By Jon Stonehouse
Western Herald
(Alex Youkanna / Western Herald) Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell delivers a State of the City address on Monday evening at the Lincoln International Studies School Auditorium.
Sporting the same style teleprompters as President Barack Obama, Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell announced that the city expects to see $8 million in federal stimulus funds in his State of the City Address, Monday evening.
In times of a struggling economy, Hopewell said the funds would be used to provide a sustainable future for Kalamazoo.
“There are people all over the world talking about our city,” Hopewell said. “Kalamazoo is holding its own.”
In light of recent youth violence and a transit millage that failed to pass in the November elections, Hopewell pledged the funds would be used for increasing the Kalamazoo Public Safety Department’s capabilities in neighborhoods, sustaining public transportation and the maintaining of roads.
“Vital city services such as transit are a must,” he said.
A reformulated millage will be placed on the ballot this November which Hopewell encouraged citizens to approve. In addition to transit, the city will invest stimulus dollars in traffic signal upgrades that are aimed at reducing operational costs and improving traffic flow, while the maintenance of Burdick and Lovell streets are top priorities for repairs.
Hopewell said the challenge of youth violence remained and applauded the arrests made in the assault on a cyclist earlier this year in a neighborhood on the city’s north side. Despite the youth violence outbreaks, he said crime had dropped seven percent from last year.
“Last year we set a goal that no youth would die senselessly or violently,” Hopewell said. “We met that goal.”
The mayor further charged the KPSD with the protection of neighborhoods and sustaining civic life, but asked citizens to work together, think bolder and connect to a greater vision unveiled in the form of a new citizen outreach program he called the city’s next legacy.
Hopewell’s outreach program, called the Kalamazoo Action Covenant, is designed to allow for the advantages of the Kalamazoo Promise program to be implemented on a larger scale in city life.
The covenant, as the mayor calls it for short, centered on creating measurable goals and accountability in the city government, furthering literacy and education, and focused on youth engagement
through the fostering of mentorship programs. Hopewell said the programs aimed at deterring violence, combat unemployment and uphold infrastructure in the city.
Through the gathering of public input in the forms of a city telephone hotline, Web site, and even Facebook page, Hopewell said the city government will compile existing plans for such programs and begin implementation of the Kalamazoo Action Covenant in 90 days.
“A covenant for our community; a covenant for each other,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”
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