WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Early voting begins Monday in Warner Robins to decide who will replace former Post 1 Councilman Daron Lee. Lee resigned from his post back in October, citing family health issues.
Now, David Reid, Cathy Harless, Derek Mack, and Jeffrey Walker are vying to take his place.
Walker did not participate in our interview due to an illness.
Reid has worked in business management for the last 30 years. He's lived in Warner Robins with his family for the last 21 years. In just the last three years, he has amassed 8,000 followers on his Facebook page 'Enough is Enough,' where he keeps track of city business.
"I think I've done as much as I can as a regular citizen by running the page and moderating the page. I need to take it to the next level," says Reid.
Mack graduated from Northside High School in 1987 before joining the military. He returned to Warner Robins in 1995 to work on Robins Air Force Base. Now, he's on the team that works on F-15s.
"I want to serve the city at a greater capacity where I can have real effects than can affect all the citizens of Warner Robins."
Harless is originally from Athens, Ga, but moved to Warner Robins in 1984. The daughter of two immigrants, she's now a civilian employee on Robins Air Force Base.
"I enjoy being a part of this community. I know at one time they had a female voice there, Carolyn Robbins. She's very well known. Her and Henrietta McIntyre as council members there. I think that's really my primary reason in running and hoping there will be another... a chance again to have a female voice on the council," says Harless.
Blight:
Reid, Harless and Mack all say blight is a big issue facing the city.
"We need to clean our city up. Increase our image. Invite people in to see it. We need to improve our code enforcement. I don't think we have enough code enforcement officers or personnel to handle all the problems we currently have in our city," says Reid.
Mack cites people coming in and out of the city as a contributing factor.
"We have a lot of out of town landlords that are not keeping up with their properties and their overgrown brush, dilapidated buildings. We need to get rid of that blight and introduce and implement a plan to get small businesses and mom and pop businesses."
Harless says it would take a lot of work.
"We'd have to get some outside resources like the Georgia Department of Community Affairs to help us and train us to help us see what we can do to get some grants to help there."
Law enforcement:
The candidates also say they want to continue to support law enforcement any way they can.
"Getting the resources to our police and fire departments that they need so they can keep our city a safe city," says Mack. "We need to be able to pay these officers the substantial wages, so they can at least earn a good living and want to stay and honor our city with the services they provide."
Harless says they need to work on the turnover rate.
"We got a lot of people moving here in this county and the sheriff's department and the police department are working great together, but they can only do so much with the amount of police officers employed," she says. "We need to help with their salaries. Not necessarily with their equipment and their supplies, but that's expensive."
Reid says it's all about building their tax base.
"We build our tax base and our enterprise funds, which is water and natural gas, sewer, we can then afford to budget and pay for more police officers, fire fighters, first responders. We are drastically behind and have been for over two decades now," he says. "We need to begin a plan to add three to five officers per year."
Economy:
Mack says he sees an economic divide in the city.
"If you look at the layout of Warner Robins and how it's growing and how it's developing, one side of town is being left behind," he says. "I want to create a culture where every citizen in this city, regardless of economic base, has a voice that is heard."
Reid says he thinks that is an easy fix moving forward.
"The economic divide could be cured by inviting business and industry in to our town that have have been coming to Macon-Bibb County, Peach County, they're moving in to Perry. They're just not moving into Warner Robins and I believe if we fix that, we'll improve our employment and a lot more people will have a better paying job. They won't have to worry about trying to get on the base."
Harless says there's a reason these new businesses are being built where they are.
"There has been an economic divide, but that's mainly because of the interstate. You've had I-75 and all the businesses, you, know the traffic is coming down I-75."
To strengthen the economy and the work force, Reid says the city needs to open its doors.
"We have Robins Air Force Base, we're working on our fiber high speed internet connections. We have some of the best citizens around, highly educated," he says. "We've been a little mis-focused and misguided the last few years in what we're trying to invite in to our city. We've built a couple apartment complexes, but we haven't added any jobs. If Amazon moved here instead of Macon-Bibb, we would've added over 120 jobs here."
Mack agrees that the fiber-optic cable network will help bring industry into the city.
"The internet service in the city is running at a snails pace. If we hook that fiber optic unit up to three gigabytes, it would exponentially increase our internet time, it would be attractive for other industries to come in here," he says. "I would like to implement and introduce a lot of economic industry and development in the city with tangible wages where people can earn a living because a lot of people want to stay here because they love the city, but they can't earn a good living unless they work on the base and not everyone is military-oriented."
Harless says the city needs to be open minded about different economic growth possibilities.
"Support the Economic Development Authority and just be open to the possibilities that can bring businesses here and not to be the one that wants all the money that comes from those businesses coming from out of state or outside here because we need to share this with Peach County, we need to share it with South Bibb County or Bibb County in general."
Robins Air Force Base:
All three candidates also have ideas on how to strengthen the city's relationship with Robins Air Force Base.
"I know that the city of Warner Robins and the base have a good relationship. It could get better through communication lines in regards to the people that are in charge of thing, says Harless.
Reid says improving the area around the base would be good for everyone.
"I think we have a very strong and good relationship with Robins Air Force Base. I think we could improve it by improving our safety, improving our image and improving the amount of businesses we have coming in to support the base and for the base to support them."
"If we're not a strong community, they can close this base down and move it. Close the workload and move the workload to another air force base," says Mack. "We need to work with the commanders of the base along with the mayor and find out what it is that we can do to help their workload to make their job easier."
Reid says the first thing he wants to work on if elected is continuing to open communication between the city and the community.
That means revamping the city's website and adding more information, along with continuing to stream city meetings online.
Mack also wants to implement more after school programs for young people in the community.
Harless is eager to figure out a plan to fight homelessness in the city and implement a city administrator.
Jeffrey Walker is also running for the seat, but did not want to participate in the interview due to an illness. However, he did say he supports law enforcement, having a city manager in place and strengthening the relationship with the base.
Early voting begins Monday February 22nd and election day is March 16th.
During early voting, you'll have three places to cast your vote: The Board of Elections office in Perry, the Houston Health Pavilion Conference Center and the Roy H. "Sonny" Watson building at Central Georgia Technical College.
All three locations are open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
You have until March 12th to vote early.