KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — Kalamazoo City Commissioners say they are well on their way to tackling the issue of generational poverty in the community, but they will need some help and some time to pull it together.
At a special work session Monday night they took a cold hard look at the numbers. 85% of the community’s families have a working breadwinner, but they just aren’t making a living wage.
One child in three lives in poverty, 50% if they are African-American.
Vice Mayor Don Cooney says they have done as much as they can without professional help. They need a specialist who can put the community’s resources together with the public input from Imagine Kalamazoo and apply best practices to come up with a strategy that fits Kalamazoo. They plan to hire a temporary consultant to do some short term heavy-lifting.
Then they need to expand existing training programs, create more businesses and better paying jobs, and set up an evaluation system to make sure it’s working.
They have the resources and they are buried in data, they say they need a path forward.
They will move forward with one aspect of the plan, that’s summer slate of programs for the community’s children.
They will however be able to greatly expand the number of children who can participate in some of the programs they offer.
The Supervised Playground Program for younger kids will be available at four parks this year, instead of just one and the Summer Youth Employment program will be able to grow from 100 to 350 teens during summer vacation.
Mayor Bobby Hopewell says these are programs that have already proven themselves over the decades. In fact he participated in them when he was young.
There is a third program called All Things Possible for middle school aged children
That will be just as large as last year, which was its first year.
The plan is to approve dipping into the Foundation For Excellence to fund the expanded programs at their next regular meeting.
