Jackson City Council’s August meeting addresses gang violence, poverty

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Jackson City Council is working to change the budget to to keep the city’s assigned gang prosecutor.

The original grant for the position ends this year, but the city wants to reinstate the funding, and also bring back the educational component of the grant which tries to prevent gang violence.

“It makes sense for us to look at how we can find and implement the educational piece on the prevention side, so in between now and next month we’re going to find some folks — school system, city, DA ‘s office, police department — who want to work on that committee of bringing that educational component back,” said City of Jackson Mayor Scott Conger.

We asked Mayor Conger if this is made more important with the rash of shootings lately.

“We’ve been talking about this for a while. And it just so happened the attention is on there now,” Mayor Conger said. “We don’t just react to isolated incidents — we look at a whole view of things and how we have a strategic plan of what we want to do and improve the city, and it just so happens it’s timed that way.”

Council members also discussed plans for an almost $1.5 million homeless shelter. The shelter, set to be done by next spring, is funded by the American Rescue Plan and CARES Act funding.

“We have this opportunity to start to tackle a major issue in the community,” said Councilman Paul Taylor. “And so that the Anti-Poverty Task Force, in conjunction with some other council members, have been working towards this. And, we’re hopeful that we can find a suitable place, and that the funding can get that going.”

The council also passed a street paving project that includes 80 street segments distributed across the city. The first phase is scheduled to begin within the next month.

“The first phase is, we’ll see a contract on that hopefully within the next month to go ahead and initiate that, and the remaining months that we have in the fall to pave and some of that will roll over into the spring,” Taylor said.

The Anti Poverty Task Force also presented their annual report. They presented ideas to help the city with transportation, housing initiatives, and a number of other key policy points for the city.

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