You know who can and should fix Macon-Bibb’s problems? You and your neighbors

Our community — this place I love so dearly — is in a quandary. Actually, what’s worse than a quandary? As the Fantastic Mr. Fox (or rather Badger, Fox’s lawyer would say), “What we have here is a total clustercuss.”

Yes, our arts, public planning, recreation and library services are safe for now. At least some of our elected officials found the will — after several chances — to keep Macon Macon (as opposed to a strip mall town devoid of soul). But if we aren’t careful, we will still find ourselves back in a budget crisis next year.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about poverty, and — unsure what reaction my first Telegraph column would generate — braced myself for massive disagreement or dismissal of the problem. Instead, what I experienced (with a few exceptions now pinned to my office cork board) was consensus and notes of goodwill, ideas, and resolve.

What does this tell me?

It tells me we may disagree, perhaps, on the manner of addressing this and other community challenges. But we agree that poverty is a problem. We’re working the steps, and we are past step one.

But denial is part of what landed us here — our paralysis on the budget, a quarter of our neighbors living in poverty, the whole shebang. In the language of recovery: our best thinking landed us here. Addressing our problems requires a hard look at hard truths.

Macon won’t work if our politicians are the only ones with information (whether or not they are paying attention) or if we stay only within the spheres of experience that feel comfortable.

I hope that if we have learned anything from this “summer the libraries closed” (a line that sounds even too twisted for Flannery O’Connor), we learned that we have got to check in and help our leaders help us.

It is possible to have land use planning, arts programming, transit and libraries without spending ourselves into bankruptcy. In fact, that is what is required of government.

But our elected officials need your informed voices: your educated vote, your presence in meetings, information about what you want from our community, the needs you see, the hopes for your children.

So, Macon, we’ve lost our innocence this summer. But let this cold education drive us forward to a new level of engagement.

You may not need to borrow free books from the library, but who wants to live in a place where free books are not available to everyone?

You may not require the services of the Macon Transit Authority, but how will the poor, as many suggest, “get a dang job” without a bus service to get them to work on time?

Perhaps now that we have lost (then regained then lost then regained again) those services, we will no longer pretend we can do without them.

So even though a majority of our commissioners did the right thing Thursday (some were there all along, some did so reluctantly and at the 11th hour, some decidedly did not do the right thing), we cannot relax into apathy.

This can happen again because it already happened. We can’t rewind in time to prevent this preventable clustercuss, but we can engage with our county commission and with one another as we move forward.

And remember, when it comes time, who was part of keeping Macon Macon and who was not.

Sarah Gerwig is a law professor and word enthusiast raising her two sons in Macon.

This story was originally published August 16, 2018 at 5:23 PM.