GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Green Bay's Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) is closing, the city announced on Wednesday.
The closure is linked to an "uncertain state and federal funding landscape."
The city's OVP was created in 2023 to promote a community-centered approach to prevent violence. The OVP is supported by a grant that will continue to provide funding for the program through the end of 2025.
Just in April, the OVP had opened a community space on Irwin Avenue. Recent initiatives supported by the program included a week long campaign in the Western Avenue corridor, called "Neighbors Together for Western."
The announcement comes as Green Bay experiences promising public safety trends, according to the city. Homicides fell by 67 percent between 2023 and 2024, and following a peak of reported 82 shots-fired incidents in 2021, that number dropped to 24 by 2024.
The director for the OVP, Andrea Kressin, will remain in her role through the end of the year to assess how OVP initiatives might continue in other ways, elsewhere in city government.
