LYNN – With a recent increase in crime, mounting tension over economic instabilities and a need to divert youth away from violence, residents and city officials called for change at a citywide Community Summit Tuesday evening.Ideas for the betterment of the city were swapped at the summit, which was held at North Shore Community College and moderated by local attorney James Carrigan.Sponsored by The Daily Item and a multitude of other city agencies, Congressman John Tierney headlined the event, along with Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, Essex County Sheriff Frank Cousins Jr., and Lynn Police Officer Robert Ferrari.Tierney stressed the need for residents to come together as a community to make sure youths have a safe and healthy environment to thrive in so they don’t resort to violence and gang activity.”We simply can’t afford to lose any child to drugs, prison or anything,” he said. “We need to give them a good quality of life and have after-school programs.”Such programs have gone by the wayside according to Tierney, who said funding in the late 1990s and in 2000 were significantly higher, providing much needed school and police programs.”Violent crimes went down 26 percent from 1993-2000, and then in 2001-2006, funding for those programs was cut by $2 billion,” he said. “These programs have been abandoned and they need to be reclaimed.”Recognizing the dire need for added after-school activities, Blodgett announced the appropriation of $30,000 from his office to be split between Girls Inc., and the Rivera Brothers Boxing Club in Lynn.”The money donated will be used to create two after-school programs – a boxing program at Rivera Brothers, and an arts program at Girls, Inc.,” he said. “Both will provide homework assistance and the funds will be used for the kids and not to fund staff salaries.”Aside from extra programs to keep kids busy, Ferrari said another key part of the puzzle to keep the city safe is the re-instatement of the Community Liaison Team of the police department that is no longer funded.”We need to bring it back to full capacity because it engaged officers seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. in the community,” he said. “The officers either walked the streets, rode a bike or went out in a cruiser. But now, officers are out chasing radio calls and are busy with a more reactionary type of work instead of spending time in the community and providing Lynn with a valuable resource.”Cousins spoke of the nearly 2,000 people that are currently in the custody of sheriffs in Massachusetts, and the roughly 2.5 million people in the country that are incarcerated.All of those people, he said, have to be reintroduced to society following their release, posing an important task to re-create upstanding citizens.”Ninety percent of people who go to jail have a substance-abuse problem, so there needs to be an aggressive program to ready those people to come back to the community including drug testing, an educational component and dry housing,” he said.A follow-up meeting will be held Nov. 20 at the Lynn Housing Authority to touch on ideas garnered at the summit.