KINGSTON – The Kingston Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee unanimously approved funding for a second major initiative to prevent gun violence in the city, Wednesday evening, passing the allocation of $20,000 for the city to create their own SNUG program.
Kingston could now be joining other municipalities including the cities of Newburgh and Poughkeepsie in having a SNUG program.
SNUG, which stands for “guns” spelled backward, is a program that utilizes trained community members to deescalate potential situations that may result in gun violence and has shown success in other municipalities which have adopted it.
Alderwoman Rita Worthington said it is important to fund this program, even though a budget and cost analysis report from SNUG still needs to be submitted to the city for exact funding, especially since the city recently had three shooting incidences within a month.
“I think that the time is now, that we do something, rather than waiting,” said Worthington. “We’ve had a couple of killings. We’ve had more than a couple- we’ve had three. We have some unsolved murders right now in the City of Kingston. Everybody is working diligently to try get a handle on this right now because right now, we seem to have lost control and we need to get control back. We need to save our kids and save some lives,” she said.
Some committee members were concerned at first with allocating funds before exploring grant opportunities, but Mayor Steve Noble said that those grant opportunities from the state and fed will be for the next year’s fiscal budget in 2022. He agreed with Worthington and said that this initial contingency funding is worth it to make sure these outreach workers’ boots on the ground as soon as possible.
“I think that this $20,000 and again, Rita and I have to work with them to get this in writing, so that all of you will feel comfortable with it, but I think that that’s would I would like to see that $20,000 used for is to be able to get some of the outreach workers paid for their time, so if we have another shooting this summer, they can spring into action to be able to disrupt that violent cycle that starts when that shooting occurs,” said Noble.
Worthington maintained that SNUG is already dedicated to coming to serve in the City of Kingston; however, like the Lights on Kingston program, it will have to be passed by the Common Council before the allocation of funds can be solidified.
