The Violence Prevention Coalition Steering Committee will hold its first community session next Wednesday, and the group plans to send a community violence survey out next month.

The committee’s chair, Doug Baxter, who is also the Violence Prevention Coordinator for CHI Franciscan, said the committee has been working hard the last couple of months.

The community session will be held at 6 p.m. on Oct. 26 in the City Council Chambers at Federal Way City Hall (33325 8th Ave. S.).

“That’ll be a chance for the community to come together, [it will] be a chance for them to talk to the coalition steering committee and give in-person feedback,” Baxter said at the Oct. 18 City Council meeting. “Also, we’ll have an update about the incidents in Federal Way that spurred the creation of our committee.”

The online survey will be sent out in November to gather ideas and give the community a chance to share their concerns. The survey will be disseminated in Spanish, Ukrainian and Korean.

Along with that survey will be a Federal Way Public Schools survey asking students in the third through 12th grades about their perceptions of violence.

“We hope to get a lot of rich feedback that we can then turn into recommendations for the City Council,” Baxter said.

The committee, however, was concerned about delivering those recommendations by their Nov. 1 deadline and asked for an extension, which Mayor Jim Ferrell approved.

The new deadline is April 1.

Baxter said the extension will allow the committee to receive “the best feedback possible” and “get the best practices so we can come back to you with the best recommendations that will actually have an impact on violence.”

The Violence Prevention Coalition steering committee held their first meeting on Aug. 9 and was formed in response to three murders occurring in 48 hours in Federal Way this past May. Two murders in the city before those three and three since have brought the city’s year-to-date total to eight.

For more information on the Violence Prevention Coalition steering committee, visit cityoffederalway.com/page/violence-prevention-coalition.