Atlanta’s failure to get promised infrastructure projects off the ground is dominating conversation around the upcoming 2025 elections, where every City Council seat and the mayor’s office are up for grabs.
Candidates eyeing one of the open district seats, or challenging incumbents slammed the city’s poor execution of voter-approved projects during the first election forum last week.
A startling audit released earlier this year found that only about $47 million of the $660 million Moving Atlanta Forward bond package approved by voters in 2022 had been spent as of August 2024 — about 7% of planned project funds.
“Our tax dollars are going to projects that should have been done years ago,” said District 11 candidate Curt Collier.
Reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed deep frustrations across city neighborhoods while residents wait for things like updated sidewalks, crosswalks and park improvements — many projects that have been in the works for a decade or more.
At the candidate forum hosted by the Committee For a Better Atlanta last Tuesday, political hopefuls blasted the city’s lack of progress on a lengthy list of infrastructure projects.
“We not only have the challenges of projects undelivered, but we also have the transformative potential of our growth,” District 2 candidate Courtney Smith said.
Even incumbents who aren’t facing challengers agreed the slow progress on infrastructure projects is holding the city back.
“The good news is that we’ve got funding committed to it through More Marta, through Renew Atlanta, Moving Atlanta Forward and through federal funds that have come in,” said District 6 Council member Alex Wan. “We just have to execute — and we have to do it in a way before the crush comes with the additional population and strain.”
Other issues likely to drive campaigns across the city are homelessness, skyrocketing housing prices and Atlanta’s transportation woes.
Vine City residents take substation fight to City Hall
Members of historically Black communities that border Mercedes-Benz Stadium brought their fight against a Georgia Power substation to City Hall.
The utility company argues a second substation in the Vine City neighborhood is necessary to bolster the west side’s grid. But residents are deeply opposed to the plans arguing that there’s already another facility of its kind less than a half mile away.
The site between Foundry and Magnolia streets along Northside Drive is also directly next to a neighborhood of single-family homes and within two blocks of an elementary school.
“They did us wrong, but what we want now is remedy, and the remedy is pick another site,” said community advocate and former state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas.
“Give us a chance to live and prosper as everyone else can — who wants to live in a neighborhood with two substations?” she said.
Early messaging from Georgia Power to community leaders defended the project by saying that it’s necessary to respond to help support energy needs about 2 miles away in the massive Gulch development. After uproar, the company said the substation is meant to boost the entire power grid in the area.
“This investment in the power grid in the Vine City and English Avenue area serves thousands of business and residential customers in the area,” said Misty Fernandez, Atlanta regional executive at Georgia Power.
Despite Georgia Power already breaking ground on the project, residents are still rallying against its construction — which the company says will pause during the 2026 FIFA World Cup Games and be finished early 2028.
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