Waterloo community confused by park renovations pitch during conversation on gun violence
Waterloo — The Waterloo community came together for a conversation on gun violence Monday evening, but they got a presentation on parks and rec renovations instead.
“I really came here because I thought I was going to hear about better living, I thought I was going to hear something about legislation,” one Waterloo resident lamented Monday evening.
City Councilor Jonathan Grieder was advertised as hosting Monday's presentation from the city at the Jubilee Freedom Center.
The presentation was billed as a 'Community Conversation on Gun Violence,' with an update on current investments being made in the community.
“We have to look at this holistically, and that means addressing societal ills, and in order to do that we have to look at obviously, the gun issue and the violence this year, but we also have to look at the the groundwork that lays a path for folks to think 'that makes up a course of action,' which is what the focus of this conversation was on, is looking at those secondary areas that impact peoples day-to-day lives, whether it’s their leisure activities or their job," Grieder explained.
The meeting comes as Waterloo deals with the fallout of a number of shootings in the last month -- some of them deadly.
That includes one instance where officers shot and killed a man who pointed what turned out to be an airsoft gun at them.
People at the meeting Monday said they're struggling to connect the dots between the shooting -- and park upgrades.
“If you don’t have a way to direct people to the parks, to those centers, I mean, even this conversation as we were hearing, obviously it wasn’t out in the public, not enough people heard about it, I expected a couple hundred people, not 20,” Waterloo Resident Phil Krough said.
City leaders will meet again on Sept. 27th to talk more about their plans.
Grieder tells Iowa's News Now they'll keep people in the loop on things through his Facebook page and the city's website.
