Budget Amendments Fail To Pass After Councilmember Japera Hemming Appeared Unfamiliar With Procedures

The East Point City Council held a Special Called Meeting for Policy Direction For The FY 2027 Budget at the insistence of Ward A At-Large Councilmember Japera Hemming yesterday. About 45 residents watched presentations centering on expenditures, heard testimony from councilmembers about budget priorities, and also listened to the city manager and his staff’s explanations of allocations and budget additions.

No flyers were distributed at the meeting location so residents were shown various budget-related slides on the the city’s two in-house TV screens, which proved to be challenging for some to clearly make out.

The meeting had been vaguely advertised as a “Policy Direction” Special Called Meeting. And although there was concern the meeting may not have been organized in a well-thought out fashion, many residents still expected some level of action would be taken.

And nothing was approved.

Hemming spoke at length about what she perceives the city is missing, but what became evident in the meeting was a lack of Hemming’s own preparation.

Hemming, who has promoted herself as the point person on the ongoing budget discussion, was tellingly unable to secure a second to her motion in her effort to pass budget amendments yesterday–amendments that Hemming herself championed at prior Council meetings.

In previous administrations, consensus was reached prior to this point. The go-it-alone approach by individual councilmembers is not a hallmark of East Point’s budgetary discussions–an approach that some in the community believe Hemming is taking.

“I don’t know if she just wants to get publicity or just feels she needs to get credit for ‘saving the day’, but nobody can do a whole city budget alone”, said one Ward A resident who only wanted to be quoted by the first initial of her first name, J.

“The meeting seemed to be a waste of time”, said Ward C resident Charles. “And Japera Hemming obviously wants the budget to pass but she needs to do her homework cause her inexperience and need to be recognized is starting to show”.

The Special Called Meeting, which was advertised to begin at 5 P.M., appeared to be rushed and put together last-minute since the city’s Planning And Zoning Commission was scheduled to hold their meeting in the same chambers–at 7 P.M.

The Council meeting lasted until just before 7 P.M..

Several residents appeared at city hall with Zoning concerns but were perplexed to learn the Council was in session instead.

At the July 6 Council meeting, Hemming joined with her colleagues Carrie Ziegler, Shean Atkins, and Eric Friedly in an effort to ram through the budget’s passage, despite a number of last-minute amendments being put into the budget which, if passed, would have violated Council Rule 16.

Hemming, Ziegler, Atkins and Friedly seemed unfamiliar with the rule, a well-established council policy that prohibits ordinances including budgets from being adopted without being submitted in their final form, and were adamant the budget pass regardless.

The four councilmembers were supported by a small but vocal group of onlookers who made outbursts at the meeting, perhaps themselves unaware the Council could not have passed the budget while violating its own rules.

The group decried what it says was time being wasted at the expense of passing the budget.

But in a late June meeting, those same councilmembers were on hand as 17 city department heads discussed a range of city topics. In the minds of many, that meeting could have been postponed in order to address the city’s budget.

“Why invite all these department heads to talk about the city and not deal with the budget at all in the meeting, but then claim time is being wasted”, said a Ward B voter who opted to not publicly reveal her identity through media.

The city is past its budget completion deadline of June 30 but Georgia localities have missed their budget submission dates before, including East Point. Community concerns over budgetary spending helped prompt the delay.