A year ago, InsiderAdvantage covered Andre Dickens being sworn in as Atlanta’s 61st mayor. Now a little more than a year into his administration, Dickens gave his State of the City address on Tuesday.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens
The address comes as tension between state government and the City of Atlanta has markedly cooled since the icy relationship between former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the Republicans who run the Georgia Capitol. Gov. Brian Kemp has praised Dickens for his efforts to combat crime and had planned to be at the speech Tuesday but was visiting the communities devastated by last weekend’s tornadoes.
Dickens began his speech with the topic that is on the minds of both the legislators at the Capitol and many Atlanta residents, crime and public safety. Dickens noted the city has started delivering take-home vehicles for Atlanta police officers, a perk of the job but also a reminder for residents that police live in the community and increased visibility of the police generally. The city has also paid bonuses, increased pay raises and cost-of-living adjustments. Thanks at least partially to these efforts, Dickens pointed out that 911 wait times have been lowered by 43 percent, and homicides are down 56 percent over this time last year.
Dickens went right at the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center that has seen frequent protests and a number of arrests (though mostly of non-Georgia residents). “We need training facilities, and our police and fire training centers have been long condemned. That’s why we are building the state-of-the-art Atlanta Public Safety Training Center,” said Dickens. “Our firefighters will finally have a vehicle course to learn to drive those trucks through our neighborhoods to deliver lifesaving care. Our police will have a training course that will prepare them to address active shooters and domestic violence situations.”
In order to increase monitoring and crime-solving capabilities, the city also now has 28,000 cameras that are registered or integrated into the Connect Atlanta system. These cameras are a network of city, residential and commercial cameras that help the police track suspects and Atlanta Chief Schierbaum has touted their assistance in solving crimes. Along these same lines, the Light Up the Night initiative makes it harder for suspects to hide in the shadows as they move through the city and thanks to a partnership with Georgia Power, there are now 11,000 streetlights that have been installed or repaired.
The other most notable item from Dickens’ speech is infrastructure. Drivers on Atlanta streets may have noted the city has filled more than 10,600 potholes in the last year. The city is also investing a new $750 million in infrastructure projects, to rebuild roads, fire stations, bike paths and sidewalks among other things (though considering one fire house replacement last year may run to $16 million, that $750 may not go as far as the mayor and city council expected).
Additionally, Dickens discussed his success at reaching the Chattahoochee River with a new park. The part is at the Chattahoochee Brick Company site, one with a painful legacy of racial discrimination. The new park will have a memorial to those who were lost in the labors there and expose more Atlantans to the beauty and ecology of the Chattahoochee River.
