City community-relations director lays out housing, mental-health and small-business plans

Ethan Posey, Springfield’s director of community relations, told a Citizens Club audience that his office is focusing on mental-health response, affordable homeownership and small-business development as part of efforts to advance equity in the city.

Posey said the city has ordered a Beacon outreach vehicle, a Bolt model intended to pair licensed clinical social workers with first responders for nonviolent mental-health calls. “The Bolt should be here sometime in July or August,” Posey said, adding that the vehicle will be transport-capable so crews can quickly move someone in a life-threatening situation to medical care if needed.

The Beacon effort — which Posey identified by acronym as Bridging Emergency and Community Outreach Network — is part of a broader push to divert nonviolent behavioral-health calls from traditional police response. Posey said the program will run in coordination with Memorial Behavioral Health and the Springfield Police Department…