Meet the Atlanta City Council candidates: Marci Collier Overstreet for city council president

This November, the entire Atlanta City Council is up for election, including the council president position currently occupied by Doug Shipman, who will leave the role as this term ends. Candidates include Marci Collier Overstreet—an eight-year member of Atlanta City Council—and Rohit Malhotra—a longtime local civic organization leader. Each spoke with Atlanta Community Press Collective about the council president’s role and priorities to address.

This post covers responses given by Marci Collier Overstreet.

Answers are condensed for space.

Do you have questions you want ACPC to ask Atlanta City Council candidates? Email karina@atlpresscollective.com to let us know!

What makes the council president position important?

Overstreet: To continue the proven progress, a lot of big things that we’re working on, the direction of the city in general.

The council president really could have a say in what that looks like, to stay on track or change out those like-minded individuals and go with those that think differently.

For example, when we were doing the Public Safety Training Center, if the council president were to choose a Public Safety chair in the four votes of “No” or the 10 or 11 votes that were “Yes,” that would say we want to do something different as a city. I personally want to see a well-trained police department. So I would definitely choose a Public Safety chair who was pro-public safety and pro-training.

For all seven of our committees, do you want to stay in line with the last four to eight years, moving in the right direction, or derailing it by changing the views of our overall picture?

The president has the will to drive vision for the City of Atlanta. It’s not a slack role that some people think that it may be, like, “It’s no big deal: all you do is preside and appoint committees,” and that’s huge in itself. You really need a consensus-builder, which I’ve been on council for the last eight years.

What is your strategy for picking committee chairs?

My strategy is to go in the direction of vision. I feel that vision has been a safe city—that’s what we’re striving for: an equitable city, all things possible no matter where you live.

That, to me, looks like some work I’ve done in southwest Atlanta, making sure we have fresh food access. I went out of my way to do legislation to start a fund for our own fresh food access, if we’re not getting investors to buy and develop grocery stores exactly where we need them. Campbellton Road, it hasn’t had a grocery store in forever. This whole second term, I’ve worked hard to develop relationships and bring people to Campbellton Road. I flew out to Las Vegas to lobby every single major grocer in this country to just look at Campbellton Road. They’re not coming. I think that we need to have a municipal market fund on Campbellton Road.”

They worked with Invest Atlanta and Savi Provisions, a public-private partnership; we will have a grocery store at the corner of Campbellton and Delowe, Azalea Market. Anytime you see Azalea, you know that the city is subsidizing or partnering with the companies to make that happen.

My vision is an equitable one, that all sides of town are safe, not just pumping gas, but also walking to your parks. So I’m looking at sidewalks; I actually did the full citywide sidewalk study years ago.

Our parks should be equitably maintained. I’ve worked hard on that too with partnerships and relationships to make sure our parks are well maintained and updated.

I’m one of the authors of the legislation for the MARTA audit.

The vision needs to be clear, and aligned. The way you vote and have led over the last eight years should be evident. I think my track record will show just what my vision is and how I would navigate the chair appointments.

What is your position regarding the mayoral administration and the growing number of city employee complaints?

We would have to take that case-by-case. I’ve not read anything saying we were under investigation. I do know this came out of an ordeal with redoing some language in our Office of Inspector General. That was quite painful but necessary because I felt like employee rights were being trampled. And I was one of the authors—there’s only three of us—of OIG legislation.

My action, I’m very vocal, and I do it in the form of legislation, and speeches—I speak out loud about it.

What are your budget priorities for FY27 and beyond?

I’m looking at our transportation grid changing, us to raise capital projects, help people to what we—and when I say we, I’m a citizen too—we all voted for, a half-penny sales tax for MARTA to deliver transportation options to the city of Atlanta. And so, I will continue on with that journey. 

I don’t know how much you pay attention to our committee meetings or full council, but I’ve been very vocal throughout these eight years about delivery of projects or selection of projects or the lack of delivery of projects. And I will continue on with that. I just truly believe that our budget priorities should be centered around those things that we as a community have already agreed that we want.

I just think that our budget priorities should always, always, always lean in toward elevating our quality of life. And that’s what I’ve always gone for. And that means making sure we do have safe sidewalks, protected bike lanes, beautiful greenspaces, transportation options with our projects being delivered. Our budget should be toward making sure of our frontline workers, and that looks like: Our trash needs to be picked up on time, that their wages and benefits are always fair and better than the norm—that’s what they deserve.

Our ATL DLT should check in 311 and fill in those potholes immediately. I am still trying to get our communities to call in or text—we’ve got so many ways now that they can reach out to us, to let us know what issues are in our 311 system so that we can get somebody there to fill these potholes. Because that’s the best way to do things, instead of being mad about it, call them in so that we can get someone over there. We’re not going to know where all the potholes are unless you tell us. 

So it’s about accountability. And I just think that our budget should show that we believe in a nice, beautiful, high quality of life for everyone, for all sides of town in the city of Atlanta.

What impact do you believe your role and council can have related to federal use of local police departments for immigration policy enforcement? How would you approach this?

The city of Atlanta is a welcoming city. First of all, we deactivated ICE years ago—and I’m talking in the city.

However, I do know that we can be trumped in that aspect, because state overrides city and federal overrides state, so that’s a concern. We know that. But as a city, we’ve already laid down our views on that. And I would certainly not go against that at all. I have no desire to criminalize anyone in the city of Atlanta from an immigration lens. Unless they’re committing crimes, and we know what crimes are: carjackings, burglary, like the real crimes—that’s different. And I would want that for anyone, whether American-born or not.

No one should be criminalized just because they weren’t born here in Atlanta or the United States.

How do you plan to adapt CVI and homelessness initiatives with decreased federal funding?

What you have to do there is hold everyone accountable. Our tax base in the city of Atlanta is divided into different pots. APS has their pile of tax dollars; Fulton County has theirs; and the City of Atlanta has theirs—has ours. And I would say that would have to have the right people at the table taking care of their business, just like we take care of it. 

Even though homelessness is not in our charter—that is Fulton County; they get their own tax base. So they really should actually be leaning in more. So that’s how I would handle that. I would make sure that everyone is at the table helping, doing their part, because it’s going to take all of us. Our budget, the City of Atlanta’s budget is for city services, and it by no means will be able to eradicate homelessness. So we really have done a yeoman’s job of using our funds for crossing the boundaries, I believe, of what someone else should be doing. Because we understand how important it is for, again, quality of life for everyone.

And we want to help. We want to do our part. But we need everyone to lean in on this. We don’t want to be the only people at the table taking care of issues that really aren’t even in our charter. So we want help from everyone, especially those that are responsible for it. That’s the state; that’s the county; that’s everyone—that’s federal level. Homelessness is not a municipal-level budget situation. We will never eradicate it with our budget.

Marci Collier Overstreet’s experience

·        Benjamin E. Mays High School

·        B.A., journalism, Georgia State University

·        Atlanta City Council member, District 11

·        City of Atlanta Pension Trust Board trustee

·        Atlanta Commission on Women appointee

·        Mommy Knows Best LLC founder/CEO, author, talk show host

·        Auxiliary to the Atlanta Medical Association board chair/president

·        Fulton County Core Services and Governance Task Force member

·        League of Women Voters member

·        Council of Negro Women – Greater Atlanta member

·        Atlanta City Council – Atlanta Public Schools Joint Committee member

·        Delta Air Lines flight attendant