Alleys: A Microcosm of Cowardice
Friends,
I hope you all had an excellent holiday weekend. I certainly did. Yesterday I took the extremely rare step of taking a full day away from politics. No emails, no constituent meetings, no conversations. It was a nice change of pace, but a day is long enough for me. A public servant in Indianapolis always has plenty to do!
Today I wanted to continue our discussion of the ways in which the proposed 2025 city budget totally fails our district and the city. And the topic today is far from sexy or glamorous. But it’s the topic about which I’ve received more complaints, requests, and frustration than any other.
I’m talking about alleys. Just look at some of these photos of six alleys in the district, all from 2024.
Outside of one small program administered by the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, The City of Indianapolis officially does not maintain the roadworthiness of its alleys. This means that everyone suffers: residents are not able to park cars in their alley-access garages. DPW Solid Waste trucks experience a massive amount of wear and tear on their suspension systems, as I discovered firsthand during my ride-along earlier this year. Emergency crews can not always use alleys to access buildings they need to. Alleys could be the perfect site for Accessory Dwelling Units that could allow more affordable housing and more density. Instead, due to their disrepair, they become a haven for illegal dumping and crime. Neighbors across the district have complained of drugs and prostitution being sold and petty theft rings centered on some of the worst-maintained alleys.
Though the city does help with illegal dumping and public health concerns in alleys, the lack of infrastructure maintenance ends up causing cascading problems. The obvious disregard and disrepair the city shows towards the alleys has encouraged AES and Citizens Energy crews to frequently cut into alleyways for utility work, without repairing the cuts. These poor repair jobs in turn escalate and expedite the way that potholes continue wreaking havoc on the alleyways.
Despite my efforts over the last several months, the City still does not offer a simple guide instructing residents how they can best get an alley repaired. Since the City does not pay to maintain alleys, the best solution any neighbors in my district have found is to pay for alley repaving themselves. In Chatham Arch, neighbors worked for years to raise money to pay to redo their beautiful alleys. The city did provide some project management and helped streamline permitting. For other neighbors who have asked questions about following in Chatham Arch’s footsteps, the city has not developed any streamlined guide to requesting permitting, finding a licensed contractor, or a rough estimate to the costs of this work.
As a result, dozens of constituents have reached out to me, pleading for help with the basic infrastructure required to make full use of their homes.
In 2023, the state of disrepair in alleys was making the news. The Hogsett administration, conscious of how frustrated constituents were about this issue, announced that they planned to allocate $5 million over the next three years to help repair alleys. Two million of that ended up being earmarked for 2024. None of this money has yet been spent - though bids are due back this month. This money is also being used to fund program management and illegal dumping mitigation, not just physical repair of the infrastructure.
The city is currently estimating that depending on the bid amount, 9-13 alleys in the city may be handled with this allotment. I’ve been told that three of these alleys are in the district, though I don’t yet know where.
I’m glad to hear that up to three alleys in the district may be repaved within the next few months. However, this is nowhere near the amount of funding required to fix all of the problems. And the rest of the alleys in the district, and in the city, continue to get worse in the meantime.
Are you satisfied with the state of alleys in Indianapolis? What city services do you think could be funded at a lower level in order to provide funding for alleyways? How much more would you pay in taxes for your city government to help guarantee that alleyways were safe and navigable?
In love and solidarity,
Jesse