Words of Wisdom from Mayor Shirley Franklin
On February 7th, Councilwoman McKenzie, Councilman Joe Carn and Mayor Bianca Motley Broom (did not wish to be in photo) met with former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin to gain words of wisdom and identify ways to move our city forward in a positive direction.
City Council's First 40-Day Projects & Accomplishments
1. We extended the time for citizens to freely voice their concerns during city council meetings.
2. We started the process for creating impact fees citywide. These fees will offset the impact of a new development projects on the existing public infrastructure.
3. We are establishing a curbside city recycling program for residents.
4. We voted to increase city funding for speed tables on our neighborhood streets.
5. We proudly approved a well-deserved holiday bonus for all city employees in the amount of $422,975.00 dollars by taking that expense out of unnecessary budget items.
6. We are reconsidering the finding the flint nature preserve project and are actively working to secure federal funding.
7. In an effort to improve communications and understanding between our council and mayor, Councilwoman McKenzie and Councilman Carn held a very productive meeting with former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and our mayor to discuss several common ground solutions.
8. We have further committed to hold a mayor & council retreat as soon as possible.
9. We put the mayor’s comments first when addressing residents at the conclusion of city council meetings.
10. We doubled our commitment to code enforcement standards citywide by increasing the number of fleet vehicles.
11. We voted to implement a state-of-the-art digital communications platform for efficient city meeting management and improved community engagement.
12. We reestablished our multi-family task force to eliminate blight and sub-standard conditions in our community.
13. We voted to remove the fees for parks & recreation programming for households with annual incomes of $50,000 or less.
14. We improved and streamlined our proclamation process so that we may honor our residents properly.
15. We added 15 new police patrol vehicles to the police department’s fleet for better patrol coverage.
16. We re-established our commitment to allocate 25% of our city funds into an African American owned bank.
17. We eliminated unnecessary staffing, non-resident services and contracts saving residents over $500,000.
18. We purchased state of the art data backup servers to prevent potential cyberattacks of our IT infrastructure.
19. We established a response and update system for citizens issues of concern during public comments.
20. Our city manager is working hard to raise the level of customer service while uncovering significant cost savings in each city department.
21. Approved our commitment via our partnership with the clean energy station on Sullivan Rd. We secured a long-term 30-year agreement which for the 1st time in our history, doubles the royalty payments to College Park.
22. Saved the city $78,000 per election cycle by having College Park established as an approved Election Polling site with the Fulton County Board of Elections.