Alley Townhall Recap

Friends and Constituents,

I hope you’re having a wonderful end to a wonderful weekend. I’ve been running around all over town like usual, but didn’t want Sunday to end without me sending a follow-up from our first issue-based townhall this Thursday. This isn't the last you'll hear from me on this topic - this is just the quick summary of what we talked about and where we go from here.

As a reminder, when you sign up for my email newsletter, you get these updates PLUS images to help make the points stronger. This month, you’re missing images of the event and of the butcher paper solutions that neighbors created.

This month, we talked about ALLEYS. Around 65 people showed up to Westminster Neighborhood Services to participate.

The background

We discussed the history of alleys and their maintenance in Indianapolis:

-The primary sources of revenue that pay for roads (the gas tax and wheel tax) are not permitted to be used on alleys.

-The City of Indianapolis has a huge number of needs for the other, unrestricted funds that it does have access to.

-Consequently, for many years the city has simply not maintained any alley infrastructure outside of cleaning up illegal dumping, clearing back brush, and the occasional special exception.

-Almost no potholes are filled in alleys in Indianapolis. It’s even more rare for alleys to receive more substantial strip patching, repaving, or other repairs.

-However, to this day, the RequestIndy app allows residents to request repairs in the alley. There is no existing process for anyone working at the City to follow up and let the people making these requests know the requests are being denied.

-Joe Hogsett campaigned in 2023 on providing $5 million for alley cleanup. This amount has all already been committed, despite confusing recent news articles indicating otherwise.

-As a result, hundreds of constituents of mine have reached out asking for help from the city, and have been left imagining their request will be fulfilled. (Here is a log of all 580 requests made in the last one year, in District 13 alone. I removed any names of constituents I saw, but otherwise left the comments for you to read).

The impact

Anyone who has seen how badly damaged our roads become after a single season should easily be able to imagine how bad alleys have deteriorated as a result of the lack of maintenance. We spent a few minutes at the townhall letting people share their experiences with alleyways.

I put all the comments from the townhall’s RSVP form in a single document, as well as some of the most egregious comments from the RequestIndy log above. More people gave verbal comments at the townhall.

Dozens and dozens of people talked about damage to their vehicles. Many more discussed water damage to their garages, basements, and homes. People’s garages have been hit by cars swerving to dodge potholes. Others had their garages damaged by loose chunks of alley spraying everywhere under cars’ tires. Quite a few people expressed concern that they would not be able to age in place due to the totally uneven walking conditions in alleys and the need to take their trash bins out to the edge of the alley. Person after person reported mosquito breeding grounds created by large potholes that collect rainwater. Several people indicated that emergency vehicles could not safely get to their homes due to severe deterioration of the alleys.

Taxpayers expressed absolute fury about how many times they had asked for help with no responses, with a few people explicitly citing this issue as a reason to no longer live in Indianapolis.

The organizing

We didn’t dwell for very long on the terrible impact of this issue, important though it is. After all, we were all already at the town hall, so who were we convincing? And we weren’t there to complain - we were there for action.

We broke into groups, roughly by neighborhood, and started sharing our best ideas for how to move forward.

We came up with several ideas for ways we can start mitigating the worst of this problem by ourselves:

-Use the PASER manuals to more objectively and methodically document the conditions of all District 13’s alleys, as part of triage and to show elected officials the necessity of more action

-Consider raising funds on a neighborhood basis to pay contractors to help fix alleys. Try to catch contractors already working nearby on official city projects, as this might help lower their overhead for an alley project

-Organize neighborhood cleanups to remove brush, clean up small amounts of trash (large amounts can still be called in for pickup by the Department of Public Works), and fill potholes

-Use cameras to catch illegal dumping and report it to the police (featuring photos of the license plate and face of the driver of a vehicle)

But we also agreed that as taxpayers, we should be getting more help from the city.

The demands

People in the near East and near North sides of Indianapolis are scrappy. We are tough. And we are not fools. We understand that the city doesn’t have unlimited money - and we understand that the Statehouse robs Indianapolis of the funding we deserve. We aren’t asking for miracles, and we aren’t unreasonable.

But we do not accept the status quo from our city government.

The City of Indianapolis should immediately start responding to RequestIndy cases to let people know the truth: their alley requests are not ever going to be resolved unless we find a new funding source. This is bad news, true, but it’s unacceptable to simply not answer constituents rather than tell them the truth.

The City should also publish detailed information about how many RequestIndy cases about alleys it receives, so the public knows how bad the problem truly is.

The City should look into cost-effective ways to help volunteers fix the problem wherever possible. Specific items I’m asking for:

-A one-page guide on how to hire contractors to repair alleys

-A published and publicized city policy to waive Right-of-way work permitting fees for volunteers seeking to repair alleys

-More focus from City attorneys on holding utility companies, illegal dumping repeat offenders, and others who damage utilities accountable

-A dedicated part-time staff person to focus on alleys. This is a major issue for much of Center Township, and there’s plenty of work to be done. A staff person could answer constituent questions about alleys, connect constituents with neighbors also interested in volunteer work, set up contractors with positive press releases to thank them for discounted rates offered to neighborhood groups to work on alleys, and work to facilitate bulk orders of supplies for cleanups and repairs.

The City quite frankly must also just find or raise some money at the city level to help maintain alleys.

The federal and state governments have both drastically reduced the funding Indianapolis can expect to receive. We understand very well that the city is facing a budget crunch.

But we have seen that the city can be innovative and enterprising when it comes to funding hotels, sports stadiums, and convention center upgrades. The City doesn’t have to fix all of the alleys in the district overnight. But it needs to start committing at least some money every year in the budget for this purpose.

You’ll hear more from me on how we get organized to get all of this work done. Write back to me if you have ideas you didn’t see me address in this email - we are stronger when we learn from each other.

Thank you again for such a successful first issue town hall. Stay tuned for next month’s topic: security in senior citizen apartments.

In love and solidarity,
Jesse