Letter to the Editor: Upcoming election offers opportunities for growth with housing, homeless

I was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in the late 1970s and grew up in the same home that my family owns here in Quincy. I am happy to see so much growth in the retail and restaurant business in the past few years.

There has also been growth in the housing sector with the building of two large market-rate rental properties. We have had a bit of an increase in tourism and the opportunity in the hospitality industry with updates to two existing hotels. We also get to continue living with the spooky fun legend of the haunted stoplight at 25th and Broadway.   

We are blessed here with so many community events each year like the Blues in the Park, Sixth Street Promenade, Juneteenth, the Grand Prix of Karting, the fireworks celebration on the Fourth of July and Pride in the Park to name a few. We now have all of the excitement surrounding our new and long-awaited Quincy Doggy Paddlers baseball team.   

The community experienced great sadness with our longest-sitting alderman Mike Farha stepping down. He was admired and appreciated for speaking his truth and for being vocal regarding his beliefs at City Council meetings over the years. Many members of the community came out over the past few months sharing memories and expressing some of the same concerns that he had had over the last few months before he left. Farha shared he had no faith in our current mayor for several reasons the past few years before he left. 

With all the anticipation of spring finally arriving, we also have the mayoral election coming up in less than a week. It has been great to hear from so many members of the community about their personal opinions and concerns that they want to address this year. Muddy River News has been an excellent platform for everyone to do so.  

Troup has shared that the police and fire pensions are fully funded, which is not correct. The city’s obligation to pay these premiums each year is funded, but the pension fund is not fully funded. He was mincing words there, and the community should know and understand that. He also promised to bring in industrial jobs and head of household positions to our community. This could be considered a major concern with our population continuing to decline.   

Some of the biggest concerns that have been shared in recent City Council meetings are about the excessive amount of overspending in situations where it may not have been necessary. It was brought up that there were projects for which the highest bids were accepted instead of considering other options. There was the possibility of the savings from the City Council meetings being recorded on the cloud versus YouTube or other resources. In both of those cases, the city wouldn’t own the videos, and if YouTube deleted them or the cloud did, there would be no recourse. As a matter of record, the city should fund a server that keeps this content.  

Many have voiced their concerns about the local grocery tax that has been tabled again at the City Council meetings. I am still wondering how long they can wait due to the implementation dates of the point-of-sale system timing concerns that were mentioned. Nobody wants to see this come to fruition, especially since the only other option was looking at tapping into our local property taxes. It is good to see that our local property taxes are still lower than 2021 and 2022, even though that has been the only talking point that one of our representatives could come up with to discuss.    

We need to focus on what was shared in the Community Needs Assessment that was presented by Jenna Hull from United Way at the first City Council meeting of the year. It states that 83% of our stakeholders’ biggest concern was that they believe there is not enough affordable housing available. This is very concerning when most of the businesses that have been brought in lately are retail and fast food.    

We still have the same concerns that needed to be addressed four years ago. We have 46 percent of our population unable to meet their basic needs. That includes families, with two or even three jobs, who still don’t qualify for free and reduced lunches or SNAP benefits. Local food pantries have been working their tails off helping to fill in the gaps as much as possible, but with the cost of food rising, it’s only going to get harder to keep up with these needs.   

We have an extreme issue with our homeless population that has and will not go away since the city closed the Welcome Inn. The community has been waiting for our mayor to address these needs for four years now. Our local shelters are full along with our HUD housing facilities’ wait lists. We have 30-plus agencies that work together to help link people to mental health, employment and housing support, along with many more resources. The police department has reached out to these organizations at times for support with the homeless population. It is time for the mayor to start attending these meetings with United Way and partner with all these organizations to address the crisis that our community is in. 

There are concerning letters that were shared with members of the community regarding the non-binding referendum for the registration and inspection program on the local ballot. Information has going around that there will be government intrusion with this program and that it will cost local taxpayers money, which is false. There are also no illegal intrusions into apartments unless that is something that some landlords plan to do to their tenants. 

Fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment has risen on average from $776 to $875 in the past three years. A fee of less than $3 per month to have this program so tenants have safe and livable housing should not be too much to ask for. 

Megan Miles
Quincy