Decision 2024: Meet Mayor Lester Miller, candidate for Macon-Bibb Mayor
Early voting begins Monday, April 29 and ends on Friday, May 17. Election day is Tuesday, May 21.
MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Macon-Bibb Mayor Lester Miller is seeking reelection in the upcoming race for mayor.
He’s facing challenger Shekita Maxwell.
41NBC’s Tucker Sargent spoke with each candidate ahead of the May 21 election.
Candidate name: Lester Miller
Running for: Macon-Bibb Mayor (2nd term)
Campaign website: lesterformayor.com
TUCKER: Decision 2024: We’re getting closer and closer to election day. Macon-Bibb Mayor Lester Miller nice enough to join us here today. Thanks for joining us.
LESTER: My pleasure.
TUCKER: I interviewed you four years ago on Zoom. It was during Covid; it was a little different time. Nice to have you here in person today.
LESTER: Things have changed.
TUCKER: So you told me four years ago your goal—your number one goal—was public safety, and tackling that and improving that. Now that you’ve been mayor for several years, where do we stand on public safety?
LESTER: Well, it’s still one of the top priorities. I think we’ve exceeded the goals that we had set out. I’m not sure how familiar you are with our Macon Violence Prevention program, but Macon Violence Prevention program is a community-led and a sheriff-led approach. Recently, we were awarded the State Visionary Award for the Macon Violence Prevention program out of all the cities in Georgia for large cities. That’s a great accomplishment. We’ve funded about $40 million in incentive pay for our deputies and public safety, hired 250 new deputies, which is exciting, and we’ve had a lot of rates dropping down. Our homicide rate’s down over 40 something percent, but our teenage violent crimes are down about 70 percent, so we’re excited about that. We never can be too complacent, so we still have a long ways to go, but we’ve made some great strides in public safety so far.
TUCKER: So you said it’s still one of your top priorities. Do you have a new priority if you’re elected again—a new top priority?
LESTER: Well, I would say that things kind of come and go as far as what the priorities are. Economic development is huge in our community. We want to make sure that we lift everyone up, including our poverty rates. One way to do that is to create new economic development for jobs so our kids can get those jobs. That’s one way that we can provide a livable wage. So that’s going to continue to be a priority of ours, along with blight and several other things to get our house in order.
TUCKER: What is your elevator story, or pitch or your thing to get those things coming into Macon?
LESTER: Well, we like to tell people the most affordable city to live in the United States, and we are. We have a great quality of life with multiple things to do. We’re in the center of the state. It doesn’t cost you very much to live here. We’re soon to be home to the first national park in Georgia. We’re excited about that. A lot to offer people: good jobs, good fellowship and good people.
TUCKER: You spent quite a bit of time on the Board of Education, but now that you’ve been mayor for several years, is there a significant lesson you’ve learned being the mayor of the city that you can apply and use that in the next term?
LESTER: I think so. I think one thing you learn is how to do a collaborative effort to work with everybody. The school board’s a little bit different. You have certain divided responsibilities that you have on the school board as a member. With the mayor, you have a lot more flexibility. We’re a strong mayor form of government. You have a lot more input into the budgets. I was fortunate over the last 12 years to manage budgets from $200, $300 million dollars per year without incident, so I think that’s something that kind of gives me a leg up, but also we learned a lot from the school system we carry over here, to know how important, we must all work together at the same time.
TUCKER: You can’t please everyone. There are obviously people out there that don’t want you to stay in office and are going to vote for your opponent. What do you have to say to them to maybe try to sway them and say, ‘Vote for me’?
LESTER: Well, I hope that our actions speak for themselves. It’s not often that you get two State Visionary Awards. One, the MVP program we talked about, the other for the Brookdale Resource Center. The first mayor ever to be named top 100 Most Influential People in Georgia. I think that brings good business to Macon-Bibb County. A billion dollars in private investment over the last several years and 1,500 new jobs. That separates us from anybody else. 700 houses, as of tomorrow, will be demolished. Did I mention the 50% tax cut, millage rate? We were at about 22.7 when we got here, and now we’re at 10.78 in the millage rate. People are recognizing they’re getting more money in their check at the end of the year.
TUCKER: The Macon Amphitheater, it’s up and running. Your thoughts on that so far?
LESTER: It’s been a win-win. We’ve had four different genres so far, probably about, I’d say close to 28,000 people have come to the amphitheater. For every 10,000 people that comes to the amphitheater, it creates about $3 million worth of economic impact for our city. The great thing about it is people are having a good time, good fellowship, been no issues there. At the same time, we’re bringing in good money, and we’ve hired about 150, 200 people, jobs there. We’re starting to see local businesses grow in the area, and they’re very excited about expanding their business. And we’ll see some new housing coming there, some new hotels, some new retail very soon.
TUCKER: Last question: We want to hit on downtown. It was a big topic last time. It’s still booming now as it was four years ago. Anything coming up soon that we should know about or that’s in the works in downtown?
LESTER: Well sure. We’ve talked about the Macon Health Club. We got that coming back. A couple more hotels in the area. A lot more residents coming, especially on Cherry Street. We’re building some things right behind City Hall. We’re getting rid of that albatross—the thing called the Hilton hotel. That’s going to be a great investment. I ask people to give me the same trust that we’ve built at the mall. That thing’s going to come down. We’re going to make money off that. It’s going to allow that whole area, including the river, to develop, and you’re talking about several hundred million dollars worth of investments there, so there’s a lot still to go. And we can’t forget about the East Bank Project. Just across from the river there, across from the Coliseum, what we believe in doing a new additional entrance into the national park. We’ve got about 21 acres there, going to be a $350 to $400 million project, which is going to help all of east Macon and all of Macon in general.
TUCKER: Mayor Lester Miller, candidate once again for another term. Thanks for joining us today.
LESTER: My pleasure.
Snippets from both candidates’ interviews will air on 41NBC News. Interviews will also be posted in full on 41NBC.com on the following days:
Thursday, April 25 – Lester Miller
Friday, April 26 – Shekita Maxwell
Early voting begins Monday, April 29 and ends on Friday, May 17. Election day is Tuesday, May 21.
