Reichert confirms next run for Macon-Bibb mayor

Macon-Bibb County Mayor Robert Reichert, two years into an abbreviated three-year term as the consolidated government’s first leader, said Thursday that he will seek another four years in office in 2016.

“Yes, we are already beginning to gear up for a run,” he said in an afternoon meeting with The Telegraph’s editorial board.

Reichert was elected mayor of Macon in 2007 and re-elected in 2011. He pushed hard for merging the city and county governments, successfully persuading voters in 2012 where four tries in the previous 80 years had failed. He then won the 2013 race to become countywide mayor.

The first Macon-Bibb mayoral term was set at three years, to bring municipal elections in line with the presidential election cycle. The 2016 election is for a full four-year term. Should Reichert win and serve it out, he will have presided over Macon for 12 years.

But before the campaign comes the budget, and Reichert acknowledged that upcoming financial choices are stark. He said he is “committed and dead set” to removing the second half of the former city property tax, thus equalizing property taxation countywide. That would take an additional $9 million from an already bare-bones budget, though.

The consolidation charter mandates a 5 percent cut in the upcoming fiscal year from the total city and county general fund budgets, but that cut was already exceeded in last year’s cutbacks due to the drop in city property tax revenue.

“It’s not the 5 percent that’s driving the train,” Reichert said.

The new fiscal year starts July 1, and a balanced budget must be approved by the end of June. Reichert said he will present his budget plan to commissioners May 12. He didn’t name likely specific cuts, but he noted that 80 percent of the budget is payroll and benefits.

“We’ve got more employees than we do money,” he said.

The “most humane” way he can try to cut those costs is to offer incentives for longtime employees to retire, he said. There are 360 employees eligible to do so, with the bulk in the Fire Department and Sheriff’s Office.

“All we need is 200,” Reichert said. Though savings would be mitigated by the need to hire some replacements, 200 retirements might reduce the budget by about $2 million, he said.

Once through the budget, though, Reichert predicts a bright outlook for Macon-Bibb as a whole. Groundbreaking on a connector road in his long-planned Second Street Corridor, linking the downtown stretch of Second with Little Richard Penniman Boulevard, will come in two weeks, he said. Work should take 16 to 18 months.

Soon $10 million in bonds will be issued to fight urban blight, helping to tear down 4,000 abandoned houses. More money to fight blight will probably be on the next special purpose local option sales tax project list, Reichert said.

He’s counting on the Second Street Corridor and related projects, plus the reopening in May of Amerson River Park and possible designation of Ocmulgee National Monument next year as a national historical park, to help fuel the sense that Macon-Bibb has “turned a corner.”

“Just like pessimism is contagious, so is optimism,” Reichert said.

One feature of the new Second Street is to be Mid City Square, at the intersection of Second and Pine streets.

Three of those corners were available and are being cleared, but the fourth is home to Wilson Electric Co. Owner Roger Wilson and his family have repeatedly said they don’t want to sell the property and move.

Reichert said he doesn’t plan to force Wilson out, but that only one of the company’s three buildings -- a warehouse -- is actually needed for the square. He’d like to find Wilson another suitable warehouse nearby, leaving the other two buildings next to the new square, he said.

To contact writer Jim Gaines, call 744-4489.

This story was originally published March 19, 2015 at 6:26 PM with the headline "Reichert confirms next run for Macon-Bibb mayor ."