Friend --
Throughout this campaign process, I have been asked a lot of tough questions and have been given a lot of tough love on the changes citizens feel need to come to our city. Most recently, my neighbor asked with an aching heart, “How could another teenager lay dead on our city streets?”
This is such a hard topic to unpack. Some of it is very real, and some of it is rumor, and when we’re afraid and grieving, it’s hard to tell the difference.
What’s real is the life lost; the lives lost. What’s real is the fear. What’s real is a woman in a park running from a shooting with her babies. That’s real, and that’s unacceptable.
What I know about the people of Kokomo is that once we set our minds to something and work together to achieve it, we can do just about anything. If we decide that we are no longer going to allow ourselves and our neighbors to live in fear, then we absolutely can come together to make that happen.
Last weekend, my family and I joined about 60 others in Studebaker Park at a Unity Block Party to come together and show we CAN enjoy Studebaker Park with our families - To show that all is not lost in Kokomo even when things are scary and overwhelming. It takes adults like you to stand up and say that Kokomo is not defined by the bad things that happen here. We’re defined by how we respond to the bad things.
My son Jack asked me what I was doing last night as I started to reply to my neighbor’s question. I told him some people had questions about whether or not people from Chicago should be allowed to come to Kokomo to live. He just looked at me and said, “Yes. Always. This is America, and all people should be allowed to live wherever they want.” He’s nine.
As the adult in his life, it’s my job to create a community where that ideal can become a reality, and that means there’s hard work that needs to be done.
On of the mayor’s responsibilities is to create and implement policies to keep our city safe. From a policy perspective, I’ve pulled a few pieces from my full platform that apply here:
- Immediately develop a competitive talent attraction package for new and transfer police officers to increase our police officers to 100-102 sworn officers so they spend less of their time in response to calls for services, and more time developing innovative programming focused on prevention and intervention of drug use and substance use disorder.
- Proactively connect first responders with community organizations and public health officials to fill the gap between the criminal justice system, prevention and treatment programs, and health care facilities to most effectively respond to our community’s crisis.
- Augment training programs to ensure our public safety departments have continued professional development in leadership training, technical training, sexual assault response training, bias-training, mental health training, and trauma-informed training.
- Create and support a robust network of neighborhood groups who come together to identify strengths, wants, needs, and more in their own neighborhoods, and work to connect them with appropriate city departments and community resources.
- Develop a network of strong, proven mentoring programs around each school in Kokomo allowing teachers to focus on their number one priority: our children.
- Commission a task force, including community members, to evaluate, prioritize, and recommend an innovative plan to rehab, repair, and replace vacant, abandoned, and blighted homes.
- Enforce codes to the fullest extent possible requiring landlords to clean up or improve their property when they are in violation of local ordinances, and work with tenants to protect them from retribution, including connecting them to community resources that can help.
- Our alley system is outdated and under maintained so we need to assess current use and state of our alley network, categorize the assessment for basic repairs, redesigns, and repurposes, and the staff and train Street Department appropriately to implement the plan and begin construction.
- Knowing street lighting provides comfort and makes us feel safer and more aware of our surroundings, request assessment from Duke Energy in neighborhoods where lighting is sparse. Prioritize locations based on neighbor interest, cost, and need where the area is a walking route to schools or vital services like hospitals, trolley stops, or groceries. Then develop lighting agreements and begin installation.
- We must develop partnerships with existing organizations at all levels to support, train, and place the hard-working people of Kokomo in jobs that support their families. We start by launching a Work Based Learning Task Force to assess the current state of job training programs and employer needs in Kokomo in partnership with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. Then we establish a strong partnership with human services organizations who have relationships with underemployed adults in Kokomo connecting them and supporting them as they get the skills needed for the jobs of today, and tomorrow. Finally strengthen partnerships with unions to leverage their well-established and effective apprenticeship programs to develop the skilled workforce we need.
We can’t pretend issues this big can be solved with platitudes and vague statements about a potential plan to staff up public safety personnel.
I’m always willing to sit down to talk about things and work through complicated issues, even when it’s hard. Please never hesitate to reach out.
Click here to view my entire platform. <abbieformayor.com/platform>
In Your Service,
Abbie Smith
Democratic Candidate for Mayor for Kokomo
Abbie Smith for Mayor
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Abbie Smith for Mayor - PO Box 2881, Kokomo, IN 46904, United States
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