Housing, Community Development & Public Health Committee - Regular Meeting

Money that we want to be able to use as things come up during the year and we can this is absent a housing trust fund that we can use and pivot and leverage also with private sector dollars to do the work that we need to do in our neighborhoods. Our ask for training is $10,073 Our ask for office supplies $8.08 78 and of course, charge backs which is our share of operating cost, water, phone, copier, insurance, etcetera is $276,004.23. So, again, general fund has a million 9, a 9.5% increase over 2025. This chart is a chart of our our organization. We have 36 full time equivalent employees proposed for 2026.

That is down from 2025 number of 44.75 employees. That reduction basically reflects the spend down of the treasury emergency rental assistance program. And with the close of that program, we had to let go those those specialists that were doing our intake and processing work. So, FTE's proposed for 2026 are 36 full time. The chart as you can see has two major divisions in the department, the administrative services position division and the housing division.

Our administrative services division, we have two senior managers, our our budget manager, Tanya Granger, and our community planning grant manager, Monica Brown. This division is charged with basically, I say, organizing and moving the money. Organizing and moving the federal dollars and doing all of the budgeting and fiscal work that is necessary. They do our budgets. They do our request for reimbursements.

They do all of our contracting, purchasing, and procurement, and etcetera. The grants management folks also do all of the five year consolidated plan, the annual action plan, all of the community work, all of the application processes that again are required to move and comply with our federal dollars that we receive. The housing division are sort of the folks that craft and implement and execute programs that are funded with our federal and state dollars. They manage the rooftops program, our whole house rehab. They manage our lead remediation program.

They manage our nonprofit Choto housing development program, our housing in home purchase assistance. So they do the program work and the execution and the actions that are funded by the grants and the funding that we receive. Directly tied to my office, which is another division, is our grant our lead and our lead ordinance enforcement work that is coordinated by Monica Smith, our lead coordinator, and our food policy work that is overseen by Mara Mamani, our new food policy officer. So this is our org chart. 36 full time employees down from 44.75 in 2025.

The general fund, if you look back at the org chart, every everybody in blue is funded by the general fund. Everybody in orange is funded by our other grant sources that we get, be they an entitlement grant or a grant that we seek and write for and receive competitively. Out of our 36 FTEs, eight positions, eight positions are funded by the general fund. One of those eight positions is funded only 70% by the general fund. The other 30% is funded by a federal grant that we receive.

So we have 36 positions. Eight are funded by the general fund. Seven of those eight are funded and one of the eight is funded only by 70% general fund work. The next slides show by division just the names of those positions and I won't bother to go into that. And if you read in detail, we have provided a brief description of what each position does in each one of those divisions and the names of the individuals that hold those positions.

This slide here, this pie chart, I always like to use it because again it reinforces the funding that we use and expend how much of that comes from the general fund. Pulled a number when we did started working on this PowerPoint, we didn't have all of the 2025 figures available. But as of November 2025, this pie chart shows you the expenditures of the Department of Housing and Community Development and the percentage of those expenditures as reflected by the sources that are funding those expenditures. We continue to track at around 7% of general fund for the work that we do. Operating grants consisted of about 50% of our expenditures and by operating grant, the biggest portion of that of course was the ERA rental assistance program, our lead grant, our home ownership fair grant that we raised from the private sector, EPA grant for environmental that secured for the Swain Field project, and a number of other, the HUD housing grant that we wrote for.

So 50% of the work that we do and that the funding that we expended in 2025 as of as of November 30 was supported by the independent operating grants that we received. CDBG accounted for about 35% of our expenditures, home 5%, and ESG 3%. So this is how we're funding this important work in the community. And in this environment of federal cuts, we're totally dependent on the federal government and the success of our efforts to procure outside funding with tracking of general fund support of around 7% of our work. What did we do with the money that we did have in 2025?

What were our accomplishments? I'm just going to at a high level talk about what I think are perhaps the three most important accomplishments. We if you look, you you look at the online item for the lead resource center is a lot less. You you in 2024, there was a larger plug for the lead resource center. One of the goals that we set with this administration was to seed a nonprofit philanthropic arm for fundraising for the lead poisoning prevention work that we need to do in this city.

Recognizing that landlords alone can't be totally responsible because of this this simple high cost of lead remediation versus the the the rents that they get. So, for example, the city of Cleveland has ceded a lead resource center that literally raises millions of dollars annually from the private sector and our goal was to mirror that mirror that work and stand up a lead resource center here in the city of Toledo. I want to say that we successfully did that in 2025 working with the fair housing center. The organization now has its own five zero one C three. It has its own executive director in Kansas Buckley.

It's now looking for space which we hope will be at Swainfield and that organization is now on its way to helping us to raise money for the lead poisoning work that we need to do here in the city. So, that was a major, that was a major accomplishment that took about three years to get to that, to get to that point. The the new board is also in place and policies and procedures have been developed. So, it's on its way. It's on its way.

She has now established a grants writing calendar. It is now starting to engage philanthropy to help us raise money to support this work on the ground. The the other major, I I think, significant accomplishments was the TA and the and the work that we've done with the homeless service coalition. More specifically, leading families home and family house. One of the things that we see is that you've got a lot of homeless service providers, you've heard a lot about the cuts in federal and state funding, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done here with efficiencies.

You've got everybody doing their own thing, everybody has their own executive director, everybody has their own finance person. How do we streamline these services in light of dwindling resources? We need to streamline streamline operations to do more with a little bit that we have and I think 2025 was a was a great year in that we brokered a merger between leading families home and family house to work together to become one provider of family shelter services and that that that was a significant coup for this city and with your approval, we funded six months of operations to provide support for that merger and we will be providing oversight over that merger to make sure that it happens correctly and that indeed the combined family shelter operation is going to be operating as we envision. I think that's significant is going to set the bar for our other homeless service providers and will be a model for how we continue to streamline services and achieve more efficiencies in this in this space. We also saw in in 2025, the start of construction on two thirty affordable housing units for seniors, families, and youth aging out of foster care.

The Collyn to Green five project Park Hotel, Glen and the Grand, YWCA, and start of construction on Arlington Senior Housing. Our portion of this work is basically sitting down with these developers, helping them find a site, helping them finalize their budget for the development of these projects, providing gap financing for these projects because they couldn't happen without our support of whether it's opera dollars, whether it's home dollars. These projects will not be able to happen. So, we provide that support. We're there.

We're making sure that these projects get to closing. We monitor the construction of these projects and we are we provide oversight and make sure these projects are filled and are operating as envisioned. So, 2025 was a good year and that we have two thirty affordable housing units on the way that were not previously available to our residents. And when you look at the need for affordable housing, we're we're probably over 10,000 units that we need. So, seems like a drop in the bucket but a drop in the bucket gets us closer as to what we need and we're going to continue this work in in 2026.

Through our rooftops program, we repair 41 roofs for seniors and very low income residents of the city with an average cost roofs of $20.00. We could do more if the average cost was less and then one of the one of the things that we we are concerned about as we do this work whether it's rooftops or whole house rooftops. It is the cost of construction that we are facing and how do we how do we work together to get that cost down particularly as we were looking at very distressed neighborhoods and and and and working with our residents that simply simply can't afford to do these repairs. And one of the things I'm particularly pleased about with the merger of code enforcement in our department is that one of our goals will be as we implement these programs would be to align the code compliance properties with and prioritize them as we as we do these programs and as we receive applications. So, 2025, 41 roofs.

We had a major sort of work item in sort of cleanup item that we did in 2025 that took a lot of staff time and time working with the office of law and the recorder's office. When we provide a loan for a whole house rehab, that loan has a ten year term and if the property owner stays in the house for ten years, the loan burns off every year that the property owner stays in the house. Well, since the department started doing this, there are there are dozens of people that had gotten these loans and these liens were still on their properties even though it's been ten years or more. So, considerable time was spent by the housing staff cleaning up all of these mortgages, releasing them, and making sure that these folks titles was not encumbered. So, I just want to point that out and and just highlight and thank the staff of the housing division for releasing 124 mortgages that were tying up their properties.

It really was a big workload. We continue to fund our nonprofits to do infill housing construction. In the old South Bend, one of our nurses we funded two new infill housing units. One of those units was a modular and that's exciting. It was the first time a modular as we look at construction costs, the ability to save time by using a modular is important.

So we've worked with that organization to pilot out a modular. With a modular, you still have to do a PLA because there's you you still have to make sure that the modular is constructed with union wages and any on-site work that is done with the modular. So, it was a good pilot for us to see how that worked and if you haven't seen the historic South modular, I'd like I I suggest you go out and take a look at it. It's a very nice looking. So, we we we did two of those in the Old South End in 2025.

We completed lead remediation on 96 properties. Most of those properties are are properties that we receive orders from from the health department and these are properties where a child had been tested positive as having high lead poisoning levels. So, we go out, we work with the health department, and we work to remediate the lead in those properties. 96 of those properties were done in 2025. One of our goals at the department is to continue to foster home ownership in the city of Toledo.

We're right around half renters, half homeowners in the city. Cities that have a higher percentage of homeownership, the neighborhoods tend to thrive better and do better. So, our goal is to stabilize that decline in home ownership and increase home ownership in the city. We do that every year. This was the second year that we had an annual home ownership fair where we bring together our realtors and resource providers, credit counseling agencies, and the second year of our fair totally funded by private sector dollars that we raised the second year of the fair.

We had 500 attendees supporting this initiative as a result of this initiative, we also funded 35 new first time homeowners in our city which is significant. So, we're we're going to continue this homeownership work in 2026. During the 2025, our right to counsel program that we do in partnership with allow serve two ten households providing legal representation in approximately 95% of the cases. A total of a 119 cases were closed corresponding to a 135 eviction filings with a 116 resulting in evictions prevented or delayed. Right to counsel advocates devoted a one thousand eight hundred and three hours to direct client representation including courts appearances in case support.

We close and receive funding for two HUD section 108 loan guarantee transactions worth $4,000,000 for community center improvements including the Sublaki Center and the Delta Hotel repositioning on the campus of UT. If if you haven't gone to that new Delta Hotel, I suggest that you go. This is our second four star hotel in the city of Toledo and without this section 108 loan guarantee transaction, this would not have happened. Just to, sort of re re update you on what the section one zero eight program is. It is a it is sort of a line of credit that we sought approval for with council's approval for strategic transaction and the sort of the collateral for this line of credit is our is our annual CDBG funding.

We also provided code blue assistance for the colder days, coldest days of the year. We've led third party partner engagement compliance efforts by coordinating mandatory CDB training for 70 participants. We facilitate the development of our current five year consolidated plan with 136 attendees and analyze 500 public surveys responses. We also secured a $4,000,000 grant for the HUD for housing competition. Significant part of that grant is going to be used for our zoning rewrite and zoning reform that we hope to get underway shortly with the appointment of our new planning director.

We're going to you're going to hear about that and you're going to hopefully, we're we're we're very excited about that work. We have we have done a with the Planning Commission a request for qualifications for nationally qualified zoning rewrite firms and we hope to be completing that procurement and bring that firm on board to start working with the community to get this done. Part of that $4,000,000 grant will fund appraisal gap financing and housing templates for building infill housing in our inner city targeted neighborhood. We completed the second cohort of our Toledo neighborhood capacity building institute. This is the work that we're doing to strengthen our nonprofits so that they can be able to secure funding to do the grassroots work that we we need to do in our communities.

We're now recruiting for the third cohort and this is this is ongoing work that we hope to continue to do. Our environmental review staff has completed a 133 environmental and historic reviews for federally funded projects as a responsible entity whether a project is implemented by us or some other entity like the Ohio Theater that is receiving federal dollars directly, we have to complete the historic and the environmental impact review. Staff did 133 of those in 2025. Our monitoring staff completed 156 monitoring visits of CDBG third party partners. We processed five eighty four requests for funding and there's a lot of back and forth correcting those requests, making sure that those requests align with with the proposed budget.

2025 saw the passage in of the final revision. We hope of our lead ordinance we secured a million and 5 from the State Ohio Department of Health to continue our work in again, lead poisoning prevention in the city with this state grant. We assisted 28 homeowners. We reviewed and processed 800 certificates for led certification by our landlords. 2025 saw the transfer of the lead process from the health department to us and if you can recall, we're now totally doing the lead cert more under Monica Smith's leadership with a rehabs project officer in LaClark.

They are responsible for sending out notices and making sure that landlords that are subject to the lead ordinance complied. So, that that all that work transferred to us in 2025 and we completed 2,100, we processed 800 lead certificates. And 2025 saw the end of the ERA rental assistance program. That program, the performance period ended in September, 09/30/2025 and we assisted four twenty five families as of 2025. So that's what we did with the funding at our disposal and this is what we want to do, continue to do in 2026.

Obviously, with 93% of our funding coming from federal and state sources, as the oversight agency, we want to make sure we continue to administer those funds in an effective and compliant manner, meeting all reporting timelines, meeting all planning plans, submittal timelines, etcetera, so that we can keep receiving those funds. So, our our main priority is to is to continue to do that and to continue to be compliant with our funders requirements. We want to continue to efficiently manage our housing preservation and home ownership initiatives. Rooftops, home rescue, lead poisoning, lead hazard control, and our home at last and we we again, we hope to align start to align that work more with our code compliance division. We we applied for the highest amount ever that the city has applied for a $7,000,000 uh-uh for the lead grant and 750,000 for a healthy homes grant.

This is the only money that we have. The only money potentially that we have to support lead poisoning prevention in the city. So, we put together submitted this application. We're now in the final negotiations with HUD for the receipt of that money. We hope to be able to make a big announcement shortly that we have received this money and and that we're ready to to comply.

So, keep your fingers crossed that we will we will our final amount will be the be the amount that we applied for. We want to complete the construction of the Glen and the Grand, the the Grand is is four is 20 townhomes with four bedroom townhomes that are, you know, affordable townhomes. If you if you drive by North Detroit, those are they're beautiful. There's a waiting list already for those townhomes and we hope to be able to have them occupied in 2026. Also, The Glen which is the 45 units that we're working to build on the old Southland Shopping Center.

Are also going to be completed with workforce workforce housing. Housing. We want to continue the construction and complete the construction of Arlington Senior Housing working with the area office on aging our partner and complete the Whitney Manor rehab on Monroe and I think it's North Cove. That will that will add 20 units of permanent supportive housing for individuals that are in recovery. It it is an extremely important source of of housing.

So, we'll have 20 units there that we will complete. We hope to expand our work to facilitate the development of more affordable housing, a more housing projects, all types in the city. A housing project doesn't just happen. People call us every day looking for sites in the city. Sites come up and we look at those sites. We look at the potential for housing on those sites. We we engage developers.

What do

you think about this site? Do you think it would be feasible? You know, do you think you could get 100 units or 50 units on this site? We share that we work with OFA. We ask OFA, if we were to do housing on this site, how do you think this site would score? We call up Lisa Cottrell and say, okay, we've got a guy that wants to do a 100 units on this site. Do you think with the zoning or with the zoning change this could happen? So the work that we do with the different, agent planning and funding agencies is to facilitate the development of a of a housing project. You got a you got a 50 acre site. Do you, you know, can you get it done?

What kind of infrastructure do you need? How can we fund So, so getting a housing project to happen takes this sort of front end priming of the pump that you need to do working with your your development community to make this project happen. So, we continue, we would like to expand that work in in 2026 and so that next year at this time, we can tell you we've got two or three more projects coming online that that will be delivering more housing to the city and of course, with the transfer of the lead ordinance enforcement to us, we want to provide robust enforcement of that ordinance under Monica Smith and her leadership but we also want to provide not we want not just a not just a heavy hand approach but we want to provide some funding that will enable the landlords that want to comply with some financial assistance. Hence, the lead grant that we apply for. Hence, the setting up of the lead resource center to try to get some philanthropy support so that we can we can provide the financial plug if you will where where available to help our landlords comply with this ordinance.

Of course, we want to complete the revitalization of the of Swain Field. At that work, I I think it's 60% done. If you drive by, you see it's looking well. They're now putting in the Lighting is now on the site. The arts commission has partnered with us.

They've applied for two grants from the Toledo Community Foundation that they've gotten and they're going to be some public art on the site which I think is just going to be fantastic when it's completed. So, with that completion of that project, it'll be a major, I think, catalyst for changing that neighborhood and that part of the Monroe Street Corridor. We're going to continue our work to prepare for a choice neighborhood planning grant application for Festula. We're waiting for HUD. HUD has informed us recently that they're probably not going to release the grant application for 2026 but you you provided us with funding to prepare for this application and we're continuing to do that work.

Healthy food initiatives, Mara Mamani, the food policy officer is hopefully going to make some progress on the establishment of a food policy commission with our Nursa uplift funding program that that we've got funding from the pro housing. We hope to start a process to help to build 75 new homes in our Nursa during the next five years. Establishment of a housing preservation fund, I would call this a precursor to the housing trust fund which we also talk about. We've always talked about with the council that we need to support housing development in the city. So, we hope to do that.

Maybe carving off some of our CDBG dollars to start this this process and finally, we We want to continue the cross cutting staff training and professional development with our staff. Under our leadership, we have promoted and with the support of training dollars from the general fund as well as from our CDPG admin dollars. We have we have robustly promoted staff training. There are several organizations that provide staff training for housing, development, home ownership programs, etcetera. We've encouraged our staff to attend trainings to get certified.

They all go to to Columbus to the housing conference every year to learn what their colleagues are doing. So, we're going to continue to do that and continue to to do this cross cutting training. I want to close before Commissioner comes on that another big priority is to really as we as we look at code compliance in housing and community development. What are the things that we need to do to enhance that function and code compliance was was once a part of this of housing and community department. It was moved on its own and at that at the time it was, there was a study that was done the code compliance assessment done by the Center for Community Progress.

I've shared that that with you with council. I want you all to revisit it because this the priority of of Commissioner Mullner and R and he will talk about the progress that he's made on implementing some of those major recommendations of that of that survey or that assessment if you will. Our priority is to really implement as many of those recommendations in that assessment as possible. We think excellent recommendations. Jim has started this work.

He'll talk about that. But our priority is to work together and use that assessment as a framework for improving code compliance in the city. So with that, I'm going to segue into Jim's presentation but you know, I just also before I go over to Dan, I want to thank you all for your support for housing and community development. Whenever I come and ask, sometimes you don't give me everything but I think generally, we receive we receive support from you when we when we ask. But I also want to emphasize the precarious position that we are in.

When we are funding 95 or 96% of our work with federal funds. It's not a good situation and I have shared with council and I'll be glad to do that again to share how other cities and counties fund this work other than the general fund. How do people fund housing trust funds? What are some innovative ways that we can so that we're not dependent on the federal government? I think I think the needs are great in the city of Toledo when you look at the state of our housing, you look at the poverty, the needs are great and we need to seriously think about, how we can diversify our funding sources.

We are committed to with a little bit that we have whether it's general fund or federal dollars. We are committed to working more efficiently with what we have and and hopefully we've demonstrated that but I think as long term sustainability planning for our neighborhoods, we need to we need to seriously think about how we in the future of how we do that. I'm excited to have Jim as part of my division. I think we are going to do some great things together. I think he's done some great work and I'll pass it over to you. Thank thank you.

Thank you. And while you get ready, Jim, I just want to take a minute to acknowledge and welcome councilman Serratu. Who has his light on?

Thank you, madam chair. I I had a question of director Clemens, if I can, before we get to the next subject. But this is a great report and I really appreciate it. It's very comprehensive. The one thing that I'm not hearing, and I apologize, I came in late, so maybe you covered this. In the past, we've had the Financial Wellness Center, and they provided about seven twenty one tax returns, resulting in about $850,000 in refunds. Is that available? What are what is what is your thinking on that? Because I think in the past it's been

The financial wellness center, their pathways does some of that work that we fund through, that work is funded through CDBG. Pathways does some of that work and NeighborWorks does a great portion of that work. As if you could recall, last year we did not fund NeighborWorks with new CDBG dollars but we extended the time and allowed them another six months to run through that. We have advised NeighborWorks that we will be expecting application from them when the new application period opens up and we're anticipating that they will be applying for CDBG dollars to support the Financial Wellness Center.

And that would be the VITA tax return services?

Yes. And that the work that they do include tax returns, it includes credit literacy counseling. So

they need to be applying at

some Yes. They need to be applying. And it's it's a part of their standard plan. They will I'm assuming that they will apply because it's a it's a standard funding source for them.

Because I as I recall, I think it was about 850,000 they were able to generate in tax refunds, federal and state combined

Yeah.

Which is important to

Yeah. It is important.

In the community.

So Okay. But we we, you know, I I think that NeighborWorks will be applying and I I, you know, I think they sort of get the message that you've gotta with the funds that you have, you've gotta manage them, you've gotta meet your timeliness because we have to meet our timeliness. Mhmm. And I think that message is clear, and we're hoping to get a good application from them this year

Okay.

To support to continue to support that work, I think.

Great. Okay. Good. Thank you, director. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you members of council. My name is Jim Molnar. I'm the commissioner of the division of code compliance. Today, we'll be presenting our 2026 budget presentation to you, and and we appreciate your consideration and your time as we go through this.

Just to give the general overview of the budget request, this year's budget request is for $2,600,234 The high level breakdown of this, majority of our budget funding is for salaries and fringes, which is $2,100,000 $2,186,296 That was an increase, but that was due to contractual obligations. All the rest of our expenditures were either reductions in our asks in the spirit of trying to keep costs down with this year's obligations and the either were reduced or stayed the same. So we are asking for $14,800 in training, dollars 80,692 for supplies. This includes office supplies, computer supplies, publications, clothing, linen. But the biggest portion of this $80,000 is postage.

As you can imagine, we send out numerous violation letters, correction letters, notifications to property owners letting them know that their property is not in compliance. It's close $60,000 of the 80 is for mailings. We're also asking for a section for computer software. The majority of this cost is for the Ptolemy software that is housed, and we tried to administer this through this is for Ptolemy where code compliance has been the the I guess the the the leader of of getting this installed, but we do share this with all city departments. I I believe everybody on city council has access to it.

If you don't let us know, we'll get an account. We share it with we're now sharing it with the water department. We share it with urban beautification. We share this with the law department, we share this with economic development, we share this with building inspection, we fire department has has been using this, and it's just a it's a tool that we are still building, but it it is already providing huge results as I'll get more into our presentation. And then our chargeback is $215,000 and that's for the interagency chargebacks and services.

So 2025, our budget was $2,374,498 to our new budget is at 8.7% increase to again the amount of $2,600,234 This is our organizational chart where we have myself as commissioner, and then we do have two administrative positions, a chief code compliance inspector and our public services officer. You'll notice that there is one bubble off to the right here, which is an inspector two, but in reality, this inspector two acts as our court liaison and deals with our housing cases. Before even my time, this position or this person was hired where instead of having to send inspect every inspector to court every single day based on whatever cases are on the hearing, we're able to send this court liaison to to housing court. And for the most part, unless it's a an official trial, he can handle all our cases. We only have to deploy one person to to housing court.

Other than that, we do have two supervisors of of enforcement support. We have one clerk. We have two specialists or two two clerk one clerk one, one two clerk twos, and then we do have two administrative specialists, one of them being our convenience store coordinator who works in enforcing the convenience store license, collaborates with planning and zoning, collaborates with finance, and then also works with the code compliance side of things. Also coordinates with building inspection as needed. And then we have our administrative specialists that is our lead safe enforcement and rental registration and vacant property registration specialist.

And then finally, addition to that, we do have 10 inspectors that are assigned to different areas of the city or special assignments. This is just an overview of the FTEs. We did add one FTE where we created the public services officer position, was the person who was my administrative assistant who was being paid out of the building inspection fund, but then got a promotion to the public services officer position. So really the reason that looks like there is an additional FTE was because of the fact that from the transition of rearranging the clusters, person's now paid out of code compliance. As we mentioned before, these next pages are for some brief descriptions of the duties of all different members of our team, and and that's for your reference later if you wanted to go back and see all the different people in our department and and what they do.

Brings us to our 2025 accomplishments. As director Clemens mentioned, the strategic, the community center center for progress study has more strategic equitable approach, the housing build building code enforcement in Toledo, Ohio, which was commissioned back in 2021. We provided copies for everybody to to hopefully you'll you'll have that so it's it's nearby for you to take a look at. And and but for the most part, this study has served as the framework for what we've been setting of how we set our priorities, we develop our operations, and deploying our limited resources to address complex persistent housing challenges citywide. While there's still work to do in the last several years the last several years have produced meaningful progress across organizational structure, technology, partnerships, and on the ground outcome.

I just added one visual that's that's in this this study that we gave you, kinda giving you idea of how city of Toledo staffing relates to other cities. Well, you noticed that that Toledo has one inspector for every 13,000 housing units versus like Rochester, New York has one inspector for every 3,300 units. So just to get an idea of the challenges that we do have in comparison to other cities. In the accomplishments, I I organized this into five different sections, starting with organizational and cultural change, purpose driven compliance. We've had a cultural shift from checking boxes to working with intention, moving away from going through the motions to to deliberate outcome focused enforcement.

Staff is encouraged to understand why an action is taken, not just what action is required. Greater emphasis on problem solving, judgment, and consistency. We have an enforcement our our enforcement philosophy has been realigned around compliance and fairness, focus on education, transparency, and an opportunity to remedy, clear pathways for extensions, owner action plans, and to save your home from demolition. Accountability remains, but escalation is purposeful rather than automatic. Our policies and procedures are are are now centralized to support intentional decision making.

We have a single handbook that provides clarity so staff can act with confidence and consistency. This reduces mixed mixed expectations and the assembly line enforcement, allows staff to focus on outcomes instead of process confusion. Just kind of real quick off of here, it's not on the slide, but with code compliance, there there there wasn't a a quick connect manual. It it was sort of like getting it's it's it's more like getting a LEGO set, and let's just say the the Millennium Falcon. So Millennium Millennium Falcon has has 7,500 different pieces.

And if you just pile it up on the the table and you try to tell everybody to put it together, you're gonna end up with people that are skipping steps, everybody builds their section differently, and you don't notice the problem till much later. And it's usually harder to fix. So the policy and procedure manual is the instruction book that keeps everybody on track. It spells things out like how we use action plans, how inspectors prepare in the field, how demolition properties are handled, and how and when orders are needed to be posted. It sets sets clear expectations for fundamentals, returning phone calls, notifying property owners properly, and documenting when a when a property is unfit for habitation.

Those details may seem small, but they're the pieces that keep the whole system working. When everyone follows the same instructions, we get consistent enforcement, better communication with residents, and the decisions that hold up when they're challenged. That's how a small team successfully builds something that this complex together in the right way. Brings us back it brings us transitions us over to our second section of workforce development and professionalization. We've empowered our workforce with training and professional development to invest we invest in their education, certification, reinforce confidence, judgment, professionalism.

Just as if we would invest in our infrastructure, in our roads, in our water system, we are investing in our team. This encourages staff to see their work as a public service with real neighborhood impact. Result of this training has been, since we launched our training certification program, we provide continuing education to the entire code compliance team. In a team setting, everyone together learning the same thing. This includes our clerks, our inspectors, our supervisors, and our our administration.

From that, we now have 10 team members that have gotten their certification in international property maintenance code. Of those ten, four of them have dual certifications in the IPMC and the the international code council zoning certification. And I just have to give a shout out and make it at least make a note that there's only 19 people in the tire tire state of Ohio that has this dual certification. Four of them are employed by the division of code compliance. The next category, systems, data, process improvements.

How the work gets done. We've improved data collection and analysis by using tools such as Ptolemy. I could talk for hours about this, but it helps us centralize property information, us identify repeat offenders, and monitoring of compliance trends. We've modernized workflows across inspections, property transfer vetting, illegal transfer identification, court review screening, and again, improving consistency, transparency, and tracking. And this isn't just Tolome, this is also CityWorks where we've had a lot of assistance with our ICT team that has been able to find enhancements or additional capabilities that we didn't know were available in CityWorks.

Tying back to Ptolemy and having those two systems work together has been a huge accomplishment. One example would be our vacant property registration with the assistance of counsel passing the ordinance of strengthening ordinance this year. We did made it we we we made it available for people to register online for the vacant property registration. We still our final step is to get it so people could pay for it online, but we're we're really close. And I'm optimistic we'll have that before the January.

If not if not, well, hopefully sooner. Another example would be that we've continued our vetting and consent to transfer policy. This is where a property has open violations and somebody wants to purchase it. It started with title companies reaching out, and there there's a rule that it's illegal to transfer a property that has open code violations. But they can go through the city of Toledo and get a consent to transfer.

And in order to get this consent to transfer, we vet the property owners, show that they have a plan for the property, have a timeline of when they're gonna bring it into compliance, show they have the financial ability to bring it into compliance, show that they don't own any other properties that already have other violations, and essentially the goal is to prevent problematic transfers before they occur. And just as of Friday, this got put online as well. So when title companies contact us or potential buyers contact us, they can submit all the different information that I mentioned online and we have a workflow system built into CityWorks to make that more efficient and and thorough. Section four, our strategic programs and project examples. These are visible concrete results.

I think everybody knows about the Ohio Department of Development Grant program where code compliance works diligently with urban beautification and Lucas County Land Bank where there's been more than, at this point, more than 700 demolitions completed. I believe almost another 100 demolitions are gonna be completed before the end of this year from that grant program. However, that funding is gonna be used up. So what we've done in anticipation is we created a candidate for demolition program. It's where we identify the next list when next funding becomes available of the highest risk properties that are properties that are deemed to the point that they aren't able to be renovated.

They wouldn't be economically feasible to try to renovate these properties. Fortunately now that we are part of the housing and community stability cluster, we've we've already started working with director Clemens and and her team to identify properties that are that are in the Inglewood NRSA. Even today, are signing out inspectors to to go go do do some some sweeps sweeps in in the the Inglewood Eaglewood NRSA NRSA to identify if there's more properties that we don't already have on our list and to do another review of the properties that we do have on our list in hopes that they'll be eligible for CDBG funding. We're really excited about that. And again, it's using our funds the best that we can strategically and identifying the funding available for it.

So the other part of this is that once a property is deemed that it's a candidate for demolition, in order to get that tag per se, that identification of that property is removed, then the property has to go through a or the owner would have to go through a save demolition program. Your home Which means that not only does the property need to be just boarded up board up the windows and cut the grass, we we require that the property owner has a safety inspection performed, an internal inspection of that property to say whether or not does it have heat, does it have working water, does it have safe electricity, are the floors safe to walk around, is this property going to be safe for human habitation. So it requires properties that have been identified for demolition to be brought to a safe habitable condition. This reinforces compliance based outcomes while preserving the housing stock. So there is an opportunity, but we have to make sure that these properties are going to be safe for people to live in and help our citizens.

Finally on this slide, we have started targeted sweeps of large property owners. Another tool that we've inherited from Ptolemy where we're able to identify the largest property owners of residential properties. And we gone we get a list. They own 140 properties. They have 40 properties that have outstanding violations.

We go and we do a double check to see if that violation is still still not complied, get fresh documentation, and then we reach out to these management companies or the owners of of the properties. Let them know, you owe fines, you have these properties that need to be in compliance. We need them to be corrected in thirty days, or provide an action plan, give us a give us a request for a reasonable ex extension, pay the fines or there's gonna be additional fines or we're going to put all four of your properties. This is just an example. All four of your properties into housing court.

We ultimately want it to be a partnership, but at the same time we need to have accountability. We now have the tools and the technology to follow through with this in a way that we've never been able to before. Finally, section five, high profile outcomes and interagency coordination. This has been essential for working in partnerships with our fellow departments at the city of Toledo. We're all in this together, it takes a village, right?

So we've had successful resolution of high profile cases, for example, the Riverside Mobile home park that involved many agencies to get us to where we are. That's still in motion, but we've made a lot of progress. Another example would be the Covenant House. The Covenant House was in pretty bad shape. I wanna say more than half of their units weren't habitable.

Over the last year, through all the different agencies that were involved. Eventually, code compliance ended up taking ownership of follow through on this, but we're down to maybe 10% of the units that are not considered to be in compliance at this point. This involved several several inspections. Inspections. It's It's involved involved us going back to the property several times when maybe we'll do 10 property or 10 units at a time.

But those 10 units are coming into compliance. And that, again, is what we want. And and I think the speculation was originally that Covenant House was on there, was just basically trying to sell this property and they were going to let the next buyer take care of it. In the meantime, our citizens suffered. But now they have taken action and they are bringing these properties into a safer living experience.

Just want to mention the improved interagency coordination with urban beautification, building inspection, Toledo Police Department, Law department, engaged Toledo. We're working constantly in coordination with these other departments and consider this an accomplishment because it seemed like there was a people wanted to work in silos and not together and there was a lot of resistance and now there is a feeling of community amongst all of us. Some examples of those would be court ordered abatements that we get from housing court and then we have to go to property or urban beautification. They're the ones that will clean up the property. We also go there to Toledo Police Department to make sure that we keep the peace and that there isn't anybody protecting the safety of our employees and explaining what is going on from the police side.

Another example where we worked with TPD is their team initiative, their quality of life program. We've done over 300, we visited over 300 properties in conjunction with TPD to do sweeps in targeted neighborhoods. And there's a lot more to it and I'll let TPD explain that more if they want to, but it's been very successful in building that relationship with the Toledo Police Department. And finally, last but not least, enforcements and collection improvements. We've been able to work with the finance department over the last year in which, let's say, fees that were being paid, I don't have this exact number, but let's say it was about $1,000 in 2024.

This year, we've been able to collect $50,000 in fines that go into the new Submitment Trust Fund. Even more exciting or not more exciting, but even additionally exciting was the when council passed the ordinance allowing the law department to enter into a an agreement with the third party collection agency, we expect to be able to collect a lot more of these fines. And it's not about collecting the fines, it's about changing the behavior of these property owners and understanding that there is a responsibility to take care of your property and that you do affect your neighbors around you. And hopefully that it's it's it will deter people or or encourage people to to keep their property so we don't have to get that call, so we don't have to send an inspector. And so we we will be able to focus our resources on the highest risk properties.

So here I do have a chart because everybody likes to see some statistics, and I just kinda explain in here what the slideshow is showing. The slideshow shows what happens after residents reach out through Engage Toledo when they call and make complaints through Engage Toledo, which we call service requests and how they transfer translate into real work. In 2025, Code Compliance received 6,287 service requests from Engage Toledo. Of those, 47% resulted in confirmed violations of the Toledo municipal code. While that's less than half of those less than half, those violations generated 26,000 follow-up actions, including reinspections, extensions, fines, court filings, postings, tow notices, a different additional violations.

There's six essentially 26,000 visits to these properties as a result of 3,000 violations. The key here is to point out that one complaint rarely equals one action. Each confirmed violation creates sustained work over time. Looking at the front end data, twenty twenty two percent of the results resulted in no violation. While while no enforcement action was needed, this still requires inspections and documentation to suggest an opportunity to evaluate how complaints are received and describe intake, where clearer questions or earlier clarification could resolve some concerns without dispatching an inspector.

Just just important to to point that out that there there could be some opportunity there. Also, 17% of these requests were duplicates tied to existing active cases. In many of these situations, enforcement was already underway. With better better visibility and communication at the time of the call, progress could often be explained to the resident rather than creating a new complaint. That also reduces the duplicate workload and a proven transparency and trust with the citizen.

On the right side of this this slide, we see that the enforcement demand is not evenly distributed across the city. Districts 4 And 3 account for the highest volume actions. So they're they're pretty close, but District 4 takes has has the most and then District 3, and then it's it's followed by Districts 1 And 2, and and that would probably not be a surprise to anybody. But in response to this data, we have reevaluated and adjusted our inspector zones to more evenly distribute the workload, taking into account not just geography, but call volume and the level of follow-up needed in each area. This helps to ensure inspectors are assigned in a way that better matches enforcement demand and allows for more consistent attention where it's most needed.

Overall, this data reinforces the need to move from a purely reactive model to a data driven proactive enforcement strategy. And it's important to note that this workload is being handled by a small but highly capable team making prioritization, technology, and smart deployment essential. This, you know, this slide just sets the stage for our priorities to focus on smarter intake, clearer communication, and directed limited resources where they matter the most. So we get to our priorities. And I might go through these quicker because I know everybody's time is valuable.

But need to mention our division of Cotomay's recent accomplishments reflect deliberate progress aligned with the recommendations of the Center of Community Progress's study. This study continues to serve as the division's roadmap for success. Through a small but highly capable and caring workforce, Code Compliance is focused on building the right foundation, modernizing policies, strengthening systems, and targeting risk more effectively. These efforts demonstrate how strategic alignment and disciplined execution can produce meaningful results even with limited results. The priorities that follow represent the next phase of this road map.

So I won't get into a lot of this because most of this is continuing on what we've already done. We have data driven enforcement. We have policy implementation. We have multi property owner strategy. We have owner engagement and culture of compliance.

Again, this is where we expand through our transfer reviews, action plans, save your home applications, emphasis on education, fairness, and timely remediation to prevent escalation, building a partnership with with our community and our own property owners. Workforce development, Legal coordination, I did mention at the beginning about our court liaison who's in inspector one, but we do wanna make that into a supervisor position so they can more more efficiently handle, be an actual legal supervisor court liaison. Operational efficiency and access, we want to improve on responsiveness through streamlined workflows and technology and we're continuing that. Implement online payment options for code compliance fees. I mentioned that we are working and we're really close to being able to take payments for the vacant property registration.

The next step is being able to have people be able to pay the fees online just as you can for, let's say, a parking ticket. When you get home and you get and you get online or you open your ticket, you open mail, you you're not you're not too happy at first, but after you calm down, you're like, you know what? I really should pay this. And you can get it you can get on your computer and you can pay it. Right now, the way the system is that you have to bring cash or a check and you have to come downtown, you have to pay to park, you have to go through security, you have to figure out what floor you're supposed to go to, you have to come and wait for a clerk to ring you up, print you a receipt, and and essentially take take take time off work to pay a fine.

So that that is is huge as far as to get that as as a priority for us. Another big one is now that working with housing community development, there's a lot more resources to meet with more stakeholders so we want to conduct more polls and create more focus groups where we're meeting with stakeholders and try to prioritize what citizens believe are our top 10 issues in which code compliance should focus on. Code compliance has been the mixed bag of ordinances being created, laws being created, and it's sort of like, not to age myself, it's sort of like give it to Mikey, he'll eat anything. When everything's a priority, nothing is a priority. It makes it really increases the challenge to try to be effective.

So what we want is try to have our stakeholders tell us what are your, what is the top 10? What is the highest risk? What's going to make the biggest impact from the community standpoint? Going into revenue stabilization, we talked about having continued collections because we do have those fines that are unpaid. And when show that it is a real payment that you have to pay, hopefully that itself will be proactive in keeping people to keep their properties maintained and in compliance.

From there we do have the multiunit apartment complex licensing that we've been working on a blueprint for. It's getting closer, but that is to address the covenant houses, the Ashland Manor. But it also includes the executive towers, and it's gonna require a license or an inspection done by a third party to verify that these properties are safe for human habitation and that starting off with apartment complexes that have over 40 units. Still have to work through those details and the logistics. As you imagine, there will be a cost to that.

We want to make sure that we get that right. But that is our priority for 2026. Finally, our transparency and public access. We really hope we can make this happen this year, but Whit told me there's all this data, we're doing our data cleanup, we're we're making sure that the information that we are you can use in Ptolemy is is useful and accurate and fair to to the citizens, but then we want to stand up a public facing platform where everyone can see what is going on when you call in with a complaint on a property. Who owns fines?

Who is still out of compliance? Who is a top residential owner that has 40 complaints and make that available to the public so that they can start using this tool that we recently already have seen significant advantages to in doing our job. So thank you.

Questions? Thank you. First, I just want to take a minute. I know we briefly brought up, but I want to thank your teams both housing and code compliance. I know we talk about small and mighty.

You guys do a a whole lot with a very little, and it is commendable the work that you're doing. So I know we're always moving and sometimes we don't take time to celebrate those victories but what you've shown today in one year what we're doing is just immeasurable for the the residents of Toledo. With that I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge President Williams and then I see lights are on but just housekeeping for anyone new there is a sign up sheet for public comment on the side table if you'd like to sign in. With that I have a couple questions. The first one is for Director Clemens.

When we are looking at the reduction in FTEs that you had mentioned that the eight positions are due to the closure of the rental relief program. Did we need eight of them because of all of the hoops and all of the assessments from the federal money and keeping I guess my question is if one of the needs that we're hearing and that we're seeing in 02/1111 is the need for funding. So if we were to ever find a funding stream for that would there be a need for eight more positions I think is where I'm coming from.

No, there's significant number. Some of the positions were due to retirement of some folks and we have decided not to fill those positions. But the rental, the mayor's assistance slot which we use to fund the rental assistance specialist, we don't envision bringing those positions back. Okay. Unless we were to get another tranche of federal rental assistance funding, then we would would recruit mayor's assistance or specialist to backstop that program. Okay. Thank I hope I've answered the the question. You have.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. And then the roof replacement funding. It is that come out of our funding or does that come out of community development block grants?

Well, a significant number of the roof replacement funding was ARPA dollars that are now expended and we added some CDBG dollars to that program. When you get your CDBG action plan, you will see another tranche of funding that we've put in to continue that program. So going forward, the rooftops program will be funded out of CDBG.

Okay. Thank you for the clarity of that. And then for Commissioner Molnar, the on your page with the software, is that the same as last year or is it an increase or a decrease in ask?

The 102,000?

Yes, the 100,000.

That's the same as last year I And

then that is for Ptolemy. Does that add any of the additional portals or anything? Is it just for the?

There's a little bit of additional in there and I don't know if Melanie wants to correct me but there is a proposal right now to get the add on for the slate software but that is for the short term rentals portion only.

Will that be coming out of the finance budget then?

Where I think what we have the extra would be used for slate or from code compliance but I can't speak for finance as far as where the remaining funding would come from for that.

Okay. I might have to save that for her because I do not see her.

We can, Councilman, we can get you a breakdown of of the different where we're expecting to pull for

that Thank

you. That would be

really And then, I know that Councilman Melden has mentioned that the city is looking at AI, the usage of an AI policy and as as I look in the code compliance study, the one thing when it came out there wasn't programming like city detect or some of the AI programs some cities are using to support their staff members through that. So I just want to make a point before turning the mic over that. I believe that you guys should be in on that conversation as we develop what our AI policy is going to look like moving forward.

Okay. You know talking about the way forward and the Center for Community Progress Assessments and what sort of a not one size fits all. Who's come, is who are our main bad actors? One of the things I've asked Jim to provide us with so that we can tailor our approach going forward. What what does our statistics look like? Who are the major who are the I think it's pretty benefits for counsel to know. Who are the are they out of town landlords? Are they local landlords? How do how can we compile the data or analyze the data to direct the approach, the court enforcement approach? Can you talk a little bit

about that?

Absolutely. So I think it's important to note that most of the time it's easy for us to say that it's these out of town landlords that are that are causing all these problems for the city of Toledo. When we actually do this study, when we do the analysis, we crunch the data, it comes back that if we look at our open violations of properties that have open violations and have continued open violations. Yes. We have 35 38% of our violations are homeowners.

And yeah. And there there there probably are income challenges to that. But when it comes to the out of town owners, the number is 20%. Out of town landlords. But then we talk about local landlords.

The local landlords make up 42% of our open violations. In in in compare and and let's talk about the fines that are owed owed. And I'll break it down a little bit further. So yes, there's homeowners right now have open fines of 34% of of the violations that are owed owed to the city of Toledo right now. The small local landlord is 32% of those are those fines that are owed.

The medium local landlord is only 2%. Our medium local landlords are people that own 10 to 19 properties. The small local landlord is one to 10 properties. And then the large out of town landlord is or I'm the large local landlord is about 4%. So we do have small out of town landlords at 17%, but the medium out of town landlord is again 2% and the large out of town landlords is 5%.

So I know I throw a lot of numbers out there and I can do this, I can provide you some charts and so forth by referral, however you like, I can just send it. To give you a better, it's kinda hard to visualize all this in your head, but what it boils down to is it's the small local landlords represent the highest problem properties in the city of Toledo. Whether you're talking about fines or if you're talking about open violations responding to our violations. So I just thought it was important to note that it's not always the out of town property owners that are causing the our challenges.

Alright.

Thank you. Thank you, director.

You're welcome. Council president Williams.

Thank you. I apologize for my tardiness. Parenting duties took priority. Just a quick question, looking through our budget book and your proposed request and this may be for director or chief or I don't know what to call you, bras.

I don't know. Ms. Clemens.

Just a question, in other departments they had a breakdown of previous years and you know our graph that makes it easier for us because I had to go get my budget book to do a deep dive of previous years. Why did you opt out to not put it in the presentations today? I appreciate the breakdown because this definitely helps for the acts that you have, but it definitely would help us as council members, look and be refreshed if we had consistency in the presentations of department. So if you could by way of referral and I'll fill it out for you, send us the breakdown of the previous years as the other departments have done, it just makes it easier and cleaner for us to review the budget instead of digging out these budget books. Another thing is I was looking and counting how many positions, it's consistent for code compliance but it's inconsistent, so it was 35 in the budget book and it's 36 on this presentation, Did we just add a position recently?

No. I think the 36, if I'm

not It's 35 in the budget book.

35 in the budget book. I think what the the error is, I think we're looking at one less neighborhood development specialist. Okay. And that's we we do we do we did recognize that that discrepancy. Okay. We have we have two neighborhood development specialists in the budget book. Okay. And we have three NDSs on our books, one is vacant and two are currently filled. Okay, That's the difference.

Okay and I'll fill out that referral, it just helps us review this budget like we always do to see what differences from last year to this year in different line items and it's in the budget book and we can do that, but we like when you guys do it on the presentation and it's consistent for us. So I appreciate it, this is a great presentation. I do appreciate the the departments working together because we have worked together through these terrible properties in District 4 District 4 and District 3, we have been struggling with our landlords. So, always love the work that we do together both departments and with urban beautification, it definitely helps with our residents and our constituents and the investment in low disinvested neighborhoods shows, that it's needed and we continue on. So whatever we can do for my office, definitely wanna keep keep going on just just that big that discrepancy really stood out to me today in the presentations because it's just like, now I gotta get my budget book out and it's easier for us because I keep these and I look through these and say okay and I bounce it against our budget books because that's our job as the the oversight for the city and I wanna make sure that our constituents understand that we actually read and so I did catch that, it was blaring to me so if you could and I'll fill out the referral so we can do it clean, Give us those years breakdown for your presentations, that would be great.

Thank you, Jim. I appreciate you. You're my guy. You're my rock star for real for real. Thank you.

Thank you.

You. Councilman Serranti.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, appreciate the presentation, Commissioner Anna. Again, I feel we are making progress, especially in the last couple of years. I want to go back, I want to ask a couple of questions here to clarify something. Recently, 13ABC had a report of an apartment building in the 2400 Block Of West Bancroft that did not have heat and that they hadn't had heat since November. Is that one of the functions of your department or the city to address that when people are denied heat?

Internal inspections for heat inspections is not something that we have the resources to conduct citywide. So that be something that would be a landlord tenant issue. There are there is a system through the court court rent escrow system that the tenant can can get the documentation and file that with the housing court. The the code compliance of City of Toledo does not have resources to go do a heat inspection that in the example that you gave.

I guess according to thirteen ABC, the landlord furnished space heaters, which can be dangerous over the long term. And I guess I was wondering the reason why we don't do that is basically we just don't have the resources, don't have the people to do that. I mean that's a serious issue. No heat. We've had some pretty cold weather, sub zero temperatures occasionally in the last month or so.

So it would seem like we need to do that. The the other thing I want to say is this. A long time ago, probably back in the nineties, when we had code violations, serious code violations, where you had huge problems in neighborhoods with different housing or apartment buildings, we had what we call the dirty dozen list. And what would happen is the administration would go out with the media and show these properties. And I think we got some results, some positive results as a result of that.

Have we given any consideration to asking the media to look at these properties and publishing a list of who the owners are and basically letting the taxpayers, the good taxpayers of the city of Toledo who maintain their property, who pay their taxes, who care about their neighborhoods to see that there are owners of property that not doing that. Have we given that any consideration? Because I don't think we're doing it.

I would say that that yes. As far as as giving a list to the media of of the dirty dozen, you're saying?

Yes, highlighting it. In other words, having a press conference like we've done with the apartments over on Cherry Street. What's the name of that? Greenbelt. Greenbelt, like we did with Greenbelt, where we finally got action from the landlord who was in Texas. I think we did for a while at least. But I mean, just like we've had issues with Executive Towers, we've had issues with Ashland Manor and so forth. That's what I'm talking about is basically having a media conference and showing what's happening in our neighborhoods. There's so many houses that are just they really need repair. So I'm asking, have we done that or can we do that?

We have not. Could we do it? I think potentially everything's on the table.

Think

are you talking about single family homes? Are you talking about multifamily homes?

Single family, multifamily. And I'm talking about the worst cases, not the eaves troughs are falling off. I

think what we have what Commissioner Mohner and his team has started to do is, and this is recommended by this study, the code enforcement assessment is sort of a proactive approach. If you find that a certain owner has, when they go out and they have violations, they are now checking to see how many other violations does this owner have. It's not just the service request. So they're checking to see is in fact this owner a bad actor. And you you if you have a complaint and you see oh well this this local landlord or or whatever has 10 other properties that are having violation.

The goal is then to take a proactive approach to say, call you in and say yeah you got 10 other houses, what are you doing? So it's more or less a, want compliance rather than a heavy handed enforcement. So I think I would say that is how they're pivoting the strategy to use data to see who are the the the violators and to use a proactive approach to try to bring these people in line. When you go back to the statistic that Jim has compiled in terms of local small landlords being the largest number of violators, there are several things that go into that. You know, obviously one is that you simply don't want to comply because it's cheaper not to comply.

So what's going to be our strategy going forward for working with our local landlords? How do we provide them with the education and the outreach? What's our strategy? And the bottom line is compliance and that's that's the tough work to do. So, we haven't done bad actor press conferences. I'm not saying that we're not going to but what we're trying to do is is sort of a a more soft compliant approach and and with, you know, different resources to getting people to comply. Now, after we do all of that and they still don't comply, then maybe we ought to hit a ball over the

head with a press button.

We want to take a sort of a proactive, sort of softer approach at this time.

Well director I appreciate

And let just add another thing. You have heard about this multi family housing licensing that we're trying to do and we will hopefully be bringing that to council. You've had a, you know, executive towers, Ashland Manor, Covenant House, Green Bell Apartments, you you know, most of the press comes from our the state of some of these multi family housing projects in the city. So our hope is that we will have a robust licenses, licensing framework. If you want to operate a multi family housing project in Toledo that are 40 or more units, you're going to have to get license, You're gonna have to get all of your property inspected.

And if you don't, you cannot operate. You shouldn't be operating. And that's the environment I think where we where if you're not complying with licenses, you're not getting you you mentioned someone having space heaters in their building. Well, you you you these are the types of things that a multi family license regime would would would guard against. And we sure, once we roll this out, we will public the list of the properties that are licensed, the properties that are not licensed.

So we want to do this in a strategic way and we are thinking about how do we make properties are operating and licensed and the ultimate goal is compliance. Well,

and I appreciate that and we should be doing that. What I'm saying is that the worst violators and by the way, I just made a referral for those stats that you presented to us, Commissioner, to send us that because I'm surprised by that. Because many of us believe that it's the out of town property owners where the problem owners I think, again, if we can make some progress with our local property owners, that will build up the neighborhoods, make them cleaner and we'll get results because we have a lot of challenges in this area. But I still think that the worst violators ought to be highlighted in the media if they're not responding, if they're not being accountable and going to housing court and doing what they need to do to upkeep their properties and make those improvements. If they're not, then I think we should have a dirty dozen list.

Because again, there are properties out there where for years the property owners have neglected maintaining basic care of those properties. And if we can't do it currently through the current methods that we're using, then I think we need to be more aggressive and take action. It's been done in the past. I believe it worked somewhat. It's not perfect.

But again, we have to make these changes to respond because the better shape our neighborhoods are, the more chances we have of keeping people in Toledo and getting people to move into neighborhoods. We have a wonderful park system. We have new schools. We have so many beautiful libraries. But if housing stock, the properties are not in good shape, it's going to be hard to get people to move into those neighborhoods.

And schools, the parks, they're all wonderful amenities to have and safe neighborhoods are also important. But we got to make progress on these homes, these properties. So I offer that as a suggestion. I look forward to getting your referral answer and hearing periodically if we're making some progress. That would be very helpful to know. So many cases filed, so many cases the landlord agreed to make those improvements and they were actually completed or they're in process. Thank you very much. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you. Councilwoman Doctor. Jones.

Thank you Chair. Well first and foremost, just the work that both of you have been doing and your teams is just phenomenal considering just what's happening not just federally with funding but just what the resources that we are working with and can work with especially with capacity and just seems like the growing problems when it comes to housing and just community development. I guess my first question will go to Chief Clemens as far as developers. Do you have an idea of how many developers we usually encounter and secure projects with annually like maybe three, four or is it more than that?

I'd say maybe three or four.

Are they like the larger developers or just?

They tend to be small. Most recently we've gotten quite a bit of interest from larger affordable housing developers for sites in the city. And that's always driven by how sites are scoring based on the offer funding source, you know, algorithm. And if we have some sites that seem to be popping up, they tend to zero in on the city of Toledo.

Okay. The reason why I asked is I know that we've had this conversation before but when it comes to the developers and all of the publicity that the city has been getting, I really think that we need consider just the community benefits agreement type format and you mentioned the housing fund and that could be something that would be of interest or presented to these developers as far as some sort of investment within this fund. At least trying to get it started considering that we are dealing with a budget constraint right now. Just something to invest in the city if you're going to build here, operate here, you can invest in some sort of other capacity whether like said the housing trust fund or one of our other trust funds, building compliance, just some sort of percentage or a certain amount that will be equitable for them as well. I just think that we really should get that started or at least have a consideration for that.

I believe you said like a la carte basically of things that we can offer the developer. When it comes to the single family homes, know that you've also bought up the half and half and a way to get around a lot of the increasing construction costs were with the modular format. Are you considering moving forward with that and if there's other opportunities for single family homes just trying to replicate that model as well?

Yes, we are exploring the use of modular construction. We have actually looked at several other cities in Ohio, Columbus, Cincinnati and we have engaged several modular housing construction companies and we will be looking at that as a potential opportunity for infill housing in this city. Perfect. And do you by chance know what was cost difference between the like a traditional housing model versus this one? It's probably around 25 or 30%.

Most critically though is ability to predict timing because you do the site work, the modular is done in the factory is delivered, you can easily control your cost because you know you can control your construction timeline. That's really one of the biggest benefits.

Okay, that's very good to hear and I'm just excited also that we're looking at other alternatives. I know that it can be kind of reactive but it definitely is a proactive approach just from what I'm reading from and hearing from you all about what you're trying to do. With the mortgage releases, is that, have you covered all of the mortgage releases as far as those who Yes, have yes, that's completely done right now.

Now have a system to immediately reduce, release those mortgages when the ten years has expired.

Okay, okay yeah because I know that you, it was 01/2024 and I was like well are there more still out there that you have to review completely Yeah, that's always,

as the ten years come due, at the time that the ten years is up we want to be on top of them and to release them.

Okay, but the expired ones are already taken care of right now. Okay, perfect, perfect. And I believe that was all of my questions for you. So Commissioner Monar when it comes to just your capacity I'm assuming because of the staff that you're relying a lot on technology right now and that's why the cost for technology has, I mean you said it stayed the same but should we anticipate more increases based upon just the streamlining of processes and things of that nature?

I do think there's opportunities to use technology that there would be a cost and just as councilman Gaddis mentioned what was the software data capture, I wrote it down. There's also technology that is add on to Ptolemy which I mentioned earlier for SLAIT that we're talking about moving forward with short term rentals. That software is available for a rental registration system. That software is available for a vacant property registration system. The idea behind the both of those would be that the landlords would actually pay a registration fee for the rental registration which right now they can do free at the county auditor's office.

However, there's enforcement side where the city of Toledo does have a law that says that you are required if you have a rental property to have a rental registration on file with the with the auditor's office. Mhmm. And it does we do have a law that says if you have required to have a vacant property registration with the city of Toledo. Mhmm. So as far as like if the city wanted to, they could enforce the the civil fines for people not having a rental registration with the county auditor's office and I believe city council could write an ordinance saying it's required to have a rental registration with the city of Toledo if we had the software And the idea being, if all if in a perfect world that while it would be an initial upfront cost that would get offset by the registration fee that the landlords would have to pay to have their property registered and it would pay for itself.

As part of that, it also would have a a workflow built in that if properties are identified as being a rental and not having a rental registration, it would help us build our case so that we could legally issue the fines. And that's where a lot of people again where I said is there's it's not a quick connect manual. There's there's a lot of pieces to putting together the the functionality of code compliance. Being that you have to have the legal case, you have to have the documentation, you to give due process, you have to give you know the system is built to protect property owners. So I didn't get to mean to get so far off track, but there is definitely possibilities to use much technology without adding to our small but mighty workforce that we already have.

But there is a the foundation that we've been able to build recently and the consistency and the training and the expertise, we're ready to have more inspectors so we can move to the proactive side of coke compliance, which you see is the successful recipe cities that are able to address code compliance in a much more successful manner.

Yeah and I realized that and I recall you saying that you still need more inspectors and based upon just the graphic that you have provided, I mean that's it's apparent and like I said with the growing just housing in general and how it's deteriorating trying to get ahead of the game it is going to take more. But as of right now and that's why I'm saying with the dependence on technology it will just be useful to explore even more. Of course not to take away positions but just to streamline more of the processes reducing duplication because I know you mentioned just duplicate reports when it comes to engage Toledo and making sure that things are connected so the processes can be more effective and could reduce more of the hours put into that for your staff so they can focus on other things. When it comes to the proposed, the multi family housing licensing, were there any preliminary numbers done as far as how much this would generate from this licensing if it is approved?

So yeah, don't have it memorized though. So referral. There's approximately three thirty apartment complexes that have more than 40 units. Licensing fee would be $100 $100 per unit and then a thousand dollars for the common space in the in the grounds to have the the the license. Now, this is where it it's a little bit it still needs to be tweaked.

So there would be the thousand dollars licensing application that you'd have to pay to the city of Toledo no matter what. By going with the third party inspections to certify that the property does meet NSPIRE standards, which is what we're saying, which is what HUD uses, for a 100% inspection of every unit showing that it is safe for habitation and and meets basic minimum standards. If the we we had the third party inspection company said it would cost about a $150 per unit. But that money wouldn't be coming to us. So if there's 300, let's say 300 for easy math or 300 units times a thousand dollars per application, that would be $300,000.

Am I correct? I'm doing math on the spot. I used to be really good at it but I questioned Yes.

Just to try to answer your question councilwoman, when we present this, this multifamily property ordinance and part of the reason we haven't presented it yet because we are going to have data on what we're proposing as inspection fees, what we're proposing as fines, what we are proposing as revenue, should we do this in house, should we allow the landlords to contract with a third party provider and what we would need in terms of staffing. So when we wrote, when we introduced this to council, we will outline of the infrastructure and the revenue and expense that it would be required to do this. Okay. And we hope to do that sometime in the spring.

Oh yeah, okay, perfect, perfect. I believe those are all of my questions. I just wanted to affirm that I do believe in bringing back shame when it comes to a lot of the things that's going on with housing and, you know, accountability and definitely with the looking into AI and just because of what we're the resources we have right now and I believe that that can definitely help out a little bit more with just the load of what you both do when it comes to this. So thank you for your work and I'm looking forward to just 2026 with what you have to bring us. Thank you chair.

Thank you and before I have you get up, at this time I'm I see that there are some people that have signed up to talk about housing and code compliance. If there's anyone at the in the audience that has signed up that would like to come and speak for three minutes about any issues or anything that has to do with housing, community development, and code compliance. And YYC, just as a reminder, we're going to set the clock for three minutes and then the floor will be yours.

Thank you. Good morning. I will be brief. Good morning, president Williams, council members, director Clemens. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this morning, and thank you too for your continued commitment to the residents of Toledo.

My name is Patricia Hernandez, Patricia Hernandez, and I serve as the acting executive director of legal aid of Western Ohio. For more than seventy years, LAWO has provided free legal services in civil cases only to low income individuals and families. We serve 32 counties in Northern And West Central Ohio and farm workers throughout the entire state. We help thousands in our communities secure justice, veterans, seniors, survivors, consumers, homeowners, tenants, and still others. We help these individuals and families in a variety of areas, consumer law, family law, public benefits law, housing law, to name just a few of the subject matters that we cover.

Essentially, LAWO is a non profit law firm that serves those who would otherwise not have meaningful access to our system of justice. One of the most critical ways we do that here in Toledo is through our right to counsel program which helps ensure that eligible low income tenants facing eviction have access to an attorney. And I was thrilled director Clemens to see that program listed as an accomplishment of your department. So thank you very much. Eviction is not just a housing issue.

It is a driver of homelessness, family instability, job loss, child custody issues, and negative health outcomes. Having legal representation often makes the difference between a family remaining in their home or becoming displaced. With the city's partnership, the right to counsel program has helped keep families in their homes, reduced cases, resolved cases efficiently, and promoted fairness in our local court system. It has also reduced downstream cost to the community by preventing homelessness and preserving housing stability. We are deeply grateful for the city's investment in this program.

And this morning, we are here to share why continued full funding is so important, not just to legal aid, but to the well-being of our entire Toledo community. Thank you for your time, your leadership and your continued partnership. To give you a clearer picture of how the right to counsel program works in practice and the impact it's having here in Toledo, I'd like to turn things over to my colleagues, Legal Aid of Western Ohio supervising attorney Taylor Burns and managing attorney Veronica Martinez, who work directly in the right to counsel program every day. They will share more specific details about the services provided, the outcomes being accomplished, and what continued full funding would mean for the residents that we all serve. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. I just circulated a one pager that highlights some of the information that we're going to provide to you today and given the time limit so that it can hopefully be a little more brief. We thank you for the opportunity to speak about the importance of Toledo's right to counsel program. I am Veronica Martinez. I manage the program and have so for the last five years.

Across the country, eviction courts are deeply imbalanced. Nationally, only 4% of tenants have legal representation in evictions compared to 84 of landlords. Without counsel, tenants struggle to understand court procedures, assert their rights, or negotiate workable outcomes. Many do not appear in court at all, not because they don't care, but because the system feels inaccessible and stacked against them. Recognizing this disparity Toledo took an important step by passing the right to council ordinance in 2021.

The ordinance which had broad community support provides eviction defense to households earning less than 200% of the federally poverty line in Toledo municipal court. Legal aid of western Ohio is the listed provider in that ordinance and we received 250,000 in 2022 to launch the program. With the ordinance contemplating increasing funding over a five year phase in. Unfortunately that increase never occurred but even so, the program has produced exceptional results. Now, as the program is entering its fifth year, a $75,000 funding court, nearly cut rather nearly 30% is being proposed.

At a time when housing instability is rising, the reduction would have serious consequences for Toledo families. I have listed on that handout some of the outcomes from our last full year that we have data from 2024, and Director Clemens had provided information from the 2025. Those outcomes show that the right to counsel is not just functioning, it is highly effective. The program also saves the city money. Eviction prevention is one of the most cost effective interventions available.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that a chronically homeless individual cost communities $35,000 per year. Per contrast, the right to counsel representation in Toledo cost about $880 per case in 2024. So that would be per household. Independent evaluations in peer cities have reinforced value. Detroit found a return of $3.52 for every dollar invested.

Cleveland found a return of $2.46 for every $1 invested and noted that homelessness growth there was far lower than statewide averages. Across cities, the conclusion is clear. Right to counsel is a cost savings homelessness prevention tool that strengthens local economies. And on that handout is two QR codes that will take you to those in-depth reviews reviews of Detroit and Cleveland's right to counsel so you can read at length more information about that. And now I will turn this over to our supervising attorney Taylor Burns.

Good afternoon council members. Taylor Burns, supervising attorney with legal aid of Western Ohio. I would like to follow-up on my colleague's comments regarding the numbers and remind council members that these folks are not just numbers. They are our neighbors, our family members, and our friends. And to highlight that these are real people behind the numbers, I'd like to share just one client story with all of you so you can really understand the importance of the services that are provided.

Vicky, we have changed her name for privacy, lives on social security disability and uses a housing choice voucher. After more than ten years in her apartment, ownership changed. The new owners failed to make serious repairs. Not knowing how to legally protect herself, she withheld rent and repeated sorry, and was served with an eviction. With help from her right to counsel attorney, Vicki learned that an eviction should have never filed.

Because she has a voucher, the landlord was required to give her a thirty day notice under the CARES Act. However, he only gave her a three day notice. After the right to counsel attorney raised this defense, the case was dismissed. A second eviction was then filed. Her attorney again intervened, ensuring compliance with the city's pay to stay ordinance, saving the client over $300 and helping her secure emergency rental assistance through the city's non existing program.

That second eviction was also dismissed. Both cases were sealed and Vicky remains stably housed. Without right to counsel, Vicky likely would have lost her home despite doing everything she knew at that time to protect herself. The proposed funding cut would undermine these outcomes. The city's $250,000 allocation currently funds two attorneys and one paralegal dedicated to eviction defense.

Legal aid already subsidizes the program through supervision, intake, infrastructure and staffing support, and we are not currently in a position to absorb this reduction. A funding cut would mean fewer families served and fewer staff. At a time when rental assistance has largely disappeared, right to counsel is one of the only housing stability tools remaining for tenants. Beyond court representation, right to counsel attorneys run eviction record ceiling clinics, assist with tenant education and early intervention efforts that prevent cases from even escalating to eviction. These services would also be jeopardized.

Right to counsel keeps families housed, promotes fairness in our courts and reduces homelessness and saves the city more than it cost. The data from Toledo and Pure Cities show that is one of the most cost effective investments a city can make. We respectfully urge City Council to maintain full funding of $250,000 through at least 2026 so this program can continue protecting Toledo families and strengthening our community. Thank you and I would welcome any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else from the public that would like to speak on housing, community development, and code compliance? Welcome.

Hi. My name is Cliff Porter. I'm the housing manager at the junction coalition. We are dedicated to getting the lead out of the Toledo community. And I believe I first want to say thank you to the city of Toledo because you all have been an incredible partner in our efforts to make sure that we get young folks tested for lead.

And I think a huge part of getting the lead out of our communities is robust ordnance enforcement. And I was really encouraged to see that that was a priority for 2026. But I do think that robust enforcement of that ordinance is going to require robust funding. So I just wanted to say that and point out that the $40,000, $39,000 reduction in enforcement of the ordinance is a little bit concerning and I look forward to seeing how enforcement of that ordinance is going to be as robust as you all intend it to be. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Well thank you so much. Now we will transition from housing and community development to our new community impact bubble, Human Relations Commission at Monsey, you'd like to come on down.

As you guys are setting up, I see so many of your staff here. I just wanted to take a minute to thank the staff. I know how hard you guys are work working. And we talk about small and mighty with code compliance and with housing, our Monsey team and our HRC team, we really you guys move mountains and you are changing lives and we I appreciate you every day. So with that, I'll turn the floor over to you guys.

Good morning, counsel. Thank you for having me. My name is Karen Maloney. I'm the commissioner of the Human Relations Commission. I'm happy to present you the proposed budget for the HRC for 2026.

Taking a look at the organizational chart for the year, I am now reporting to the Chief of Impact and Director of Community Services, Doctor. Tiffany Whitman, who has joined me here this morning. And then the HRC and MONSI project coordinator reports to myself and my colleague who is also with me, Director Malcolm Cunningham of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. The next slide shows the accomplishments of the Human Relations Commission in 2025. These include but are not limited to the management of the Kidd Mayor program, the human library, neighborhood cleanups, the support of the city's welcoming efforts with the support of Welcome TLC, the City of Toledo Service Week and other volunteer opportunities for the City of Toledo employees, a citywide food drive in partnership with food policy manager Mira Mamani and interim director of the Plan Commission Lisa Cottrell.

A year long analysis of the city's block watch program, partnership with Bowling Green State University, Center for Regional Design to analyze the city's engagement efforts through its sports and commissions, and then overall support of the commission including recruitment, logistics of projects and meetings, trainings and mediations. 2026 is gonna bring some changes but the work is gonna continue and in fact I believe with the vision of the administration and with Director Whitman, the HRC is in a position to be impactful than it's ever been. Systems will need to be developed to ensure that when we engage with our residents they feel respected, heard and valued. You can see here that the three line items that are significant in this budget will help support that reorganization and the development of some of these systems. The line item for professional services will continue to support some of the cultural events that we have historically planned and managed and then also continue to support the cultural events in our community and then the support of boards commissions.

The FTE's for the HRC are myself and then point seven five of a mayor's assistant three in the form of a project coordinator that is shared with Monsey. And then our expenditures by category, you will see that the majority of the HRC's budget supports myself and that project coordinator which leaves about $80,000 to support training, supplies, events and community efforts including Welcome TLC. This is about 34,000 less than 2025. So with this, this concludes my presentation to you and I am happy to answer any questions Director Whitman.

Thank you. Before I get to you, Councilman Soranto, in your report and thank you for it, you talked about the support of cultural events.

Could you expand on what events you support? Sure, so historically, well through the years we've supported things like the HRC, myself and the HRC members plan the MLK Unity Day celebration. We work with community to support Juneteenth events. We have in the past hosted an Iftar dinner at the request of the United Muslim Association of Toledo. We host a human library.

And Director Whitman and I have just spoken recently about formalizing the process for how we support these events and really making sure that when we are supporting these events that looks like a City of Toledo supported event and coming up with a protocol as to how and why we support these events as well. So this is something that I know that we will both be working on in the next year to formalize that process a little bit. I appreciate that and

I really appreciate that. I think we don't put our, we should be promoting the good work that we're doing more than we are. People are always surprised at what we're doing when I'm in the community. So anyway we can have our brand or whatever out there so people know that this is what we're doing. The other question before I get to is I know that there was the study for boards and commissions. When will we see that?

That is actually I think we're meeting tomorrow with the administration to discuss that report and then I anticipate that we'll have a meeting to discuss with counsel.

Okay, alright I'm looking forward to that. And then with that Chairman or Councilman Soranti.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a follow-up, when can we expect the Black Watch Research Report out?

That report is currently being finalized with our marketing team just to kind of put the final touches on it. It's also being divided into two different kinds of reports I guess to make it a little more digestible for community. And so I anticipate that will be finalized here in the next couple of weeks.

Okay, so then so sometime in the next thirty days or so we'll Yes. Have Okay, great.

Absolutely.

Because I think it is important, obviously we need to make some changes and I know you've done surveys and had meetings and look forward to doing that so that we can get moving and by summer at least have some kind of program for the residents in various neighborhoods.

Absolutely. And I hate to leave this with more to come, but that's what I have for you with All more to

right, super. I appreciate that. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I had a brain fart, I'm sorry. Doctor. Jones.

Thank you, Chair. Well, very excited to just see, and I love how you have the timeline of things that are coming, so I think that should be a request for other departments as well as far as their projects. First question I have is with Welcome TLC because I know that there's been much discussion of just trying to realign with what's happening and making sure that it's still offered without having any difficulties. So could you give an update or because I know it's a new strategic plan and with the enhanced library cards, could give you like a little update of what you're seeing right now? Sure, so Welcome TLC continues to do

its good work. They currently with the enhanced library card program, with the changes with the library, they have the funding with the support of the city and the county to purchase the equipment to print the library cards and so at this point what we are working with team, the Welcome TLC team is which I represent the city on, is working on community buy in and gathering partners that will accept these enhanced library cards because it's really just a tool that unlocks resources. And so in order for those resources to be unlocked, that program, that entity needs to accept these enhanced library cards. An example would be like a food bank that requires an ID. So that's currently what the team is working on.

But we've been asked by the library is to give it a couple months first quarter for them to work out the logistics of the training of the staff and then the setting up of the equipment. So as we gather these partnerships and then the equipment is set up and the staff is trained on the printing and everything like that, we anticipate that those will be available to the community by second, hopefully by second quarter. So that's one thing that Welcome TLC is working on. Another thing that Welcome TLC has done is set up a rapid response committee in anticipation for what's coming down. This rapid response committee has been working on how to get information out to the community.

And the work is being done just maybe if you're not even hearing about it. So it's tactful and it's really boots on the ground at this point. But in the meantime, the board itself is really still bringing on new partnerships and meeting regularly, the teams are meeting regularly and we are really working to make sure that our residents of Toledo feel supported and welcome here.

I'm glad to hear that because I know that was definitely a large conversation and something that I had bought up but it was more of a community conversation of how are the communities responding to this, how they're letting everyone know of what's coming and I know most of it is underground rightfully so. So I'm glad that the city is showing that support and actually that brings up another question because of the anonymity and underground work, how do you protect you know those who are involved in this and those who may use this as well.

Yes, I think what's important is I think by having infrastructure like Welcome TC, Welcome TLC already up and running and supported that there's been so much good proactive work that I think that work will be able to cover all kind And of situations so I just think it's important that you know we continue to put you know communities most impacted at the forefront and so the work is being done and so Welcome TLC continues to kind of do the good work and so when you do have infrastructure and you do have resources, you can weather multiple storms. So yeah, I just think that's important to make that statement so.

Well wonderful work and like I said I'm glad that this is we're trying to get ahead of the situation. Seems like it's speeding up all the time. One last question with your budget request it's the professional services, what does support of boards and commissions, what does that entail?

So with the reorganization there and with what will eventually be the conversation about the report that the Center for Regional Design has given us, There is some opportunity maybe for some streamlining I guess and efficiency within our boards and commissions. There's also some opportunity for some development of some systems that let our boards and commissions talk to each other a little better so we don't duplicate work. And so with that I anticipate that there's going to

be some

costs for trainings in particular and then I think there's going be an educational component to it as well. So the printing costs and supplies and things like that would be needed in support of boards and commissions as well. And then our boards and commissions oftentimes love to do for good reason direct community work in the shape of whether it's cleanups or an event of some kind and there's a cost to that as well. So that's what I mean by support of boards and commissions.

Okay, all

right, perfect. Thank you very much for that and just thank you for the great work. Looking forward to just what this year has in store for you all. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Seeing no further questions, if you'd like to continue.

Thank you.

I think it's Ctrl plus L.

Madam Chair, City Council, I'm here to present the budget for the mayor's office and neighborhood safety and engagement for 2026. So typically before we begin, we just start with a moment of silence considering the impact of lives lost even as we have progress. We are so close to this work, we are so close to this community and we feel it every single time no matter what the numbers say. So I would ask for just a brief moment of silence before we dive into our presentation. Okay, thank you for that.

So just a brief review of the agenda for our presentation. So we're going to begin just by talking about 2025 and actually a bit of a retrospective at this point, Manzi was founded in 2023 midway through. So we are going to do a violence review of the previous three years and the three years since Monty has come to be. And then we're going to talk a bit about where we've gone in 2025. So that includes the proposed budget highlights that we presented to you all last year versus what we actually accomplished.

I think it's important to have transparency and accountability around that as well as around the numbers. We're also going to discuss the things that we've accomplished or that we've done alongside Save Our Community in 2025 and Peace in Motion, the comprehensive plan that was adopted by City Council in May. From there we're going to look forward to 2026, our proposed budget highlights and initiatives, our proposed org chart including how we fit into community services and impact under Chief Whitman. Then we're going to take a brief look at the schedule of FTE positions, our proposed expenditures and typically we like to end with the cost of gun violence study that we completed I believe in 2024. From there, I hope to in some ways tell the story of the work by passing the mic.

We have a number of staff and community members and I believe a few participants that are here to provide some perspective, some thoughts on the work itself as well. So that is our agenda, I hope to cover all these items for you all today. So just violence review as you can see there is a very large asterisk next to that number. So these initial bars from 2019 through 2024 which again are lives lost or what are included inside of peace Motion and are the same way that we are calculating things for 2025. We have not historically included fatal police shootings in our datasets and so we are not using it for this as well.

And I also will just acknowledge that sometimes these numbers change change slightly year over year for a few reasons. Sometimes someone that was injured in one year ends up losing their life in the next, therefore that person is counted for the previous year if that makes sense. So this is the number, these are the numbers or the data or the people that we are going to be discussing throughout this presentation. So another thing that we shared in Peace and Motion that I want to provide a follow-up on. And again, this is for the sake of transparency is to look at the number of homicides that occurred between May and August.

We've discussed I think a decent amount, the concerns, the pain points that happen around time out of school. So we did not have progress in 2025 when it comes to time out of school. Over the course of the fourth of July weekend, six people lost their lives to violence over that entire month. I think eight of the 18 homicides occurred in the month of July. So I just again for the sake of transparency want to provide some context on where we are when it comes to the homicides between May and August.

Additionally, one thing that we shared in Peace and Motion was there's this disparity, there's this difference in the impact of violence and who was most impacted by violence. In Toledo and I would say probably across the country, black people in particular black men are most impacted by violence. So this first chart is a rate which means a rate per 100,000 people. How likely is an individual compared to other people and I guess the benefit I guess you could say for lack of a better term is you can then compare this across cities, across countries, right. In order to understand what progress is being made, what the risk factors look like for particular populations.

So the homicide rate and I'm saying that for the next slide among black people in Toledo, Ohio is 31.2 per 100,000 people. That believe it or not is progress especially when compared to the previous three years. It's obviously not something that we're satisfied with, but it is again for the sake of transparency sharing out that information. The other thing that you'll note is that among Latino or Hispanic individuals that rate increased pretty significantly. That represents five individuals, but that's an increase certainly from zero to 21 or 20.8 rate among Latinos.

So that's a significant change that we are concerned about. We're thinking about the way the work looks in different communities and neighborhoods. So when you look at the actual number as opposed to the rate, the number of black males that were lost to homicides over 2025 is twenty one. One thing that I think is important to look at also again is that three years previous and three years of Monty. So one hundred and twenty nine black males were lost from 2020 to 2022 and from 2023 to 2025, sixty five.

That represents more than 60 lives saved, right. That represents a 49.6 reduction compared to the previous three years. Another focus that we have had is focusing on violence in particular homicides against women in particular black women because the rate had been so high because the number of black women lost had been so high. So again, and I'm saying this knowing that I'm talking about humans that we know, right, that we talk to that are sometimes on our caseloads, sometimes are plugged into the Healing and Compassion Fund that are deeply invested in and committed to this work. So I know that I'm not talking about numbers, I'm talking about people.

And I also know that this is a sign of progress when there were eight in the previous year and there were two this year. Again, it's not possible to be satisfied until there's zero, but this is where things are at. 22 in the previous years and then $0.11 Monty. So the other thing that we also focus on within our work is incidents and impact on young people. We know that we've had significant difficulty with the number of young people 18 and 18 to 24 that have been lost to violence in particular gun violence in particular young black people, young black males.

So again, I have to be transparent about all of the numbers, I have to be transparent about this in order to truly work towards addressing the issues that we've identified that we've as a community decided to work to address. So when looking at this, as you can see twenty twenty four and again this is not numbers, these are people, there are people in the audience that probably can speak to some of this, right? Twenty twenty four as we discussed I believe that year, one of the worst years in the history of the city when it comes to violence impacting young people under the age of 18. We do see that there has been progress this year, but again when we're close to the work, we know, we feel, we see the way that it impacts community. Also between the ages of 18 to 24, there was a slight uptick this year.

But when looking at the overall picture, we went from 52 in the previous years to 23 in the three years since we've come around. We're not satisfied, it's not possible to be satisfied and we believe that there is progress that is happening. Another I guess age group for lack of a better phrase that we think is worth noting is that transitional aged adult, they say that the brain theoretically finishes forming or that frontal lobe is much more mature at that age. So what's happening at that point in time, right. So between 25 and 29, as you can see things are trending fairly consistently in the right direction.

I believe that's a difference of 27 individuals versus nine. And what we're also seeing and this is actually something that I think is worth considering when thinking about longer term strategy as a city as Monsey overall is that the number of people that are 30 and up or 30 to 39 or I mean honestly my age range that are being lost to violence is going up, right. We noted this among 18 years old I think in 2023 And we are seeing a trend that dates back to I mean honestly it's actually I would say probably around the pandemic time where 30 and up, there are more people being lost to violence. That to be honest has not been a focus area for our office, right. We've been very clear about what our focus areas are.

That does not excuse it. That just means that we have to when considering this think through what the next intervention or approach needs to be in order to address these issues long term. So I wanted to provide that context just on the numbers for the sake of transparency and to show the direction of where things are going overall. And also just to highlight that there is something among thirty to thirty four year olds, honestly it's 30, it's probably thirty to forty four where there needs to be alternative strategies that are developed that are appropriate for that age range and population. So again, wanted to provide that context before jumping into what we've been doing, the work that's been happening with Monty in 2025.

So I to provide transparency, what have we been working on, what did we propose in our budget and what actually occurred from there, right. So want to save our community, our goal was to increase our caseload to 105 individuals. I'll share a bit more context about how people qualify in a moment. And we ended the year with 98 participants in our caseload. We wanted to increase our employment program from four to 20.

And we ended the year with 17 in our mobility aid program with 22 where the contract was just completed. So they're scheduled for 2026 along with additional funding that is new to us that will allow us to increase to 38 participants in 2026. But again, we aim for 20, there were 17 people that were employed this year directly through our program. We also began to engage more deeply with Lucas County Juvenile Courts. This is actually something that Councilman Sorantu spoke to repeatedly.

We wrote and agreed to an MOU. We began with accepting 10 referrals and we're at seven referrals so far. I think they're being a bit careful with those final three because they may be concerned that they're the final three referrals that they'll receive from us. But I know that we're going to expand that number in 2025. But again, just for the sake of transparency, this is also another thing that happened.

Thinking about training and capacity building, we strongly believe in bolstering building up our team, whether it's with getting them trained to be trainers of RewireCBT, whether it's taking them to conferences to have them connect with and build with other partners from across the country, whether it's going to Cleveland to learn directly from another CVI organization. We continue to deeply invest in that and are committed to it. We also spoke to improving data collection and outcome transparency. I believe that if we were only talking about data collection, we would be in a good place because our case management migration from our one software to Apricot began in 2025. Our team is much more comfortable with it.

But the outcome transparency, the quarterly reporting that I would like to do did not begin this year. So we plan on having that begin in 2026. When it comes to Peace and Motion, the strategic plan that was adopted by City Council in May, the plan was finalized and adopted, right. The action table in the violence reduction council continued to run to this day. The partnership with ROCA and with Rewire CBT, we brought legislation in front of you all towards the end of the year that is grant funded in order to extend that relationship.

We continue to build up that capacity building, we continue to do youth and family engagement. But then there are some things that we did not accomplish that we listed as budget highlights for 2025. So that includes the sustainability plan that is in progress, but it is not a physical document that you can look at and say, this is SOC sustainability plan. So I just want to be honest and direct about that. It is being informed by the needs assessment that we're conducting as a part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant.

So there is progress on it, but however, it was not accomplished in 2025. We discussed the comms campaign, we were hopeful, we had meetings, discussions around how that would look, we did not launch a comms campaign. We believe that we need to return to the idea. I know that Chief Whitman, I know that the comms department and myself have been discussing how it would look if we were to relaunch during gun violence awareness month in 2026. Commissioner Davis has been working closely with comms and also on his own around narrative change.

We went to He went to a narrative change workshop alongside director Rachel from comms department and has been leaning into that and developing a few materials and tools that we believe will be useful for expanding our transparency and our communication and our openness as well. We also discussed social media conflict and not just doing the interventions because we continue to do social media interventions using the e responder model. But we also discussed having training and support for organizations for parents and for youth. That part of the social media intervention did not happen. And it is something that is continuing to move forward.

We continue to work with Boston University. My capstone in school was focused on developing those trainings and those supports. And one of the interrupters that's in the room today, Interrupter Davis has been actually doing some training around, it's called attacking the algorithm, I think is what he calls To work with young people so that they can look at and process what is coming down their pipes, what's being targeted to young black men in particular. And how to change the algorithm of what they're consuming. They receive shooting videos, they receive beef, they receive all sorts of awful things, but you can actually intercept or interrupt.

I don't know if it's interrupt or attack, guess Bryson could speak to that a little bit later. So there are things that are happening, however we said we would do these sorts of trainings and we did not. So again, I just want to be transparent as possible about what was and what was not accomplished. We continue to discuss safe passage as well. So we received TA from the Alliance for Concerned Men out of DC.

We did a few site visits and we discussed having a pilot along a specific route. Ironically enough, we actually do safe passage along those routes, but it's with our team. Our long term goal is to expand it so that there are volunteers, that there are people that are committed to doing this outside of the two or three person team that we have right now that are doing safe passage. So those are save our community peace in motion underneath peace in motion is the pillar of fostering hope and healing. So supporting grassroots and CBO organizations, the resource guide and the Healing and Compassion Fund have all moved forward.

I believe I presented some, not I believe, I know that I presented some information to you all about the Healing and Compassion Fund maybe three or four weeks ago. We have distributed $27,000 in funding to believe 16 applications of individuals that have been directly impacted by gun violence. So we had a few changes in our plans as well. Fortunately, we did receive a $2,000,000 grant through the Bureau of Justice Assistance that will inform a number of things. The things that are actively happening right now are the needs assessment, the surveys, the conversations with other providers across the city that do CVI or that are doing something adjacent to it.

Because we need to understand who's doing the work, what the quality of the work is and what their needs are. And then the funding that comes out will be informed by what that needs assessment says. So that's moving forward. We also hired two people, a project coordinator that's grant funded. So that's Roshani Ashik in the office or the room with us today.

We're very excited for that. And we also transitioned one of our existing positions into an outreach specialist role as well. So we have two staff that are dedicated to this along with myself in order to make sure that we're moving this work forward. We also received funding through the Toledo Community Foundation and developed a partnership with DEI with and with a grass cutting provider in the community to establish the mobility aid program. So that's where we employ young people from our caseload and we receive job development and skills training.

And our team actually does rewire CBT training with them as well. And they provide lawn mowing services for elders and people with disabilities in our focus area neighborhoods. So we're combining a number of things, we're addressing blight, we're focusing on addressing a clear issue among elders and people with disabilities in our community. And we're also providing meaningful training and development opportunities for young people that we work closely with. I believe one of the young men is in the audience today as well.

So that was a change because we were able to receive that funding, it was very exciting. We also contracted with Hoodstock Foundation. It says how did our plans change, it's really how do we make our plans real after conversations for years, right. So we were able to contract with the Hoodstock Foundation to have a street intervention specialist role in the south part of the city, a junction in Englewood I guess you would say. We also increased the number of programs and outreach that we were doing.

That includes with a number of charter schools. We now do outreach with both Glass City Academies, the Downtown and the Eastside. There have been a number of interventions and mediations that have occurred as a result of that. I believe we've actually taken on a few individuals in our caseload as a result of that partnership as well. We began engaging closely with the summer pools in particular two pools that had seen a number of issues.

We worked closely with parks and youth services to develop that partnership, to do a safety assessment, to begin implementing things and we're actually having conversations. We've been having conversations over the past I think two months or so around how this can look moving forward into 2026. We also established a healthy relationships working workshop sort of activity that we host with young people from our case loads, but also just from the community generally, red flags and green flags. How to identify who is and is not in your support circle, things of that nature, processing grief, things of that nature. So a number of things have occurred in this year and these are significant changes in our plans compared to where we were at.

Also flag football tournament that we put on in partnership with, well this was led by our commissioner Raymond Campos, who actually has been a part of establishing and building this flag football tournament for years. But this is the first year that it was done in partnership with Moms Demand Action, Northwest Ohio Parents of Murdered Children and with Save Our Community. So just a number of things that have occurred over the past year. I will also just acknowledge a few things. We plan to pursue funding through the Department of I think it's the Department of Labor for YouthBuild.

We did not pursue that funding. And I'll also just acknowledge that I spent a decent amount of time away from the office this year just due to some family things that occurred as well. So diving a little bit deeper into Save Our Community that year end review. We have 11 staff that includes new commissioner Raymond Campos and one independent contractor that contract with Hoodstock Foundation. As I noted before, are 98 participants.

They have a number of risk factors that qualify them for services essentially. Those include affiliation, those include serious fights, direct and chronic exposure to gun violence, justice system involvement, violent injuries of themselves, of their friends, of their families, of their social networks, social media conflict and intimate partner violence. So we think through addressing these issues in a number of ways. We talk through addressing risk factors, we talk through increasing protective factors and we talk through community engagement, outreach and support. So we continue to do coordinated response that includes some relocations as needed, sometimes they're temporary, sometimes they're permanent.

We continue to do social media intervention. We continue to manage conflicts and do direct mediation. And those mediations can look a number of ways. Sometimes depending on how active a person is, the best we're going to get is a non aggression agreement where they are just willing to not have conflict or to engage in that level of violence with them. Sometimes it's getting them to take a pulse down that has exacerbated all sorts of issues, sometimes it's de escalation in the moment.

So those look a number of different ways. We now track our conflicts within our apricot data management system and we'll be able to provide a more accurate breakdown of which ones are non aggression versus ceasefire to be frank or mediation or whatever those things look like. And then when it comes to increasing protective factors, I've referenced a number of those things so I won't repeat them. I will say that we continue to engage with and support other providers from across the community that are working to address issues. So we're talking about mandate with Doctor.

Deontay Moss and Hassan. We're talking about different volunteer opportunities in community. We're talking about mentorship referrals. And we also established and this is something that Commissioner Campos brought on board, a monthly award for the young person on our caseload that has shown the most progress. So that's the most improved community member and that award has become something that our young people are always looking forward to.

Sometimes they want a 25 gift card for Red Lobster or something along those lines, like pretty small, but still like a really just an example of like positive socialization, right. So again, I've referenced a number of the ways that we approach behavior change. We really lean into Rewire CVT. It is evidence based. We've seen progress with our young people and it has been proven effective in Baltimore, in Boston and elsewhere as well.

So we're going to continue to lean into rewire CVT. We also have had a number of closed loop referrals. I've referenced employment. We also actually and I believe that Commissioner, I'm sorry, Director Clemens spoke to Park Hotel Apartments, which has transitional housing for young people. We've actually been able to get a number of young people that have stabilized into Park Avenue or Park Hall excuse me, Park Hotel Apartments.

That is required a number of hours of work from our outreach specialists and also from our project coordinator. We're grateful for the point two five that we have for the HRCMonce project coordinator role because that's been a tremendous lift and has had a, incredibly positive impact on the young people in our caseload. And we continue to support and provide advocacy wherever those places are needed. So what has that resulted in if we're talking about big picture outcomes? I know that at the end of the day we are evaluated by the number of fatal and non fatal shootings.

That is the mission of Save Our Community. One thing that has shifted is they are not positioned to do street outreach the way that they were. I have shifted them to really focus on case management and support based on risk factors at the individual level. And there has been progress regardless of that shift from a street route outreach approach to a direct intervention case management approach. Injunction, there were zero homicides this year.

And I don't know if that can be celebrated enough. If we think about the history of Junction, If you think about the history of Junction, I mean obviously I'm biased because I grew up there even though it wasn't called Junction, I say this every time. I do not recall a year where there were zero homicides. And if we look at the trends, it's just a tremendous change. Non fatal shootings have remained stable or gone down year over year.

Unfortunately, again this is probably a challenge of not having the ability to really do street outreach with a large number of staffing versus direct intervention on an individual level. We have seen just kind of a remain stable or slight uptick on the North side of our city. So we think through what does it look like if the funding that we're going to put out to community based organizations can help to bolster and support with that Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant in ways that we're not physically able to do. That's one of the things that we think about. But again, progress, progress, progress.

And this is just a collection of pictures from my team. I just I really I really love the work that they do. I really love how committed and dedicated they are. And this is just a collection of pictures. These are all from 2026, so I'm not trying to sneak 2023 in here somewhere, but this is just showing how active this team is.

This includes street outreach, this includes professional development, this includes young people in our mobility aid job employment program, this includes our summer programming, this includes the flag football tournament, the healthy relationships, so on and so forth. So this team is committed as you all know, they are completely dedicated and it isn't something where we're going to be able to take a picture of a mediation, right. So we have to take pictures of these other types of opportunities just to show how active and engaged they are. And another thing with the data management system is we'll be able to more accurately demonstrate or show the number of in person hours with participants, activities such as community outreach along these lines and so on and so forth. So peace in motion transitioning to that as well.

So as we noted, the plan was adopted by City Council in May 2025 this year. We transitioned Commissioner Davis. One of the benefits, I'll frame it as a benefit of no longer having our school team funded through that pot of funding is that we were able to position a person to have them commit time to accomplishing the goals within the Peace in Motion plan. That plan has 42 recommendations. It is a five year plan, but it has 42 recommendations that were developed by community and five high level goals.

If we do not have FTE dedicated to it, then we cannot truly expect to accomplish strategic goals, right? So as far as the things that have occurred with Peace in Motion, I've referenced the community level coordinated response. I know that there's more progress that needs to happen. However, it does occur to this day. We would like to actually host a committee hearing early in the first quarter of this year to discuss the needs assessment and landscape analysis that we've been doing as a part of that BJA grant with the BGSU Center for Regional Development.

We also continue to have the violence reduction council. We've done four reviews initially focusing on young black men transitioning to focusing on young women in particular young black women between the ages of I believe 14 29. So there have been results, have been outputs, The contract with the street intervention specialist is a recommendation that came out of the violence reduction council. And also initially the grant that funded the violence reduction council was also funding some of that individual's time, right. The reentry and safety planning among young people that have gun charges, but also are exiting back out into community, which I know is a pain point that many people have, is a result of the violence reduction council, is a result of the work that we do.

So now we're doing intentional safety planning when you're coming home from DYS, when you're coming home from JDC, when we have that relationship, we're doing safety planning. What sorts of issues do you have in community that you're coming home to? What issues happened on the inside that you're going to come home to that we need to account for and address in order to reduce the impact of some of the issues that occur in our community? And I also will say, and this will be something that I think will become more clear in 2026. There is increased buy in not just among organizations, but among health systems for hospital based violence intervention.

There is intentional work that is happening with several hospital providers. And I believe that some of that buy in has come from the violence reduction council and the work that we've been doing overall. So that's more of a more to come sort of situation. I've already referenced the Healing and Compassion Fund and shared out the impact so far. And I've also referenced the training academy and the SOC employment program in particular, I also want to draw attention to an additional bit of news that we I think we received this in December.

We worked with WGTE and reinvest Toledo to apply for a grant and it's called Make It Make Sense. It is to support and provide paid internships to six young people to learn how to do storytelling, learn how to use and manage a camera, and to be paid in order to eventually tell their own stories, right. Again pass the mic and find alternative career pathways. So this is a tremendous access to opportunity for these young people that will eventually be recruited and kind of funneled into that program as well. So the other thing that I believe I somehow have not referenced is youth leadership.

That was a key recommendation that came out of Peace in Motion. And we actually launched the young leaders collective alongside Cities United with funding that we received through Lucas County Family and Child First Council as well as from Cities United and as well as some of the contractual funds that we had left over towards the end of this year. So that's 15 young people that come directly from community that have been directly impacted by violence in one way or another. They come from a number of different streams for lack of a better term. That includes participants in our load.

That also includes a lifeguard from the summer pools program that we did with Save Our Community, right. So it's coming from a number of different places. However, they're all committed to engaged in and connected to this issue in some way and are committed to improving outcomes, improving health and well-being for young people. So when you're talking about addressing issues long term, you have to get close to those that are closest to the issue and learn from them and work alongside them to develop ways to address the issue long term. So that is also an exciting thing as well.

So again, a collection of pictures from 2025 for Peace in Motion. This includes the community action table. This includes some of the work that Commissioner Davis has put together around narrative change, including a monthly interview that we do with fifty Way Studios, where there's a radio interview that happens with a number of community partners. Sometimes it's a member of our team and it's a community member. Sometimes it's just providing perspective on Rewire CBT to further expand that out into community, whatever those things are.

There are a number of additional, I guess images on here. There was a No More Silence podcast put together by youth through the RAM empowerment project. This is an image of the Young Leaders Collective. This is an image of the Breaking the Cycles of Violence Summit that we worked on. I think we were more in the background, but this was alongside DEI and prosecutor Facy.

And the flag football tournament and also in the lower corner you can see an image, this is very meta, an image of an image of a young person that we work closely with that's a part of the young leaders collective. She made her way to us through a tragedy, just to be frank, right? And is now speaking in front of national audiences not just about the pain of the story, but about the purpose that she's developed as a result. So it's just a powerful thing to see that transition from pain to purpose and to see the way that we as a community and as an office can help to push their work, their story and also their positive impact on community despite the pain forward. So I think that's a really powerful image as well.

Director Cunningham, if we could just, I want to make sure Sorry we get to everyone

in the about that. Thank you.

So

now that I've done everything but provide the budget, right, sorry about that. So budget highlights for 2026, we are as a report to community services and impact, we've discussed a number of things with Chief Whitman that includes deepening that collaboration of youth services and workforce development. That includes the community response specialist roles that are being proposed and including a victim's advocacy aspect of that. That includes the second annual break in the cycle of violence summit and shared office space. Within Save Our Community continuing to grow that participant employment, continuing to improve those referral pathways including with the health systems and with DYS, continuing to pour into and develop an actual plan for staff wellness and development that includes a number of other things that are clear here.

As I referenced before, we did not complete the comms campaign. Our goal is to launch that in 2026. There are a number of activities under the BJA grant that's expanding or developing other CBI programs, that's micro grants through the community action table, that's the training academy itself. And again, just a number of things that I think I've referenced enough times for us to have an understanding of it. So finally get to the org chart.

So these are all connected to community services. I can provide more context by way of referrals. The big picture is if there is a green bubble, externally funded. If there is green text, is an explicit contract that we have, right. So some of these are unpaid, but some of these are like unpaid MOU and some of these are actual paid work.

And then of course, save our community. And then as I noted before, Commissioner Davis has moved into the peace and motion role and is overseeing a number of these items that occur. And then just of course referencing the continued work with the VRC and with the community action table as well. So what does all of that look like? So we have proposed an 18.25 full time equivalent positions that includes three that are grant funded, one is currently filled, two are open and that includes 15.25 from the general fund.

Those are mostly the folks that are already here. However, we are also requesting an administrative assistant to help navigate some of these things. And we are hoping to either repurpose a current staff for that community response specialist role or if possible add an additional FTE for that role. Proposed expenditures by category, I think these numbers always look a little wonky when it comes to the actual cost of the general fund. That is because historically this office and save our community was funded through ARPA dollars.

And every year of course we know and with this year in particular ARPA is no longer in place, right. So this includes a few things, obviously our staff time, but also our case management software, it's around $24,000 a year. That includes the street intervention specialist role. So that's as an independent contractor paying him at his full rate. That includes the second year of the Mobility Aid jobs program because as a part of the funding that we received, we agreed and submitted a letter of support that we would provide a 50% match to that funding.

And that also includes those basic needs, wraparound supports that can't be readily addressed by the Healing and Compassion Fund. Sometimes we need to buy work IDs, sometimes we need to buy work boots, sometimes a person needs transportation, sometimes it's not a permanent relocation, it is a rapid relocation as a result of an incident that has occurred. And those will not happen at the pace of the healing and compassion fund, but are things that are still fairly important for our staff to be able to access with their purchase requests as well. So grant funding, this is also I think that looks a bit wonky that is this 2025 amended is an indicator of what dollars came in as opposed to what dollars were expended. We did not spend $3,000,000 in 2025, we brought in that much in funding in 2025.

Much of that will go out the door in 2026 to different types of interventions, to partnerships that we have with ROCA, to continue the violence reduction council so on and so forth. So the final thing that I'll say before again stopping because I may talk a bit too much is that we completed a study around the cost of gun violence alongside the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. So every fatal shooting every non fatal shooting has an explicit direct cost to taxpayers in our city, in our county and in our state. That includes a number of things, includes crime scene cleanup, that includes prosecution, that includes honestly the loss of tax revenue for individuals, that includes a number of things. And for every fatal shooting in this city, it costs around $883,700 $883,000 right.

And for every non fatal shooting around $572,000 as well, right. So every single time that we are preventing or stopping an incident from occurring, we are having an impact not just in terms of lives, which is the most important thing, not just in terms of community, but also literally in terms of taxpayer dollars for citizens of our community as well. So now that I have spoken far over our time, I'm open to questions and welcome any questions or comments.

Thank you and I do appreciate your thoroughness. There's a lot to celebrate. There's a lot going on in this department as you are quickly scaling up. I really appreciate that. Part of our responsibility is we're approaching budget is to think about the deficit this year but also to think about the projected what's coming.

So as we've passed the peace of motion plan which does commit that to ordinance right that's a law now that's something we are obligated to follow as a city. Do you see the need for more funding in order to get those, to check those boxes off in the upcoming years? And then have you, in a twofold, have you seen as the federal government is making so many cuts, have you seen cuts in grant opportunities or do you think that will stay the same?

That's an excellent question. So the first part do I see us needing additional general fund dollars or funding from the city in order to expand this work long term? In an ideal world, yes. But I also believe that with the resources that we have, we have had an impact and maintaining or sustaining that I think is probably most important in order to continue the impact that we have. I believe that we can develop funding sources, I believe that if there's an opportunity to develop alternative revenue streams, I think that's important.

But I think maintaining the existing funding is going to be pretty important for us. And I'll also just acknowledge again with the ARPA dollars going away, that means that the cost of the general fund is going to be around that $2,000,000 number in order to really sustain the work that we're doing. So I do think being able to say every single year, my team isn't worried about whether or not they'll have a job. My team isn't worried about whether or not they'll be able to provide resources to our participants, whether or not they'll be able to do rapid relocation. I think that's probably the most important thing for us.

But I think we'll develop other funding streams. I think we've been quite good at bringing in resources. I think our grants department is amazing and we have the narrative and we have the data that shows that the work that we're doing works. So I believe we'll be able to develop alternatives, would love to be able to sustain where we're at right now. Although I'm sorry, I think my team would like a raise. I know my team would like a raise. So I guess I should have mentioned that as well, I'm sorry. They let would me have it, I'm sorry. They would have let me have it if I wouldn't have said it. So I'm sorry about that.

So as far as federal funding, we the youth build funding was something that was interesting. We're not sure how it will look when it does come back out. We know that there were cuts across the board for the BJA grant that we referenced. However, locals did not have that issue. There were normally organizations that lost that funding. So we're not concerned at this point about losing the Bureau of Justice Assistance grant funding, the OJJDP grant funding. Funding. We're not concerned about losing those. We think some of the opportunities that have historically been out there may not be available at the same amount as before. So that's really where our concern is.

But as far as sustaining where we're at, I feel pretty solid about that as far as funding.

Councilmember Gaddis, can I add to that? I appreciate Director Cunningham's response that I do think any I think every city department has to always look at having multiple streams of revenue whether you're talking about Monty, whether you're talking about even some of our public services, we should always be looking at ways that we can have public private partnerships, and so we shouldn't just always put that on the our kind of people facing departments of our organization. I think that's important. The other thing that I want to say and I hope this is coming through is that we know this from looking at different cities but I think hopefully know that violence prevention and intervention is not optional for a city to have. There we have to really understand how we're going to invest.

With that being said, we have to make sure we ensure operational efficiency and myself and director Cunningham have been talking about that. We have to make sure where we're having impact that we're funding in the areas that we can, you know, share staffing and do things. We also have to be efficient with our funding as well. But I think what's important, and even you have been a strong advocate, is just really relating to our community having these resources are not optional. And here in our city really we're different because we are leading the work as a city.

We are leading this ecosystem. Other communities they have nonprofits who are doing it but we are really leading the violent intervention, interruption, and healing work for our community. And so I think we need to take that into consideration. It cannot go away, but I do think we have to be more strategic in how we fund it.

Thank you. That was very helpful. Councilman Doctor. Jones.

Thank you chair well first of all I'm very supportive of just all the work that you have been doing this. This program this department is like you said not optional. This is something that is essential and vital especially dealing with public safety and just the safety of our citizens and community and even the future when it comes to this. I was curious as far as when you're talking about funding, does the TPS cuts have any effect on how you're going to operate Monty?

That is an excellent question. I will say to a person on my team we are concerned. We really lean into that public health approach. We think about upstream versus downstream. Education and supportive services are critical and also time in school is critical.

And we know that time out of school results in poor outcomes among people that may or may not make good decisions because of their brains, because of their context. The idea of going from five days in person to four days in person be honest with you with a long weekend is something that gives me pause and gives my team pause from what we've discussed. So we think there probably needs to be a suite of interventions. We think we may be able to contribute conceptually, but we also know that at the end of the day it's a team of 18.25 and a case load of 98 for 10 to 11 people at any given point in time. And yeah, we're concerned that was a very long way to say we're concerned.

We think that we have to consider and think through not just that summer plan, but also that time out of school plan because a two day weekend has essentially become a three day weekend for young people. So, yep.

And I shared that concern because you know as you were talking and know talking about your wonderful team and just all the work being done with the youth just that one day and one day taken away from being in a school and then adding one day of just free at this point if you can call it that. There's going to have to be some reassembly especially when it comes to more community programs because on that day off where are the kids going? Where's the youth going? So that on the other end would probably increase operational costs for you know organizations like the Boys and Girls Club and the Y and so you know a lot of collaboration could be taking place with that. The other question I had you know just because of how you are funded and I don't know if this will be controversial or not but has there been conversation of maybe seeking funding from you know the police department, public safety, their budget in any way or is that something that is kind of like off limits per se?

I do not think that's a question for me to answer honestly. I think that's above my

pay grade. So

I think one of the things and I think that's why I made the statement about this funding not being optional. I think when we look at our general fund period I think there's always ways that we can look at the areas that we you know we can increase funding and have more impact. I want to be cautious but I also want to know the reality that I think anyone who can sit up here and say they could take anyone's budget, they would take any department's budget. So I want to be fair with that but I think as we're moving forward I think even if you listen to Chief Clemens and Commissioner Molnar, public safety is a wide range of entities. And so I think we do need a holistic review of how we fund public safety period across the board.

But that also includes as you heard, Coke appliance, that includes housing. So, I think it's, you know, I want to be, we are one city and I want to be fair to my colleagues, you know, with going against departments. However, I do think, you know, if public safety is a priority, then we really have to look at, you know, how do we give resources to a holistic public safety approach.

Yeah, yeah, and you know, that's really just a thought especially because you are already working in collaboration with TPD and you know just the EMTs response to a lot of the cases. You know it doesn't hurt to take a look at just seeing how that how we can go forward with this because one thing I don't want to see is for you all to go away. And then all of the extra work and extra just everything is going to be put on TPD and in fire and in things like that. So it's kind of like sharing the work, the load that is coming with it but how are we sustain that and especially with what's happening federally with all of these cuts. So it and like I said, it definitely is worth taking a look for future operations for that.

But other than that just what you've done has been phenomenal and thank you for the data especially with the highlights of that one. You said the '35 to 44 group that needs more intervention based upon that.

30, oh sorry.

Which one was it?

Yeah, to 44.

30 to 44, yeah, it's, I wonder what's happening there. That's really what I'm trying to see. So I'm glad that you had offered that and also just focusing like I said on the Latino population because of that increase as well. I'll probably ask this as far as referral but I would love to see a map and I actually would want to look more of a spatial analysis just to see some sort of, I have a particular program that I use with some research that really takes more of that the environmental, kind of like census data and compare it to just how, what is happening spatially and why is this happening and can make projections. Because at this rate you know we need to figure out you know of course with the built environment that does attribute to it but what specifically and how can we get ahead of this as well.

But the work that you're doing right now is phenomenal for the resources that you have So please keep up the great work and of course reach out to us for really anything that you would need and thank you to just the team that's definitely been putting in the work for this. Thank you chairs.

Thank you.

May I add, I will absolutely provide that by way of referral. One thing that we've worked on, this has been very like kind of behind the scenes is working closely with code compliance and that Tollamy dataset to do a block level analysis of blight, of gun violence and of honestly liquor serving establishments whether they are stores or bars. And we put together a number of maps. There is a safety index, there's a blight index and I'm blanking on the final one. That is a census block level analysis that could provide some strong context for you.

There are interactive versions and there are static versions that I could share with you that I think speak to some of the concerns that you have. So completely agree there are these complex intersecting factors which ones are most critical to understanding where and when gun violence happens. And how can we effectively change built environment risk factors. Is it some liquor serving establishment doesn't need to their license renewed here because of the impact that that could have on violence two years from now, right. So I think there are lots of complex and projective analyses that we can do, but there are some things that we currently have that I can definitely, you know I'll get into the weeds so I'll stop talking from there.

Thank you. I look forward to that information as well. I think when we really start looking into the harms in a neighborhood that's when we can make some changes. Councilman Sratu.

Thank you, madam chair. I appreciate the information you're giving us. Clearly, we have made substantial progress, and I appreciate the work you're doing with juvenile court, especially because again, as I've said so many times before, the sooner we can get to our young people, the better off we're all going to be because unfortunately, we have adults that are continuing with the cycle of violence. We're making progress there in that area too, but juveniles are very important to get to given the most recent situations in city. Director, what you just brought up also I hope we're going to include an analysis of after hours establishments because we've had a number of tragedies, that have occurred, in those establishments or people coming out of there and we really need to crack down on that between the police department and Monsey working on that and seeing what we can do to get that because they are hot places for violence, and it's very, very unfortunate when you get up in the morning and you hear about a young person being murdered at that establishment or near the establishment.

So I appreciate that. I want to go back and I want to make sure I understand your budget on Page 22. You have for 2025, you've got 1,072,158 million dollars but you have in parentheses under other $743,000 Could you explain to us what that category is?

Yes, so that's the ARPA reimbursement that happens at the end of the year to help offset those costs. I think Director Campbell made, I don't know if she's

still okay.

And I think Director Campbell could probably provide far more context, but it's typically it's the ARPA reimbursement that happens at the end of the year.

Okay. And then for '26 in that same column, but under '26, it's showing zero. But when we add up the numbers, it's $1,900,000 versus in '25, dollars 1,072,000. So there's about an $800,000 difference. I was just curious again the explanation for that, so we understand that.

We can get that to you by way of referral.

Could you please? We'll make sure

we follow-up with that.

All right. If you could consult with the Finance Director and just so we have a clear because again I want to the way it looks to me is we're increasing the budget by about $800,000 and I just need to be able to explain why. Is it the lack of the ARPA money and so forth? So if you could get that for us by way of referral, I would appreciate it. And then I just have a general question and that is that with the with the good work that your organization has done, As far as recidivism, are you seeing a decrease in the number of people that you're working with that have been involved in violent crime?

Has that decreased or do we see a fair amount of recidivism? It isn't a

100% success rate just to be frank. Right. But we are certainly seeing a reduction among individuals that were active and that were engaged. One of the benefits of having this case management system not to treat it like a panacea is that we'll be able to actually track and share out quarterly a number of items, right. So we'll be able to share that specifically like at a big picture level as opposed to an individual.

Among the 98 participants how many have recidivated for a violent crime is something that we need to able to report year over year. So I would like to share that with you, but it'll have to be moving forward more so than retrospective. I have certainly, honestly I don't know who all is here today, but there are people that maybe we can have a committee hearing and we can speak to or perhaps have some of our participants that were active, were engaged, that were in police incident reports, that were making the news to be honest, that are stable, that have housing, that have jobs, that are not engaged in that life at all anymore. And it's a testament to the team, right. And I just, it's really powerful like it's really effective, I don't have an exact number for you.

I can tell you that it's not a 100%.

That is what? I'm sorry.

It's not 100%.

Oh, that's I'm just looking for some trends and my suspicion is that we've made a lot of progress in that area. Of course you're going to have some recidivism, which brings me to my next question in terms of members of gangs. Are are we making some progress there in in getting them away from that type of activity? Because we all know that gangs have been prevalent in terms of the violence that we've experienced over the years.

So I think it's one of the things, yes I believe that we are. And we are not doing group based intervention with gang A and gang B where we're intervening with an entire gang at the same time. The evidence says you should do group based violence intervention with that sort of intervention in order to support and address the issue with the entire group at the same time. We don't have a specific intervention that does that right now. I hope that one of the recommendations that comes out of the needs assessment is that we establish that And we work with people that are affiliated, that are connected, and I am seeing some progress.

But it's not the same as a, you kinda have to do an entire group intervention really to be effective for addressing gang versus gang violence. The other thing that is different, and this isn't just Toledo, is that the nature of gang and group violence has changed somewhat. Previously for lack of a better term, there were more of a corporate gang structure where there was a leader, there were lieutenants and there was a specific set of actions that they did and that they handled in a certain way. Normally that was around the drug trade or historically that was around the drug trade. Nowadays, I would say there's more young hybrid that form around the loss of life to be honest with you That have a lot more social media and music based conflict that results in offline conflict.

And there, I mean our team would give you specifics, it's more hybrid or insurgency style gang nowadays as opposed to historically kind of the again like that corporate gang structure. So it makes that like the you wouldn't necessarily intervene with a Rico, you know for lack of a better term, with a gang or a group or a street organization, whatever you want to call it of 19 year olds that formed because they lost their friend when they were 14, right. So it's just, that was a very long way to say we need a specific intervention that does group versus group. And we also work with people that are affiliated and are having some impact with that. And also the way it needs to look probably needs to be different than what it has been historically.

Okay. So that was a long

layered I answer, appreciate that. Thank you and thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you. Okay, we're going to turn it over to the audience. I do have some people that signed in but if anyone is here to speak about Monzi or the Human Relations Commission, we're going to limit it to three minutes. There'll be clocks on the side and up here, and we'll take it from there. If you could say your name and then three minutes.

Hi, my name is Krista McKinley and I'm the youth coordinator for Toledo Lucas County homeless board, but I've actually worked with Monsey and Save Our Community since it began, and I have seen the program evolve, and I waited the three hours to talk so I could, because I do feel it's essential that this is a very significant program that is here in Toledo and it's evolved to amazing program that's that's made significant strides in advocating and supporting our Toledo young adults. Brandon, Bryson, Sierra, Kay, Diana, Cassandra, Ed, Matt, Chris, Josh and Malcolm who I've all worked with significantly go above and beyond. Having the data now I think is essential and it's one of those pieces that Malcolm has brought to the table that I think continues to demonstrate and actually show the hard work. SOC both in the schools and the community have worked hard with Toledo Lucas County homeless board and I can't say enough about the SOC community and school staff who have gotten several into park apartments, and they don't just drop them off. They're continuing to mentor them, and we're working all together as a team in collaboration.

And I just think that that continued collaboration and community all of us coming together has been very essential. And so I just think those park apartments are now giving opportunities with the wraparound services for these young adults to have the resources finally, to be able to be productive citizens in our community. I'm so grateful to be able to continue to work with Save Our Community and their staff. I'm also thankful for Mayor Wade for his insight from the very beginning to get this program here in Toledo and that he is innovative and looks at the success in other cities and he brings those to incorporate so that we can continue to support Archelio young adults. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Kristen.

Thank you. Anyone next? Welcome.

Hello. Is that what?

If you just want to state your name for the record.

My name is Raymond Raymond Newton, and I was met by Ed when I was in Juvie. After Juvie, he helped me get a job and apply for jobs at libraries. And when I got a job, I got a job at Goodwill. And when I got a job at Goodwill, I met Malcolm. And he just she worked with me, and we had just cut grass and stuff.

And for, like, six weeks, I just felt like I could be independent with, everything that they taught me. And as I grew up with the knowledge that I know about cutting grass and, you know, just lawn care in general, I just I don't know what to say. I'm really nervous, to be honest.

Oh, you're doing you're doing great. You're doing great.

I just appreciate, like, the opportunity to have a second chance at life, you know, learning how to be, a grown person or an independent person in general without a father figure, and just appreciate life. Think I said I would wait for six weeks and I don't know what to say. I'm gonna be honest.

Appreciate you. Thank you for coming and sharing your testimony. It's very Yeah. It's very nice to hear.

I'm a go back.

Hi. That was my son, Raymond. He's 17 now. At that time last year when we encountered everything, he was a juvie, six age 16, and I had been praying in the city. I'm a pastor.

I have a small congregation on Summit Street, Greater Revelation of Word. Been praying, been involved with a lot of mothers that have been involved with gun violence. They were on the end of the stick where they got a coffin for their child. My child was involved gun violence and I'm praying in the city and I'm like, oh my god. I could not believe that this was happening to me.

So I had a choice. I could be like the ostrich and hide my head, pretend it didn't happen, or address the issue, acknowledge it, and take charge. I took charge. I told the judge, don't make it easy. Don't pat him on his hand for having a gun and shooting in a park after dark.

He was caught, shooting a gun after dark, in Jamie Farr Park. I believe he had ran out of fireworks, him and his friend. So they had his sister's gun, and they were shooting. And I don't know if you guys know, but black men don't stand a chance with the police with a gun. But my son lived, and I was grateful for that. So I began to seek help because I don't know. One of our cousins was killed through gun violence. I'm sorry. And that was Webby. Isaiah, you guys know, was killed in '24 September 24.

The Moody Manor killing, I pastored their mom, Keandra, Leandra, Hooks. I pastored their mother, and their sister is in my home today. So gun violence is real, and it's something that we can't sweep under the rug. People are impacted by it, highly impacted, and usually it's mothers that are addressed with a coffin for their child. It's not enough. I was lucky. I was blessed. My son ended up I'm not sure I wasn't sure where he was. I thought he was missing. He said he was spending the night at a friend's.

He didn't spend the night with that friend. His mother came looking for him. His friend said he was staying with him. That didn't happen. So we didn't know where our child was or where our children were, and they kept saying, do a missing picture. You know, he's missing. You gotta put a picture up. I'm like, what? I'm not putting a picture up to say that my child is missing. I just couldn't I couldn't accept that. You know, I just couldn't accept it. And they said, well, we're fixing to do a drive and start searching for these children. I couldn't accept that. Not me. I just couldn't accept it.

And so they did a phone check and the phones came up dead, and we found out they were in juvenile. And that's a wonderful thing that they were in juvenile because they could not have made it. They could have been killed by the officers because they playing with a gun at night. They didn't know they were children. Could have thought they were adults. Could have killed them. That's what you do if somebody's shooting. So I called the mayor's office. I said, need some help. I want some help with my child.

I'm not gonna sweep this under the rug. I think and I could be wrong. I think a lot of mothers that sons are in prison or incarcerated or that have killed someone, they had a notion that their child was carrying a gun or something. So what do you do with the notion? Do you sweep it under the rug or do you address the issue?

I did not know, but when I found out, I addressed the issue. Addressing the issue, I was introduced to save our community. Save our community, we had a chance to meet with Eduardo Adams. He mentored my son through juvie, through the whole system. Had a chance to meet Malcolm on the phone. Good to see your face. Hi, Malcolm. So it's been rough. It's been a reality check, but I asked for this because I don't want the pat on the hand. I don't want my son to think that this is an easy thing, something that's gonna go away.

I want him to be accountable. I wanna be an accountable mother. So we went through parole, not parole, probation, so forth, and had a chance to go through the work program which is wonderful. Thank you guys. Thank you.

It has really helped to change Raymond, having a mentor. I cannot say how much that means, we can call Ed no matter what it is. He'll show up if it's, you know, juvie court, whatever it is, he's there if we call on him. And I'm so grateful. Raymond, hasn't been home for about six to seven months now, and he's looking for housing.

So he's helping us to address that issue. I cannot tell you how important any of this has been to me and my family. It's a reality. I am an accountable person. Raymond is being accountable now, and, you know, we're here to address the issue of gun violence. I I'm against it. And so if I'm against it, I can't sweep that under the rug. And so it didn't happen just because it's my child. I'm a pastor in this city. I'm gonna be accountable. I have a mouth. I have a voice. I want that to be heard. I want to help. I want to reach out.

I want to be more than somebody to stand in over a body, praying that, you know, for these families that have lost their children. I want a voice. Let's do something about it. I don't know what to do, but I asked god to give me 100 guns in this city, and that's my prayer. I want 100 guns before this year is out. I think I mentioned that to Malcolm. I don't know how. With the police, with whoever, gift cards, however, but we need to get these guns off the street and especially out of the hands of non responsible people. Teenagers are not responsible. They're not.

We are. And so let's get these guns off the street. And I have a mouth. I have a lot to say. And I'm gonna be saying it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Name is Gardner Johnson and my son Joseph well, actually met the SOC program through my son Joseph and my niece. My son was murdered, Joseph Johnson, in March. I must say that the easy part was the funeral. Mentally, you know, it broke my family up.

We have a very tight family, you know, and they made sure they checked on me. They put me in rooms with people that understand my pain to the point to where it's people that I know that has lost children and I didn't realize the effect until I actually joined that group. And it's they have gave me resources that I can help other people with you know dealing with this because it's harder afterwards you know your whole life change. And okay, I want to say this too, I have three boys. I have a 24 year old, my middle son about to be 23 and my youngest, well Jojo would have been 17.

So their fathers were murdered, know, and it's like you know I just tried to you know just step up and take that place when I it's it's stuff out here to help me and you know that's not stuff that you it's easy to take on and through the SOC program they have helped me to know that it's okay to need help and and and to be able to help other people that I know that's going through people that have lost their kids since I done lost mine you know. I got two older sons and I see them ready to crash but I know they gave me somewhere to go or to even point somebody in the right direction that's going through it. So just for that I just wanna say that that is a great program. Great program and it helps and thanks and that's it.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to address council? Yeah, we're good. We're good? Yep, thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for taking the time out and explaining the budget. Really appreciate that. And with no other business before council, this meeting is adjourned.