Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich says the city wants to do what it can to alleviate concerns about lighting and safety at public housing locations and other residential developments.
Following comments from District 1 council member Denise Jackson at this week’s city council meeting in relation to a recent shooting incident at the RiverWest public housing complex, Urich said working with the Peoria Housing Authority is a priority.
“We're going to sit down and talk with the PHA executive director [CEO Armeca Crawford] and see if there's opportunities for them to review the lighting around RiverWest, and then certainly talk about security,” said Urich, cautioning there may not be any simple solutions.
“The difficulty with multi-family housing units and security is, quite frankly, the numbers and: Can it be financially feasible for them to provide that level of on-site security at those units? Particularly for subsidized housing units, it's a challenge because it's not generally covered as part of the reimbursement expense to operate the housing units.”
Urich said he understands the desire for reduced dark space in and around the housing complexes in order to cut down on criminal activity.
“That's the reason why the city has been working through crime prevention through environmental design,” said Urich. “We've been looking at that within some of our neighborhoods where we're trying to take down some of the property line trees that have grown up that used to be just sprouting weeds that have become larger trees.
“We'll be taking those down in certain neighborhoods, but you can do the same thing with apartment complexes. We have police officers that are trained in that, that would go in and make recommendations to the property owners about how to handle the lighting issues around their property.”
