Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced that the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies has approved $150,000 for City of Mouth Vernon Youth Development Action Plan in the FY11 Appropriations Bill. Senator Gillibrand aggressively lobbied members of the Appropriations Committee to include funding for the project in this year’s spending bill.
“We can never allow the lure of gangs to surpass opportunities for our children to grow and achieve their full potential,” Senator Gillibrand said. “Too many communities are seeing increasing gang activity and the violent crime that comes with it. It’s time to fight back with better resources for our law enforcement, tougher penalties to lock up offenders, positive role models to guide our children to success and unite communities to keep our families safe.”
There are as many as 4,500 gang members in the Hudson Valley. In an effort to combat the national issue of growing gang activity on a local level, the City of Mount Vernon has developed a new grass-roots project that would prevent our youth from committing gang activities, by providing alternate supervised activities and development opportunities that would keep the city’s youth engaged during evenings, weekends, and during the summer months when gang violence peaks.
This legislation would provide $150,000 to the City of Mount Vernon for the implementation of this project, which would help put the city’s youth on a path to a better future and improve the overall quality of life for the residents of the City of Mount Vernon.
The legislation will head to full committee, and then to the floor for a full vote before the Senate. The bill will then proceed to the House-Senate Conference Committee, before final passage in both chambers and then to the President to become law.