There will never be enough money or enough resources to fix everything that's broken here, and the whole city will collapse in the ocean if we splinter into one more special interest group.

And then, every so often, I meet someone who restores my faith in the power of regular people - with as many grievances as us - to transform a community.

A few weeks ago, I dragged my "morning after" head into a neighborhood economic development meeting sponsored by the S.T.A.R.S. Community Development Corporation. (The S.T.A.R.S. CDC, as I hope you know, is a dedicated grassroots group that is working to kick-start redevelopment, employment, training, and recreational opportunities on the West Side.)

At first, I was skeptical as featured speaker Donald Maxwell - the longtime director of a Kansas City, not-for-profit community group - began describing his background. Maxwell said he was the former owner of a shoeshine empire, a record store, a pool hall, and several apartment houses - all before his senior year of college.

But when he began showing slides of his neighborhood group's accomplishments - in an area of Kansas City that looked very much like our West Side - I almost fell out of my chair.

There was the abandoned hospital that his group bought for a dollar, demolished, and rebuilt as a community-owned shopping center - complete with a model Hallmark shop that is used as a national test site for minority-themed products, and a well-stocked grocery that features African-American foods.

There was the "incubator shopping center", where local entrepreneurs can launch their small businesses on the condition that they install quality fixtures and merchandise, and hire at least 50% of their work force locally.

There was the new public library that replaced a liquor store and bars.

There was the plastics company that employs 85 people without high school diplomas for $8 or $9 an hour, while training them to get better paying jobs elsewhere.

There was the cement block factory that pays local residents $18 an hour and which features the best manufacturing equipment in the country because it's also used as a demonstration plant for the equipment manufacturer.

There were the blocks of restored apartment houses. The townhouses designed to attract middle income people. The attractive, state-of-the-art senior residences.

The senior activity center which draws 600 seniors a day, and which features a movie theater, health center, craft classes, chapel, pool hall, ice cream parlor, and soul food lunches.

The once ravaged neighborhood that now boasts distinctive, single-family homes with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2-car garages, spacious yards, and basements - and which sell for only $75,000 if the owner stays for 10 years.

The fleet of 59 vans that daily transport more than 3,000 people to their jobs, the senior center, or to hospital appointments.

The home health care program that transforms welfare recipients into practical or registered nurses.

The construction trades program that takes people with 5 to 10 year drug sentences and prepares them for union jobs in the $22-$29 an hour range. If they stick with the program for three years, their sentence is commuted and their record cleared. (Only a handful have returned to prison.)

Over the course of three hours, Maxwell showed us over three dozen different projects, representing only about half of their successful ventures.

Was every project a success? Not at all, he assured us. Almost one-third of their ventures have failed, and their first project was a complete bomb. Was it all done overnight? No, their neighborhood-based group has been working steadily for almost 30 years.

What about relocation? Quite a few residents had to be relocated, but they hired an expert relocation company to find safe, sanitary and decent housing for them, and they offered each owner a fair market price for their property.

Who financed it? Maxwell emphasized that his neighborhood group started with no real money of their own. Instead they sought federal and state grants and low-interest loans (admittedly harder to find in our post-September 11 world). They convinced companies like Hallmark and the equipment manufacturers that it would pay big public relations dividends to use their facilities as demonstration sites for new products and equipment.

They cajoled major corporations into giving them grants and long-term, low-interest loans. They bought up abandoned property, maintained it as the neighborhood revived, and profitably resold it to companies like Hollywood Video.

They sold their first successful business ventures to local minority entrepreneurs so that they could reinvest the proceeds in other projects. And they convinced local churches to donate $3,000 each to their first shopping center so that church members would take a real interest in its success.

Maxwell's strongest advice to the S.T.A.R.S group - which is teaming up with the Monmouth Housing Alliance to build its first single-family homes on the West Side (a venture pioneered here by Interfaith Neighbors) - was to start small, involve the community, and don't be afraid to fail.

Which brings me back to those twice-monthly, migraine-inducing city council meetings, and my doom-and-gloom feelings about Asbury Park.

Over the past eight months, I've noticed two groups of people who typically speak up at council meetings. One group seems to come solely on a divide-and-conquer mission, to make speeches and sow distrust. When it comes to teaming up to start a children's program, paint a community room, or clean a lot, they're nowhere to be found.

The second group often complains just as bitterly about city conditions, but they are organized to do something about them, and they are more than willing to work with city hall and other groups to make conditions better. They also understand that we're in this together for the long haul. Fortunately, this second group vastly outnumbers the first.

These are the people who will revive Asbury Park, and that's why I love this city the other 29 mornings of the month.