Atlanta mayor keeps pledges, makes progress

Reed also is credited with finally selling City Hall East, bringing film business to the former Lakewood Fairgrounds, securing federal money for a streetcar downtown, and picking a quality Cabinet.

“If you check metric, after metric, after metric, this city is moving in the right direction,” Reed said. “If you look at what I said I would do when I ran, we have done that.”

Big challenges remain, such as reforming an underfunded city pension system that remains a financial yoke.

And some skeptics still wonder if Reed will prove as adept at tackling the grittier problems of crime and basic services.

“I don’t think momentum has shifted yet under Reed, so I would give him a grade of incomplete,” said Jeff Baillis, who owns several rental properties in Southwest Atlanta, including one that was the target of a home invasion Wednesday night. “From a small-business owner’s standpoint, nothing much has changed. Water bills are still too high and there are still rampant crimes in the neighborhoods. I don’t think the attitude of the criminal element has been impacted if they are gonna be that brazen in their efforts.”

Reed said his State of the City address this week, while touching on his first year, will look forward. He and his staff have spent weeks crafting policies and strategizing for his second year in office.

“I would give him a good rating on the basis that I think he has been a good learner and he has set a standard of cooperation and accessibility to everybody,” said veteran city council member C.T. Martin, who is working with his fourth mayor. “A lot of the things he has put in place will pay off as we get to the bigger picture, but he has not yet defined the bigger picture.”

Reed said his second year will be about “fine-tuning this operation ... so we can treat our citizens better, provide better customer service, get rid of waste so that we can create a better product and make the experience of living in this city better.”

“It will also be a year about making sure that we are not a one-hit wonder.”

Focus on the city

Reed took office Jan. 4, 2010 after a bruising campaign that saw him rise from third in the polls to beating Mary Norwood by 715 votes in a runoff.

Fresh from the General Assembly, Reed came to City Hall with the reputation as a smooth and skilled negotiator.

“When he was in the Legislature I used to see him having lunch and dinner with a lot of the good ‘ol boys around the state,” said former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young. “I said that is what you have to do. He is very good at building relationships, because he respects people even when he disagrees.”

But even while he has opened doors under the Gold Dome and at the White House — including taking a lead role in seeking millions in federal dollars from Washington to deepen the Port of Savannah‚ 250 miles from Atlanta — Reed insists he is focused on city issues.

“I believe I occupy my lane well,” he said. “I don’t feel the need to get involved in anything unless Atlanta’s vital interests are involved. I think I am a good teammate. I am not a prima donna. I learned that you couldn’t survive in the General Assembly that way.”

Coming from state, rather than neighborhood, politics, Reed lacked the local name recognition of either Norwood or Lisa Borders, who also ran. To make up for it, he delivered 125 speeches and attended more than 550 events in his first year in office.

He makes no apology for the self-promotion. “The city has to believe in itself and the mayor of the city is a part of that notion,” he said. “And not very many people knew me, so I had to spend real time shaking hands and letting people see that I was not a Martian.”

Buckhead resident Gordon Certain said Reed’s efforts have paid off in an area that supported Norwood.

“I think we are pretty pleased and encouraged by him,” said Certain, president of the North Buckhead Civic Association. “We got a lot of big problems to solve and he is off trying to solve them.”

Buckhead, with its large homes, was one of the key areas hit by massive water bill spikes last summer in a city that already has the highest water bills in the nation. The spike was one of a series of problems that led to the departure of water department leader Rob Hunter.

“The way he handled that whole situation with Hunter got people’s attention,” Certain said.

Brent Sobol, who owns nearly 1,000 apartment units in Atlanta, said that while he appreciates Reed’s grand ideas, the mayor is ignoring the grassroots, particularly on the Southside.

“Clearly he is trying to improve the city. But at the end of the day, you gotta look in the neighborhoods and ask what is still not getting done. Like code enforcement, water and sewer fixes and neighborhood-based economic development,” said Sobol, who supported Norwood. “If I had to grade him, I would give him a ‘C.’ I have not seen a lot of positive results, especially in the Southside. And I have been surprised that so many people have been praising him.”

Reed acknowledges more needs to be done in the city and by his administration.

“I don’t have moments of doubt, but I do have moments where I wonder if there is something more I can do,” Reed said.

His administration has shaved a few million dollars off of pension costs by lowering benefits for new employees, but it is still the city’s biggest burden. A whopping 20 percent of Atlanta’s $556 million budget goes toward pension payouts and the city faces an unfunded obligation of about $1.5 billion. A task force to look at the city’s pension problems is expected to issue a final report in February.

Crime is down by double digits in every major category, except murder. But that is also misleading. In 2009, the city had 80 murders, followed by 93 last year. However, 2010 was only the third year since 1964 where fewer than 100 murders were recorded in the city.

“But that doesn’t matter,” Reed said. “Although we have made substantial progress in crime, the number of murders we have — when you have such an intense focus on crime prevention — is shocking.”

He said he is especially concerned about random violence, which he said “bothers me to my core.”

Reed hopes the 230 recent hires in the police department since he took office will help bring murder numbers down.

“There are less than 25 vacancies on the entire police force,” Reed said. “When I was running around campaigning, saying this is what I was going to do, people mocked it. And we are just getting started.”

But Moki Macias, a member of BLOCS, a grassroots police accountability organization, said Reed’s record on crime is uneven.

“It seems like he can come out really strong when something happens, but we are not seeing him be proactive in addressing violence throughout the city and addressing the root causes of it,” said Macias, whose organization had a seat on the search committee to find new police chief George Turner.

“He had the potential to bring progressive ideas, but we have seen him rely on a tough-on-crime approach, which has ineffective. We don’t think that aggressive tactics are the answer.”

Reed said his first year has been a blur of 15-hour days, dozens of phone calls and very little eating.

Still, he said, “I am happier than I have ever been in my life. This is a bigger job than I had imagined, but I think I have grown into [it] in a reasonable good fashion.”