The Neighborhoods, Community Services, Public Health and Safety Committee convened on Monday, May 18, 2026, at 9:31 AM in the City Hall Council Chamber and adjourned at 12:36 PM. Chaired by Mike Gay, the committee considered 49 agenda items, including ordinances, resolutions, and emergency measures. Key actions included approval of park funding, support for affordable housing bonds, a major debate over the Edward Waters University track improvements, and the failure of a resolution opposing a new jail in historically redlined areas.
Well good morning and welcome to the Monday, May 18th neighborhoods meeting. We'll go ahead and start with introductions to my left. Starting with Mr. Delaney. Good morning, Bill Delaney with the mayor's office. Brandon Russell, Council Research. Harry Stepopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Billy Peterson, Council Iris Office. Michael Boylan, District 6. Kenamara, City Council, District 1. Randy White, District 12. Mike Gay, District 2. Good morning, Chris Miller, at large group five. Ron Salem, group two at large. Good morning, Tyrone Clark Murray, District 9. Will Lane and District 3 visiting. Terrence Freeman at large group one just visited. All right. Thank the visiting council members for being here. We'll go ahead and go to uh public comment. You'll be given three minutes to speak to an item uh on the agenda. So, when I call your name, please come on up. And if you filled out a card, come on forward and grab a seat up front here so we can get through these uh this morning pretty quickly, but give your name and address or say it's on file for the record, and we'll start with Mr. Wells Todd. I don't see Mr. Todd. Oh, I'm I'm sorry. There he is. Come on down, sir. My name is Wells Todd with uh Take Em Down Jackson Interrupting Redlining, and uh my address is on file. Um of the things that uh some of your ancestors did back in the day was to turn the African American community into a third world country, uh that process uh was called redlining. It denied African Americans the right to buy homes, decent jobs, and basically the right to survive without harassment and terror. Today you are faced with the remnants, or I should say the continuation of that process. The question here is how cheap is land, and we found out from the medical examiner's office and the morgue just how cheap the land is in the African American community caused by redlining. Now the question before you is a jail. What does that actually mean? Not only for the African American community, not only for the community that was redlined, but the city in general. A new jail, campus style jail, and the idea of having to find cheap property for it. There has been the legislation that you guys voted on unanimously that redlining was an issue. The question now is what are you going to do about it? The biggest question before the community as a whole, as this city as a whole, is will you be able to justify building it in a black neighborhood? In a neighborhood that has suffered for decades upon decades economically. So we're here today to speak out against that building of a jail in an already depressed neighborhood area, and um you have to figure out how to move forward on this. But once again, you have to figure it out in the parameters of not destroying the community any more than it is. All right, thank you. Our next speaker is uh Bobby O'Connor. Good morning. My name is Bobby O'Connor. My address is on file. I'm here to speak to 2026 0356, which is that the jail or the detention center will not be built in a redlined neighborhood.