The results are in for the “Voice of the Citizen” Budgeting for Public Safety initiative and four projects – one in each city sector – will receive city funding.
Outgoing Rochester Mayor Thomas S. Richards has announced in a news release that up to $200,000 – up to $50,000 per city quadrant – will be spent on projects that were wholly created and developed by Rochester citizens.
The Southwest quadrant winner was the Jobs for Life career and community education program.
The program will provide job referrals and mentors for 30 adults and tutoring for 60 youth in science, technology, engineering and math This includes seminars on block club leadership, civic engagement, financial literacy and home buying, as well as a youth disaster recovery workshop that teaches skills in disaster preparation.
The winning Southeast quadrant program includes civic engagement opportunities like traffic calming discussions and implementations, neighborhood enhancement projects such as mini-Clean Sweeps, gardens, landscaping and community collaboration events such movie nights, health fairs and holiday celebrations.
In the Northwest quadrant, a Crime Prevention through Environmental Design project won. Funding for this project is slated to include tactics to encourage pedestrian traffic and discourage loitering, street drug sales and gambling. These would be high visibility pedestrian crossing signs, increased brightness of street lighting in select areas, outdoor café seating for rotating use among the quadrant’s restaurants, stores and delis, sidewalk plantings and hanging baskets and vacant storefront art.
The Northeast quadrant winner was the GIS Scholars Program. Voice of the Citizen funding will allow the program to add 5 to 10 more students to take part in after-school training in the operation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology.
The students will create a mapping project designed to assist with crime prevention in selected areas. They will also collect data and identify crime rates through the mapping technology. The students will also create maps to plot variables surrounding crime such as property ownership, poverty, proximity to services and others. They will publish and share their results.
The two-week Voice of the Citizen voting period ended on Monday, Dec. 16 with a total of 840 votes cast.
The winning projects are scheduled to proceed to the implementation phase in January.
GMCLENDN@DemocratandChronicle.com
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