Zero Hour Approaching for Brookhaven Budget Adoption

The Brookhaven City Council is tentatively set to adopt the city's first budget in history on March 26.

The council set the date during its regular meeting on Tuesday, March 12.

According to the Brookhaven Post, Mayor J. Max Davis instructed the city's finance staff to work to reduce the millage rate below 3.35 mills.

DeKalb Interim School Superintendent Michael Thurmond is also scheduled to appear at the March 26 council meeting, which will be held in the PATH Academy cafeteria, 3007 Hermance Drive.

The controversy over the city's budget took on a new dimension in late February, when two back-to-back robocalls went out to Brookhaven residents on the topic of tax increases.

At around 5:30 pm on Monday, 4, came a call from an unidentified female, claiming that "Brookhaven Mayor J. Max Davis has broken his promise to protect taxpayers by including a property tax increase in new taxes on electricity, land line phone services."

Less than an hour later, came an automated call from Davis himself, claiming "an anonymous, illegal and misleading autocall went out to Brookhaven residents this afternoon. Please disregard this message as it is extremely inaccurate ..."

The week before, District 2 City Councilman Jim Eyre sent out an email blast, claiming that Davis' proposed budget will result in a revenue shortfall for 2013.

"As I see it, we have two options," Eyre wrote. "Accept a tax increase for 2013 with expectations that this increase will be reduced for homeowners in 2014 when all revenues are available to the city of Brookhaven, or further reduce our service levels to better match available revenue with little or no tax increase for homeowners."

Davis countered by saying Eyre's assumptions are based on what DeKalb County decides to do with the HOST millage.

"We won't know DeKalb's HOST millage rate until this summer," Davis said. "There are several facts that aren't in his email, and until we know what DeKalb will do with the HOST rate, we won't have any idea what our city's millage rate will be."

See Also:

Robocalls Blast Brookhaven Residents

Davis: 'We're Not Raising Taxes or Cutting Services in Brookhaven'

Patch's Complete Coverage of the Brookhaven City Council