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YAKIMA, Wash. -- The Yakima County commissioners on Tuesday authorized spending up to $6,000 on a grant writer who will apply for federal money and Gates Foundation grants to fight gangs.
If the county secures the grant money -- up to $850,000, according to Commissioner Kevin Bouchey -- it would be spent on the Yakima County Comprehensive Youth Gang Project.
The project is a partnership between the county, the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, the city of Yakima and Educational Service District 105 that aims to provide anti-gang counselors for the county's rural schools, among other initiatives.
"There are smaller communities, areas of particular interest, that need to be targeted," Bouchey said.
Gang violence has long been a problem in the Yakima Valley, with several local cities passing ordinances in recent years specifically aimed at cracking down on gangs. It has been in the headlines lately as a spate of shootings from Grandview to Yakima has rocked the Valley.
The county's cooperation with educators and with the farm workers clinic gives the new anti-gang effort an existing framework within which to function, Bouchey said.
"We're using their expertise in their given areas on how we're going to implement this," he said.
The commissioners action Tuesday -- hiring a grant writer at $50 per hour with a $6,000 limit -- is intended to lead to funding for anti-gang counselors and starting an anti-gang curriculum in county schools.
The plan also calls for using former gang members from the nonprofit Building the Bridges program to mentor youth who are arrested for gang activity.
"The ultimate goal is to get these programs on the ground in the community," Commissioner Mike Leita said. "Enough with planning."
* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693, or at pmuir@yakimaherald.com.
County Commissioner Bouchey of the Bouchey Farms agri-business conglomerate wants to seek up to $850,000 of federal taxpayer money by using
$6,000 of our local tax money to hire a grant writer. All this to combat the spread of gang violence that has nothing to do with the tens of thousands of illegal aliens working in local agri-business. Hmmmm..... must just be a coincidence. Oh well,go ahead and do your job Kevin but who are you really working for?
Countryvet, I see your point. However, the ag business is only the smallest part of the problem. The biggest majority of illegals now work in construction, hospitality, light manufacturing, and the medical services fields. THESE are the "jobs Americans WILL do", yet our government refuses to listen, despite the outcry from the vast majority of our citizens. It is as if they have no ears, or no minds connected to them. Worse, they are kowtowing to the United States Chamber of Commerce, (the businesses that hire these people) or the liberals who want the votes and pander to the immigrant sympathizers and illegals themselves - most of whom are non-citizens and cannot even vote legally.
It is time to start prosecuting ALL EMPLOYERS who hire illegals. The practice would quickly stop and the illegals would self-deport for lack of work.
Even the unions are myopic about jobs, illegal aliens, and consequences involving high costs, unsustainable population growth, and crime. Rick Bender, state president of the labor council, writes a column saying "green jobs must mean good jobsd that respect labor" but he supports all the bills that enable and attract ever-more illegal and legal immigrants.
Report ViolationIllegal immigration and the promotion of it needs to come to a screeching halt. But the likelihood of it is trivial because anybody against illegal immigration, granting amnesty to those who are illegally here and demands employers be penalized for hiring illegal immigrants are racist. Illegal is illegal and how being against that means you are a racist is beyond me. In addition, government plays the game of being 'politcally correct.'
In any other country in the entire world, would they not put up with illegal immigration. Those who call promoters inhumane and racist should think again. Inhumane is when true American citizens with blue collar jobs cannot get social services, when senior citizens must ration a social security check but neither can get the assistance of a welfare system that supports many lazy and unwilling people. Racism? Those who believe illegal immigrants can't make it on their own, don't have the ability to obtain citizenship or fight for it legally are racist becuase not believing a peoples cannot and you can only promotes a social hierarchy of hand me down assistance.
Last time I remember, the tax dollars of U.S. citizens should be invested for their better interests, not that of illegal immigrants. If people (illegal or not) here in the United States have the gall the complain how the U.S. isn't doing enough for illegal immigrants, well then go to their country and advocate for them. But here in the United States, where U.S. citizens are being fleeced of their money, working two jobs as economic slaves and for what? To only be declined social services. It seems illegal immigrants get more help from the U.S. more than is provided to its own citizens.
If the impoverished, illegal immigrants need help and can, in mass numbers protest the actions of the United States, instead use that energy for your own country. We have problems too!
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