From the Mayor’s Office:

Strolling up Hoyt Street a few weeks ago, just uphill from the Council on Aging, two children about three or four years old approached me, and one held out her hand to give me something, and asked if I would like a pecan. Her companion handed me another, and they let me know that I can make a great pie with them. We spoke for a few moments, and I let them know that I’m particularly fond of chocolate pecan pie, which they said would be an acceptable use of their gifts.

This brief encounter was a reminder of what Athens is all about. A place of generosity. A place of creativity. A place of knowledge. A place of collaboration. And, a place where the entire span of life is critically important, and in which no one should be left behind.

I come to you today after nearly twenty years of policymaking as Mayor and a County Commissioner, and will reflect on where we have come, the work now underway, and on opportunities on the road ahead. And much of our time together today is with these young friends and their generation in mind. For as much as we need support in our adult years, we do our best work when we anticipate the needs of the generations to come.

One thing that is certain, is that today’s children will come into a growing version of Athens. This has always been true, and will continue to be. When I arrived in Athens to attend graduate school more than thirty years ago, we were a city of about 95,000. Today, nearly 135,000 people call this home. Much of this is natural growth. It is my new neighbors just up the block, who retired to here to be close to their children and grandchildren. It is the growth in the medical community, anchored by our two great full-service hospitals, as smaller facilities throughout the region have closed or reduced services. It is the growth in advanced manufacturing, particularly bio-science, as innovative businesses seek to cluster and benefit from a common pool of skilled scientists and technicians. And, of course, it is our cornerstone institution, The University of Georgia, with their nationally ranked academic units and expanding array of high-demand programs, with the Medical College joining so many others from agriculture to engineering, political science to the art school.

It is an unusual week in my life in which I am not on campus engaging in the classroom, or hosting students at City Hall. There is an embarrassment of riches at the University, and we are fortunate to have so many great faculty, staff, and students contributing to our tapestry.

The University has been transparent about their enrollment plan, which anticipates about 600 new students each year adding to the more than 44,000 now enrolled. This is helpful, as it makes planning more predictable.

Planning is what is certainly underway in local government, with the Commission having passed the Future Land Use plan, which will allow us to move forward with zoning modifications to accommodate the growth we know to be continuing. Most significantly, there will be an increase in density in the commercial corridors that were established forty to eighty years ago, with the ability to layer upon existing infrastructure of water lines, roads, and data cables.

Even as land planning ordinances and policiescontinue to be refined, strategic upgrades that we have already made in infrastructure, and focused zoning code modifications have attracted many more neighborhood-scale developments, including two on Newton Bridge Road, a significant scale project just past the Country Club off Kathwood Drive, dozens of homes near the intersection of Whit Davis and Lexington Roads, and a neighborhood that will feature more than 600 homes on Atlanta Highway past the Loop interchange, as well as several smaller developments on the west end of town.

In addition to the need for housing supply, we continue to need focused affordability, and there is an array of local work underway to pursue that. Over the next two years, Athens will see more than 600 new affordable units.

Construction has begun on Phase 2 of the North Downtown neighborhood, on the property that was formerly Bethel Midtown Village. When that phase is complete, there will be room for all former residents, and then we will continue to work with the Athens Housing Authority to realize phases three, four and five. And through this work, we will have transformed one of the most poorly maintained private properties in Athens into a model for mixed-income housing close to amenities and employment. And we have every reason to believe that following in the footsteps of the prior Athens Housing Authority redevelopment that is now Brookside, we will see a dramatic improvement in safety, while supporting and increased volume of quality housing.

The Athens Housing Authority is also partnering in three new developments that utilize the combination of federal and state Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The first of these, near Athens Technical College on Highway 29,features 190 beautiful new units walking distance to groceries, and near thousands of good jobs. Similar projects will happen on Lexington Highway near the airport, and just past Epps Bridge Parkway on Atlanta Highway, the latter of which will focus on senior residents.

We have also established a Housing Trust Fundto focus the dollars we have accumulated through General Fund allocations, and more significantly, through the Inclusionary Zoning code that was established several years ago. This year, I will be assigning the task of updating that code to our Planning Commission, so that we can leverage it for even more investment in permanently affordable housing.

Our housing partners Athens Land Trust, East Athens Development Corporation, and Habitat for Humanity have all featured ribbon cuttings on new affordable single family homes in the last year, with the Micah’s Creek neighborhood established by Habitat under construction now, which will ultimately see more than sixty new homes in a highly desirable location just east of downtown. While these organizations have always done great work, they are increasingly doing so in a concerted way to make as much of a difference as possible.  

If all of this work underway seems immense, I ask us to think again of my young friends on Hoyt Street, and the needs of their peers. I would draw your attention to the experience offamilies with children in the Clarke County School District. In recent years, with many families chasing affordable rent, or moving in with friends and relatives amidst economic challenges, there has been a wave of residential instability for many. In just the current academic year, over 2000 students, or 17% of the SchoolDistrict’s population have moved schools - - some within the County, some moving out. That is a set of children who lose immediate access to friends they have grown close to, who lose relationships with teachers, counselors, and administrators who mentor them, and to the familiar terrain of hallways they know. When we ensure that there is enough housing available, we create greater likelihood of a secure, confident, and high-achieving student population through their very stability, and avoid students burdened by transience and the loss of critical social connections.

Even while the challenges of housing for families are very real right now, we have an enormous amount of good work to celebrate as we consider the opportunities for healthy, happy and prosperous lives for young people growing up here.

Over the last 25 years, through constant effort by too many people to mention today, we have moved from a high school graduation rate of 50% in 2000 to over 80% in 2026. With the maturation of the Athens Community Career Academy, along with the support of its partners at the University, Athens Technical College, Athens-Clarke County’s Economic Development Dept, and many industry partners, students in Athens can enter many professions well prepared than in earlier years, as we know that beyond just the simple diploma, it takes a strong skill set to become employed in positions that will be careers, not just jobs. To heighten this impact, we have partnered with the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce to launch a job placement and counseling system, Athens Achieves, that will be more than just a listing of the thousands of available jobs in the Athens region, but will provide coaching and feedback to give residents the wraparound support needed to succeed in a search. All of this works to the benefit of the individual, the employer, and the community at large. Modelled on the highly successful West Alabama Works program based in Tuscaloosa, we will ensure a lifelong foundation of success through this work.

Athens has sometimes been described as having a “barbell economy”, with a large cluster of high wage jobs, a large cluster of low wage jobs, and not enough in between. These efforts all serve to close that gap that has existed for centuries, from the very founding of Athens. Together, we are working to re-shape historical patterns for the benefit of everyone. In the years ahead, we must bolster this foundation, particularly focusing on those students who continue to struggle, with targeted efforts that will take more work to achieve.

This work includes the partnerships we form with other institutions to support young people outside of their school hours, knowing that social capital and positive engagement will lead to more successful outcomes.

Tenured community members who have served our youth for decades have commented to me that in the years since city-county unification, there had been a void that needed to be filled in programming for our children. Similarly, parents in Athens looked to nearby counties and saw developmental programs in Volleyball, Basketball and other sports – often run by county governments - that prepared younger athletes for high school sports. That programming had been lagging here in Clarke County, both within the Leisure Services offerings, as well as from the Clarke County School District. It is often said that a crisis can yield solutions, and that happened in this case, as the Unified Government and the School District came together to ensure that access exists for students at each of our elementary and middle schools, and that in a great case of shared responsibility, each partner funds an even portion of the operation, and benefits from the generosity of the UGA Athletic Association, who provided a capital grant. Now, there are 1600 students participating each year, providing positive experiences to our kids, and our high schools have a more experienced set of student athletes who are able to compete with their peers from other areas.

In addition, after many years of being empty spaces, community centers within Athens Housing Authority neighborhoods have been reopened to after-school and summer programming with federal dollars, and I have proposed to the Commission that we extend this work with local funds, to ensure that as many children as possible, can walk to places where they will be supported, and have the curriculum they experience at school extended into evenings and summertime.

This great work for our young residents is joined by the stabilizing forces of so many strong local nonprofit providers, from the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, to the Athens Community Council on Aging, to the resource navigation of Family Connection-Community in Schools’ Neighborhood Leaders program, and the grantmaking of the Athens Community Foundation. The work of these organizations supports human health, keeps trauma from boiling over, and as demonstrated by the work of Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey and others, has a direct connection to the reduction in crime and violence.

To further provide a path to stability, we have partnered with Advantage Behavioral Health Services, and through SPLOST dollars and a state grant, they will soon be opening a 60 bed mental health recovery facility on their campus.

We need leaders to continue to support options like this, given the very real challenges that many residents face. With the rising cost of housing, families are making hard choices. First, they get rid of a Netflix account, then as times get tighter, they trade grocery store visits for a trip to the food bank, then they try to live without power, and soon the lack of other resources means living in a vehicle or on the street.

Anyone spending time under thesecircumstances will experience stress that creates an easy path to addiction and other problems. Some of us come into a life with privilege that creates a soft landing pad, but many of us lack that buffer, and when we hit bottom, we hit it hard. So I wish to express gratitude to all those working on the front lines of addiction recovery and behavioral health support. We need you now, and will continue to need you.

Another project related to this has been undertaken by the Athens Homeless Coalition, which has created a high quality intake instrument shared by area support providers. It is this data that must inform decision-making in the years ahead.

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Layered upon the work of our service providercommunity is the great work of the Athens-Clarke Police Department. Through acombination of their efforts, we have seen a great reduction in crime in Athens-Clarke County.

2025 saw two murders in Athens in its closing months. Two murders too many. Murders that surely haunt friends, family members and loved ones. But, to gain perspective, we need to compare that to the years 1992-1996, when we averaged more than 13 murders a year in this county, with a population of forty thousand fewer residents, and you can see in the most devastating of crimes the safety gains we have made.

We can also look at the drop in major crimes between 2021 and now, and we can appreciate how together, every effort at community support, and every investigative apparatus is making a difference. Over the five year period between 2021 and 2025, we experienced a 25% reduction in Aggravated Assaults, a 40% reduction in entering vehicles, a 46% reduction in burglary, and a 58% reduction in motor vehicle theft, and a whopping 73% reduction in robberies. These positive trends continue here in the early months of 2026.

It is important to note that when we do have significant crimes, as in those two murders last year, or the recent late night shooting downtown among visitors from a neighboring county, we are equipped to respond very rapidly, make very quick arrests, and put victims and their families at ease.

I’ll put it bluntly. Do not bring violence to Athens. You will be in handcuffs in no time, and wishing you had made very different decisions.

For the second year in a row, we are fully staffed with officers in the Police Department(noting a handful of officers currently in training). We benefit from fantastic administrative support from Chief Saulters and his team, ever-more-competitive salaries that the County Commission has funded, and a culture of high quality training and innovation. This includes significantly more de-escalation and behavioral health training than peer departments, and tools to operate well from our dense core to our trail system, along with our Real Time Crime Center, which includes a digital video system that allows instantaneous tracking in the kind of cases I just mentioned.

There is understandably a concern about the civil liberties of those whose images are capture on video, but I want you to know that we only share information with other agencies if it is sought in conjunction with specific cases, rather than host an open portal. Additionally, the vast majority of video entering the system is from private cameras from businesses and residentialcomplexes. We are as conscious about ensuring your privacy as we are ensuring public safety, and we will continue to balance them.

Turning to other emergency services, we will see the new Fire Station Number Five built to more completely serve the entire eastern portion of the county, and will be able to maintain our countywide Insurance Rating of One, resulting in lower insurance costs, particularly for commercial operations.

We are also going to continue to enhance the medical capability of our Fire and Emergency Services Department this year, with the hire of two additional members of the Department’s leadership team that will be able to train all service members to more effectively render aid, as they are often the first on the scene of an accident or injury, calls that comprise sixty percent of their dispatches.

We are also pushing forward greater safety on our roadways, with a vision zero plan that is being implemented as we speak, to make intersections and roadways and sidewalks safer for all of us.

We continue to see gains at our great Athens Transit System, which saw the greatest ridership in its entire history last year.

Mobility projects of particular interest include the coming roundabout where West Broad Street meets Hancock Avenue, which will move more traffic safely through that key intersection, which will be the starting point of a multi-use path that will extend to Epps Bridge Parkway. Intersecting with that path will be the first trail segment along the Middle Oconee River, which will be part of the package that voters have the opportunity to approve in the May 2026Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales tax referendum.

That package also includes significant additional dollars for intersection safety, bridge replacement, safe travel to schools, along with Transit expansion to Newton Bridge Road and Commerce Road, and relief from property taxes that would otherwise pay for pavement maintenance and similar expenses.

We will also see the completion of the Oconee Street Bridge replacement in the next year at the foot of downtown, which will include apedestrian underpass, allowing you to walk safely from Dudley Park to the Oconee Hills Cemetery and beyond without having to cross traffic at all.

And after 25 years of work from countless local leaders, we will realize the completion of the 7 mile long Firefly Trail on the former rail linecorridor, and this will finally connect downtown Athens to our lovely neighbor of Winterville. I can’t wait to meet Winterville Mayor Ferrelle when the last bucket of concrete is laid, and I can assure you that we are cooking up one heckof a celebration, given the decades it has taken to get us here.

Twenty years ago, we had an off-road trail system that included a trail from Sandy Creek Nature Center to the Classic Center, and now we have dozens of miles of paved off-road trails where we can meet all of our neighbors, recreate, and enjoy the nature that has characterized the river corridors for millennia.

Recognizing that our trail system is more than a park, it is people’s road to school and work, this year we will be implementing a lighting program for major trail corridors, to ensure visibility and safety before the sun is up and after it has gone down.

We continue to lean into protecting the natural infrastructure of our earth, as we advance our 100% clean energy plan through retrofitting of existing buildings, as you see with the solar panels at the Baxter Street library, and much greater efficiency in our new construction and newly purchased vehicles. We also continue planning for the reservoir that will be near the airport when the existing quarry ceases operation, which will help provide clean water for a century to come, extending the award-winning work of our Public Utilities team. In the years ahead, one great opportunity to care for our environment is to work with public and private sector entities alike to ensure that our community’s tree canopy is replaced as older specimens reach the end of their natural life. We feature the most dense tree canopy of any community in the region, but it will take intentional work to maintain that.

There are other wonderful public spaces you will experience for the first time in the coming year. College Square, which has been a seating area for the last five years on that closed roadbed, will see a significant upgrade, with a beautiful surface, a glorious tree canopy, and all the bells and whistles for public gatherings, the sort of which we love so much. Just around the corner from there, the park next to the Hot Corner mural will be opening even sooner, and I can’t wait to hear musicians play music on that stage underneath the iconic portrait of so many who made Athens what it is today. Then, next year, we will have the first stand-alone new library branch in many decades on Barnett Shoals Road, where residence of all ages will be able to enjoy the books and programming, we all deserve to have close to our homes.

We will also see work in the next year of the concourse of private development surrounding the Akins Arena at the Classic Center, further enhancing that former brownfield, and complementing the great gatherings and entertainment that the arena has provided. It is hard to imagine downtown without the Classic Center, and Athens community leaders of decades past deserve praise for their foresight in placing it downtown, where it provides a significant economic boost and jolt of energy as people of all ages come for conferences, concerts and celebrations.

While I have the responsibility of delivering this address, it has always been important that I recognize that the good work we do is group work, and shared responsibility. Thus, as I begin to close, I need to thank every County Commissioner and Mayor that I’ve worked with over the last two decades, as each of them held a font of wisdom, and made keen observations to get us to where we are here today. Similarly, we have benefited from strong staff members andmanagement, going back to my time working with Alan Reddish through Blaine Williams, to Bob Cowell today, who comes to us with a wealth of understanding about the ecosystems that make communities thrive. More than anything else, though, I want to thank all of you for continuing to push and advocate and sweat and question and work yourselves tirelessly as you hold each other up in this community that we love so much, and that has so much great opportunity on the road ahead.

I suspect that those include a high school student who will be visiting this year for the first time at a conference of fellow students, and become entranced by Athens, and will soon work in a lab at the University of Georgia solving our deepest needs, whether in crop health or medical innovation.

I also imagine that there is a young local Athenian who will walk into Nuci’s Space’s Camp Amped program for budding musiciansthis year who will write a song that will soon blast out of windows around the globe.

And, I have every confidence that one of the hundreds of second graders I met this spring during their first lesson in civics will one day become a fantastic mayor of Athens-Clarke County.

Thank you all for this wonderful journey, and blessings to you all for everything you bring to Athens.