Walter Reynolds, currently serving as the District 4 city councilman in Milledgeville, has announced his candidacy for mayor in the upcoming 2025 municipal elections. With a background in local governance and deep-rooted connection to the community, Reynolds aims to bring a fresh perspective to the city’s leadership.
“The best way to describe my approach to leadership is by bringing the right people together, putting them in a room and finding consensus,” said Reynolds. “Leadership is about being out front and saying this is the way, this is where we are going. You have to have vision; you need to have an idea of what you want this community to be and spell out the ways you can achieve that.”
One of Reynolds’ key campaign priorities is infrastructure improvement and addressing ongoing challenges regarding economic development.
“I heard the mayor recently say that there is not enough space in the city for housing development. I don’t think we need to look at the county for more housing, I think that it would be great for the county to encourage more housing development,” said Reynolds.
“There are things that the city can do, we can look at incentivizing for permitting, we can look at dropping permits all together for new housing development.”
The issue of affordable and available housing has emerged as a central theme in the 2025 mayoral race, with residents voicing concerns about rising prices, limited inventory, and infrastructure constraints.
Reynolds does not want to rely on county-level expansion for the city’s housing needs, though he does support the county itself working to increase housing, as a substitute for city development. Removing financial barriers to encourage more new housing construction is something that he believes will help build the community.
In addition to economic development, Reynolds wants to get the city back to doing the fundamentals well.
“We have had issues with the water systems here, we are making progress with that, but the lessons that we have learned for that is that we have to invest in reliable infrastructure,” said Reynolds. “We have to make investments in our distribution system and our water plant.”
Reynold’s believes that one of the keys to growth in Milledgeville is communication.
“We have to be more transparent and better at communicating with our citizens when we have issues. These are not difficult questions with relatively simple answers,” said Reynolds. “The county has an excellent emergency management agency; they have tools available to help us get information out quickly. We can’t rely on putting out a press release or posting it on social media, because not everyone has social media. We need better ways to communicate with people if there is going to be a problem.”
Reynolds also stated that the city needs to move to doing business in the 21st century.
“There are ways to expedite the process of applying for a business license or an alcohol permit,” said Reynolds. “We need to reduce the man hours it takes and make it more cost efficient for the city to deliver that service. We need to determine what kind of establishments do we want in our downtown area and what kind of establishments we have too many of at this point.”
Reynolds said he wants Milledgeville to be remembered for its visionary leadership and long-term ambition as he aspires to make Milledgeville a model for other cities.
“I would love for people years from now to be calling on the leadership here in Milledgeville and saying, How did you guys do it?’” Reynolds said. “‘How did you solve the downtown parking problem, how are all your downtown business now full, and how did you meet the housing needs so quickly?’ At the end of the day, the entire purpose of local government is to make way for the people to be able to have their needs met.”