A budget item that divided the Conyers City Council just one month ago has quietly disappeared from the public agenda — and no one at City Hall has offered an explanation.
At the March 15, 2026 City Council meeting, I watched council members vote 4-2 to table discussion on a proposal to fund a mayoral administrative assistant position at a cost of approximately $8,000. The vote was contentious. The council directed the discussion to the April 1 retreat, with a final vote expected at the April 15 regular meeting.
That vote never came.
I reviewed the official agenda for the April 15 City Council meeting. The mayoral administrative assistant item does not appear anywhere — not under Old Business, not under New Business, not anywhere on the document. A highly debated proposal that generated a split council vote one month ago has simply vanished from the public record without explanation.
That raises a serious question: what happened at the April 1 retreat?
The April 15 agenda included the approval of April 1 retreat minutes under Section V — meaning whatever was discussed at that retreat is now part of the official public record. But those minutes have not been made publicly available, and the city has offered no public statement about the status of the mayoral assistant proposal.
I have submitted a request to the City of Conyers open records request asking four direct questions: Was this item discussed at the April 1 retreat? If so, what was the outcome? Why does it not appear on the April 15 agenda? And has a decision already been made — and if so, by whom and when?
I have also filed a formal Open Records Act request for the April 1 retreat minutes pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq. (Reference: CH-92-2026). Under Georgia law, the city has three business days to respond.
As of publication, I have received no response to either request.
The public deserves to know what happened to this item. A 4-2 council vote is not a minor procedural moment. It reflects real division on the council about how city funds should be spent. For that conversation to move behind closed doors and then disappear from the public agenda without explanation is exactly the kind of thing accountability journalism exists to examine.
I will continue to report on this story as records and responses become available.
Have a tip or information about this story? Contact CJ Lester at cj@cjlesterinvestigates.com.
CJ Lester Investigates is an independent accountability journalism outlet covering the City of Conyers and the City of Oxford, Georgia. If this reporting matters to you, consider supporting it at cjlester.com.
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