East Point officials are rethinking repaving the mayor's street.
Two months ago, Mayor Earnestine Pittman and her council allies decided the city's professional staff had overlooked some streets in critical need of repair — including Arrowood Drive, where the mayor lives.
Arrowood — and other streets added to the repaving list by the council — weren't deemed a priority by the city's public works department. It had recommended resurfacing nine streets based on a computer program that scores streets by condition, cost and importance.
But this month the council backed off and told the staff to bring it a new plan in August. Councilman Myron Cook said the council needed to allocate the money and let the staff choose the streets.
"I really think it is in the council's best interest if we get out of the business of picking what streets need to be resurfaced," Cook said at a work session last week.
Pittman said the council nixed the plan because the staff hadn't properly coordinated planning between departments. For instance, she said, Arrowood, a quiet residential street that is a back route to Atlanta, had a faulty sewer line beneath it and would have to be repaired before being resurfaced.
"The council needs to decide the process on when we do these streets," she said. "But we're not going to identify any streets until water and sewer tells us that it doesn't have to have the water lines changed or sewer lines changed."
Public Works Director Alex Mohajer said he expected the list his department submits in August will closely mirror the list it submitted in the spring, because the first list was based on objective criteria.
"We're headed in the right direction," he said. "They have their opinion and we'll give them our opinion, which is based on engineering, and we'll come up with a common denominator. Eventually we'll get the streets all done."
Council members did get two streets, Ben Hill Drive and Young Drive — short gravel roads that serve a handful of houses and a church — moved to the top of the priority list even though they didn't make the staff's original list. Mohajer agreed that the gravel roads should be paved, even if they serve only a few people.
Councilwoman Sharonda Hubbard said she was pleased the council majority seemed to be moving away from picking streets for repaving. Hubbard, who often opposes Pittman, said the controversy undermined trust in government.
"I always thought it should be done fairly by an independent grading system," she said. "That way everybody feels that the streets are getting done in fair way, and it is not a political game."
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