The regular meeting of the Toledo City Council on June 16, 2026, was dominated by the first reading of a proposed ordinance creating special event safety zones in response to the recent Old West End Festival shooting and other teen takeovers. The mayor presented the ordinance as a first draft emphasizing prevention and parental accountability. Council members expressed broad support for action but raised detailed concerns about enforcement, due process, and youth inclusion. The council also debated the renewal of the Flock automatic license plate reader contract, eventually scheduling a committee hearing on June 22 and a vote on June 23. Numerous routine ordinances from public utilities, finance, transportation, and other departments were approved by consent.
Here. Gaddis. Here. Hobbs. Jones. Come Ives. Here. Quorum present. Items one through seven are from the Department of Public Utilities. Oh, President Williams. Thank you. I just wanted to um introduce the mayor. We're gonna move the mayor's um legislation up top. Clerk, can you please um adjust that and tell us the what number is that, Clerk? Is it number 20 on our agenda? Yeah, it's number 20 on our agenda. So we're gonna move that up so the mayor can present on this piece of legislation. I just wanted to let you know also there's a new version that was put in. It is in your folders. Thank you. Uh I'll turn this over to Mayor Kapsakavich. Um, you can have the floor. All right, thank you very much. Uh President Williams and uh Chair Cramer. The administration is here today to talk about uh an ordinance uh that is uh that at least begins the conversation on how we can uh make our large gatherings a place where individuals can enjoy themselves and have fun, uh, but also be safe. Uh it is the first uh response uh to what happened at the old West End recently, but it does not have to be the only response. I felt it was important to begin the conversation. And at the table here, we have John Madigan from the law department, uh Chief Carl, the safety director, Austin Mack from my office, to sort of talk about the logistics of what this ordinance does. But I just wanted to sort of give an overview, maybe a view from 10,000 feet about some of our thinking. Um we felt, first of all, this is not necessarily a uh finished product. Uh it to think about this uh maybe the way you would think about a term paper in college. Uh let's uh not think about this as uh the final paper that we're turning into the professor, but maybe rather as the first draft. Um it is our hope that city council can work with us to turn this first draft into a second draft, third draft, fourth draft, and to the point where we get the final paper that we can turn into the professor. We felt we understand City Council's legislative schedule and we respect City Council's legislative schedule. While all public gatherings in Toledo are important, we did feel and do feel that there is unique importance to thinking about the Fourth of July gathering in Promenade Park, where we are I'm certain we're gonna have the largest firework show we've ever had in the history of the city of Toledo as we celebrate the 250th birthday of America. Uh Austin has helped uh raise the private funding necessary to make that the case. I know how much money we typically raise for fireworks. We have exceeded that uh by a great margin, so we're gonna have the best fireworks we've ever had, which means we're gonna have a lot of people down there. We will have tens of thousands of people there, and we want to make sure that if we believe new policies and processes and procedures are necessary to safeguard um the citizens for that event. We knew we had to get this legislation in the packet last Friday. So I guess if we sort of rush to get something before you, it was with an eye toward getting something passed by 4th of July. I can understand. I'm not I'm happy to very briefly to the extent I can talk through what this does. I can understand that city council is gonna have opinions and might want to influence it and add here and delete there, and we absolutely welcome that. Let's do that in real time. I don't know if maybe a working group offline uh could be useful toward that effort. Uh we're willing to block out ours, even this week if we want to do that difficult work. I know sometimes with the legislation like this, there's a temptation to maybe have a hearing, put it in committee. I'm all for that. I'm just a little I just want you to know at the beginning that the purpose of doing this now is to get it on the books by 4th of July, and I just worry a little bit about having this stuck in a committee as a result.