Mayor Reed is back in Washington, DC this week meeting with President Obama as part of the president’s “Insourcing American Jobs” Forum. Top on the Mayor’s agenda is discussing with President Obama the $600 million that the state needs to deepen the Savannah port, bringing more business and more jobs to Atlanta.
Scott Henry has a great post up at Creative Loafing about what the Mayor’s efforts will mean for Atlanta’s future.
I can’t meaningfully predict whether we’ll get that money, but it would certainly make Atlanta a more exciting place over the next several years if we did, seeing as it would transform the city into even more of a freight and logistics hub than it is now.
But consider that Obama has, according to what I’m hearing, already tapped Reed for a major public role in his re-election campaign this year. I don’t how much leverage that gives the mayor to wrangle the port-deepening money, but it sure can’t hurt.
Mayor Reed’s tireless efforts have grown the cities reserves from $7.4 million two years ago to $94.4 million today. And his ability to take Atlanta’s priorities straight to President Obama give us an opportunity to grow our economy and our workforce as successfully we’ve grown our reserves.
I watched Kasim Reed on Meet The Press and he was WONDERFUL. I wish every democrat would respond to the lies and false statements made by the right with one statement ” if what you are saying was true it would be horrible. but we BOTH know it it not!” than they should follow up with the real truth. But the need to call out the falsehoods.