When Phoebe Brown ran for Ithaca Common Council last year, it was part of a very personal call to action.

“I thought of Harriet Tubman. I thought of Shirley Chisholm,” the 2nd Ward alderwoman said. “I thought of my mom and felt like you know, ‘it's time for me to share my voice.’ ”

As Ithaca’s sole Black alderperson, she feels in many of the places where decisions are made that there are not a lot of people who look like her. So it's important to her to be part of the solution.

“This is coming from someone who had given up hope on politics,” Brown remarked. “Change has not happened. I haven't seen it happening the way I want to see it happen for Black and brown people."

At one point, she was fairly opposed to the entire idea.

“I didn’t even like the title, like something from Disneyland, ‘reimagining,’” she said. “But then I respect many of the people who've been working on it.”

She argues it has not gone as far as she wanted, to potentially shifting some ethical police funding to different grassroots social services. That being said, she's actively having conversations with local authorities and working through some of the bureaucracy attached.

“We need other pieces to start falling in place so that the community can feel heard,” Brown said. “The community can who put a lot of work in this can feel like ‘OK, we move on with it.’ ”

It's a daunting task to take on reform initiated by a previous council, but what drove Brown to run for office is keeping her going for the entire community.

“They find hope hopelessness because they don't see where the changes happen for them,” she said. “What if I'm having conversations with them? I'm gonna make sure their voices are heard.”

Even as Brown has reconciled with some of the process, she maintains the spirit of urgency or reimagination.

“Nothing that we plan is going to be perfect,” she said. “We're going to continue to come back to the drawing board and make it better.”

When walking the streets of Ithaca, she said she regularly seeks input from those in the community.

It's going to be a lengthy process. It may not go the way she expected. But Brown is following a passion for change and she hopes to inspire along the way.

“If at any time you think your voice don't count, look in the mirror and say ‘my voice counts.’ And if it don't work that first day, do it every day,” she said. “Because your voice is important, and it counts.”