About Teresa
Mayor Teresa Tomlinson was elected as the 69th Mayor of Columbus, Georgia on November 30, 2010 with 68% of the vote. On January 3, 2011, she was sworn in as the city's first female mayor. Columbus boasts a population of 189,000 and is home to Ft. Benning's Army Maneuver Center of Excellence—one of the largest military training bases in the world. Columbus, Georgia is also the home to several Fortune 500 companies, including Aflac and Nash-Finch. Mayor Tomlinson ran on a platform of utilizing the city's under-developed urban core and capitalizing on the city's tremendous economic development opportunities in the face of significant growth related to BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) among other issues.
Since taking office, Mayor Tomlinson has instituted a Copper Theft Task Force, which has resulted in a 47% decrease in copper theft in Columbus, Georgia (May 2011 through September 2011). She appointed and led a volunteer Alcohol Ordinance Advisory Board and worked with the city's ten-person City Council to update and broaden Columbus' alcohol laws to be more business-friendly and encourage innovation, growth and job creation, while protecting neighborhoods and citizens. Mayor Tomlinson also established the Save-A-Pet program for the Columbus Animal Care and Control Center, which program is based on the nine "No Kill" steps and seeks to increase the adoption rate of stray and abandoned animals, while decreasing (hopefully to the point of elimination) the euthanasia rate of animals due to capacity limitations.
In her first eleven months in office, Mayor Tomlinson has reformed the Muscogee County Prison to ensure the effectiveness and safety of the prison and to increase Correctional Officer morale. She has improved the city's Tax Assessor's Office, which was suffering from lengthy backlogs in complicated assessments, placing millions of dollars in previously unassessed properties back on the tax rolls.
Other successes during Mayor Tomlinson's mayoral administration include:
- Reigniting the discussion of Passenger Rail from Columbus, Georgia to Atlanta.
- Amending the governing ordinance of the city's previously controversial Public Safety Advisory Committee to allow for citizen review of complaints made against Public Safety personnel by accessing the existing Internal Affairs and Investigative units of the departments.
- Working with the city's Executive Management to fill key Director level positions with superior candidates in order to rebuild and evolve those departments after prior mismanagement.
Mayor Teresa Tomlinson moved to Columbus in 1994 from Atlanta and married Wade H. (Trip) Tomlinson, who was raised in Columbus. For 16 years she practiced with the law firm of Pope, McGlamry, Kilpatrick, Morrison and Norwood, LLC, where she specialized in complex litigation and was the firm's only female partner. She served from 2006-2010 as Executive Director of MidTown, Inc., a non-profit community renewal organization.
Mayor Tomlinson is a 1983 graduate of Chamblee High School in Atlanta, Georgia, a 1987 graduate of Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, and a 1991 graduate of Emory University School of Law, in Atlanta.