TOLEDO, Ohio — Violence continues to be an issue in Toledo and city leaders are continually trying new approaches to tackle the problem.
On Tuesday, Toledo City Council approved the most recent strategy in the form of an agreement to hire Cities United.
Cities United is an anti-violence organization out of Louisville. The goal is to help the city develop a new comprehensive plan to reduce violence.
All but three members of council voted in favor of spending $180,000 for a year-long contract with the group, seeking Cities United's guidance in sharpening and restructuring the city's anti-violence systems.
While the contract is guaranteed for a year, council member Tiffany Whitman said it could go up to 18 months, but she made clear that it's a one-time expenditure.
Whitman explained that members of Cities United will bring their technical expertise to the Glass City by providing job training for violence interrupters to make sure they're properly trained, helping to further develop our community's gun violence prevention and intervention programs, and making sure city resources are being properly allocated.
"They're going to be doing work with some of our directors and people internal to the city to create a comprehensive public safety plan as well as look at some of our programming," Whitman said. "As well as we've received a grant to put interrupters in some of our school communities, so that's some of the work that will be done."
On its website, Cities United describes itself as helping local governments "create a customized and sustainable action plan for implementing solutions."
To do this, Cities United focuses on four key objectives: coaching city and community leaders to use effective anti-violence approaches, uniting those leaders with people from other cities to share ideas, establishing the organizational support to implement those ideas, and the money to keep it all going.
It's something the organization says it has done in 130 cities across the United States. When the group comes to Toledo, it will work directly with the mayor's Office for Neighborhood Safety.
Council member Cerssandra McPherson said she's cautiously optimistic and believes that Toledo will sometimes spend money frivolously, but Cities United will help cut the fat from our current system.
"We've got a lot of people in the community who are actually doing the work, and a lot of them aren't getting funded. And we have people who aren't doing the work, and they're being highly funded. So I think, in that sense, they'll be a great help," McPherson said.
Council members Katie Moline, George Sarantou and John Hobbs all voted against the contract, with Sarantou pushing Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz during the session of council to hire a safety director with police training instead.