Toledo City Council approved an agreement Tuesday with Lousiville-based Cities United to develop a crime-reduction plan.
Council voted 9-3 to approve the $180,000 contract, which will be funded using federal relief money.
City officials have said that for the past 11 years, Cities United has partnered with over 100 municipalities nationwide to create a comprehensive violence-reduction plan.
But Councilman George Sarantou, who voted against the proposal, does not believe Toledo will receive a good return on its investment. Also voting against the proposal were Councilmen Katie Moline and John Hobbs III.
“In the 150 cities they are located in across America, less than 3 percent of the cities have had a reduction of 25 percent or more in homicides,” Mr. Sarantou said after the meeting. “I just don’t see the results, and I’m a results guy.”
The organization’s executive director, Anthony Smith, met with local officials in February and again last week when Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz announced the creation of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, a new crime-reduction initiative that will receive technical assistance from Cities United. The mayor also named Malcolm Cunningham director of the new program, which he says will help to “formalize” crime-reduction work under a department of city government.
Councilman Tiffany Preston Whitman has been pushing for passage of the contract with Cities United, which she says is no different than the many other outside contracts the city routinely engages in for assistance in developing policy to allocate spending.
“We do this all the time. We constantly engage with outside services to do the business of the city. This is no different,” Ms. Preston Whitman said before the council meeting. “Cities United is about helping the mayor, the administration, council, and other department heads really look at how their resources are structured around violence and how you restructure a city to reduce violence. That’s something that a lot of cities don’t have a lot of expertise in.”
Ms. Moline also voted against the proposal because, she said, she believes Toledo already possesses enough internal resources to create such a plan. She also expressed concern that safety director Brian Byrd would retire in September. His announcement happened Tuesday morning in a social media post.
“When the Cities United plan was being brought to council, that would have been a good opportunity to let us know while we were deliberating on it that we were going to be looking for a new safety director,” she said after the meeting. “I was a little taken aback that the announcement came on the same day as a vote potentially on the Cities United project.”
Four former mayors who formed the Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhood, a community initiative to combat crime, have also been vocal in their opposition to the Cities United proposal.
The group has initiated multiple community meetings while also developing a 12-point plan to address crime in Toledo. The former mayors — Mike Bell, Paula Hicks-Hudson, Donna Owens, and Carty Finkbeiner — submitted a letter Friday to members of council and Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz urging them not to support the Cities United contract. Mr. Finkbeiner, Mr. Bell, and Ms. Owens attended council’s meeting Tuesday, but did not address council publicly.
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said Tuesday morning that he met with the former mayors several weeks ago, and they had a frank exchange of “good ideas.”
“We left the meeting committed to working together,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.
Cities United was discussed at the meeting, and the former mayors were told they would have an opportunity to “meet with the organization to start working with them,” he said.
“We extended an invitation [for them] to meet, and they declined,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said. “Unfortunately, I think that is significant.
“The community wants us all to work together to solve this problem. For the first time since this committee has formed, they have officially decided that they don’t want to work with us. I think that’s a little unfortunate, and it kind of flies in the face of the spirit that we should all be committed to,” he added.
When asked about the proposed meeting with Cities United, Mr. Finkbeiner said Tuesday before the council meeting that he did not believe Mr. Kapszukiewicz was being sincere, and he referred to the invitation as a “pure political move on his part.”
“[This is] absolutely a political thing to make it look like he cared about our opinions when in fact, it was the same way he has treated us all along, with total disrespect, while he flounders and falters and hires people that have no experience in public safety,” Mr. Finkbeiner said.
Ms. Preston Whitman said she was “disappointed” that the former mayors declined to meet with Cities United officials.
“We shouldn’t go back and forth for something [like this] because there is too much at stake,” she said. “Anyone can have organized community groups and put forth aspirations and goals, and we support that. But I guess what I don’t want to do is for the community to be misled or misinformed about what this work is. We are open to growing in this area, and we have a lot of work to do.”
First Published May 30, 2023, 11:48 p.m.
