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Public commenter urges transparency, raises housing and funding concerns at council committee
Summary
At the Committee on Council public comment period, Brother Anthony Muhammad urged greater transparency and raised concerns about homelessness, large city-held funds he said exist, and past public-works layoffs; the record shows his remarks but no formal response in the provided transcript.
Brother Anthony Muhammad, identified in the record as a public commenter, used his allotted three minutes during the Committee on Council public-comment period to call for "transparency" and to raise concerns about housing, city-held funds, and historic staff layoffs.
Muhammad referenced a civic body he called the "Atlanta Commission on money" and said it began in 1994 during the administration of former Mayor Shirley Franklin. He told the committee, "My my concern is always compare transparency, and my concern is consciousness."
He said the city had "got the gosh. $5,000,000,000," and that "we already got 2,000,000,000 that the city of Atlanta have taken to set aside for the benefit of their investors to put their 5,000,000,000." He also said, "you got people living on the bridge down near the gulch. You got people living in neighborhoods that continue don't have affordable houses." Muhammad named recent housing work as positive — telling the committee he passed by projects initiated by Council Member Andrea Boone at Martin Luther King and Westlake — but said more was needed.
Muhammad also referred to an earlier personnel action, saying he "fell out with Miss Shirley Franklin when she fired 400 people before Christmas who worked for the public works," and suggested that historical decisions affected current conditions. He framed his remarks in moral terms, mentioning "consciousness" and religious texts as sources of civic values.
The meeting record does not show any council response to Muhammad's remarks in the excerpt provided. His remarks were part of the public comment period; they were not an agenda item and did not result in committee action in the provided transcript.
Because the remarks were personal commentary during public comment, they include assertions about past events and financial figures presented by the speaker; the transcript does not supply documentary evidence for those assertions. Readers seeking verification should consult city budget documents or historical personnel records.
