Today, Monday, February 2nd, I went to a city council meeting here in Decatur, where I live. I had prepared a two-and-a-half to three-minute speech where I would ask the city council to consider more infrastructure development, as they allow citizens to speak for about three minutes at a time at these meetings. Since moving to Decatur, I have been concerned that, unlike in Chicago, Decatur has no bike lanes and no easy way for pedestrians to get around, especially in certain areas that connect parts of the city to one another. In Chicago, there are so many ways to get around. I didn’t own a car until I was 40, when the pandemic hit. I left shortly thereafter. Decatur seems very car-oriented, and no one seems to question this state of affairs.
When I arrived at the city council meeting, there was a line of people ready to speak to the city council on a controversial project in the city, which I was unaware of until today. There were people standing in the meeting hall. I couldn’t get past because there was no room. The meeting was being broadcast on a live feed, and a lot of people who were outside, like me, had the live feed of the meeting on their phones. I listened to and watched it on my phone too. I heard person after person speak for or against this project. Some people were concerned about the possible negative effects that this newly proposed cogeneration plant at the ADM plant would have on the residents of this city, on the water supply (Lake Decatur), and on the environment. They were concerned that the positive economic impact wasn’t enough to offset the negative effects of the new facility. There were also business and economic interests there who spoke and propped up the economic benefits of the new proposed plant. They mentioned jobs and tax revenue.
I was there to speak about my concerns regarding how car-oriented this city is and how we need to consider people who are not able to own a vehicle and try to make the city more accessible in general. I felt a little like my topic wouldn’t be relevant.
A little while ago, my nephew, who lives with me and does not own a car or have a driver’s license, had a job at Kroger, which is walking distance from where we live in the South Shores neighborhood of Decatur. It was very convenient for him to work there. He told me about his experiences walking to and from work. On snowy days, because the city doesn’t clean up main sidewalks, he said he had to “play frogger,” walking on the roads and then jumping back on the snow-covered sidewalks to avoid getting hit by cars. He also told me that he had a colleague at Kroger who would regularly walk across a main bridge (on Business Route 51) where there is no pedestrian walkway and where it is very unsafe to cross, just to get to and from work. On nights when the weather was too bad, he would call off work just because it would be even more dangerous to cross that bridge on those days. My nephew told me this colleague had to brave walking across that bridge to get home at night because buses in the city only run until 8 p.m.
Recently, the city implemented a new rideshare program called Decatur Moves. It is a very affordable rideshare system that only costs $2 per ride. That has been a saving grace for a lot of people in the city. Decatur Moves functions all over Macon County and is wheelchair accessible. However, Decatur Moves is a service that stops at 8 p.m., leaving shift workers, like my nephew’s colleague, to fend for themselves.
A few years ago, when I did Uber and Lyft for supplemental income, I recall picking people up from work in the Mount Zion business area of Decatur. They lived in the more low-income center of the city, but they got off late at night from their jobs at the fast food restaurants in that area with no pedestrian access and had no other way to get home than to pay anywhere from $12–$18 (or more!) for a ride. A fast food employee doesn’t make more than about $15 an hour, if that, so for someone to devote an entire hour to an hour and a half of their six- to eight-hour shift to getting home is a huge expense.
All of these experiences, as well as my own personal preference for bike riding and walking (the way I used to do in Chicago), made me very eager to go speak to the city council about these concerns. I am someone with privilege. I have a job that allows me to own a car and get around relatively easily, even during weather that would make it difficult to get around on foot or by bike. If I had an emergency, I could get an Uber or a Lyft. I have also ridden the bus on a few occasions here in Decatur. However, because there were so many people at the city council meeting today who were upset about the new proposal that the city council was supposed to vote on, I decided not to speak.
As I walked out, I thought to myself, “Maybe you could have added a little bit more somewhere in your speech about how the city needs to put terms on these projects and demand investment in infrastructure for these proposals to even be considered.” But it was just an esprit de l’escalier, a little too late. The city council had already moved on to talk about their agenda items as I walked out of the building.
This experience sparked something in me, though. One of our assignments in this class is to write a policy brief, and I have already started working on mine. It will be about this issue of helping people move through the city of Decatur with dignity, regardless of their ability to own a car or pay for expensive rideshare services later in the evening and at night. I intend to email it directly to the city council members. I also intend to come back to the next city council meeting to speak. Next time, I will be more prepared.
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