02-03-07 Franklin charms Rotary
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Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, has been known to charm a crowd, and the Roswell Rotary Club was no different at its weekly meeting Jan 18.
Franklin was the guest of Mayor Jere Wood, who said he was impressed the first time he met her.
"I was at the monthly meeting of the Atlanta Regional Commission, an event her predecessor [Bill Campbell] had never attended. I wondered how long after her election before things calmed down and she would make an appearance," Wood said. "Well, she hasn't missed one yet."
Franklin, now in her second term, has made her reputation as a politician who is willing to take on the tough issues. Perhaps the toughest was taking on the abysmal Atlanta sewerage system and turning that around, convincing Atlanta residents to raise taxes to do it.
But her slickest piece of politicking may have been when she raised $30 million in private funds to purchase the Rev. Martin Luther King papers, which allowed them to be maintained at Emory University.
"I didn't know what to do, all I knew was I didn't have $30 million," she laughed. |
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