Last year, the DeKalb City Council decided not to cancel its Dec. 19 workshop meeting for the holidays. Instead, they discussed issues that had arisen with the Keating brouhaha-ha project to decide if they should make changes to industrial development policy.
The motives were the best, but you can see from the minutes that they in fact decided nothing. At one point Mayor Van Buer asked the council not to get bogged down in details, but to think out 20-30 years ahead in order to formulate policy. If another train hadn’t come by, I swear you would have heard crickets chirping. The silence was stunning.
It’s obvious that DeKalb is having trouble with envisioning its future. This is not new, and seems to stem from a lack of strong identity. As I was reviewing Growth Summit material, I came across this tidbit from a Regional Planning Commission Meeting in 2003:
Mr. Nicklas asked if DeKalb had come any closer to being able to define and articulate what they want to look like and how they see themselves. Mr. Rasmussen [DeKalb Community Development Dept., also member of the Planning Commission] noted that the City was still extremely conflicted in this respect, having only recently (within the past 2 years) come to accept itself as a college town. He went on to add that in all his previous experiences, the towns he dealt with had a clear view of who they wanted to be. DeKalb, however, continues to be fragmented in its self-image. Mr. Nicklas asked how DeKalb was addressing the question, noting that he had never seen it addressed in a public venue. Mr. Rasmussen responded that the City had recently hired NIU to conduct a survey of a random group of DeKalb citizens to see if some pattern could be developed. Because this will be handled scientifically, it should shed some light on real feelings about growth and identity.
So this is why the Council approved $7,000 for a citizen survey to supplement the input of the Summit Committee members. But did it yield any useful information? Let’s look.
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