It was supposed to be a solemn ceremony to say farewell to Atlanta's oldest fire station.

Instead, it was overshadowed by a verbal confrontation between Mayor Shirley Franklin and about a dozen demonstrators who did not want Fire Station 7 closed.

Jason Getz/jgetz@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Randy 'Mwenda' Brown, of Atlanta (left) and Percy Jackson, of the West End, (center) on Monday protest the recent announcement by Mayor Shirley Franklin to close the Fire Station No. 7.

RELATED: • Video • Photos: Closing protested

Atlanta fiscal crisis: Budget forces Atlanta to cut employee hours  Councilman refunding tax money he paid brother's firm  Atlanta council members' spending questioned  Franklin has $850,000 plan to turn around city's finances  Atlanta schools pension fund needs cash

"This is wrong!" the protesters chanted, prompting the mayor to stop her remarks.

"This is the best we can do under a bizarre set of circumstances," Franklin said amid boos and name-calling.

At one point, Franklin left the podium and confronted the protesters, who peppered the mayor with questions about why she was closing the station, located in the West End neighborhood.

One man holding an infant yelled that the city was endangering area children, insisting response times to fires will slow.

"We're not proud right now," said community activist Deborah Scott, taking a page from Franklin's campaign slogan "If you make me mayor, I'll make you proud."

"I'm not proud of the way you are behaving," the mayor replied as about three dozen firefighters and paramedics watched.

Franklin announced Friday that she was closing the fire station as part of a plan to plug a $14.6 million budget gap. The mayor also laid off 78 city workers and left vacant 112 positions, including 53 for sworn police officers.

In all, the cuts totaled $21.6 million, which is $7 million more than the City Council recommended the mayor trim from the city's $583 million budget for the fiscal year that started July 1.

Council members, such as Ceasar Mitchell, said Monday that Franklin should have considered employee buyouts and eliminating more vacant positions instead of the job cuts. The mayor says the council "punted" the task of making the cuts to her and insists her budget-balancing plan of raising property taxes would have avoided the job cuts. Franklin laid off 441 city workers and eliminated 788 vacancies earlier this year to help fill Atlanta's $140 million projected budget shortfall.

Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran reiterated Monday that response times would not slow in the West End, noting there are four fire stations within three miles of Fire Station 7. The chief said he recommended closing the station after a response time analysis showed it could best withstand being shuttered. Cochran said the city may reopen the station if and when Atlanta's budget situation improves. The firefighters who worked there were transferred to other stations.

Community leaders and residents eulogized the cream-colored, two-story building as the place they visited to get blood-pressure screenings or learned how to install child-safety seats. They had recently begun an effort to raise money to fix the station house, with its ceiling cracks and worn furniture.

Merry Ford, who works at the nearby West End Medical Clinic, stood among the crowd Monday, worrying if it will take paramedics longer to get to the patients they treat.

"It's not minutes that count," she said. "It's seconds."

Amid the shouting, the firefighters said goodbye to the station. They read a eulogy about the lives they saved and the difficulty of leaving. They prayed, recited the pledge of allegiance climbed into their trucks and then drove away to waves from the crowd.