Toledo has enjoyed a number of notable achievements over the past five years. Our economy is as strong as it has been in decades, an accomplishment reinforced by the fact that Site Selection Magazine has ranked Toledo in the Top 10 in the nation for new business investment six years in a row.
We are resurfacing hundreds of residential roads per year, as opposed to the dozen or so per year that were fixed in the past. We created a regional water system with our suburban neighbors, invested federal dollars in programs directed at youth and neighborhoods, and won national awards for the excellence of our park system and our commitment to sustainability.
These are all hallmarks of a successful city, and we should be proud of the progress we have made in such a short amount of time.
But not everything in Toledo can be described as a success right now. Not when we see too much gun violence and too many lives — especially young lives — lost to this crisis.
Even though the statistics show that violent crime and homicides were lower last year than the year before, we know what’s happening in many Toledo neighborhoods is unacceptable. And even though gun violence has gripped countless cities around the country in the years since the pandemic began, we take no solace in that. Because we don’t live in other cities. We live in Toledo. And solving this problem can only involve the people of Toledo.
Over the past three years, we have established a gun violence interruption program, made significant investments in the Toledo Police Department, and accelerated economic and neighborhood development in targeted areas.
Toledo City Council declared gun violence a public health crisis, with individual council members leading diverse efforts to address blight, increase funding and support for youth programming, and respond to neighborhood-level safety concerns. It is work the Mayor’s Office and City Council are doing together.
However, gun violence is due to serious breakdowns in many areas of a person’s life. So, we can’t fool ourselves into thinking that the solution can be found in any one proposal or institution. Moving forward, we will be taking a new, multifaceted approach to address the violence in our community.
Successful cities have ecosystems that protect citizens and promote safety. Toledo has this ecosystem, too. It is made up of families, schools, police, churches, employers, health-care providers, social service agencies, violence interrupters, and countless other community members, all of whom want the same thing: for everyone in this city to live happy, healthy lives.
The ecosystem doesn’t always work efficiently. We are working to improve efforts to join local leaders, neighborhood-based organizations, and major institutions that are already engaged in community safety work. We need to get better at linking these groups and people together.
One way we plan to do this is by partnering with Cities United, a nationally recognized organization that works with cities around the country to fight gun violence. Cities United specializes in bringing communities together to ensure that the public-safety ecosystem is working properly and is financially sustainable. We saw this firsthand when we attended the Cities United annual conference in Baltimore in October. It’s impossible not to be impressed by the results. Toledo is blessed to have so many people and organizations who want to address this problem collaboratively. In the upcoming weeks, Cities United will begin to coordinate these efforts and fold these disparate groups under a common umbrella.
This will be hard work. It may be frustrating, and the results won’t happen overnight. But it is work that must be done, and based on everything we know about the resilience and goodness of Toledoans, it will be work we all do together.
Wade Kapszukiewicz is the mayor of Toledo and Tiffany Preston Whitman is a member of Toledo City Council.
First Published January 22, 2023, 5:00 a.m.
