I recently read a book called Mattering, and the author makes a point that sounds obvious until you actually think about it: you can belong to a group and still feel like you don't matter. You can be in the room and still feel invisible.

That idea has stayed with me because the gap between belonging and mattering is exactly where city government lives. And it is our job, every day, to close it.

Benjamin Franklin understood this. He didn't just theorize about democracy, he built it, block by block, in Philadelphia. The lending library. The first fire company. Paved roads, public lighting, and a public hospital. He believed strong communities are built by people close enough to their neighbors to know what they actually need. He wasn't talking about Washington. He was talking about people who live alongside the people they serve. He was describing us.

We know when the streetlight on a particular block isn't working. We know which neighborhoods have been waiting longest for sidewalks. We know the families who are one rent increase or one medical emergency away from losing everything they've built. We know because we are there, at the same community events, the same schools, the same places of worship. Being there is not incidental. It is the foundation of everything we do.

And what we know in one city isn't what we know in the next because no two Georgia cities are the same.

The challenges facing a fast-growing suburb look nothing like those facing a small town working to hold its downtown together. Decisions that actually work for the people they affect come from people who understand those differences. And the people who understand them best are the ones who live with them every day.

That case needs to be made. Clearly, consistently, and by the people best positioned to make it: you.

The argument for local governance doesn't make itself.

When decisions about our communities get made at a distance, by people who don't know what we know, something essential is lost. We lose the connection between the governed and those who govern them. We lose the ability to make people feel they matter. That is home rule, and it is worth defending not just in principle, but in practice, in your relationships with your legislators, your neighbors, and anyone else who needs to understand why it matters who makes decisions about your city.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the American experiment began with a radical idea: that people could govern themselves. Not from a distance, but close to the ground, close to the people. Cities were where that idea was tested first. And cities are where it is being tested again today.

Our convention theme this year was "Georgia Cities Shine Bright." Cities shine bright because of the steady, unglamorous, daily work of serving people well, work that no one else can do the way we can.

That is what I am asking of you this year. Show up. Make the case. Your city is the argument.