Sarah Johnson to City Council: "I’m Done!"
By Sarah Johnson
Sarah Johnson is a community organizer, co-founder of Mode Shift Omaha and co-host of the podcast Car Free Midwest. She started a weekly City Council discussion group, Council Club, after running for City Council in District 1 and currently lives in Benson with her husband and two dogs.
I moved back to Omaha from Grand Lake, Colorado in 2009 thinking I’d be here just long enough to pick up the pieces after a divorce that left me broke, living in my parents’ basement before relocating to a city with more to offer. Instead, I realized that my hometown of Omaha had a lot of potential but not enough progress, so I decided to stay and plug in, naively hoping to be part of that necessary change.
Here we are— 13 years later— and once again I’m thinking about leaving Omaha.
Public engagement is broken in Omaha;
it’s just a box to be checked, not truly necessary to those making these decisions.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Johnson
Over the past decade, it wasn’t unusual to find me on Tuesday afternoons at city hall, watching the Omaha City Council make big decisions with our money about our future with little community input. I regularly testified, generally pushing for progress in the transportation policy realm, hoping my engagement would matter to the elected officials (not leaders, to be clear). We have seen some meager wins from showing up over the years but after the latest insulting “yes” vote on the library fiasco, I’m done. While our voices may be heard, they aren’t taken seriously and don’t play into the way our city is built (and destroyed) around us. Public engagement is broken in Omaha; it’s just a box to be checked, not truly necessary to those making these decisions.
Years ago I’d perfectly time my three-minute testimony, since before Festersen was council president the mic cut out if you exceeded that three-minute mark. I’d carefully research and compile my thoughts, hoping that by articulating just the right points I could actually affect their vote. Towards the end of my time testifying at city council, particularly over the past few months, it was more like rambling rage, unscripted but generally including, “Not that this matters but…insert facts, comparisons, contradictions, maps, data, etc.”
In fact, leaving the last council meeting, I stormed out of the chambers shouting, “You’re so condescending!” at Councilor Melton as she talked down to those of us pushing back against the dubious library deal. I’m fried. Acting out. Done.
You won’t find me wasting my energy with “public engagement” at City Hall any longer. In one word, it’s about respect. The respect I have for myself and my time paired with the realization that it’s no longer good for my mental health to keep showing up, asking for reasonable changes only to be met with indifference, gaslighting and condescension. I’ll no longer subject myself to witnessing the bogus charade that is decision making at city hall, let alone try to influence it in this particular way. It’s basically the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
It’s also about the council’s lack of respect for other concerned residents taking time out of their busy work day to show up and speak out about what matters most to them. I’m privileged enough to have a flexible work from home schedule that allows me to be there regularly without financial penalty. Others I’ve spoken with tell me that they have to take time off without pay to share their thoughts, believing their testimony will make a difference. I can not, in good conscience, continue to tell people to show up to testify when it clearly doesn’t matter to the majority of the councilors. We seem to always hear that we’re at the wrong place or at the wrong point in the process to actually see our input matter.
Then there’s the lack of respect from the Mayor, starting with how she treats the Council.
How embarrassing for them to be so disregarded, so insignificant in her eyes, that this huge debacle was a surprise just dumped on them for a vote without their prior input. Pathetic, honestly! The list goes on with the mayor's lack of respect for the librarians with an actual plan that shows this rushed downtown move is NOT a top priority; the mayor’s disrespect of public engagement attempts throughout this absurd backroom deal. Anyone who was paying attention saw the abundance of push back on this issue, for good reason. The overall theme of disrespect is consistent throughout Omaha’s governance. It feels like an abusive relationship and I don’t blame anyone who leaves this city for a more considerate community.
On Tuesday, Feb. 1, many of us lost hope and suffered a special type of disrespect. After a particularly long, four-hour meeting, full of brilliant and varying testimony in opposition (both written and in-person) to the ridiculous library leases, we learned that evening that it was already settled; we had all wasted our time. Many of us knew going into that Tuesday’s council meeting that it was a done deal due to Omaha’s autocratic “Strong Mayor” form of government. There was still that pesky optimism though, or hope, that kept us intrigued, wondering how the vote would play out.
After SO MUCH pushback by people of all sorts on this obviously rushed and shady library relocation, clearly prioritizing a big money insurance company over the public’s best interests, surely they couldn’t approve it, right? Wrong. I’m grateful that Councilors Johnson, Begley and Palermo had spine enough to call BS on the whole situation and vote no on the 1401 Jones lease agreement, even apologizing to the community for wasting their time with testimony, but it still passed 4-3. Which brings me to Pete Festersen who voted yes despite acknowledging how poorly it was handled.
Rage Into the Machine
I ran for city council last year against Festersen in District 1 because I was sick of “Status Quomaha” plus he was ignoring tough issues like racism, the excessive police budget, climate action, transportation equity, and waning community trust. He’d been there coasting along for too long and was showing his lack of care for the residents he supposedly represents, regularly voting with developers’ (and the mayor’s) best interests in mind. Just a rubber-stamping yes man that wasn’t doing enough in my opinion. Truly, he votes yes the vast majority of the time and refuses to push back in a meaningful way.
I wanted to actually listen to the concerns of the community, push for action instead of just plans, and stand up to the mayor. Running against a wealthy, rather well-liked, white male Democrat incumbent was ridiculously tough and I knew I wouldn’t win, but people kept asking me to do it anyway. I eventually realized no other progressive in D1 had the capacity, so I entered the race. I thought the opportunity to shift the conversations in Omaha was a worthy enough cause to jump into, even late in the game since I entered the race late January of 2021.
Of course I lost and no, I won’t run again, but after too many conversations with residents asking “What is the City Council?” the idea of Council Club came to be. I realized that if we were actually going to get better folks into the decision making seats, the community needed to understand that these were important positions and talk about them year round, not just during an election cycle. We also felt a strange momentum after the last election which we didn’t want to lose, so every Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. we gather on Zoom to discuss what happened at that week’s city council meeting and to look ahead at the next week’s agenda. It’s now less about influencing the outcomes from this particular council and more about highlighting the decisions made by them.
It’s cathartic mostly, sometimes referred to as “Commiseration Club” and certainly feels more life affirming and productive than city council meetings. We study and learn together, hoping to widen the cracks in the political machine that is Omaha, Nebraska. I’m not sure if it’s effective some days, but I do know that we keep showing up for each other, with new faces joining each week. I’m not alone in trying to shift Omaha for the better, aiming for more transparency, more respect, and more accountability. The public does ultimately have the power and we need to find ways outside of city hall’s version of “public engagement” to maximize that strength.
