How Chattanooga and Mableton Are Seizing the AI Moment

We are at a historic inflection point where AI has the potential to help redefine national competitiveness and societal wellbeing. With cities on the frontlines of delivering the services that shape our lives, AI presents an immediate opportunity to act as a capacity builder, enabling city governments to serve their communities faster and more equitably.

To ensure local governments can seize this potential, Google has partnered with the U.S. Conference of Mayors to develop an AI Playbook that equips leaders with foundational steps and replicable examples for responsible AI adoption.

To bring the lessons outlined in the playbook to life, Cris Turner, Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google, spoke with Chattanooga, TN, Mayor Tim Kelly and Mableton, GA, Mayor Michael Owens about the ways their cities are seizing the opportunities AI presents. Chattanooga is already deep into its AI transformation, and Mableton is a newly incorporated city that's building AI-first from the ground up.

Cris Turner: Many municipal leaders are still evaluating AI adoption for their cities, but you have both committed to embracing AI now. What motivated you to lean into AI and digital transformation at this moment?

Mayor Kelly: My starting point coming into office was really informed by two things: first, the City had a long-standing commitment to open data that I was committed to preserving. So it occurred to me very quickly that we had better get at least as good as the most adept residents at using AI to analyze our own data for insights. Second, coming from an entrepreneurial background, Mitch Weis’s book “We the Possibility” made a big impact on me in underscoring the urgency for democratic governments to prove that we can solve people’s biggest problems again.That will require innovation, an area in which governments may struggle. That will require innovation, which government generally stinks at. So AI seems to be our best hope to act as a tool and a thought partner to accelerate and improve our pace of innovation.

Mayor Owens:  From a political and social standpoint, I believe AI will allow us to govern more effectively, efficiently, and equitably. A lot of cities are challenged from a budgetary standpoint, and as a city of 80,000 people and a very small staff, we are too. AI is a tool that allows us to punch above our weight, while still being fiscally responsible. It gives us the capabilities to scale operations and it directly improves how residents experience the city, by enabling us to provide faster response times, clearer information, and better service delivery. Additionally, from an economic development perspective, we are building a new city, and we see an opportunity to embrace AI and digital transformation as our competitive advantage; to attract like minded companies, entrepreneurs and developers to invest in Mableton.

Cris Turner: It’s clear you both personally believe in the opportunities of AI. Can you share how you approach establishing a culture of innovation more broadly within your team/government? 

Mayor Owens: Leadership is really important in this area. As mayor, I built this commitment to digital transformation, and my leadership team and I continue to champion it every day, especially as new people come in. When it's modeled from the top, it drives buy-in throughout the organization, and that’s the cornerstone for culture. It’s also really important to talk about and document your expectations around AI through policies, guard rails and use cases. For example, we have a documented generative AI policy within our HR policy handbook to ensure that every person coming into our team has an understanding of AI and our expectations around how to use it.

Mayor Kelly: I agree, leadership is really important here. It really has to do with setting expectations that staff will be creative and fearless in their approach to problem solving – and repeatedly giving them explicit permission to take the risks necessary to do so. I like to remind staff that there is often as much risk in the status quo as there is in the unknown, and that I’m more likely to be upset with them for doing nothing and defending the status quo than I am for trying something new and making a mistake. But it’s worth emphasizing: the cultural bent in government is always towards caution, so as a government leader you have to be relentlessly repetitive – and send no mixed signals – if you hope to change the culture.

Cris Turner: Let’s dive more into your vision: Mayor Kelly, Chattanooga has already tackled many challenges with the help of AI – from empowering workforce efficiencies, to improving public safety – what are your goals over the three years?

Mayor Kelly: I’ll focus on just a couple of priority domains where we are looking to see AI-driven transformation over the next few years: First would be the ability to ingest large amounts of resident feedback from various sources through all our current channels – such as phone, email, 311, text, website, etc. – and sort, collate and analyze it to look for trends and narratives that we can more proactively address. This will allow us to create a sort of “call and response” model that could vastly improve our community engagement strategy and keep a few loud voices from steering our decisions. Second, I want to focus on using AI to enhance our Smart City operations to offer better traffic management, public works operations, public safety and more. 

Cris Turner: Mayor Owens, Mableton is one of the newest cities in the US. How are you approaching selecting your first AI project?

Mayor Owens: As a small team, we have to be very intentional about what our capacities and capabilities are internally. To help identify the right opportunities to pursue, we start by asking ourselves four core questions

1. How does it improve a resident’s experience?
2. How does it save time, or reduce operational friction internally?
3. How can we scale it and make it sustainable over time?
4. Does it reduce risk, rather than introduce risk?

There’s a multitude of projects we could decide to dive into but my direction to my team internally, and my advice to other cities, is to ask these four questions first to see which one of those projects makes sense for you and your city.

Cris Turner: Let’s wrap with some advice for your peers: For other civic leaders, what is the single most important piece of advice you would give them around embracing and scaling AI?

Mayor Kelly: Success in this area begins by beginning. Civic leaders have to lead staff by example and aggressively encourage adoption and experimentation, while building in “bumpers” to mitigate risk. But beyond the pilot phase, success in scaling has to do with thinking strategically about the core problem, and then selecting the right set of tools and vendors to accomplish the task. And setting clear and realistic expectations up front is also very important. 

Mayor Owens: I agree, the most important step you can take is to start. AI is already being used in your city whether you've acknowledged it or not. Your employees, contractors and residents are all already using it. The worst position that a government can take is to pretend it's not happening.

Access the full AI Playbook here.