According to records obtained from City of DeKalb, on February 27 a man stopped in to city hall to file a complaint against then-Alderman Scott McAdams. This included a letter addressed to Mayor Cohen Barnes and the city manager, along with screen shots of a messaged conversation during which McAdams used racist slurs.
The letter requested Mayor Barnes “take appropriate action in response to these comments” and made several suggestions for “actions that demonstrate a commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in our community.”
Weeks later, the mayor has yet to respond.
Part of a Pattern
Ignoring or cutting off allegations of racism isn’t new. Mayor Barnes was motivated to apologize last month for steps he took to curtail a public comment when the commenter alleged discrimination against Hispanics.
Moreover, I’m inclined to put the ongoing failure to appoint members to the Human Relations Commission (HRC) in this column, too. Mayor Barnes’ creation of vacancies in HRC followed a somewhat tense meeting with that body. Commission members were attempting to deal with a complaint of housing discrimination that had been brought to them, and they challenged the mayor’s view that zero housing discrimination exists in DeKalb. Now they’re gone, and HRC can’t meet for lack of a quorum.
In this latest situation, a person personally delivered a complaint about an alderman’s racial slurs and received no response to his complaint. At the very least it’s terrifically bad manners, but it’s also perfectly true to form for this mayor.
The Letter
Sourcing
The letter is part of a response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed March 25, 2024. The response is 35 pages and a lot of them are duplicates. I’ve placed a page in the City Barbs Blog Facebook Group that gets at the slurs, and if you’d like to look at the whole response, ask City of DeKalb for a copy of FOIA Response N000089-032524.