Investing in our Neighborhoods

The small details add up

As part of the American Rescue Plan, a federal relief bill passed in 2021, a ton of money was sent all over the economy. You’ll most likely remember that it sent out $1400 checks to most people, something that definitely helped out my financial position at the time. 

It didn’t just send out checks to the people, a lot of money for State and Local governments was also part of the bill. The City of Galesburg has been fortunate to get approximately 6 million dollars from this stimulus package. The city hasn’t yet decided how to use that money, but they are likely to make some decisions soon.

There are many projects that would be worthy of this money: improving downtown, balancing budgets, saving Hawthorne Pool, the list goes on. 

I will say that I’m firm in my conviction that we should not use this money to just balance future budgets. While we are going to run into some funding shortfalls in the coming years for some departments, this money can have better uses. 

We need to invest this money in the community. While we’ll want to invest it in big projects like the pool and some streets, which I agree are valuable investments for our community, we also need to make small investments.

We all know that there are thousands of small things in our neighborhoods and around town that we feel could be better. But since these small details don’t have huge impacts on day to day life and aren’t big enough to be brought to the city’s attention, they go unnoticed and unchanged. But we should do something about them!

Small Fund, Big Impact

I propose that we take a portion of the $6 million and use it on a community projects fund. This project could take any amount of money, ideally between $50,000 to $500,000. The goal would be to do as many projects as possible, with a spending cap per project somewhere between $1000-5000. This way we would be able to do a large number of small improvements that are normally overlooked. 

What could these small projects be? It could be replacing or installing a bench in a strategic area. Planting trees in areas that could use more shade. Plant trees along streets to create a shade canopy. Paint new lines on streets that help slow down traffic. Create bump outs out of paint and lane dividers to help calm traffic in an area. Paint a crosswalk. Install a trash can. Repair short stretches of sidewalk. Create areas for neighborhood art. 

The goal is to find small projects that address real needs in the city. The above list isn’t everything it could possibly be, I’m not the sole originator of ideas in the City. So we would need to open the process up, have some community meetings to get feedback. We could also allow letters and emails to be accepted for project requests. Make sure there is an adequate platform for people to express their needs while also not taking too long.

Then once we have the ideas we should do as many as we can, immediately. Not wait a long time for design processes or reviews or studies, just do the projects. With each project costing less than $5000 there isn’t a massive investment being made. Almost any investment the city can make under $5000 is easily reversible. So if any of these end up being bad then we can undo them with minimum harm. 

The idea is that this type of investment would garner local support and instill confidence in the community. One of the biggest markers I use to assess the quality of something is whether the small details are correct. If I go to a restaurant and order 20 wings and only get 18, that’s showing me that the establishment doesn’t take great pride in what they are doing. Mistakes happen, but consistently perfecting the small details shows that we care about the finished product, the experience.

What we’ve done with so many past investments in town is spend large sums of money on projects that may or not work out, and when they don't work out then we get nothing. So we should take this money and put it into projects that make small, iterative improvements for people’s lives in Galesburg. No preexisting city projects should be allowed, only projects brought forward by the citizens during the public comment phase. This way we can make investments that can address the small overlooked issues and help more people feel like they belong in this community. Because at the end of the day this town is where our people are living, so if we can show we are listening and actively trying to make their town better they’ll want to stay and fight for this town.