Prince George's County seeks mascot name ideas for Elevate initiative

Prince George’s County is asking residents to help name the mascot tied to its Elevate initiative, with submissions due Monday, July 13, 2026. The county said the winning entry will be formally recognized as the official contest winner, and it is steering residents to think about community, innovation, leadership and county pride.

The mascot contest is the latest public-facing move in Project Elevate, which County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy launched on June 23, 2025. County materials describe the initiative as a countywide revitalization and beautification effort meant to respond to long-running maintenance and service problems across Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Those problems have been spelled out in the county’s own Elevate communications: litter removal, pothole repairs, tree pruning, stump removal and abandoned vehicles. County documents say one Elevate-related effort addressed more than 7,000 open cases, while a later update said Strike Force 311 was launched to deal with a backlog of 13,345 nuisance abatement complaints.

The county has also used Elevate to widen its outreach beyond field operations. The Office of Community Relations created Elevate 360: County Service Corps to strengthen ties between county government and the communities it serves through volunteers who show up at outreach activities and county-sponsored events. Separately, the county says the Permit Rapid Response Team was established under Elevate to spur economic growth by streamlining permitting for major development projects.

That matters because Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation says the county has seen tremendous growth over the past decade and is rapidly becoming an epicenter for economic development in the Washington metropolitan area. In that setting, a mascot contest is not just a branding exercise. It is part of a broader effort to package cleanup, service delivery and development policy under a single public identity.

The county posted the mascot announcement on June 29, 2026, and said the name should be original, creative and reflective of how officials say they are elevating Prince George’s County. The county also said the name should capture the spirit of Elevate and the county’s shared vision for the future.

For Braveboy’s administration, the naming contest is a small but revealing test. Elevate now has a mascot pitch, a service-cleanup component, a volunteer corps and a permitting arm. What remains for county leaders is to show that the brand means more than a logo and can deliver visible results in neighborhoods from Largo to Upper Marlboro and Landover.