A contentious city meeting on taxes and utility rates that saw police called in to restore order was the talk of the town Friday in East Point.
Resident Elizabeth Hunt said when she arrived for work at the East Point Barber Shop, “I walked in the door and people were asking, ‘Do you still claim to live in East Point?'"
The cause of the all the talk was Mayor Earnestine Pittman's Thursday night meeting at the Jefferson Park Recreation Center to discuss proposed property tax increases and utility rate rollbacks.
Pittman opponents demanded, sometimes raucously, to be allowed to speak. The mayor cut them off, and her supporters tried to shout down the other side.
Over the course of the meeting, police ejected four people and an elderly man challenged a middle-age man to fisticuffs.
Pittman is proposing raising property taxes from 13.75 mills to 15 mills to pay for a promised rollback in utility rates that became a hot-button campaign issue in last fall's election. At the meeting she presented various new water and sewer base rates but warned the city had to find money somewhere or cut staff and services.
A resident asked the mayor if she had proposed that homeowners 70 and over, now exempt from property taxes, should pay some tax. "I most definitely did," Pittman said.
Two newly elected City Council members -- backed by Pittman -- had campaigned on the promise of reduced utility rates. The council could act on the rates as soon as Monday.
Pittman told the crowd her proposed tax increase would cost homeowners less than $25 a year for a home that is not worth more than $149,000. She said few would be hit that hard because the average property appraisal had fallen from about $86,000 to about $38,000 in three years.
Doubters noted the mayor didn't produce any numbers on whether her proposed tax increase would be able to close the multi-million dollar deficit that would result from the rollback in utility rates.
Under previous projections the increase to 15 mills would raise about $968,000 more for the city, but Pittman said Friday the projected revenue is now unclear.
Dustin Drabot, a real-estate agent, tried to question the mayor about her figures. Pittman would only say that it was unclear how much money would be needed for the general fund because the council was still working on the budget.
Drabot took his seat but ended up in a shouting match with a Pittman supporter.
Police quickly encircled them. The supporter and her husband left. Several officers physically removed Drabot.
Pittman, who had promised to take questions, then halted the meeting.
"I don't answer to you. I don't answer to hooligans. I don't answer to disrespect," Pittman said. "Madam mayor is gone."
Resident Stephen Zink was left standing at the lectern. He said he was frustrated because the mayor had refused to answer his emailed questions, saying she would address them at the meeting.
To Zink, the rollback didn't justify a tax increase because the base rate, currently at about $48 a month, would only drop about $9 under the mayor's proposals. A year ago, the base rate was less than $20 before the council raised rates on the grounds that the general fund was subsidizing the utilities.
"We're really getting a doubling of our utility rates and an increase in taxes," Zink said, "and we don't know if we're reducing the deficit."
Councilman Myron Cook acknowledged after the meeting that the council was still tussling with how much to roll back utility rates because of the deficit and tax questions.
Ruby Barber, one of his constituents, said the night's events had been disheartening and unnerving. Politicians and the public, she said, need to come together to create a sound policy for the city.
"My point is people should work as a team for the people of East Point," she said. "We don't need all this confrontation."
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