Thank you very much, and welcome to 2005. For the purposes of the council, each of you has a document in front of you titled Bain & Co. something that I received today as well which is about 10 pages of highlights on the accomplishments and metrics that we’ve been judging ourselves by. While I’m not going to speak from that we may have discussion about that some other time.
Council President Borders, members of the City Council, distinguished, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this opportunity to address you this afternoon.
Please allow me to acknowledge the presence of the city cabinet, men and women who are committed to making Atlanta a best in class city, who by their hard work and leadership have made tremendous strides improving the quality of life of city residents and all our visitors. Will members of the cabinet stand?
I’d also like to acknowledge that my daughter Kai Franklin-Graham is in the audience today and I’m glad to have you with us. Of course I promised not to do that to get her to come, but you know how moms go.
Those of you who are veterans of the council have grown accustomed, over the years, to a very similar song from the mayors who have come before you. Most every January you heard words that described the promise of tomorrow, a city on the brink, almost there.
For some, it had to seem as if they were stuck in a Peanuts cartoon: Every time their city got close to the ball, every time it seemed like it had enough positive momentum to drive it through the uprights, something would derail the progress, whether it was busted budgets, “politics” or often times, circumstances beyond anyone’s control.
Indeed, I too, as mayor, have addressed this body each of the last three years with messages that our city can give light to the entire world,
that our city must work and we as leaders must work together and
that our rich opportunities exist because of the many contributions of great leaders and everyday folk for nearly 170 years.
I am privileged today. Because I no longer have to speak about the “ifs.” My job is to speak about the “hows.” It is to discuss “what’s next.” Together we are leading a city making good on its promise. And we’re doing it by being methodical and transparent in our approach,
and constant in our purpose.
We started by doing what was necessary and then raised our sights to do the possible.
That’s what this city needed, some say, a little, well leadership, like a cardigan sweater, practical, nothing flashy, maybe even a bit boring.
It needed steady doses of hard work, candor, creativity, and faith. But something interesting happened as we did the unglamorous tasks of the necessary. It’s a phenomenon St. Francis of Assisi described:“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
To borrow from a slightly more contemporary source, the great children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman said,“Set goals and work quietly and systematically toward them.”
That’s what we’re doing.
The necessary we started during our first years together. Repairing potholes, removing metal street plates and cleaning vacant lots.
Yes, we started by fixing our streets and sidewalks, so our residents could drive down a road without fear of disappearing into a pothole. It also meant getting a handle on litter and making our departments more responsive to taxpayers and businesses, so that they didn’t fear doing business with the city.
Then there’s the possible.
Balancing the budget and professionally managing city finances, reorganizing government for greater efficiency, even finding $165 million in operating savings, re-launching the airport expansion program, increasing the number of police officers and firefighters among other initiatives.
We tightened our belts and asked a lot of our employees and residents, and while it hurt – personnel cuts hurt me personally -- we did what we had to do to turn the $80 plus million shortfall we were handed into three years of balanced budgets with operating surpluses.
That helped restore confidence in the competency of our leadership. As did the money we returned to our residents last year with a property tax rollback, while setting aside money for the reserve fund, which had been depleted before we took office.
Together, we are also repairing our water and sewer system, and we’ll pay for it without the 43 percent increase to ratepayers this year that was originally projected. With the support of the sales tax proposal passed last summer, we rolled back the increase to just 1 percent. [applause] That applause is led by the chair of the finance committee.
Finally, we invested the time and money, not to mention the help of our friends in the business community and Bain & Co., to develop a roadmap for our economic development. We will not be led by circumstance.
The New Century Economic Development Plan is an ambitious but realistic guide for our continued economic expansion and new jobs.
All that work, the necessary and the possible, leads to what some would say are the impossibles, the unlikely futures that are happening today.
We stand on the brink of being able to eliminate homelessness as we know it in Atlanta, and the centerpiece of that effort, the Gateway Center, has been largely privately funded. But that money never would have been raised had we not done the necessary and the possible. United Way and people such as Horace Sibley, Dr Louis Sullivan, Jack Hardin, Dr Jim Laney, Reverend Jim Milner, Paula Rosput and their colleagues wouldn’t have been attracted to the regional commission on homelessness either. Nor would Cobb, Rockdale, Dekalb, Clayton and Fulton counties, the state of Georgia and federal agencies have volunteered to partner with us.
And I suspect we wouldn’t have seen the restoration of the faith of Atlanta’s business leaders, which you can see in the construction of thousands of new housing units downtown and across our city and the overwhelming interest in the beltline project, which could fundamentally transform this city.
What a difference three years makes. Atlanta has gone from a city constantly doubted, to one that is rightly touted. Without fear of exaggeration, I can say that Atlanta today is the most vibrant and important city in the Southeast of the United States. Not only are we vibrant, we are also one of the nation’s most successful cities. It’s also the most diverse, and you will find no place more tolerant of that diversity than our own Atlanta.
Diversity works…….the City of Atlanta has met and exceeded the Equal Business Opportunity goals of 34% for three years. In 2004 minority participation represented 38% of those doing business with the City. This administration has maintained its commitment to ensuring that minorities have an equal opportunity to do business with the City of Atlanta.
Today, we are also financially stronger, and our infrastructure –airport to roads to sewer tunnels – is stronger than it’s been in a generation.
What I ask of you in this last year of my term is to continue to do the necessary and the possible. And the impossible will follow.
What else would you expect from a city that rose from the ashes?
Sometimes, I try to imagine the task confronting city leaders in the years following the Civil War; perhaps it’s just to make myself feel better some days.
Could you imagine what they envisioned for this City? They certainly didn’t envision the Atlanta that we know. But we know that they must have concentrated on the mundane, started at the only place they could: at the bottom, at the necessary.
Our own list of the necessary from 2004 is not nearly so daunting, but it is very, very long. I’ll give a few highlights.
Last year, Atlanta’s Trash Troopers cleaned 164 illegal dumpsites, 125 vacant lots and disposed of more than 7,300 tons of solid waste. Let’s hear it for the Trash Troopers.
Meanwhile, with our Dirty Dozen program, we continue to identify and eliminate vacant, dilapidated homes that blight our neighborhoods.
Together, we are making Atlanta the South’s cleanest city, its best in class.
The police department continues to work towards accreditation, and last year’s budget funded the salaries and training of 100 new officers. Year-end crime statistics indicate another year of decline……. 12% decline in seven major crime categories. (rape, murder, robbery, larceny, burglary, auto theft and others). Let’s hear it for public safety.
The Department of Fire Services meanwhile distributed nearly 1,200 smoke detectors to needy city residents and inspected thousands of homes to advise our residents about fire safety. Please a round of applause for fire services.
The city also assisted 12,000 people in job searches in 2004, placing at least 500 in positions. In addition, 700 young boys and girls were placed in summer employment positions. More people at work means more people with hope and hope defeats crime.
Together, we are making Atlanta a clean city, a safe city. We are making it an environmentally sound city.
The Department of Watershed Management is busy ensuring our compliance with the various consent decrees and the Clean Water Act.
As you know, an extensive review turned up problems with the Watershed Department’s collections operation. It was an embarrassing finding, but when I became mayor I promised to make operations open to scrutiny, and that means admitting mistakes and taking responsibility for them.
At the same time, in 2005 we’ll finally usher Atlanta into the 20th Century of records technology. (That wasn’t a typo.) The system will allow department databases to talk to one another and should give Atlantans a whole new level of transparency when it comes to figuring out their bills and their taxes. The I-team modernization effort will drastically reduce man hours spent on tedious data entry and will make this government more open, which was one of our chief goals.
Together, we are making Atlanta the South’s most efficient city, a best in class.
Like any Fortune 500 company, that efficiently includes good customer service we are trying to better communicate with our constituents. The City has instituted a customer service plan to provide anyone who contacts the City of Atlanta with a customer service experience that is responsive, easy to use, efficient, and delivers services in a caring manner.
Last year, eight miles of deep tunnels - how many of you went on those tunnel tours?- And they are deep. Eight miles were drilled, which play an important role in the overhaul of the water and sewer system, while Watershed Management finished lining more than 100 miles of sewer pipes. That will help eliminate leaks that contaminate our streams and rivers. In addition, we acquired 132 acres of new greenspace in 2004, bringing out total since 2002 to 800 acres of new green space. We definitely need to applaud that.
Together, we are making Atlanta the South’s most environmentally friendly city, its best in class.
The City’s fifth runway remains on course for its completion. Its $5.4 billion expansion program will preserve Hartsfield-Jackson as the premier airport in the nation, the transportation hub and economic engine of the entire region and a vital link to the southern hemisphere.
Together, we are making Atlanta the South’s most needed city, its best in class.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that this is my first address before the council with President Borders as its leader. I, like you, am so pleased to join her in public service. She ran a very tough race to get here. And I think she’s doing a great job. Please stand and be recognized.
I admit that I heard the calls during the campaign season, folks telling me I should run for the U.S. Senate.
There were those who heard those calls and interpreted them as a bad sign, others as a good sign for me.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that it wasn’t me who was so great.
The mayor of Atlanta has heightened name recognition because Atlanta is social, culture, education, entertainment, sport, transportation and business capital of the state and the region following the prophecy of civic leaders of a century ago. And besides Atlanta met its financial challenges head on defying even Wall Street predictions.
For those of you who think I might not be getting finished, I am. I know that my approach to the budget bothers some people. It seems too cautious. But I cannot overstate how important it has been that we have learned to live within our means, to make cautious revenue projections, to govern as our residents manage their own budgets. If we do not surprise our taxpayers or our businesses, we are providing predictability, and predictability is a vital part of investment.
Together, we are making Atlanta the South’s most economically responsible city, a best in class city.
But let me continue on that point. Smart money isn’t spent on long shots. Smart money is put down where a return can be expected. I am convinced that our fiscal discipline helped make the funding of the Gateway by private citizens a reality and development in downtown – from Georgia Aquarium to the City’s rebirth as a hot zip code – a wise bet.
With Gateway, we offer hope for thousands of people who live on the streets and under the bridges in Atlanta, and we’ll do it by addressing the root causes of homelessness.
Today, if you’re living paycheck to paycheck and have a serious illness in your family, there’s a good chance you won’t make rent. Gateway is based on the simple premise that for however easy it is to become homeless, it should be exactly that easy to access the help necessary to get yourself back on your feet.
In Philadelphia, a similar program has drastically reduced the number of folks who are homeless. It can work here, too. Gateway will link people to the social services that people who are homeless need, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If Gateway is successful the way that I think it can be, we will have done what many had given up hope. We have an opportunity with Gateway to renew hope for those people who face some of the harshest and most difficult times that any can imagine. And it all started with the city, the city council, the mayor’s office, United Way and two dozen private citizens who love Atlanta and the people of Atlanta as we do… enough to take the risk of overreaching to love our neighbors. The Regional Commission on Homelessness and the comprehensive plan both were an exploration of the necessary and the possible.
Now we have in our sights the next impossibles. I’m convinced that in the belt line, along with ensuring quality education for all Atlanta’s children and our new blueprint for economic development, we hold the future of Atlanta, Atlanta’s prosperity in our hands.
Certainly, we cannot sustain economic development if we fail to supply the minds necessary for 21st Century businesses. That means our schools must produce students who can compete with anyone, not just children in Cobb and Gwinnett, but those in Beijing and Buenos Aires, too. Our schools must be good enough to create a legacy of success for decades to come. There is no other choice.
And as for the beltline, it isn’t just a public transportation and transit initiative. It’s an opportunity to link our neighborhoods and secure the park space that would create an emerald necklace of trees and public terrain in which Atlantans could do their playing in our live, work and play communities.
I believe that it can give us something we’ve been missing, a sense of place, a connectedness across our neighborhoods, especially as Atlanta’s population grows.
I close by acknowledging now that many of 2004’s accomplishments came with disagreements. I know that every time we fail to agree, our passionate arguments come from the same place: the desire to do what’s best for Atlanta and its residents. The differences are philosophical: who knows the best way from A to B.
But let us remember today how much we have done to make this city best in class, the passion of our debates.
So in 2005, I again ask the City Council for your support. I want to share the dreams that we have for Atlanta and make them real.
Let us concern ourselves with what is necessary.
Then let us tackle what is possible.
From there, who knows what impossibilities we can conquer?
It will take faith in the people of this city. I know what instrumental roles faith and prayer have played in my life. They are powerful instruments. In Matthew chapter 17, Jesus spoke to Peter, James and John.
The three witnessed a miracle but wondered aloud why they themselves could not perform it. It was, Jesus explained, a failure of faith. “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.”
I call on the faith we all share that Atlanta will be a better place next week, next year and next decade. I call on the faith that together – as a government dedicated to serious and important work and as a diverse community striving for worthy causes- we can achieve greatness. And I call on the faith that allows us to see things that don’t exist and make them real.
I envision an Atlanta as a city with clean air and water, beautiful parks and a vibrant arts community, where people care about their neighbors, where elderly have adequate housing,
where children are assured a quality education and healthcare, where business provides fair and stable employment and leads the way in facilitating economic development, where religious leaders teach us how to live harmoniously with dignity and respect for each other.
Together, we can move mountains. I look forward to your partnership; I look forward to facing the challenges of 2005 with you. Together, we can move mountains.
Thank you.