AKRON, Ohio – A social justice forum Thursday night featuring candidates for Akron mayor went relatively smoothly, with minimal finger-pointing from candidates and a handful of outbursts from roughly 200 attendees gathered at the Garfield High School auditorium.
The event was hosted by Akron NAACP, Freedom Bloc, Akron League of Women Voters, and other local groups.
Social justice areas the seven Democrats addressed included hot topics for the city, such as policing, public safety and violence. Questions were also asked about economics, housing and immigration.
Candidates were given one minute to answer each prepared question, while questions attendees submitted during the forum were asked at the end of the event.
Ohio League of Women Voters board member Cynthia Peeples, who founded Honesty for Ohio Education, moderated the event, and worked to keep candidates within their allotted time, while tamping down a few negative comments candidates directed at one another.
Akron Deputy Mayor of Governmental Relations Marco Sommerville took the most heat from the other candidates and the audience for what were essentially slips of the tongue.
In his response to reducing police violence, Sommerville described a dart system that allowed police to tag suspects' vehicles rather than chasing them, so officers could later go to the home to “move in for the kill.”
The audience reacted audibly, relating the expression back to the deadly police shooting of Jayland Walker, a young, unarmed Black man, last June in Akron.
Walker was killed after a police chase for an equipment violation, while subsequent decisions by the city and Akron Police Department, such as reinstating the officers involved and allowing officers to remove their nametags, elicited the ire of many community groups.
Mark Greer, a former city employee who headed up the city's small business program, openly rebuked Sommerville for the comment, apologizing to "anyone who has ever experienced violence or trauma at the hand of violent shootings by law enforcement."
"That is not the language that is going to move this community forward," Greer said, drawing applause.
Sommerville misspoke again in his response to a question asking what the candidates would have done differently in handling the shooting, when he referred to Walker as "Jason" rather than Jayland before correcting himself.
City Councilwoman Tara Mosley took aim at Sommerville for that blunder.
"His name was Jayland Walker," she said pointedly, drawing applause. Mosley followed up saying the police involved should have been fired, although the investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is ongoing.
The candidates were asked to explain how they would handle transparency in spending taxpayer money and awarding city contracts, and deal with corruption in those areas.
City Councilman Shammas Malik criticized City Hall for not yet calling out FirstEnergy, one of Akron's largest employers, regarding House Bill 6, which cost Akron taxpayers millions to bailout the company's failing nuclear power plants.
He referenced a line in the recent budget, which city council is now working through, that reads "special contracts don't have to come back" to council for approval.
"So, it may not be bad, but it looks terrible," Malik said. "And we are going to have to decide, me and my colleagues, whether to vote for a budget with that in it because it doesn’t look like it's going to be taken out."
Count Councilman Jeff Wilhite said any county contract of more than $50,000 must come before county council.
"We learned this week that for over 60 years, that the ordinance on expenditures with contracts from the administration forward has been ignored," he said referencing city contracts.
"You cannot wave your hand and say 'Oh, well, we didn't know that'" he said. "It's in the ordinance. And for that to be ignored, I think is absolutely wrong on every level."
Progressive Joshua Schaffer reiterated a stance on transparency he voiced in several responses, saying his administration would not take money from CEOs, from criminal organizations or from the rich.
"I'm going to be the most transparent mayor Akron has ever seen," he said. "I'm going to be taking the bus to work. I'm going to be mowing lawns at the park. I'm going to be taking out your trash and you can hold me to it."
In a related question about awarding ARPA contracts equitably to minorities, Keith Mills, a Cleveland schoolteacher, said his administration would "trim the fat" to ensure career training is available for young people, to give them options.
"So, if they can get that necessary training, I think maybe, you know, it will work with maybe reducing some violence," he said. "Maybe a kid will not, you know, go hang out somewhere he's not supposed to be, but then have, you know, maybe some options to be a carpenter or electrician."
Akron is considered a federally recognized Welcoming City for immigrants, which means the resources are available to help them settle more easily in Akron than other cities. As such, candidates were asked what their policies would be regarding documented and undocumented immigrants.
Malik said he can relate to immigrants as he is half Sunni and half Irish.
Bhutanese residents are confused about gambling in area stores, he said, as no one knows which machines are legal, and the city is responsible for providing that information.
Mosley, who represents Ward 5, said her ward is home to many of Akron's immigrants who are paying their way and paying taxes no matter what their citizenship status.
Akron should move from a Welcoming City to a Sanctuary City, she said, which provides safe harbor to undocumented immigrants.
"We say we're a welcoming community but if we if there comes a time when we have undocumented here and ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) comes in, we need to be a sanctuary city for those individuals," she said.
Wilhite said immigrants should be celebrated and the city owes much of the federal funding it has received based on population to the steady influx of refugees and immigrants.
Wilhite said he recently learned from the Bhutanese Community Association that suicide rates in that community are rising because many young immigrants have lost the ability to speak their native language while elders don’t know English, causing a divide.
As a result, the county applied funding toward a program that will help both age groups access the training they need to communicate with one another, he said.
"That's the kind of mayor you want," Wilhite said. "Listen and act."
Akron's mayoral primary is Tuesday, May 2. Read about the candidates online, locate your polling location and learn whether you are registered to vote at the League of Women Voters website, Vote 411.