Columbus City Council wants to fund a scholarship named for a Black man killed by a former Franklin County Sheriff's deputy in Columbus in 2020.
City Council wants to give Creating Central Ohio Futures, a Columbus non-profit, $100,000 to honor the life of Casey Goodson Jr., a 23-year-old truck driver who was shot and killed by SWAT Deputy Jason Meade over two years ago. Meade still awaits trial on murder and reckless homicide charges.
The scholarship will focus on workforce development for underserved, underemployed, or economically disadvantaged people, specifically helping them get a commercial driver's license. Goodson was trying to get his CDL before he was killed.
The city similarly invested $200,000 dollars to start the Pathways to Purpose: Casey Goodson Jr. CDL Program, in 2021, which will provide resources and the skills for people to become trained CDL drivers.
Leland Bass, the nonprofit's CEO says the scholarship is for Columbus residents who are interested in gaining their commercial driver's license and creating a sustainable income source for them and their families.
"They may not have had those opportunities and may not have had those chances thus far in their lives. We want to reach out to those people and give them this opportunity and give them not a hand out, but a hand up," Bass said.
Building Back Better Together is the non-profit's workforce development program in partnership with the Columbus and Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council. The program helps creates paths to the middle class for the people it serves.
It is an 8-week program, through which previously incarcerated and underemployed people, receive training and career placement after earning a class A CDL.
"We want to get away from getting people jobs and get people into careers where they can be self sufficient," Bass said.
Councilmember Shayla Favor sponsored the legislation, which said Goodson's life was taken way too soon. The council will vote Monday on the first reading of the ordinance.
Bass said his organization wants to make a change in the lives of people wanting to make a career with a CDL and says Goodson represented that vision.
