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Living for the City: A Conversation with Robert Reichert,
by Chris Horne
A couple weeks before Mayor Robert Reichert unveiled his annexation plans, he sat for a conversation with editor Chris Horne. They talked for an unexpected and rare hour about a variety of issues facing the city of Macon, much of it colored with the Mayor’s indescribable passion for positive change and progressive growth. Considering the length of the conversation and the importance of its content, we thought it was best to split it into two parts so that our readership has the best opportunity to know who Mayor Reichert is and how he plans to guide the city.
1) You’ve been a city alderman before. How much different is it to be Mayor?
There is a huge, vast difference even between being in the General Assembly than being the mayor. Up there, I was one of 180 members. Here I’m one of one. Plus everybody knows my name. I’ve also made the comment that my learning curve looks more like an elevator shaft. It’s straight up. And another thing I’ve told people is that I really don’t have as much control over my day as I wish I did. I sympathize now with doctors. They can have the best of intentions, have all their appointments lined up, but the first appointment could throw everything off.
2) Has it been that way since you started or have you had a honeymoon period?
Here’s the true story of my first day on the job. I’m sitting there fat, dumb and happy, thinking “Hot dog, I think we can handle this,” and the Army Corps of Engineers walks in and says, “We’re fixin’ to de-certify your levy.” “Excuse me? Why? What’s going on?” “These things have been going on. We’ve been writing letters. There’s been an exchange of correspondence, and duh-da-duh-da-duh-da.” Well, I wasn’t planning on seeing the Corps of Army Engineers first day in office. On the first day in office, there’s someone waiting to see me about a problem. It’s hard to get control of your schedule, but it’s busy, fun, exciting and challenging.
I got into this to help my community. I think it’s so much to offer, and I’m convinced that the stars are lining up for Macon and Middle Georgia in ways that people just haven’t even begun to appreciate yet.
3) Is it just a gut feeling on your part or do you have more solid reasons?
It’s a combination of things that we’re all familiar with. But you’ve got to connect the dots. The growth of Atlanta has maxed-out on the north side; it’s gotta go somewhere. Right now, the push is south. Point number two: The State of Georgia is projected to have an additional two million people move in, according to US Census data. (Note: 34% projected growth between 2000 and 2015 to 10,813,573, making Georgia the eight largest state.) There are eight and a half, nine million people already. Two million. Where do you think they’re going to go? Number three is something else you already know about: the Interstate/Highway system.
Chris: The modern equivalent to sitting on a river.
Mayor: And well, that’s the next thing. We are on a river and it’s on a different water basin than Atlanta, which also happens to headwater in Georgia and discharge in Georgia therefore not subject to the inner-state water wars. Think of another second-tier city (in Macon’s situation). There ain’t one.
4) How do you think these things line up in our favor?
We’ve managed to retain the small town atmosphere that so many people are drooling to find. But even with our small town atmosphere, we offer tertiary healthcare (specialized consultative care) with the Medical Center, a quality of life because of Mercer, Wesleyan and Macon State College that is equaled only in communities several times our size, a symphony orchestra, a successful arts community, plays, performances—this quality of life and yet in a small town where you can still get around, quote-unquote, pretty easy.
5) Do you really think people who want to live close to Atlanta will move here?
I draw the analogy of two magnets. You get ‘em close enough together and they’ll jump. With the population growth coming down (highway) 212 and 200, someone’s going to say, “Darling, we could either build us a house out here in this subdivision out in the middle of nowhere, between Jackson and Barnesville, or we can go 20 minutes further south and have retail shopping, health care and a better quality of life?” It’s going to leap frog the last 15-20 miles. It’s not going to cigarette burn; it’s going to jump.
6) How do you prepare the city for this projected growth?
You better start planning with your roads. Thank goodness we already planned with our water and sewer—we weathered through the storm and the flood in 1994 and sixteen days without water, and now we’ve got water and sewer capacity. So roads and schools are going to be the big thing. They’re working hard on the schools, rebuilding the infrastructure. Central (High School) is under construction now, and thank goodness they’ve put the emphasis on Central that they have to make it a viable in-town school.
7) It seems like most folks, especially around election time, were talking about how you’d have to dig Macon out of a hole. No one was really thinking so much about preparing for the future as much as they were about getting back to par. How do you sell people on this bigger picture?
I think you’ve got to inform and educate people to the downside as well. The downside is that we don’t want to re-create the donut. That’s a population pattern that has been demonstrated to be not only ineffective but destructive. We don’t want to have an inner city that’s decaying and dying and more dangerous, surrounded by this more affluent ring on the outside. Right now we have constrained the growth of Macon to these little imaginary lines on the ground that really haven’t been significantly redrawn, population wise, since the late 60s. We’ve been 40 years without significant population annexation.
8) Why do you think it’s been so long since the last annexation?
The fire protection services were combined and consolidated in the early part of the 70s to be the Macon-Bibb County Fire Department, so no longer did you have to be inside the city to get city fire protection service. Same thing happened with the water and sewage authority. They put it in a separate authority and ran it so no longer did you have to be a resident of the city of Macon to get city water and city sewer service. Without those incentives the city limits have remained static but the people have continued to be dynamic and move. Now we’ve got subdivisions that are cut in half by imaginary lines. We’ve got two trash trucks that’ll go down the same street: one to pick up garbage from side in the city, and the other that goes down the same street to pick up from the left-hand side because they’re in the unincorporated part of the county. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that’s not the most effective way to deliver services.
9) Is there any other reason besides streamlining service delivery?
There’s also a tax equity problem. Why should people on one side of the street pay more taxes than people on the other side of the street for the same services? These neighbors, who are for all practical purposes, residents of the city of Macon, they’re not allowed to vote but they drive in and out and enjoy the same resources as people inside the city of Macon. So I think we need to look for tax equity implications as well as service delivery implications. We need to look at annexation.
10) What’s been the response to you on annexation?
We’ve had an incredible number of people say—while they’re not excited about paying additional taxes—they see the implications and they’re willing to come in. The alternative is to let the center city decay. What do you think that’s going to do to your overall cost of government? Plus, your quality of life is going to be worse if you’re scared to even come into the city. If you think that you can stay outside of this imaginary line that we call the city limit and not be adversely affected by negative developments inside this imaginary line, I think you’re delusional. You know and I know that ignorance, poverty and crime is systemic. If you think you can leave those alone inside the city limits and expect them to stay there, you’re wrong.
11) That’s a big job to tackle. What did you have to ask yourself before you decided you wanted to do this and believed that you could do this?
After a LONG time of thinking about it and praying about it and trying to decide, I think I came along at a time when my skill sets and my reputation were such that people could put faith, trust and confidence in me. We’ve got a great little community here. All we’ve got to do is believe it ourselves and sell it to others. And they’re fixing to come.
Here’s a little vignette. I hadn’t even been inaugurated as mayor yet and somebody called me up saying, “Hey, there’s a developer here from Miami-Dade County, and he wants to meet you.” I asked them what got them thinking about Macon. Turns out, they were looking at a trade journal and the lowest cost for construction per square foot on the Eastern Seaboard in an urban area is Macon, GA. They got out a map and said, “Wow, it’s only 80 miles south of Atlanta, on two Interstate highways! Why don’t we take a trip to look?” They took a trip and said, “Jeepers!” They wanted to meet a couple county commissioners. One of them comes over and says, “Oh, y’all are the group from Miami-Dade County that’s looking at the X building?” They said, “No, that’s the other group from Miami-Dade County that’s looking at the X building.” “You mean there’s two groups?” “Oh yeah, and when we got here, they told us you had a crime problem. You ain’t got no crime problem. You want to see a crime problem, come to Miami-Dade County. Y’all are just spoiled.” Our little secret is getting out.
… to be continued.
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