Following on the heels of a speaker at Wednesday night’s city council meeting, Mayor Linda T. Johnson said she wants to get input from Suffolk residents on what the city’s new motto will be.

“Who knows our city better than the people that live in our city?” she asked during a council comment session at the end of the meeting. “I think everybody should have input in that.”

Wallace Cotten, a Nansemond Parkway area resident, spoke during the meeting to say he thinks the citizens should have input on the new motto.

“Instead of hiring someone to go out and come up with a logo for the city, we should have something right here among the city itself,” he said. “The people here in Suffolk should be the ones that designate what type of logo we have.”

Cotten put forth the idea of a contest among citizens to come up with a new slogan.

“If we can come up with some type of a contest, and (have) some minor thing we can give as a prize for first, second and third, I think that would be much more beneficial than having some outside consultant come in and say, ‘This is what your city logo should be,’” Cotten said.

The mayor agreed, saying she’d like to get the schools involved.

“I think it’s an absolutely great idea, and we’ve actually all talked about having input from the citizens,” Johnson said. “We do have a ton of talent in the city. We have a ton of talent in our citizens, as well as in our administration.”

Johnson said the effort to come up with a new slogan doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, except for the costs of new marketing materials and other things that feature the slogan.

“Of course that costs money, but we are so far away from that,” Johnson said.

The city will have a suggestion box in the city tent at Peanut Festival this weekend for slogan ideas and other general suggestions.