Chris Smith running for mayor: A new face for Perry

PERRY — The race for Perry’s next mayor has a challenger this year with Chris Smith, who announced his campaign in August. We sat down with him to discuss his campaign and plans if elected.

Brieanna Smith: Tell me a little bit about yourself. 

Chris Smith: Well, I’m born and raised here in Perry. I went to school in Valdosta, Georgia. After that, I worked in the corporate world for a little while. My grandfather started a business here called Utility Service Co., so I worked there for a little bit after college and decided the corporate world wasn’t for me.

I joined the Army, took off for about seven years. After I was done with the Army in 2018, I moved back here. I’ve been living and working here ever since.

Brieanna Smith: So what inspired you to run for mayor? 

Chris Smith: It’s something I tossed around for a while, the idea of running for office here, seeing people make decisions and thinking, “I have some ideas of my own.” 

My grandfather was pretty influential in the community here. His name was Frank Shelton. He owned Perry Volunteer Outreach. He had a lot of connections around here. He made a lot of friends who made decisions around here and and his teachings growing up kind of led me to have those ideas.

It’s something that I’ve got time and the freedom to do right now. So I figure, strike while the iron is hot. There’s an opportunity to run for mayor. 

A lot of times, the local political races are unopposed. People don’t want to get out and participate. So I like to give people an opportunity and have a choice in their elections as well.

A lot of times, when you don’t have an opposition, there’s no choice. So giving people choices is something that I feel is fair for the citizens here in Perry

Brieanna Smith: How is your campaign going so far? 

Chris Smith: It’s going quick. There’s a lot to learn, and many people to meet and talk to on a daily basis. So it seems like every day a lot of my time is already spoken for. The days go by super quick, and I’m trying to get around and talk to everybody as much as possible. 

It’s hard to gauge the actual results now that early voting has already started. We don’t have an exact number on who’s voted for who yet. So, that’s hard to tell.

But there’s a lot of excitement, I think, especially for an off-year election. It’s not a presidential election year, so people typically don’t participate as much. But it seems like this year we’re going to have pretty good participation. 

Brieanna Smith: There’s still quite a bit of time left. So, if you are elected, what are your priorities? And then how do you hope to achieve them? 

Chris Smith: I’m a very fiscally responsible person. I’d probably even categorize myself as frugal. So, I’d like to get in and make Perry a little more fiscally responsible, frugal, from my point of view, anyway. 

I know a lot of people share my opinion that growth has been rapid. I feel like we need to slow it down so we can get a hold on infrastructure planning for the future, roads. 

There’s a lot more that goes into just building housing and businesses. You have to set it up. And I feel like we are getting a little in over our toes at this point.

So I’d like to slow things down. Make sure Perry grows in a way that maintains the character people from here want to live here for. Perry has that certain character, that charm, as you’d say. And I’d like to keep that as we grow. I think one of the ways you can do that is to make sure the growth is well calculated. Make sure everything fits that characteristic.

Brieanna Smith: Right. You already alluded to this with the city’s growth, but how would you ensure that growth is under control? 

Chris Smith: Participation, not just from the actual building aspect. Developers should make sure they’re investing back in the community more than just the houses.

We have to make sure we plan forward if we’re going to build a lot of houses in a certain area. For instance, make sure the roads are going to be able to handle it before they actually get built, or we have a plan in place to improve those roads. 

Some of these are very small backcountry roads, and they’re putting a lot of houses on them. I’m not sure they can handle that yet. We need to have plans in place, or we should start improving those roads to make sure they can handle that type of work. 

And then it seems like every year or every other year, our utility fees and service fees go up. As the population increases and those fees keep going up, that tells me we’re getting less efficient as we get more people. 

So, we need to analyze that. Either revise or revamp the plan altogether and figure out why we’re actually paying more as we get more people. 

I feel like as more people come in, we should get more efficient. The fees should be shared among more people, and they should go down. So we’ve got to figure that out before we keep imposing that on the current residents.

We’ve got to consider current residents before we think about the people who want to live here. I’m glad people want to live here, but the people who live here come first.

Brieanna Smith: You’ve already alluded to this as well, citizens who are concerned about the rising cost of living. And, like you said, utility rates are a prime example of that. As mayor, how would you ensure city residents have an affordable place to live? 

Chris Smith: We’ve done a lot to add to lower-income-type housing. We also need to make sure that the infrastructure can handle that as we go. So, we’re going to do things like build up the infrastructure. We’re going to slow down the actual housing. 

Build the infrastructure so we can catch up and avoid stacking on top of those fees, as many of these fees are being passed on to the people to pay for these things.

We can slow down the growth and start catching up on the back end. Then we can continue growth again. But as of right now, we need to slow down and figure out where we’re spending, where we’re bleeding money, so we can catch up in those areas. 

Brieanna Smith: Sounds good. So now, moving on to another issue. People are a little bit more concerned about public safety. Crime has been a little bit quieter over the years, but this year, as kind of an anomaly, there have been several cases involving family violence. What do you think of the city’s crime rate? And if elected, how would you help enhance public safety? 

Chris Smith: You’re going to have certain crimes when you’re located on an interstate, and it’s just an inherent part of it. It brings in a lot of business to Perry, which is great, but it’s just part of the process of living next to the interstate. You’re going to have crime. So maybe focusing more of our public safety on areas next to the interstate. 

Now, as you increase in population, you’re going to get larger portions of domestic violence, breaking and entering. You’re going to get more instances of those crimes because you’re going to have more people. We’re going to have to analyze our departments to see if we need to increase their size or change how they handle patrolling and allocation to certain officers in specific areas.

Brieanna Smith: On the city side, what other initiatives are you excited about? 

Chris Smith: We have some parks that are being built, and our parks that already exist. Those are great. I’d like to promote them more and get use out of these parks before we start adding to them. It seems like we have a lot of underutilized space, as far as parks go. Let’s promote them. Once we see public interest, we can really add to them. 

I’m all about the parks as well. It’s great to have that for people. But we do need to make sure that people are using them before we keep dumping money into them. 

A couple of other things. I don’t consider myself a subject matter expert in things like fire protection and police safety. I’ve never worked in that line of work. I’ve worked in the military, quite a bit different.

But I know people who have. Bringing in subject matter experts, whether they work for the city or have worked somewhere else in the past, to get them to have their input so you can make an educated decision is key. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t. 

Find people who do know, consult with them, and then we can really focus the energy where it’s going to make the most sense. Like we were talking about before, in police, fire protection, these are projects that are probably going to come along with new fire stations and things like that.

So we need to get people who really know what they’re talking about to come in and advise the decision makers: myself, city council or public safety officials here in Perry. We can come together and really make a more efficient decision going forward. 

Brieanna Smith: By and large, why should Perry residents vote for you?

Chris Smith: I’m not here to tell people what to do. I want them to vote for what they feel like. I’m here to offer what I feel should be done for Perry: slow the growth, focus on infrastructure and fiscal responsibility, and ensure we keep up the pace in public safety and fire protection. If that’s something they like, then absolutely vote for me.

If you like the current pace of things with Mayor Walker, then vote for him. 

I’m not here to suggest what people should and shouldn’t do. I’m here to offer what I think should be done. And if that’s what you like, go vote for it.

Brieanna Smith: Anything else would you like to say to the community? 

Chris Smith: Perry’s been great. Everybody’s been real welcoming. Even people that I’ve met who support my opposition, they’ve been really nice and pleasant to work with. I’m glad I’m running for office in Perry. Other municipalities around here, the elections have gotten a little nasty, but here in Perry, it’s very cordial.

I’ve run into Mayor Walker a couple of times; he’s very cordial. That’s what really tells me Perry is a different community. You can have political adversaries in this town and still be neighbors, and that’s what makes this place great. 

That’s why ultimately, I was pushed over the edge to run for office here because I knew it wasn’t gonna be nasty. It wasn’t going to get out of control. This was going to be a very cordial election process, and so far, the people in Perry have absolutely lived up to that.

A lot of people are asking for new faces. If you want a new face focused on fiscal responsibility and making smart decisions, vote for me.

Visit Smith’s campaign website at chrissmithformayor.org. 

Early voting spans from Oct. 14 to Oct. 31. Election Day is Nov. 4.