Her plan isn’t complete, but will Fort Valley’s history-making mayor run for 3rd term?

Before she first ran for mayor in Fort Valley, Barbara Williams went on a Christmas trip with her family and talked to them about running for the office.

When she came back from the trip, she decided she was going to run, and she unseated the four-term incumbent by 70 votes to become the first Black woman to be mayor in Fort Valley.

“I guess I’ve been first in a lot of things,” Williams said. “I just saw it as a great challenge. I was born and reared in a household with five brothers, and we all got along.”

Williams was also the first woman band director at a high school in Georgia when she worked at Dooly County High School.

“When we come to meetings where there’s nobody that’s a female there but me, I was respected. And of course, I gave them respect,” she said.

She was a city councilwoman for 16 years before she ran for mayor in 2013. Her second term as mayor will end Dec. 31, and she hasn’t decided whether she will run again.

“I think it just needs to be somebody energetic enough to have a vision and plant that seed, and certainly I’m energetic enough, most times,” she said. “It’s a friendly town with some great potential.”

Who is Mayor Williams?

Williams was born and raised in Roberta and although she doesn’t mind visiting big cities, she said she’s a small town person.

“I like to be in a town wherein you can come into town and ask anybody in the city if they could tell you where Mayor Williams lives, and they can point you to it or lead you to it, and that’s the way people in the rural South do,” she said.

Williams has a bachelor’s, master’s and an education specialist degree. In addition to working at Dooly County High School, Williams also worked at Fort Valley Middle School before she retired.

Her late husband, Jimmy Williams, was also the mayor of Fort Valley from 1994-96, but he died while he was in office.

Being a politician is not an opportunity to receive fame or money, she said with a laugh. It’s about giving back to the community, and in order to have peace of mind as a politician, she said it depends on how well you plan.

For her, she likes to go fishing and visit family to de-stress, and she makes sure to travel at least four times a year.

“I also pray a lot,” she said.

What has she accomplished in eight years?

When Williams stepped into office, she had many goals including bringing more restaurants to the city, creating a recreation complex and encouraging more unity within the community. Here’s what she’s done:

• Received $1.5 million in grant funding through the Community HOME Investment Program with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs

• Turned the Woolfolk Chemical Company site into a Fort Valley Festival Park, which is also veterans memorial park

• Built community playgrounds throughout the city

• They are in the process of developing a 3-star hotel with a restaurant and bar.

• Construction on a truck stop off of Highway 49 will begin on Monday.

• A developer is building University Station, a multi-use facility with retail space and lodging, across from Fort Valley State University.

• Several buildings in downtown Fort Valley have been purchased by a developer to create retail space and lodging.

• The city has partnered with an entrepreneur planning to create space to start a film industry in Fort Valley.

• Brought several restaurants to the area, including Taco Bell, Eighteen 36 Restaurant and Lounge, Fried Green Tomatoes and Silly Lilly’s

• They are negotiating with local small farmers and Fort Valley State to bring fresh meat and produce directly from the farm to the table.

• Balanced the budget upward of $7.25 million with a contingency of more than $300,000

• Developed a relationship with Fort Valley Utilities Commission

“We’re a vibrant community. It’s just that the pandemic, COVID-19 almost shut things down, but lucky enough, our business owners are still hanging on. Some of them are hanging on by a thread, but they’re still hanging on,” she said.

Williams said she wants to create an atmosphere in Fort Valley where students want to stay in the city after they graduate to live and work.

“They want to go to Atlanta. They want to go to the larger cities, the big cities, but you do have people who want the peacefulness of small town living,” she said. “We don’t only want to train them and send them off. We want to train them and keep some of them here in our city.”

Being the mayor of a rural town has its own challenges mostly with retaining talent and activity, she said.

“In small cities, especially rural cities that’s a ways away from the interstate, it seems like the life and productivity is sucked out of a city. And so, the challenges have been to try to get everybody to be positive about economic development, about the vitality of the community,” she said. “We try to plan things to keep people engaged, to make it a great place to live, work and play.”

There’s still work to be done

One goal that Williams has tried to achieve over the past eight years is creating a recreational space for young people to enjoy, such as a sports facility, a bowling alley and a movie theater.

“I’ve been pitching it for eight years, and I’m still not getting to it yet, but I’m not giving up on it,” she said.

When she entered office, she said she wanted to create more unity in the area, and although she believes she did, she thinks it’s an ongoing goal.

“It’s going to take all of us in order to be able to get things done,” she said.

This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.