Artificial intelligence should save Georgia cities time, earn residents' trust, and eventually disappear into the background. Those were the answers three city elected officials gave Friday, Aug. 14, during a panel discussion on how local government is putting the technology to work.
The panel closed the morning session of the Council for Quality Growth's "The INTERSECTION: Quality Development Conference" at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Theater. Amol Naik of Resurgence Strategies moderated. He was joined by Mableton Mayor Michael Owens, Atlanta Councilmember Matt Westmoreland and Woodstock Mayor Michael Caldwell.
Mableton: Policy Before Pilots
"AI is not magic pixie dust," Owens said. "It is a tool." Managing that tool starts with policy, he said. Mableton adopted an AI governance policy, wrote it into the employee handbook, then added training. He said cities cannot wait for the perfect moment. "There's no green light that's going to go off," he said. "You have to jump in at some point. It's not going to get any better the longer you wait."
Owens said up to 80 percent of permit applications arrive missing information a reviewer needs, which forces staff to chase down the applicant before work can begin. An automated check that confirms every field is complete would remove much of that delay.
Institutional memory is another gain, he said. Mableton is three years old, so zoning decisions inside its limits were made before the city existed. Staff loaded that history into a secure model, and Owens said he can now ask what was decided on a property in 1994 before he votes on it in 2026.
Woodstock’s Approach
Caldwell said the private sector habit of failing fast does not translate to city hall. A company that fails badly can go out of business, he said, while a city that fails badly still opens the next morning and its residents live with the consequences. "We don't get the opportunity to disappear tomorrow, no matter how badly we screwed up," he said. Even so, Caldwell said the greater danger is being too timid. Woodstock lets departments experiment with tools on their own while the city centralizes the budget and performance review in the CIO's office.
Caldwell also drew a line between paperwork and decisions that go before a council. Ministerial and routine approvals should move as fast as possible, he said, but zoning and planning cases are different. The time a case spends pending is time residents use to learn about it and prepare to speak. If AI compresses that window to days, elected officials will have to build pauses back into the process on purpose.
Atlanta's Model
Westmoreland chaired Atlanta's artificial intelligence commission, which began in May 2025 and finished its work this May. Naik called its report the best local government AI work in the country.
Westmoreland described the goal as a way to "innovate without suffocating." The council set broad values on transparency and privacy and left frameworks and training to the administration, then allowed departments to innovate within those limits. Commission meetings were open to the public, he said, and the city wants residents to know when it is using AI and to be able to raise concerns. A quarterly advisory board, also open to the public, now continues the work, "because it never stops."
Measuring Success
Asked what success would look like by 2030, Westmoreland said the measure is saved time, from faster permits to water lines flagged before they break. "What I hear from citizens and businesses alike is time," he said.
Owens said trust is his measure. "Can you trust that the city is doing the best thing, in the best interest, to improve quality of life for residents," he said, and delivering services in a way that is ethically sound.
Caldwell said success will look like nothing at all. "When city governments are doing their job extremely well, you don't think about us," he said. "And when AI works, you don't realize it's happening."