Affordable housing, police reform – & backyard chickens – touched on during DeKalb mayor candidate forum Saturday

DeKALB – Police reform, affordable housing and backyard chickens were hot topics during a virtual DeKalb mayor candidates forum on Saturday night.

When asked about how either candidate would address the need for affordable housing in DeKalb, mayoral candidate Cohen Barnes – who owns Sundog IT in DeKalb – responded that he believes living wage jobs are a big component to that.

“We need to make sure that people have the ability to be able to afford the kind of quality affordable housing that they want to have themselves and for their family,” Barnes said.

Barnes said he believes economic development helps to drive initiatives to address the lack of affordable housing in the city. One recent example of that was the city bringing in the Facebook data center and Ferrara Candy Company distribution center, he said.

“The 1,100 jobs that are going to be available in this community for people of all skill levels [is what will help residents] to be able to have that living wage job and be able to find the kind of housing they would want to have,” Barnes said.

DeKalb First Ward Alderwoman Carolyn Morris, who is also running for the mayoral seat, acknowledged the city has an affordable housing shortage and issues with public safety. She said she thinks the city needs more cooperative and collaborative solutions in addressing that problem.

“I think we need to dig into different methods in pursing public safety in some of these areas that are of concern,” Morris said.

Morris said she thinks the city needs to get a lot more aggressive about solving public safety concerns, especially considering issues the city has had and continues to have with irresponsible landlords.

“We need to make some cooperative engagements where we pool money together for these resources,” Morris said. “Just in same way that Facebook and Ferrara were recruited to come here to be businesses in our community and to provide jobs, we need to be doing the same thing with housing ownership companies. And we have begun some of those initiatives since I’ve asked the city manager to do so.”

Morris said she agrees that living wage jobs are big part of helping people out of poverty. However, she said, one thing she has noticed is the city desperately needs more daycares and she believes that’s one element the city needs to invest in.

“They don’t have the opportunity to go work because there’s nowhere to send their children,” Morris said.

Both candidates also said they would be in support of establishing a citizen review board to help investigate public complaints of police misconduct.

Barnes said he would like to first see through the hiring of the new DeKalb police chief before the group is established, though he’s confident the diverse selection committee will choose a good candidate for police chief.

Morris said she has heard widespread support for that in the community and that has been made abundantly clear by residents.

“I think that if we choose a police chief that is not supportive of a citizen review board, we’ve chosen the wrong police chief,” Morris said. “We have absolutely failed and have done a disservice to the community.”

[ Here's who's been selected for the citizen-led committee to choose DeKalb's next police chief ]

An audience member watching the live stream asked where each candidate stands on DeKalb allowing backyard chickens.

Morris said she personally supports allowing city residents to keep their own backyard chickens, though she doesn’t believe she could handle having her own chickens personally. She said she doesn’t think it’s fair to tell people what they should or should not do on their own property.

Barnes said he’s seen the issue resurface before among residents, and he recently received materials from a resident not in support of backyard chickens being allowed in the city. He said he hadn’t given it enough thought to give an opinion one way or the other yet.

“Because there are so many priorities going on in the city right now – large priorities that take time to understand, time to work with people to build those relationships to be able to figure out how to move the needle forward,” Barnes said. “And quite frankly ... I don’t think it’s a cop out for me to be able to say that it’s on the ballot because it is, it’s out of my hands and people are going to decide.”

Though there a backyard chicken referendum set for the April 6 ballot, the voting result won’t set any action in motion just yet, since the referendum is advisory not binding, confirmed DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas previously. That means if DeKalb residents vote overwhelmingly for or against backyard chicken ownership, the city council could take future action based upon resident feedback from the referendum.

The forum was hosted by the League of Women Voters of DeKalb County, the DeKalb Public Library and Northern Public Radio. Full video of the forum can be found on WNIJ’s Facebook page.