The Shropshires of Delowe Avenue in East Point have not been paying their utility bills.
That would hardly be news except one of the residents of the home is East Point City Councilwoman Sharon Shropshire, a longstanding and vocal opponent of how much the city charges residents for electric, water, sewer and garbage services. Despite running up close to $9,000 in unpaid bills by the end of last year, the city did not disconnect service to the Shropshire residence.
Christopher Weed, who is running against Shropshire for her Ward A council seat, got a tip about the unpaid bills and filed a request with the city for the records. He said the city is “notorious” for shutting off residents’ utilities for non-payment.
“This has been a constant complaint in East Point,” he said. That Shropshire is able to float such a large balance stinks of favoritism, he said.
“It needs to be brought to the public’s attention, not just because I’m running against her,” he said.
Shropshire, who is mayor pro tem for the south Fulton city of 35,000, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this column, but she has a history of sounding off about the city’s utility rates.
In 2011, when the council proposed increasing the rate for the city’s money-losing utilities by $28 per month for water and $7 per month for electricity, then-citizen Shropshire made her opinions clear.
“Who do you think is going to pay all this? You will not be sitting in these seats in November,” she told the council.
Shropshire ran and was elected to the council in 2013. Since that time the amount owed at her address has skyrocketed.
Nearly $9,000 owed
The story echoes last month's revelation that Atlanta City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms has carried an overdue balance on her city water bill for the past eight years. Bottoms claims that some of the overdue amount relates to a billing dispute with the city, but records show she has owed as much as $1,300 as recently as last November.
The story of the bill at Shropshire’s home is similar, but magnified. Like Bottoms, the Shropshires have carried an unpaid balance for years, but the December statement showed almost $9,000 owed. Records show a December payment of more than $1,800 was followed by no payments at all the first three months of this year.
Six times last year, the city didn’t even receive a token payment.
Records indicate the property is owned by Shropshire’s parents, but according to paperwork filed when she ran for council, she lives there as well. In private life, she works as a clerk for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Shropshires are hardly alone among East Point residents failing to pay their bills.
An Open Records Act request with the city turned up a list of more than 1,000 city residences scheduled to have their utilities disconnected for not paying their water or electric power bills. But the councilwoman’s address doesn’t appear on that list, despite months of non-payment and broken repayment agreements, according to city records.
City mum
I tried to get comment from East Point Mayor Jannquell Peters and City Manager Frederick Gardiner on the city’s policy on disconnecting service to people who fail to pay their bills, but I didn’t hear back from them.
Calls and emails to the city’s spokeswoman finally resulted in an emailed no comment and a copy of a city ordinance that says service “may be discontinued at any time” once a bill is at least 29 days overdue. Logical follow up questions — like how the city decides when it is time to pull the plug — were not answered.
East Point isn't a wealthy suburb. One in four people there are classified as living in poverty and the city struggled to balance its books throughout the Great Recession. Rising rates from the city-owned electrical utility have been a hot-button issue for a decade and a cause of fractious politics between the council and the city's previous mayor, Earnestine Pittman.
The current mayor and city council, including Shropshire, are defendants in a class action lawsuit brought by Melvin Pittman, the former mayor's husband, and several other city ratepayers.
The suit claims the city charged utility customers illegal fees and did not follow the proper procedure when raising rates in 2013. It also claims the city misused a rebate from the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, the non-profit utility where East Point and 48 other municipalities get their power, to patch holes in the city’s general budget.
City acts against whistleblower
Into this mix comes Weed, a political novice, who requested the records on Shropshire’s home and posted them on his campaign website. The posting of the records upset some, including Londenia Shropshire, the councilwoman’s wheelchair-bound mother, who took Weed to task during the public comments period of a city council meeting last month.
“I didn’t give him the right to get my bill and I feel like I was violated with my rights,” the elder Shropshire said. “What I think you should do is make (Weed) pay for the bill. He wants the bill. Give it to him and make him pay for it.”
Shortly thereafter, Weed received a letter from Brad Bowman, the city’s attorney, telling him the city accidentally gave him too much information and he had to take down the documents from his website, return the records and destroy all copies. If he didn’t, Bowman wrote, state law “provides for criminal penalties against individuals who knowingly distribute personal information.”
I talked to Bowman who explained that a combination of figures on the documents provided to Weed, when matched together, equals the Shropshires’ account number and account numbers are not subject to open records requests. In another document, telephone numbers were inexpertly redacted and could be read, he said.
Bowman said the city contacted Attorney General Chris Carr’s office and confirmed they could ask for the records back.
When asked why threaten Weed when the city was at fault, Bowman said, “It was an indication of what was possible.” Bowman would not say who asked him to send the letter, citing attorney-client privilege.
Weed turned the records back over to the city. “I can’t afford to get into a fight with the city,” he said.
That’s fiscal wisdom. At least somebody is showing some.
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