The East Point City Council on Monday night balked at rolling back water and sewer rates and instead voted to maintain the current rate through next fiscal year.
Mayor Earnestine Pittman and two newly elected council members had seized on voter outrage last year, when base rates jumped from $19 to $48, to create a new council more empathetic to the mayor's agenda.
The city's professional staff had begged the council in previous meetings to keep the rates as they were, in part because the water and sewer department currently has only $1.5 million in reserve for emergencies. The aging system is prone to breaks in the lines.
Pittman and her supporters cast Monday's vote as a rollback because the base rates were set to jump to nearly $67 when the next fiscal year begins in July. But that is likely to be of little comfort to voters who were outraged at the $48 rate.
Councilman Lance Rhodes, an opponent of Pittman, sought to show up the mayor by having interim City Manager Nina Hickson confirm the vote meant that rates were not being rolled back, as the mayor and her allies had promised.
Pittman accused Rhodes of misrepresenting the facts.
East Point's water wars have created a $6 million hole in the city's general fund that has to be balanced before the fiscal year ends June 30. The council created the shortfall earlier in the year by voting to quit transferring utility franchise fees, indirect costs and depreciation payments from the enterprise funds for the utilities to the general fund.
Pittman and her allies said that the utilities were being used to make up for losses in the general fund. Other council members who supported raising the rates last year had contended that the general fund was keeping utility rates artificially low by shouldering indirect costs.
The mayor's stance got a boost from another source Monday when Michael Hakan, who runs the Regency Park Apartments, complained that the city utilities have begun charging a base rate for each apartment resident. He said previously the city had billed the complex for one base rate and for water used. Now, he said, he was being billed for 600 base rates, costs he has passed on to tenants.
The atmosphere grew even more contentious after the council voted to seek internal candidates for the permanent city manger position, which was vacated by Crandall Jones after Pittman's block won power last November. Jones had pushed the utility rate increases.
The mayor accused Rhodes of lying to the public when he stated in a previous open meeting that Pittman had said she wanted Hickson made permanent city manager.
"This council needs to sanction you for telling this bald-faced lie," Pittman said.
Rhodes suggested it was the mayor who was lying.
"You're teaching me well, Madame Mayor," he said.
"Your mother taught you," Pittman said.
The mayor later apologized to Rhodes for bringing his mother into the squabble.
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