Perry Your City Program yields 23 graduates

23 Perry residents graduated from the city’s Your City Program. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, each graduate was call by name and handed a certificate; they posed for a photo with Mayor Randall Walker as well.

The program is a bi-monthly dynamic program held the first and third Thursday of each month. According to the press release, it’s designed to give Perry citizens an opportunity to learn about their local government and how to be an active and involved community member. It’s also meant to familiarize residents with government services, functions, programs and activities. It also enhances residents’ ability to communicate effectively with local officials and city staff and with visitors in an ambassador-like interaction.

Over a 7-week span, the program is centered around six strategic city topics such as city leadership and government, economic and community growth, a high quality of life, essential local government services, a safe community and an informed and engaged community.

Participants met with government agencies and learned the general operations and goings on of each. Local business owners Penny Stapleton and Angie Cline had rave reviews about the program and recommended it to every Perry resident.

“You [residents] really need to do this,” said Stapleton “It’s amazing, it’s fun, it’s informative [and] it’s engaging.” Stapleton says she was interested in the program both because she owned a business (Daisy Patch Flowers) and because she was curious about the city’s inner workings. “I believe our council does an amazing job to get deeper into how things run and their role in it was a big interest.”

Cline, owner of Central Computer Services, LLC., said the program offers imperative insights into how and why the city makes particular decisions that not everyone agrees with. “You see the one side, but you don’t see why they do what they do. You just hear things about, ‘Oh, they did this and they did that’… that’s why I took the class, so that I could see the other side.”

Stapleton continued saying her biggest takeaway from the experience was the in-depth look into the city government. She said it shattered her mind’s view of what really took place in the city. “It is so much more intense and in-depth, which makes them even more amazing to me.”

For more information on the Your City Program, contact communications manager Tabitha Clark at 478-988-2760 or email her at Tabitha.clark@perry­ga.gov.

The council approved the release of $62,366 from the downtown improvement restricted account for the Downtown Development Authority’s pole relocation project along Commerce Street.

Council was introduced to three ordinances at Tuesday’s meeting: an ordinance to adjust the fiscal year 2020 operating budget, an ordinance amending the transient occupancy tax (hotel motel) and an ordinance adopting the Georgia Municipal Employees Benefit System’s restated and defined benefit plan.