Tall weeds and ivy growing around a broken concrete top to a storm drain make it hard to spot a dark, gaping pitfall large enough to swallow a young child or a dog whole.
Close by, a small hill of trash behind a pear-colored house on Cowan Street marks the infancy of an illegal dumping site.
A chain-tethered pit bull, who appeared to have recently birthed a litter of puppies, stands guard outside a house on Center Street. Motionless, alert and silent, she eyes a small group of yellow-vested volunteers who amble by with clipboards in hand and a sheriff’s deputy follows suit late morning Tuesday.
“Imagine as a child you’re having to wake up every day and this is what you see all day everyday,” Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful Executive Director Asha Ellen said, adding that is reality for about 35 students at Burdell-Hunt Elementary School.
The “walking audit” of the Fort Hill neighborhood, conducted by Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful and United Way of Central Georgia, aims to identify hazards and address them to make it safer for students the Bibb County School District says are not eligible to be transported by a bus because of their address.
“The school does not provide a bus for the students if they live within a one-mile radius of the school,” Ellen said. “If their parents don’t have a car, they would have to walk to school.”
A “walking school bus,” organized by United Way of Central Georgia, pairs groups of students with adults who chaperone the trek on foot.
Kelly Rodgers, who leads United Way’s “Community Schools United” program, said the walking school bus program launched last year after a student at L.H. Williams Elementary was attacked by a dog while en route to the school that lies in the heart of the historic Pleasant Hill neighborhood. Bike Walk Macon, the Boys & Girls Club of Central Georgia and the state transportation department’s Safe Routes to School program also help.
“We’re trying to see if we can do something similar here at Burdell,” Rodgers said. “Especially since so many people are having similar issues walking to school.”
But the program hasn’t yet gotten off the ground in the East Macon neighborhood.
“It’s a great idea, a great program, but it doesn’t work if people don’t volunteer and people don’t come and help out,” Ellen said. “We need volunteers to run it.”
In the meantime, board members of Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful volunteered to take note of problems, hazards and other obstacles facing students on foot.
Heather Harvey, a third grade teacher at Burdell-Hunt, said she tries to walk each of her students home at least once every school year.
One of her students, a 9-year-old girl who walks to school, was sick one day, so Harvey walked her home because, “I wanted to let Mom know she needs some medicine.”
“I didn’t realize how bad her walk was,” Harvey said, adding that the student didn’t recognize the overgrowth that made all but one of the sidewalks impassable as a solvable problem. “To them, this is home and they think this is OK. … That’s why I was like, ‘OK, we’ve got to do something.’”
Harvey reported overgrowth on the sidewalks to the See Click Fix website where residents may submit complaints to the county that range from dead animals in the roads to late trash pickup.
“The app isn’t working like it’s supposed to,” Harvey said, adding that several of her complaints about the issue went unaddressed. “That’s why I put a plea out to the community … and they all pulled up.”
Harvey is not the only one citing delays or lack of responses to submissions on See Click Fix. In a recent interview, Mayor Lester Miller said he didn’t think there were any technical issues with the online complaint portal, but more people are using it so “bear with us” and be sure to follow up on it.
“Sometimes people do 20-30 See Click Fix a day … it takes a lot of manpower to get through those things,” the mayor said, adding that a lot of times the complaints are not problems in the county’s control to fix. “Feel free to send an email if the See Click Fix ticket doesn’t get fixed correctly. We’ll try to figure out why it is and get better the next time.”
A father of one student volunteered to clear the sidewalk, which was completely obscured by weeds and vines and “probably hadn’t been touched for years,” Harvey said. Macon-Bibb County Commissioner-elect Stanley Stewart helped too.
Students took notice of the once-hidden sidewalks. The problem became clearer to them upon experiencing its solution.
“I think they’re motivated now,” Harvey said of her students using the recently cleared sidewalks. “They see it.”
A community cleanup is set for Oct. 19, but Harvey said she wants the county to maintain the rights of way in Fort Hill as regularly as it does in north and parts of south Macon where more affluent residents live.
“Keeping the sidewalks clear – that’s not our responsibility,” she said. “I can’t fuss at the kids and the parents for throwing trash out when they can’t even see the sidewalks.”
While periodic volunteer cleanups help, Harvey said county investment is needed for long term impact to the neighborhood.
Stewart promised the gaggle of volunteers that he would push for the county to start regular maintenance in the neighborhood upon taking office next year.
“Even if the city doesn’t do anything, we’re going to galvanize the community to do it,” Stewart said. “It’s going to get done either way.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of United Way of Central Georgia’s program, which is called “Community Schools United.”
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, email [email protected].
