‘Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods’ frustrated with city leadership
They say the right steps have not been taken.
TOLEDO, Ohio — Members of the Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods, which includes three former Toledo mayors, held a meeting at St. Martin de Porres Church on Bancroft Street in Toledo. They say that one concern they have about gun violence here in Toledo is that they believe members of Toledo City Council are doing the mayor’s bidding.
“I know they’re nice people, but they’re not solving violence and crime as the major problem in our city,” said Carty Finkbeiner, former mayor of the city of Toledo.
Joined by two other former mayors, Mike Bell and Donna Owens, Carty Finkbeiner unleashed on members of Toledo City Council and Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz.
He says that the city’s choice to tap a Louisville-based firm to help find solutions to address violence, from the attendance of a Baltimore conference, isn’t sensible, considering Baltimore has one of the highest crime rates in the country. He and others believe alternative solutions need to be offered.
And newspaper after newspaper, Finkbeiner offered examples of how other cities have addressed the issue.
“‘Duggan urges Detroiters to enroll in job training.’ Underemployed and unemployed folks; he’s got a program they thought so highly of it that the White House sent an advisor to Detroit to encourage them to adopt the program. He’s looking out for the economic well-being of the poor and the under-salaried in the city of Detroit,” Finkebeiner said.
For former mayor Mike Bell, it’s about putting taxpayer dollars to good use. After one attendee suggested Ring cameras to modernize block watches, and expressed concern about the costs associated, he responded by saying taxpayer dollars are exactly that: taxpayer dollars. He added today that there’s plenty of collective experience between three former mayors.
“One thing we know is that it won’t cost you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to find out, what we already know as mayors, what is wrong with this city,” said Bell.
Another attendee of today’s meeting even brought up the idea of going into schools, which is where students may feel comfortable discussing the obstacles they face as young people in the city. It’s a similar idea to what the city has already been doing with a series of “Youth Be Heard” listening sessions at local libraries.
“We have to go into these schools, every single one of these schools or we’re going to keep losing kids every single week. It’s upsetting to me because I want to go into the schools, I’m gonna start going to the schools myself and seeing what I can do personally to maybe have an assembly meeting, maybe once a month, just to find out what these kids have to say. It’s so important to find out what their issues are.”
Owens responded by saying that the mayors did that at Scott High School, but didn’t invite cameras to protect those students. She emphasized while speaking that people of all ages are being lost to this issue.
“The kids are dying. Young kids, babies, older people. How much more of this are we going to take?” Owens said.
The mayors said that following this meeting, they’re going to continue to have more conversations, and then they’ll present their ideas to Toledo City Council in the form of a proposal — which will put any further action in their hands.
