Updated on 10/03/24 at 1:55 p.m.
The City of College Park now has a city manager, a hiring that several residents pushed back against amidst a number of issues in the city.
In late September, College Park officials selected interim city manager Dr. Emmanuel Adediran for the permanent position.
Some residents wondered whether Adediran was the best person for the role. Before the hiring, the city held a town hall meeting to hear input from residents about the final three applicants.
“For him to have made the cut of this rose eyebrows for everyone,” said College Park resident Demetrius Taylor during the meeting. “So now we’re questioning what was the rubric used to make him make the cut.”
Other residents said they did not get proper notice about the other candidates being considered. The resumes of the final three candidates were posted in a Facebook group a few days before the town hall.
However, Georgia’s Open Records Act requires that information be made available at least 14 days before hiring.
College Park Mayor Bianca Motley Broom addressed the decision in the meeting after the selection, stating that the hiring process “skipped essential steps” and “limited public engagement and full council participation.”
However, College Park Councilwoman Jamelle McKenzie said she’s gotten strong responses from city residents who supported the hire.
“I had 61 people reach back out to me some way, whether it be a conversation, whether it was a text message, whether it was an email, and … 57 of those people were like, ‘Hey, we want Dr. Adediran,’” she said.
Meanwhile, a community-led effort to recall McKenzie has made some progress. Some residents pursued the effort due to a lack of satisfaction with McKenzie’s performance as a council member.
“They are not going to continue getting away with things the way they are with residents being so unhappy,” said Elizabeth Lester, a city resident who is part of the initiative.
“We’ve been very loud and vocal with our state legislative delegation and letting them know that things are not okay. Regardless if our recall succeeds or not, it is not going to stay the same.”
McKenzie told WABE that the recall is “going through the regular process,” but the claims against her are “frivolous.”
In response to the recall effort, McKenzie filed a lawsuit. As of the time of publishing, a hearing is set for Oct. 30 to decide the next steps for the measure.
Related Story: College Park meeting prompts AG scrutiny amid tensions between city council, mayor and residents
Additionally, tensions between Mayor Motley Broom and the city council have continued.
The mayor filed a second lawsuit against the council in early September. The suit cited possible violations of the Open Meetings Act during an August council meeting.
The meeting in question was held by the city council to censure Motley Broom. The same meeting also prompted an inquiry by the state Attorney General’s office due to the public’s removal by the city manager.
The mayor claims in the suit that the vote to censure her was “illegal and invalid … because the public was not allowed to be present in the chamber for the vote.”
According to College Park’s city charter, censure is a penalty that may only be imposed under the city’s ethics ordinance. The charter also outlines a specific process for ethical violations.
“The Interim City Manager cleared the room during that Special Called Meeting with the specific intent to quell dissent,” Motley Broom wrote in a statement addressing her lawsuit. “Though the meeting was live-streamed, the temporary interruption and the absence of public presence in the room violated the Open Meetings Act.”
Motley Broom stated the actions in the meeting “also violated my due process rights and were a blatant disregard for the laws that govern our city and our state. They were taken without authority under our Charter or our Ethics Ordinance, making the censure resolution null and void.”
As of now, both of the lawsuits referred to in this article are still open.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to specify that Mayor Motley’s Broom’s comments on the city manager hiring decision occurred at a meeting after the selection had been announced. In addition, minor revisions in grammar have been made to distinguish the two lawsuits discussed in the article.
