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Welcome to The Foster Friendly Podcast. We’re bringing foster care closer to home by sharing stories from the front lines. We're talking with former foster youth, foster parents and others who are finding unique and powerful ways to dramatically improve the experiences and outcomes for kids in foster care.
The Foster Friendly podcast is brought to you by America’s Kids Belong, a nonprofit that helps kids in foster care find belonging in both family and community.
Brian (00:01.208)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I'm your host Brian and with I am with my nonpartisan co-host Travis and the reason he's nonpartisan is he knows how to work with political people on the left and on the right. And today one of our guests is Mayor Tommy and he in fact, I don't even know.
Travis (00:08.986)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (00:30.466)
what party you're a part of. And I guess it doesn't really matter to me because I love what you're doing. And so.
Mayor Allegood (00:37.093)
Well, thank you. Let me make a comment, Brian. You know, in Georgia, in most municipalities in Georgia, there's not an R or D in front of the name on the ballot. So at this level, you're running as a nonpartisan. And I would hope and pray that the citizens in our city would not necessarily know how I vote for who I vote for.
Brian (00:48.968)
is that right?
Travis (00:49.594)
Mmm.
Mayor Allegood (01:00.132)
or where I stand ideologically, but would just see my heart.
Travis (01:00.474)
Ha
Brian (01:05.55)
Well, apparently they do and they like what they're seeing because Mayor Tommy Ali Good, he's been leading the city of Atworth, Georgia since 2002. This is his fifth unopposed term. People see him and they're like, I'm not running against that guy. so, during those over 20 years, you've seen the city.
Travis (01:06.084)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis (01:16.547)
Mmm, man.
Travis (01:25.434)
hahahaha
Brian (01:33.826)
more than double in this population, is that right? That's amazing.
Mayor Allegood (01:37.468)
actually two and a half times.
Brian (01:40.376)
Two and a half times. and then during that time, you are now leading a campaign called the Quality of Life campaign. And I would love to hear a little bit about that. But before we do, we're do a little icebreaker with you. And so just for fun, what is a little known fact about you? A hobby or a strange fear or something that people might not necessarily know about you?
Mayor Allegood (02:09.468)
I'm a really good pickleball player.
Brian (02:11.662)
AHHHH
Travis (02:12.247)
nice!
Mayor Allegood (02:14.404)
And only the people that play against me know that.
Travis (02:17.818)
I should send my son down there. He thinks he's pretty good.
Brian (02:19.144)
hahahaha
Brian (02:24.974)
So had okay pickleball is all the rage. Had did you take play tennis before? Like how'd you? How'd you get into pickleball?
Mayor Allegood (02:34.844)
Yeah, I was a tennis player, a pretty good tennis player. But off and on for years, I was a pretty avid runner. And as I got older, I stopped running and started running up and down Kennesaw Mountain, a Civil War historical site here right nearby in northern Atlanta. And then I had an injury doing that. And I said, you know, I'm 70 years old. I probably ought not to be doing running up and down Kennesaw Mountain and keep falling.
Brian (03:03.458)
Hahaha
Travis (03:03.829)
Hahaha!
Mayor Allegood (03:04.751)
And so I decided to play start playing pickleball and actually kind of used my agility, my tennis skill, everything just kind of combine those things to to be able to play a pretty good game from my age.
Brian (03:20.094)
Nice, I'm impressed because I'm 10 years younger than you and I'm not agile at all. just I wake up every morning thinking I must have been in a fight last night. So in the middle of the night, maybe I need to play pickleball and loosen up. Yeah, all right, game on mayor.
Travis (03:37.282)
Next time you're in Georgia, I wanna see this matchup and we'll broadcast this. I really gotta see that.
Mayor Allegood (03:44.956)
Come on down.
Travis (03:45.124)
But come on down. my gosh, that's great. Well, a little bit more personal too, as well. It's just, if you'd share a little bit more about yourself and family and kind of what led you into becoming mayor in 2002.
Mayor Allegood (03:58.908)
Well, that's a really good question. You know how you always tell God that there's certain things you're never gonna do. And one of my never gonna do list was to ever be involved with in any type of elected capacity. I always kind of for the longest time thought that people that were elected at any level were doing that for personal gain. They were doing that to gain advantages and.
and that many people just weren't honest. And so I never wanted to really do that. We moved here. We bought an old historic home. And at the time, our population was about 9,000 people in our city. And there was nothing here. There was nothing going on. And I was trying to buy some property. City council was not being cooperative. And I went home one day, one afternoon, and I said, you know, to my wife Carol, I said, you know, we're going to have to move because this town.
Nobody wants to get anything done. Nobody wants to be a place that will foster growth and economic development. And she said, well, she said, there's an election coming up. Rather than just complain about it, you've always said, why don't you be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? Well, I said, you know, I guess I will. Went down, signed up, and just, it was the only time it was for city council.
Brian (04:58.178)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (05:22.376)
not the mayor's seat. It was the only time that I had opposition and it was an awful experience. I get elected and then after two years, I've decided that we have an opportunity to do something really special, to create a vision for quality of life and to actually create a destination. And so that's, I kind of backed into it and that's how I wound up being where I am today with a vision of quality of life, a quality of life that has made us
an extraordinary destination for business and for people, all kinds of people. We're a very diverse community. We're very, very, very inclusive. And we like to say that we've got something for everybody. And we've got a really great quality of life.
Brian (06:10.04)
Well, I think the first lesson our listeners need to take home is don't tell God what you're not gonna do, because he takes that as a challenge apparently, right? He does. I've also fallen into that trap of I'm not gonna do that and off to hundreds I live and things like that. So anyway, the quality of life. I would love to hear more about that. I understand that's kind of been your mantra and.
Mayor Allegood (06:18.652)
That's right, even God has a sense of humor.
Travis (06:23.362)
Ahahaha!
Brian (06:37.87)
And I would love to hear how that phrase has become more than just a saying, but is something that drives what you do.
Mayor Allegood (06:46.652)
Well, for me, it's everything about leadership in our city. if you think about the definition of quality of life, and the quality of life by its definition is to make life better, to make life better. So if you're gonna build quality of life, then you're gonna build a community where life is gonna be better, and you're going to look at the reasons that people move to your community. they make quality of life decisions.
Brian (07:03.15)
Okay.
Mayor Allegood (07:15.024)
The reason you live where you live and to live in the community that you live in, you probably made a quality of life decision. You didn't know it was a quality of life decision, but it had to do with the school system where your children were gonna go to school. It had to do with the reputation of the local government. It had to do with the reputation of the police department. Was it a safe city? It had to do with parks and recreation. People want parks and recreation opportunities and we have.
Brian (07:35.896)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (07:42.94)
two lakes and four beaches. We're the only city in Georgia that has these really unique parks and recreation opportunities and good city services, a reputation for good city services where your tax dollars, where you're gonna get your money's worth. So those are all quality of life decisions and we began to work and enhance every area. Coincidentally, those happen to be the services that we as a city deliver.
Travis (07:58.682)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (08:11.132)
So we're talking about delivering quality of life services. We're telling people and businesses that they're making quality of life decisions and we're gonna show them that they make good decisions and we have built quite a sustainable tax base through our quality growth that came from our quality of life. So it's quite a vision, quite a story. When we started out, we were one of six cities in our county.
Travis (08:11.418)
you
Mayor Allegood (08:37.862)
I always tell people we were the city that went from last place to first place as far as where businesses and people wanted to live.
Brian (08:46.7)
Wow. So give me an example or two of some of the couple of things that you're most proud of that changed over the past 23 years.
Mayor Allegood (08:56.86)
Well, part of the quality of life is in delivering all these different services. There have been milestones, certain things that happened down through the years. In 2010, we were nominated to be an All-America City, the National Civic League takes applications every year from, there's 22,000 cities in America, and many of those cities apply for this special designation where we...
in 2010, one of 25 cities that were chosen to compete, to be a quality of life. to do that, you had to have created three life-changing programs for people in your community. And we had done that. We had created the opportunity for young people. We had a really great mentoring program that we had created for kind of latch-key kids.
We created a program that took kids on field trips. We had a benefactor that's given us about a million dollars in the last 20 years and we take kids on all these really unique field trips that without the benefactor, the kids would have never been able to do. And then finally, in our county, we have about 20,000 children that have special needs. So we created a a field for kids with special needs to have.
Brian (10:10.573)
Hmm.
Travis (10:15.866)
Mm.
Mayor Allegood (10:22.236)
the opportunity to compete just like other kids. And then we took volunteers from the high schools and we kind of matched them up with special needs kids for seasons, for baseball, for kickball, and many other special needs programs that we've had. we chose to be the All-America City because of those three programs. And then in 2020, the...
Travis (10:38.893)
you
Travis (10:44.09)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (10:47.738)
National Civic League came back, they came, they asked us, how are you doing with these programs? Thinking we would probably say, you know, well, they've gone away, we don't do them anymore, or we've changed, and we said, no, we're still doing these. And they were so impressed with the impact, when they looked at the numbers of impact of children in our community. as I said, they're life-changing programs, and they have changed children's lives in our community. And so then they...
Brian (10:55.275)
Yeah, right.
Travis (10:56.268)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (11:15.558)
they inducted us into their Hall of Fame. there's only like 15 cities in America that are in the Hall of Fame. So what does that do? You'd say, well, Tommy, what does that tell you? Well, that tells us that we knew, as part of our quality of life, that we had become a loving, caring city. That was part of what attracted people.
Brian (11:18.7)
Huh?
Travis (11:19.652)
You
Travis (11:24.237)
Wow.
Mayor Allegood (11:42.918)
But that was the validation that we really were a loving, caring city. And that kind of set us on a trajectory that we're still on today to make sure that we do love people and that people know that they're welcomed here. We created a brand. Our brand right now is You're Welcome in Atworth. And that brand is, we have invested so much into the brand so that the brand is what people feel and think when they hear our name. We've got a really great reputation.
Travis (12:01.594)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (12:12.636)
And again, it goes back to the vision to build quality of life and adding all these components and being recognized nationally as an All-America city and then into the Hall of Fame. Those are really high points for us.
Brian (12:23.181)
Yeah.
Brian (12:29.075)
How many cities in the United States are there? You said 20. And how many are in the Hall of Fame?
Mayor Allegood (12:30.906)
About 22,000 cities.
Travis (12:33.173)
Dang.
Mayor Allegood (12:35.449)
Probably not more than maybe 15 or 20.
Brian (12:39.648)
Wow. Well, congratulations. Yeah, that's percent of a percent of a percent. So.
Travis (12:40.686)
Whoa, do the math on that.
Right.
Mayor Allegood (12:46.394)
You might Google it and it may say something else. And I always say, let me give you the caveat here. If when I say something, I really believe it, it's true.
Brian (12:54.03)
Right? Yeah, I heard you're the best city in the world. yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true.
Travis (12:54.806)
It's a motto.
It's true then.
Mayor Allegood (13:04.795)
believe it. See, I believe it, Brian. Thank you.
Travis (13:09.178)
That's hilarious. Well, thanks for sharing that. I love that too. kind of a really great 30,000 view of, of Acworth, your sort of your mayoral history and strategy, you know, just all of the stuff you've done. What's very, what I think we're going to pivot to now in the conversation really is this podcast is to look at foster care itself and posture. The podcast is called foster friendly. If we hone into that population and your time and sort of unpacking that a little bit.
Brian (13:17.261)
Okay
Travis (13:39.512)
Just bring us into how you kind of got involved with one of America's Kids Belongs major chapters, Georgia Kids Belong. How did that start? And then if you'd also talk about what does foster friendly mean to you?
Mayor Allegood (13:52.112)
Okay.
Well, as you might imagine, there's a personal story that's involved with this with me. People, think leaders that, community leaders that have connections, family connections and different types of connections tend to focus on initiatives in their community more when they have some kind of connection to that. for me, between the years 2012 and 2017, I was the
not only the mayor, but I was the director for the Cobb Community Foundation. So it's a community foundation. Through the community foundation, I had the opportunity to work with a really effective foster program in our community called Calvary Children. So I got to know those people really well. And there was someone that I met that, a crazy story, this...
this, I won't call it his name, but he was dying of cancer. He knew he was gonna die and he wanted to leave all of his money to foster kids. And so I went to meet with him and kind of awkward, you know, know somebody is gonna die and you're talking about what you're gonna do with their assets after they die. And it wasn't a huge estate, but it was pretty significant. It was significant enough.
to where we worked out a deal and he said, he said, I don't want anything. I'm gonna give the community foundation the money and you're allowed to use 6 % because the community foundation invests that money and you're allowed to use up to 6 % of whatever the earnings are every year. But I want it to go to, in this case, to Calvary Children's Home. So I had a chance to really get to know the people at Calvary Children's Home and I had the opportunity to realize what a gap.
Brian (15:35.288)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (15:50.812)
Even in our county, Cobb County, what a gap there are for services to help foster kids, kids that are in that program. So that gave me kind of a really unique opportunity to know about that and to be aware of the needs for the kids as well as needs for parents. Well, kind of fast forward in about four years ago.
after one of my pickleball games at our community center. walked out, I walked out, yes I am. I remember, I remember winning, so I must have won. So I walk out and Rebecca Radici, is with, she's the director for Georgia Kids Belong, they are in the community center doing some filming that day. And I'm just kind of walking by and I'm always asking, well, what are people doing? We have a big community center.
Travis (16:22.645)
haha
Brian (16:24.024)
where you won, obviously. Yes,
Travis (16:26.01)
Of course.
Mayor Allegood (16:49.594)
A lot of people coming and going. And I said, so I stopped and I said, who is this and what are they doing here? Somebody said, that's Georgia Kids Blonde. They are kind of the, their mission is to match up kids in the foster system and to find those kids with foster parents. And I went over and introduced myself and I was really fascinated with what she was doing that day. They were actually interviewing.
interviewing foster kids. And then they were going to go live in Georgia and go looking for potential foster parents that would be interested in the kids. And it was such a unique concept, different from Calvary Children's Home. I'd never seen anything like it. And I said, well, I'm really interested in this and I want to learn more about it.
Rebecca just won my heart. Those kids that day, I met some of the kids, went to the website and I said, you know, these people are doing some really great things. Right now today, we have about thousand children that are in the foster care system in our county. We're a county of about 780,000 people, the second largest county in Georgia out of 159 counties. So I'm thinking, you know, we've got a thousand kids.
Brian (18:12.278)
Mmm.
Travis (18:12.591)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (18:18.14)
It's kind of like the special needs. was very similar. When I found out that we had 15,000 children that had special needs and they were somewhere on that scale, that special needs scale. So helping to build a field and putting a program in was easy to do because what would it do? It would bring quality of life to those parents as well as to those children.
Rebecca did the same thing. She came along, she tells me this about this great program. And I'm thinking, wow, nobody else I know is doing this. And once again, it goes back to how can we make life better for those parents and for those children? It was a quality of life, an easy quality of life decision for me. So that's how I kind of backed into it. And we've we've done some really amazing things. We we now are the host for
an annual event where we bring potential parents together to meet children, but also to meet other parents, other foster parents who kind of give their testimony. And we've been really, really affected. And we also had the opportunity to go to our business community. We said, look, something that we thought would be really a great thing would be create incentives for foster parents to be able to get incentives to shop in our shops, eat in our restaurants.
and get a discount because they were a foster parent. so that's been really effective. We've got a lot of businesses involved with that program and have been able to really inspire other cities with a lot of the things that we're doing today.
Brian (20:06.03)
And the Acworth, mean, is not only the first foster-friendly city in your county, it's the first in the whole state of Georgia. And I really hope that other people who are listening hear what you're doing and get the same message out to other mayors. So what kind of response have you seen from businesses, churches, individuals when it comes to the foster-friendly idea?
Mayor Allegood (20:35.839)
the support because again, once again, I think we've fostered, we have a culture that's a loving, caring culture in the community. So we start really in a good place. I don't know that every community is gonna have that kind of a culture, but we do. And so it's really easy to go to our churches and say, hey, we have a gap in our community. We our churches to help us fill the gaps.
Brian (20:46.009)
Okay.
Brian (20:52.13)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (21:04.058)
Government is very limited as to what they can do and what they even can do well, but our churches, there's where the gaps, there's where the opportunity to fill our gaps. And we've knitted really close relationships with about 30 of our churches in our community. And we've been able to knit together with a couple of our key churches, and they have become actually partners.
Travis (21:08.878)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (21:33.308)
with Georgia Kids, along with Rebecca. And then we've added, I think today we have probably 30 or 40 different businesses that are signed up that are foster friendly. That wasn't easy when we went to our business community and Rebecca made a pitch about, here's what we do, here's our vision, our mission. And I stood up and I said, look, we're looking for partners that want to support these parents and to
Brian (21:44.76)
That's amazing.
Travis (21:45.838)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (22:02.63)
to help to promote this and we wanna have a reputation for being a foster friendly city. And we're gonna make you a foster friendly business and we just, had people sign up, it was really easy to do.
Brian (22:15.298)
That's awesome.
Travis (22:15.524)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (22:16.38)
Again, Brian, if you think about it, every community has gaps. And depending on the size of the community, obviously, I'm the mayor of Atlanta. I probably, with that larger population, I'm doing something a little different every day than Tommy Alligat, who's the mayor of Atworth. And I can have more of a hands-on effect in pick and choose programs that I know are going to change people's lives.
And Georgia Kids for Long is one of those programs.
Travis (22:49.139)
Yeah. Well, and what I love too, I heard you say this in another interview one time and it all kind of fits together, kind of again for the strategy of Atworth and what you're kind of showcasing here, but you talked about one time where to become a foster friendly city for you wasn't about the certification. was, this were your words. said, this is who we are. And I really love that because it's just, it's...
it's already fitting into the culture you've established. And so what is kind of just some messaging you'd have for other mayors or civic leaders, you know, maybe on the fence or just kind of learning about this, you know, and why they should look at their cities also becoming foster friendly.
Mayor Allegood (23:30.66)
Well, every city in America has foster children in there and you've got parents that are unbelievably courageous that decide to share these foster kids in their lives and for some period of time and even some of them even adopt those kids. the whole foster program, the whole foster kids program
I felt like was really not really understood well. if we, like most things, if you take some time to educate people and you can usually get people to cooperate and to become partners in your efforts there. I think when we started out that day that I saw Rebecca and I met those kids and I thought, what a genius idea to make these videos and to show them to potential parents around the state of Georgia.
What? I've never seen anything like that. And so I said immediately, we want to be part of that. We want to support that. We've got we've got kids that we know are in the program in our community. We've got parents. We want to support our parents. So in the beginning, we weren't thinking Georgia's first foster friendly city. We were just thinking about loving, caring, filling those gaps in like we were talking about. So so in the beginning, it was never about a certification. Really, it was Rebecca's.
idea that why don't, would you be a foster-friendly city? I said, sure. And we kind of backed into it. And then that was something else for us to talk about those milestones and the achievements, like you asked earlier about, you kind of think back over your time as being the mayor, things that stick out and becoming a foster-friendly city is certainly one of those milestones that once again validates
who we are, that we are this loving, caring city, that we have a culture that believes that it's better to give than receive.
Brian (25:39.736)
That's so good. So what would be your message, Mayor, to the business community, business leaders and managers, and why should they come alongside foster families and kids in foster care?
Mayor Allegood (25:56.86)
businesses have been, we have a very successful business environment in our community and our businesses are so often asking for how can we get involved where businesses come into the community. Just it just happened yesterday with somebody. They said, well, we want to get involved and I'll say we'll join the business association. And there's a lot of different ways and we kind of talked about some different things. So
Brian (26:10.879)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (26:24.304)
Are you interested in helping special needs kids? Would you be interested in foster kids? The programs there, understanding, supporting foster parents. We kind of give them a list of things. Are you interested in volunteering at one of our churches? Does that mean you have to go to church? Just means volunteering and being in our community. So businesses, it's kind of contagious because
Businesses see other businesses doing it and then they want to do that and it becomes something that's really easy for people to do. And then at end of the day, see people feel good when they give and they know that they've given monetarily or they've given their time and they've made a difference in somebody else's life. Everybody wants to feel that. If you can articulate that and come back and reinforce that with people, you can inspire people to give.
Travis (27:15.714)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (27:22.286)
even sometimes when they're not even thinking about giving. And that's what we've been able to do with our business community. We've been able to show them how they have made contributions that have become life changing to children in our community.
Brian (27:34.254)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I thought about the business community too. And I know that a lot of business leaders that care more about their community. It's not just about their bottom line, but they care about their neighbors and others in the community and those that are kind of falling through the cracks and they want, they want to help and they want their business to be part of the solution.
Travis (27:34.628)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.
Mayor Allegood (28:02.588)
Yeah, and there's a connection there. People that... We have a large, large shopping area and every retailer in the nation is in this large shopping area. And so that probably makes up a hundred national chain brand chains and whatnot. Those folks are not as interested as the 1,200 or 14 other.
Travis (28:02.99)
Yeah.
Mayor Allegood (28:29.68)
businesses that are in the community, that are part of the community, that want to make a difference. And so those are the people that, those are the business owners and business leaders that are connected. those are the people that are foster friendly businesses in our community. I've learned and I've watched this here in our community. Everybody wants to feel like that they're making a difference in people's lives.
Brian (28:34.658)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Brian (28:47.939)
Yeah.
Mayor Allegood (28:59.164)
And they want to be recognized for that. And we do a great job. Once a year at our State of the City presentation, I talk about, I had a slide for Georgia Kids Belong Us, and we had 400 people in the room, and I said, look here, look at this list back here. All of these businesses that are Georgia Kids Belong Businesses, and I called them out. I called those names out. they, know, many of them were in the room, they, later somebody said,
Brian (29:26.467)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (29:28.124)
Gosh, how did you remember all the names? I said, well, I had them all written down. I had them all written down and they were proud. They were so proud to be recognized as getting in it. If you have leaders that understand that it's not about them, but it's about simply making sure that you encourage people in the community and you inspire them to want to give, boy, you can get a lot done.
Travis (29:32.13)
Yeah.
Travis (29:56.45)
Yeah. Well, I was going to add to like, I talked to some foster moms one time about just raving about the foster friendly businesses in our community. And one of the points they said that sometimes we lose sight of as well is the connectivity that goes the other direction. And what they then said was, is that when they feel supported by these businesses, they inherently just want to also support those businesses and get the word out from their friends to support these guys who are seeing them. So.
I just love how it's also just kind of created that spark of connection, both directions out. Yep.
Mayor Allegood (30:27.196)
Definitely, definitely, Definitely. And you know, there's a there's something that happens too, is that we have other opportunities for people to give and to be partners. And some of those people that are on the Georgia Kids Belong Slide are also on the Baker Kids Birthday Bash on the Special Needs Kid.
Those people like that and all of a sudden you say, well, here's a business. It's a restaurant, a very successful restaurant. they're, gosh, they're involved with four or five different things. You know, I'm inspired now. If they can do it, certainly I can do it, but you gotta talk about it and you gotta recognize and you've gotta thank all your partners for helping to fill those gaps. And some gaps are big, some are not so big. But there's somebody in our community to fill every gap.
Brian (31:05.848)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (31:25.274)
We've watched this step.
Brian (31:28.142)
Well, Mayor, the thing that you've shared a little bit now and also before we started recording is you have done something that a lot of political leaders don't do much of, and I wish it would do more, use the power of their convening authority to kind of call a party and bring people together at the table and say, we need you. so it is my hope that a lot of
a lot of people out here who are listening, if you could get this idea in front of your mayor, because, and let their mayor know that they have this opportunity and special kind of authority, I guess you want to put it that way, like Mayor Tommy Alligood has of kind of calling the party, bringing people together.
and then inspiring them to be part of the solution. And so I hope today that through this podcast, there'll be other cities who are going to say, we want to do what Atworth has done.
Mayor Allegood (32:45.404)
You know, you used a word to unify just a minute ago. And if you asked me over the last 25 years from all my time serving our community, what's been the biggest challenge? And I would say, I don't have to think about it very long. The biggest challenge has been to keep our community unified, to keep it unified. One of the ways we've been able to do that is with
Brian (33:09.901)
Hmm
Mayor Allegood (33:14.266)
building quality of life, that idea that we're making life better for people is a unifying thing that actually pulls people together because we've been through a lot of seasons since I've been the mayor here. A lot of seasons we've had is, we've had the post 9-11 with the Great Recession, we've had a dot com bust economy, we've had an economy that
Brian (33:30.626)
Mm-hmm
Travis (33:38.852)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (33:43.42)
where real estate values went to heck in a hand basket. Then with the season of social unrest, the whole thing that in 2020 is we spent several years there watching all around America, communities just fragment and fall apart and tear down statues and march in front of city hall. And even today, we're still seeing those things happen. None of that's ever happened here. We have made sure, and I say we, I'm talking about our city team.
Travis (33:47.47)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (34:01.518)
Hmm.
Mayor Allegood (34:13.39)
as well as our city council members, we have made sure that we, in everything that we do, that we've unified, that we've communicated, we've built trust, and in doing so, it has made us, I believe, really approachable to be able to, when we have something like Georgia Kids Belonging, we wanna share that with the community. We've got credibility, we've earned that credibility, and people know about our reputation, and they know we wanna unify
and make life better, that we're building quality of life. And people have wanted to be part of that story. So unifying, that word is a big, big, big, big word for me.
Travis (34:51.759)
Hmm.
Brian (34:55.584)
And boy is it needed now more than ever. Holy moly. So that's a tough assignment, but it sure is a worthy one.
Travis (34:57.54)
Right. Hmm. Yeah.
Mayor Allegood (34:57.818)
More than ever.
Mayor Allegood (35:03.11)
But local leaders have the ability much better than people up in Washington. In Washington DC, people have a D or an R in front of their name. that can be automatically convoluted for trying to get ideas across. It doesn't happen at this level. And in most mayors that are gonna be watching this from...
Travis (35:04.526)
Hmm.
Brian (35:06.038)
Yeah. absolutely. Yes.
Brian (35:16.736)
automatically divisive.
Travis (35:18.074)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (35:20.62)
Mm-hmm.
Mayor Allegood (35:31.548)
from Main Street America, and that's what we are out here in Accord, Georgia, we're Main Street America. And most mayors probably are thinking about unifying their communities, keeping their communities safe, making life better for their citizens. And boy, it's just another easy way through Georgia Kids Belong or Alabama Kids, whoever you are out there to be able to do that.
Brian (35:32.152)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Brian (35:52.238)
Yeah.
Travis (35:52.931)
Brian (35:55.79)
Well, Mayor, thank you so much and very grateful. I'd love to come visit your city and meet you someday. I would recommend that you combine your passions, that you get a pickleball uniform and then send it to the Hall of Fame, the City Hall of Fame and ask them to retire your uniform because you're such an amazing pickleball mayor. So, the mayor of pickleball.
Travis (35:56.068)
Well said.
Travis (36:20.506)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Brian (36:25.602)
You
Travis (36:25.838)
Whole new category.
Brian (36:30.926)
Thank you so much. God bless you, Mayor.
Travis (36:31.249)
that's good.
Mayor Allegood (36:33.478)
Yeah, God bless you guys. Thank you for telling a great story and a meaningful story and so good to be with you again. Thank you. God bless you.
Travis (36:42.756)
Thank you.
Brian (36:42.872)
Bye. Thank you. Bye.