Andre Dickens: ‘I just want to be mayor’

At the Monday luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Atlanta, Mayor Andre Dickens made a pitch for his top priorities — affordable housing, early childhood education, housing the homeless, public safety and water infrastructure.

Dickens will be running for a second term as mayor in less than a year. Monday’s Rotary meeting was a friendly opportunity to secure even more support from Atlanta’s top business and civic leaders.

It was obvious from the get-go that Rotarians like the mayor, someone who loves to be loved. 

Dickens has been a popular mayor. He has been available to attend events and photo opportunities — making himself approachable and accessible for selfies with people he encounters along the way. Rarely does he take questions from journalists at these events, which is a departure from previous mayors.

So far, his strategy seems to be working. There does not appear to be any significant opposition ­­to Dickens’ reelection emerging. Despite a rumor that former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is considering a run, most people don’t expect that to happen. It would be hard for Reed, who was quite a controversial mayor, to run against a popular Dickens, who has managed to skirt past several obstacles that could have wounded him.  

In fact, Dickens mentioned a couple of them during the Rotary meeting — the public safety training center and the water main breaks earlier this year.

“Thank you for your support of public safety,” Dickens told Rotarians. “The public safety training center is near completion. We will be doing a preview later this month, and then a formal opening when it warms up.”

The public safety training center, labeled “cop city” by opponents, is moving forward despite citywide petitions for a referendum or legal actions to stop construction. The mayor pushed forward with plans to build it on the old prison farm property in DeKalb County despite strong opposition from environmentalists and others. At the time it was proposed, the Buckhead City movement was alive and well, and the project had strong backing from the business community.

 “The first pillar of my administration is 1. a safe city — to make Atlanta a safer large city,” Dickens told Rotarians.  “And we’ve done just that. That’s why I’m so happy to report that city-wide crime numbers continue to drop.”

The other issue that potentially could have hurt the mayor was when Atlanta had several major water main breaks back-to-back in late May, causing a major disruption for many residents.

During the Q&A portion of the program, housing leader Bruce Gunter thanked the mayor for his focus on affordable housing. Then he asked Dickens if he wanted to be known as the “water mayor” in a similar way that former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin was called the “sewer mayor” when she was in office.

“I’ll never forget that those three or four days where we were dealing with a crisis of water flowing up on the ground,” said Dickens, adding how the city is using AI to find vulnerabilities with large water pipes to repair them before they cause a major disruption. He told Rotarians that in 2023, Atlanta had about 500 water main breaks and leaks and that the city has been fixing an average of about two leaks a day. 

“What we’re doing now is going after those large pipes first, which is going to be a lot of construction,” Dickens said. “Large pipes are under the middle of the road, guys, which means in order to fix them, you have to break up the road.”

Then, in his only reference to his reelection efforts, Dickens said: “So yeah, I’ll be the water mayor. I’ll be the housing mayor. I’ll be the early childhood development mayor. I just want to be the mayor. I just want to be the mayor until I’m not.”

Where Dickens fell short was in providing an aspirational vision for Atlanta.

In August, during the annual LINK trip, Dickens was inspired by what he saw in New York — a city with a spirit that anything is possible.

Dickens was impressed with NYC’s transit system, its alternative modes of transportation, the city’s urban design and its propensity to “think big.”

But little of that has carried over to Atlanta. 

The issue of transportation, MARTA, transit, Beltline rail and the audit of More MARTA did not come up during the Monday’s Rotary talk. 

While in New York, Mayor Dickens was contemplating transit-oriented development on top of the Five Points MARTA station rather than the transit agency’s $230 million redo of the connecting hub. But that big idea fell by the wayside when Dickens and MARTA recently announced an agreement to proceed with plans to renovate the station.

Courtney English, chief policy officer for the City of Atlanta, said there still is an opportunity to have transit-oriented development on a building pad next to the Five Points MARTA station.

Civic leader John Grant asked Dickens about the city’s preparation for the FIFA World Cup in 2026.

“We’re the only city that gets to go from the Olympics to the World Cup in a 30-year span,” Dickens said, adding that Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics in 1996 and the World Cup in 2026. “We just keep getting more and more blessings. We’ve got the MLB All Star game. We’ve got the Super Bowl. We have the Final Four that’s coming.”

His message to Atlanta: “We’re going to get it done the Atlanta way — with a collaborative spirit.” Dickens added: “The overall goal for me with the World Cup is that it doesn’t just happen to Atlanta. It happens with Atlanta.” 

What will Atlanta look like after the World Cup leaves? “We’re going to look like a wonderful, beautiful city that has hosted the World Cup,” Dickens said. “Everybody in the world will be talking about the World Cup in Atlanta.”

Dickens said the city is working with the Atlanta Sports Council to make sure “all the nuts and bolts of hard work of making sure it’s safe and people are able to get around.”

He added: “What we want to do is also add in the human scale to it, that the residents of Atlanta are included, that small business are included, and that it’ll be unforgettable.”

Mayor Dickens, you have been a friendly and decent steward of Atlanta during your first three years as mayor.

But as you approach reelection, Mayor Dickens, you still have time to “think big” and provide a vision of how Atlanta and the region can aspire for greatness.