Letter to the Editor: City’s role in leading poverty solutions unclear

Dear editor,

I just read your opinion piece (“Without action, poverty hole could sink city”) about poverty in the northwest sector of Springfield. As usual, it was very nicely done.

Certainly awareness is a great first step. It appeared Greg [Burris’] statistics showing a crisp depiction of the problem achieved that goal, but did his PowerPoint include a similarly focused outline of the solution? Did he present proposals or specific calls to action to fix this? While awareness is essential, what’s the city’s plan for positively impacting this tragic situation?

Certainly listing various public and private groups attempting to address the problem is helpful but should the city be laying out a coordinated private/public effort to improve the circumstance of these affected people?

In researching this issue (prompted by your article), I went to ImpactingPoverty.org. That website appeared to represent (at least in part) the city’s effort to address poverty in Springfield. There wasn’t a single entry for a meeting or status update for 2016.

That could imply the city overall is not as proactive in its leadership to coordinate all these efforts as they might be. It’s hard to proactively lead with five-month-old actions.

—Scott Axon, Kingsley Group