Year in Review 2020

In allen county.

As 2020 comes to an end... tonight -- we reflect on what happened this year and how it changed our community.

Fort wayne mayor tom henry sat down with caleb saylor this afternoon..

To talk about the citys impact from this year's events... and how it'll shape plans for the future the city of fort wayne has faced several challenges throughout 2020.

From the covid-19 pandemic, crime rates, racial justice issues, and continuing economic growth.

While he had hopes to get more done this year, what did happen will change the city moving froward.

"smoking, diabetes, obesity, and infant mortality."

Improving public 3 health.

This was mayor tom henry's top priority for 2020, but covid-19 had other plans.

"i was in the process of meeting with some of the organizations in town and putting together some individuals to address it, and as you said in march, when the covid-19 situation hit our community, a lot of that stuff was put on the back burner."

The virus has impacted many parts of society.

Anxiety and stress rose because of people losing their jobs, losing their homes, turning to drugs and alcohol to cope.

But years of work came to fruition in 2020, with several addiction recovery centers opening, and social services kicking into high gear "the social service community began to get aware of that tooso they began to put resources in to address that.

Drug abuse the same thing.in early summer, protests over the death of george floyd broke out across the country and right here in fort wayne.

Henry says peaceful protests help leaders in our community, including him, to reevaluate racial justice in our community "what happened to george floyd we never want to happen in fort wayne, so let's make sure we have policies and protocols to prevent that from happening."

The city created a committee on police reform and social justice ... meeting every other week to come up with ideas to improve relations in fort wayne, the list of recommendations will be coming out soon.one of the calls for change ... stop having police 3 do many things they weren't specialized in, like handling mental health or suicide calls.

Henry says this is going to be addressed in the future.

"what we're doing is hiring a social worker, maybe even two, to be able to address situations like that."

August brought questions surrounding the electric works project.

The deal between the redevelopment commission and the developers was pulled and mayor henry worked to make sure that deal came back to life, getting more people involved in the plan.

"when you're talking about 65 million dollars now and ultimately 280 million dollars, that's a lot of money.

That's real money and i think the redevelopment commission and i both felt that we needed to take that extra step to try and protect our citizens."through all of this, the pandemic still went on, with cases and deaths growing locally.

And while the city is still addressing the virus, henry is turning toward 2021 "the staff and i met in there was no question that there were several initiatives that we had planned for 2020 that has been deferred to 2021 and understandably so"tomorrow night at 10...hear more from my conversation with mayor tom henry about what he hopes to get accomplished