Public Safety

As the Chairman of Council's Law and Public Safety Committee David has supported numerous steps to rid Cincinnati streets of drug dealing and violence.

First, David pushed for a get-tough law that empowers police to proactively engage the open-air drug dealing that is taking place in too many neighborhoods in our City. He pushed for a Drug Elimination program that has led to hundreds of arrests for drug dealing and illegal weapons charges. At the same time, he authored and pushed for the Safe and Clean Neighborhood Fund, which is supporting community-led efforts to take back dangerous streets.

In addition, David has created a stepped up effort to target and shut down known crackhouses through a partnership between the police and other City departments, supported the creation of a Housing Court in Cincinnati, and pushed for partnerships with local landlords to assist in preventing and removing drug dealers from properties.

Finally, David co-sponsored legislation to bring the Compstat model to Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Police Department is now using its own variant of the approach, called "Cinsite"-using technology to track crime trends across the City, target "hotspots," and manage personnel and police resources accordingly. Numerous hotspots have been eliminated in the past year, and crime mapping information will soon be shared with community groups.

Neighborhood Empowerment

As the Vice-Chairman of City Council's Neighborhoods Committee, David believes that empowering communities and neighborhoods is the best way to make progress in reviving the City.

David has led and supported a series of reforms to improve basic quality of life issues in the City, including streamlining the enforcement of litter laws and other regulations governing blight (abandoned cars, graffiti and illegal signs), creating partnerships with local correctional facilities to create a program of regular business district clean-ups, creating a comprehensive program to tackle blighted buildings through nuisance abatement actions, and increasing accountability on property owners to keep their properties clean and blight-free.

David has created a Safe and Clean Neighborhood Fund that will provide grants to support community-initiated and implemented projects to tackle safety and blight in the neighborhoods that need it most. Along with this effort, David is pushing to increase grassroots groups' capacity to formulate and implement solutions to neighborhood problems. This began with a Neighborhood Summit David organized in January, which brought together more than 500 community leaders.

Economic Growth and Opportunity Agenda

David co-authored legislation to increase economic and job growth in the City by working with the private sector to streamline regulations and reinvent City Hall's economic development infrastructure. At the same time, this legislation opened up economic opportunity by reforming City subsidy practices, requiring transparency and open, competitive bidding - not just for City-funded projects, but projects where the City has provided major subsidies. Faced with a budget deficit, David has insisted on using modern-day management techniques to get the best use of City resources and highest quality service delivery. At the same time, he has worked with City workers to assure that the terms of that competition are fair (including that all City services be paid by a living wage), and that City workers are trained to deliver the best services possible and think of new, innovative ways to deliver efficient, high quality services.

David has pushed an economic empowerment agenda, creating a "Make Work Pay" partnership in Cincinnati to increase access to the Earned Income Tax Credit and other financial literacy services; pushing for major reforms to Cincinnati's job-training programs; and supporting a community-wide initiative providing job-training and internships for Cincinnati's youth. Key tasks remaining on this agenda include a comprehensive effort on affordable home ownership, and a plan to assist ex-offenders in reentering the workplace.

Youth

In addition to taking part in a community-wide process of building a comprehensive agenda promoting Cincinnati's youth, David has pushed and supported a number of initiatives, including dramatically increasing recreation center upgrades, pushing to make recreation centers more youth-friendly, and creating, for the first time, an ongoing partnership between City Hall and the Cincinnati Public Schools to build a new model of schools called Community Learning Centers - where schools serve as the center of communities, and include City services in addition to educational opportunities.