Atlanta Forward / Another View: Past mayors made hard choices; next one must, too

By Andrew J. Young

Atlanta has been blessed with mayors who do the right thing — even when it is unpopular. We have had mayors who planned for the future and made hard choices that created the growth and prosperity we experience today.

Of our recent mayors, Sam Massell continued the tradition of William Hartsfield and Ivan Allen, looking to the needs of greater Atlanta and beyond immediate political concerns. Forging a coalition with Atlanta Life President Jesse Hill and Manuel Maloof, CEO of DeKalb County, Massell negotiated a “Fairness Formula” that enabled Atlanta to be one of only two cities in America to vote for mass transit in the 1970s.

And it was not enough for Mayor Maynard Jackson to rest on his achievement as the first black mayor in a major Southern city. Shortly after his election in 1973, Jackson began work on a new, larger international airport using the existing runways. This required city and federal planning, including the rerouting of I-85. Jackson, Wyche Fowler and I — as the U.S. congressman representing Atlanta — helped facilitate another unlikely coalition between Sen. Herman Talmadge and U.S. Transportation Secretary William Coleman, a black Republican, to expand the airport at its present location.

The joint ventures that Mayor Jackson introduced at the airport, giving minority- and female-owned businesses access to the economy, created a climate that has welcomed hundreds of billions of dollars in direct investment throughout the region. Opening the economy for blacks and women has meant a more open economy for talented, hard-working people of all persuasions — black and white, Latin, Asian, African, gay and straight, male and female, Jewish, Christian and Muslim.

The Olympics seemed like a pipe dream until we won the bid in Tokyo following a broad-based community campaign led by nine families spending their own money to introduce the bid. I was ridiculed for offering international investments, encouraging tax breaks for downtown housing, insisting on building an international terminal at Hartsfield airport, the Presidential Parkway, Ga. 400 and flights to Africa. The Africa routes are now Delta Air Line’s most profitable.

When floods engulfed Atlanta’s suburbs, the waters ran in a pipe below my home, instead of through my house. Mayor Shirley Franklin had the vision to take on this essential infrastructure. It is not popular, but Atlanta’s future growth depends on the sewer improvements we have made.

Atlanta has grown from a metro population of 1 million when I was in Congress to nearly 5.6 million at present. In the 1960s, a city population of 400,000 supported a metro population of 1 million. Today, a city of less than 600,000 is called upon to support a metropolitan population of just under 6 million. We have moved from a 2-to-1 burden to a 10-to-1 burden. I say burden because much of the vision, leadership and courage in the region comes from inside the Perimeter.

The civic, business and community leadership of Atlanta has demonstrated progressive vision and the courage to face complex problems around race, class and gender issues, as well as challenges of new technology and globalization. They’ve done so while maintaining a metropolitan sense of responsibility. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “We are tied together in an inescapable network of maturity.”

Atlanta’s mayor in 2010 will have an extremely difficult and complex challenge, but great cities and great leaders are produced by great challenges and crisis. The courage to take unpopular stands, the vision to plan for decades in the future, the willingness and ability to bring diverse people together — these are leadership traits that have made Atlanta great.

(Editor’s note: Young has endorsed Kasim Reed in the Atlanta mayoral race.)

Andrew Young was mayor of Atlanta from 1982 to 1990. He also represented Atlanta in the U.S. Congress, served as Ambassador to the United Nations and as co- chair of the 1996 Olympic Games. Currently, he is chairman of GoodWorks International and The Andrew Young Foundation.