A couple of dozen people showed up at the David Raines Community Center in the Dr. Martin Luther King Drive neighborhood in Shreveport Tuesday night to talk to city leaders about needs in their area.

Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins and his department heads laid out a list of priorities:

Public safety, infrastructure, technology and jobs are the focus of how the mayor wants to spend the money. Mayor Perkins told the crowd it is time for all of us to come together. He says we had a pandemic and lost 800 of our local residents. We also had large protests over police complaints.

Those things happened in a very condensed time and our community went through a lot of traumas and what we saw was a lot of frustration. There is still a lot of frustration in this community. We like to lash out at one another. But I've gotta tell you now is not the time for that.

Perkins says the city has already gotten $25 million in Covid relief money and we are in line to get $48 million from the American Rescue Plan. He says now is the time to prioritize our needs.

More meetings are coming up:

Thursday, June 3 A. B. Palmer Community Center

Thursday, June 10 Southern Hills Community Center

Tuesday, June 15 Airport Park Community Center

Thursday, June 17 Bill Cockrell Community Center

Thursday, June 24 Bilberry Park Community Center