KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – It is Youth Violence Protection Week, and the Knoxville City Council met Tuesday night to discuss a new intervention program.

This comes after the city cut ties with Turn Up Knox in February.

As it was written on the agenda, the resolution was for a total of $519,750.00 to create a community violence intervention program. This caused some local organizations to feel they had been overlooked.

“It’s pretty much a slap in the face to anybody that’s been out here actually doing the work and showing results,” said Rashaad Woods, the director of the ReNOUNce DeNOUNce Gang Intervention Program.

The money set aside in the resolution would go to the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, based in California.

“To devise a plan that doesn’t include any grassroots efforts that are already established and effective in the community, it hurts,” Woods said.

Woods said he feels like the city overlooked many local groups doing that kind of work in the community.

“To think that somebody could come from another state or another city and do what a person inside the city does and is already doing better than what they’re doing, it just seems kind of egotistical,” Woods said.

WVLT News reached out to the city with Woods’ concerns and received the following statement:

NICJR is a nationally recognized leader in community-based violence reduction. And NICJR is certainly no stranger to Knoxville. For nearly two years, it has been providing training and coaching to City staff and Knoxville community partners.

If City Council approves the contract extension tonight, NICJR will hire a full-time program manager and local credible messengers. So this will be the best of both worlds – local people continuing to do this important work who are trained and managed by renowned national experts.City of Knoxville

Woods said before Tuesday night’s meeting that he hoped council would consider spreading the money in a different way.

“There’s a lot of programs in the City of Knoxville. There’s a lot of programs that are working in the City of Knoxville. Why not reinvest in some of those programs? It wouldn’t have even taken that much money,” Woods said.

City council spent two hours discussing and hearing feedback on the resolution before postponing it for two weeks.

Amendments discussed included shortening the length of the contract, status reports every 90 days and a workshop.

Story Courtesy of WVLT