Robocalls Blast Brookhaven Residents Monday Afternoon

No, we're not in the middle of an election season ... not yet, anyway. And the cityhood debate hasn't suddenly been resurrected.

But you wouldn't know it from the robocalls that were burning up Brookhaven's phone lines on Monday night, as two distinctly different viewpoints of our new city were being espoused.

At around 5:30 pm 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."

The robocall also claimed that Davis' budget will raise "revenue on new taxes on utilitites, which gets passed onto us." The caller urged residents to call Davis and "nicely express your concern about this tax increase."

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 ..."

You can listen to both calls by clicking on the microphone image in this article.

This is the second consecutive week that Davis has refuted any possibility of a tax increase. Last week, 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."

Davis compared Eyre's email to "a piece of propagnda from the NoCity campaign. ""He's making unknown assumptions that are being treated as fact.

"We're not going to be raising taxes or cutting services in Brookhaven."

See Also:

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

Patch's Complete Coverage of the Brookhaven City Council