SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — On Tuesday night, City of South Fulton council members said Mayor Khalid Kamau must pay thousands of dollars back for a mural that was installed in his office.
“This will be paid from the mayor’s budget and garnished from his wages,” City Clerk Corey Adams said.
Jose Jimenez, the owner of Alphagraphics in East Point, said the mayor never made good on a $5,283.85 invoice.
“We work a lot with government agencies... we do the work, we get paid,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez said he was surprised when he never received a payment after the 30-day deadline because it’s uncommon for a government entity to not pay.
“The office wanted the mural installed ahead of some event,” he said.
Channel 2 Action News was at that event in February, where the mayor showed the mural and other electronics that we now know were unauthorized purchases.
“Let me be clear, we are in the business of not harming small businesses,” Councilwoman Carmalitha Gumbs said.
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The council was given authorization to unfreeze the mayor’s budget to pay this invoice.
“With any procurement process you have to get three quotes that’s anything over $2,800 and that’s the standard process. In this case, the mayor decided to do it off a handshake and that’s not how we do business in local government,” Gumbs said.
Since January, Lincoln has uncovered dozens of unauthorized transactions allegedly made by the mayor.
Credit card statements showed multiple unapproved international flights, office furniture and thousands spent on a media studio.
Last month, the board voted to temporarily ban the mayor from his office, to remove all unauthorized purchases.
The garnishment comes as the mayor is under the scope of a financial audit and ethics investigation. Both are currently ongoing.
On Wednesday, the mayor did not respond to Lincoln’s request for a comment on this story.
He did defend his spending in a February interview with Lincoln.
“There’s nothing purchased in my office that I didn’t talk with the city manager about,” Kamau said.
The city is currently in the process of making changes to its procurement process to prevent this in the future.
The city has to go through a legal process to decide how much money will be garnished from his paycheck.
Kamau must turn over the $5,283.85 before December 31, 2025.
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