Our Vision
At the heart of Jaketra Bryant’s campaign is a simple belief: leadership should reflect the people it serves. Our city deserves a mayor who listens first, acts boldly, and delivers results that improve everyday life. Jaketra’s vision for our community is grounded in equity, opportunity, and progress — ensuring every resident has a voice and a chance to thrive.
Build Better Stronger Safer Neighborhoods
Launch a Fair Housing & Anti-Retaliation Enforcement Initiative to protect tenants from intimidation, discrimination, unfair evictions, and unsafe living conditions.
Conduct an immediate review of landlord fines and code enforcement to ensure penalties are meaningful—especially for repeat violations involving mold, unsafe conditions, and neglect.
Hold repeat offenders accountable, ensuring violations are no longer treated as a cost of doing business.
Create a secure, confidential tenant reporting portal so residents can report retaliation, rental abuse, and excessive rent increases without fear.
Safe housing should never require silence. Accountability will be enforced.
Mental Health & Crisis Response
● In my first 100 days, I will redirect city funding away from ineffective incarceration-based responses and toward a coordinated mental-health transition and reentry system, ensuring individuals experiencing mental illness are no longer trapped in jail without treatment, discharge planning, or connection to care. This includes establishing clear pathways from jail to mental health services, stabilization, and housing supports so release does not mean immediate relapse or re-arrest.
● Within the first 100 days, I will implement expanded mental-health response capacity across public safety and corrections, including specialized training and staffing for patrol officers, jail personnel, and dedicated mental-health response teams, so encounters with people in crisis result in intervention and care — not criminalization.
Public Safety & Evidence-Based Crime Reduction
● In the first 100 days, I will launch the Columbus Violence Reduction Strategy (CVRS) — a data-driven, evidence-based group violence reduction model — focused on disrupting cycles of violence through targeted intervention, coordinated accountability, and strategic support for those most at risk of serious harm.
● I will immediately shift public safety strategy toward proven prevention and intervention approaches, prioritizing focused responses to repeat violence, cross- agency coordination, and community-based partnerships that reduce violent crime without broad over-policing or reactive enforcement.
Championing Education & Youth Development
Columbus Connect: Safe Summer Series
Columbus Connect: Safe Summer Series is about more than keeping kids busy — it’s about keeping them connected.
As mayor, I will expand Safe Summer to include positive public safety engagement, on-site mental health support, and trusted points of contact for youth, so young people know where to go before a crisis happens — not after.
This initiative will partner with community spaces to offer youth nights, late-night activities, arts, comedy, sports, and talent exploration, giving young people safe, creative outlets and positive interactions with adults who are there to support, not police them.
Columbus Connect will also establish a local youth resource hub and call center, providing direct access to mental health support, conflict mediation, employment opportunities, and community mentors — because prevention works best when help is easy to reach.
NextGen Columbus
NextGen Columbus is a citywide youth, safety, and opportunity initiative focused on reducing youth violence, decreasing teen arrests, and rebuilding trust between young people, public safety, and City Hall through consistent engagement, leadership development, and economic opportunity.
● As mayor, I will launch NextGen Columbus to rebuild trust and reduce youth involvement in gangs and violence by expanding positive, non-enforcement interactions between youth and public safety, investing in leadership pathways, and restoring safe, structured activities during high-risk hours.
● NextGen Columbus will establish Mayor’s Youth Leadership & Policy Cohorts, bringing high school juniors, seniors, and college students directly into City Hall to learn policy, government, and civic leadership early—creating real pathways into public service, advocacy, and local decision-making.
Literacy, Classroom Support & Family Engagement
● In my first 100 days, I will redirect education-related city funding toward literacy support tools and software, ensuring students and educators have access to evidence-based technology that strengthens reading, comprehension, and digital skills, particularly in classrooms serving historically under-resourced communities.
● I will immediately invest in classroom support funds and family engagement incentives, prioritizing culturally responsive learning environments, direct instructional support, and programs that actively involve families as partners in student success —not as an afterthought, but as a core strategy for academic achievement.
Advancing Equity & Inclusion
● Within my first 100 days, I will appoint a diverse executive and administrative leadership team, ensuring decision-making authority across city government reflects the racial, gender, and lived-experience diversity of Columbus — not symbolic inclusion, but real power and responsibility.
● I will establish clear equity accountability within leadership and hiring practices, embedding inclusive decision-making into policy development, budgeting, and departmental oversight so equity is operational, measurable, and enforced from day one.
Environmental Stewardship and Local Agriculture
● In my first 100 days, I will launch a city-supported urban agriculture and environmental resilience initiative, redirecting underutilized land and resources toward local food production, community gardens, and small-scale farming partnerships that strengthen food security, support local growers, and reduce environmental strain in underserved neighborhoods.
● Within the first 100 days, I will align environmental policy with public health and economic opportunity, prioritizing sustainable land use, neighborhood-based green projects, and partnerships that expand access to fresh food while creating workforce pathways connected to agriculture, conservation, and environmental stewardship.