READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0During its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night, Reading City Council heard the city\u2019s Managing Director Jack Gombach address the issue of youth violence in the city.<\/p>\n
About three years ago, the city had allocated $50,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act funds for a related website, but Gombach said it has not been updated because the city has not received the needed input from its partner youth organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it’s our view that the website is a tool to help support the work \u2014 not the work in its entirety,\u201d Gombach said. \u201cThe strategy reflects the mayor’s belief that youth safety is fundamental to the success of our city, but it also requires sustained coordination and a shared responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, to that effect, he had asked that the administration bring in the school district, juvenile probation and community partners into a structured framework that produces measurable change,\u201d Gombach said.<\/p>\n
Part of the plan is to develop structured community town hall meetings.<\/p>\n
Gombach said that over the past two years, the city has seen a 22% increase in\u00a0juvenile arrests.<\/p>\n
Many of those arrests stem from simple assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat data tells us what we already know: that our kids are getting into fights,\u201d Gombach said. \u201cIt is our view, after reviewing some information behind the data, that this is peer conflict escalating in middle school-aged youth struggling with impulse control, social media dynamics and group behavior.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gombach said the city reached out to about 20 different youth-serving organizations throughout the region, but did not get the results, feedback or input that was anticipated.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of the month, we’re hoping to establish formal interagency working groups that will meet consistently, identifying high-incident crime windows, priority corridors and rethinking how we approach youth violence in city hall from the ground up over the next 12 months,\u201d Gombach said.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Melissa Ventura said she is frustrated with the lack of action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis administration knew for years now that we’ve been trying to deal with youth violence prevention,\u201d Ventura said. \u201cIt\u2019s not new to us. We know; we’ve been meeting with the school district, and there are no results. We spent $50,000 on a website; no results.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving these meetings with the school district and juvenile prevention \u2014 that’s cool and all. However, all we do, year after year, is have meetings with no results,\u201d Ventura continued. \u201cRespectfully, that’s the trend that we’ve been seeing, and I really hope that at these meetings, you’re really involving these community organizations that want to help regardless of your differences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gombach said the issue isn’t that organizations aren’t working together or communicating, but is a matter of capacity, a lack of funding and a lack of staff.<\/p>\n
Gombach said the problem will not be figured out overnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our focus right now is these meetings, these community engagements, these partnerships, and then after that, talk about how to leverage the website to communicate those findings,\u201d Gombach added.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0During its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night, Reading City Council heard the city\u2019s Managing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3066,5028,128,1095,130,129,59681,8322],"class_list":{"0":"post-128109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-jack-gombach","9":"tag-melissa-ventura","10":"tag-reading-city","11":"tag-reading-city-council","12":"tag-reading-city-headlines","13":"tag-reading-city-news","14":"tag-youth-organizations","15":"tag-youth-violence"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}