Tuesday, April 15, 2025–12:00 p.m.

-David Crowder, WRGA News-

The majority of Monday’s Rome City Commission meeting involved a debate regarding appointments to the Rome Housing Authority, with a series of motions, countermotions, and amendments to motions being offered.

It began when Lee Hight was presented a certificate of appreciation for her years of dedication to the housing authority.

She then spoke, admonishing the commission, specifically regarding the recent resignations of two authority board members.

“I don’t believe in 20 years or more I have ever seen the city deliberately tell any if our board members that they would be dismissed before their terms were up, but that is exactly what you tried to pull,” she said. “The disrespect shown to our board was not right. Two board members with years of commitment, service, and knowledge are now gone. It is shameful. They had no choice but to resign. Now, the city will stack the board.”

While it wasn’t made clear exactly what happened to those authority members during the open meeting, there has not been a vote of the commission to remove those two members of the housing authority.

“The Committee on Committees, which I chair, was brought into this situation,” said Rome City Commissioner Jamie Doss. “The dismissals never came up at my committee. I totally agree that we need to be informed, as a board, and we do not need to work in secret, but tonight has not been one of our finest hours.”

Although the authority members were not dismissed, Commissioner Mark Cochran suggested that they were essentially forced to resign.

“I am under the impression that they were told that if they did not willingly remove themselves, then they would be removed, and there were already the votes to make it happen,” he said.

Cochran added that he would like to see steps taken to ensure that one commissioner does speak for the entire board.

Mayor Craig McDaniel defended the process that is already in place for appointing and removing members of the authority.

“Our policies and procedures, and the way we vote, over time in how we operate, all in all, have worked very well,” he said. Sometimes it doesn’t, but overall it works pretty well. If we want to go back and say we may have screwed up on the housing authority, and maybe somewhere along the way we did, but I think we screwed up a long time ago on the housing authority. We didn’t replace people for a long time. I think the city commission was negligent in not replacing people when their five-year terms ran out.”

This is the second time in a year that the city commission and housing authority have butted heads over appointments.

In April of 2024, members of the authority questioned proposed appointments by the city commission, citing what they characterized as a breakdown in communication and a lack of diversity.

The housing authority consists of eight members. Five are appointed by the Rome City Commission. Cave Spring and Rockmart each have one representative.