I believe that our current neighborhood association structure is lacking; as past president of the Overman Park Neighborhood Association, I was surprised to see that, in neighborhood briefs to city council, only North Cedar, Overman Park, Community Main Street and College Hill had a seat at the table. And these groups briefed City Council only irregularly (once a year at most).
I follow neighborhood association activities around the country in order to learn best practices, and the most successful ones have a defined city component (usually in the form of a volunteer neighborhood services committee). As your At-Large city council rep, I would advocate for establishing a similar committee for Cedar Falls, comprised of the leaders of each of the neighborhood associations, along with a city staff member and the Iowa Regional Council of Governments (INRCOG). This committee would exist to foster communication between the associations, as well as to apply for and distribute grant funds to support city-wide neighborhood development projects and coordinate events like National Night Out.
To make this idea happen, we'd ideally need new neighborhood associations for other areas of the city. While the city isn't responsible for creating them, as your At-Large rep on City Council I'd take on the challenge of identifing and recruiting potential leaders and helping them to organize and establish their organizations. And I believe the city can help by establishing recognized neighborhood districts (similar to what's already been done unofficially by the Tourism and Visitors Bureau). These new, official neighborhood districts could then be the boundaries for the new associations, as the non-governmental means to address neighborhood issues and advocate for improvements and services.