In his first year in office, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed fulfilled his promise of re-opening each of the city’s 33 recreation centers.
At his annual State of the City address Tuesday morning, Reed said he will spend his second making those centers into facilities that focus not only on athletics, but also educational, cultural and artistic training, or Centers of Hope.
That effort got a big boost when Coca-Cola Co. Chairman Muhtar Kent announced that the company is donating $1 million toward the project. Reed said the city will use the money to open two pilot programs in southeast and southwest Atlanta.
“(You) can’t have a great city without large portions of your population thriving,” Reed said. “We are going to come up with programming and test and measure it. We want to make sure we are not warehousing kids. What we are trying to do is plant a seed.”
In his speech, Reed called his first year in office “dizzying” and “transformative.”
He told the breakfast crowd dotted with business and political leaders that Atlanta has thawed out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
“When I came into office, we were in the midst of uncertainty. The city had been traumatized by deep and painful cuts,” Reed said. “Despite everything, the state of our city is resurgent. We’re coming back.”
Reed said Atlanta has been able to hire more police officers, fund most of his initiatives and increase reserves from $7 million to $56 million.
Noting that the city is spending at a pace roughly 3 percent under the $559 million budget, Reed took a subtle shot at critics because property taxes haven't been raised.
“The budget didn’t break,” he said. “We paid for it just fine.”
He still faces the challenge of pension reform. Atlanta has about $1.5 billion in unfunded pension obligations. Reed is considering seven options to restructure the pension plan, which he wants to present to workers in time for the 2012 budget.
“The future is going to be about excellence,” Reed said. “There is never going to be a time when we can’t fund police and fire. There is never going to be a time when we can’t help young people."
Reed said he learned about the Coke gift from Kent about two months ago. But Kent wanted it announced at the State of the City event.
"This year, our 125th anniversary, we're going to support an initiative closer to home, an initiative important to our mayor and all of us who live here in Atlanta…the Centers of Hope," Kent said.
The mayor, who talks often about attending recreation centers as a child growing up in Atlanta, made it a campaign promise to re-open all of them after many had been shut down by the previous administration in sweeping budget cuts.
Last June, the city council approved $3.7 million to reopen centers, but Reed is relying on private dollars to enhance them. Aside from the Coca-Cola gift, Turner Broadcasting has committed $1 from each CNN tour sale to the centers, which will bring in $250,000 to $500,000 a year.
About 2,000 kids use the recreation centers and Reed will identify the two pilot sites in about two months.
“You never know what is going on in someone’s life,” Reed said. “When these kids have nothing to do, you take a wonderful life and put them in a position of making a big mistake in which they cannot recover.”
Reed's speech was followed by a song he requested, performed by the Clark Atlanta University Philharmonic Society: the old spiritual “I Done Done What You Told Me to Do.”
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