COLLEGE PARK, Ga. — Some College Park taxpayers say a councilman is living in a house the city bought him.
Records show it was sold to Councilman Joseph Carn for nearly nothing.
Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes was live outside College Park City Hall for Channel 2 Action News at 6:00.
For two days, she came to city hall where Carn is normally in his office.
She texted and emailed him, and he had no response to Fernandes’ question: Why did this city’s business development agency buy him a house?
“He did not purchase this house as normal citizens have to buy,” said LaKresha Williams, who lost the College Park Ward 2 city council race back in November to the incumbent Carn.
He has been a College Park councilman in the past, took a break to be a Fulton County commissioner for a couple years, then came back.
Carn used the house’s Herschel Road address to qualify as a College Park candidate, the same house many taxpayers say the city’s development authority – BIDA - gave Carn essentially free.
“BIDA purchased the home from the original owners for $175,000, and then they turned around and gave it to him for a dollar? Tell me how did that improve or was that a good business deal, and you can’t tell me that was a lack of business knowledge. That was intentional,” Williams said.
A Fulton County document says BIDA was the seller back in 2014, and Carn was the buyer. The column with all the zeros is where the price Carn paid for the house should be.
On the Fulton County Board of Assessor’s site, it says the city sold the house to HB Enterprises, a business Carn formally had registered under the secretary of state.
The site says, that business has been dissolved since 2012, two years before the city sold the property to Carn’s business.
A quitclaim deed says only $10 was exchanged between Carn and the city, and he’s now been living in the house for 11 years.
When Carn wouldn’t answer of Fernandes’ communication, she showed up to his office at city hall but was unable to speak to him.
“I think it’s because there’re a lack of oversight from the higher ups. From the county to the state level, no one is coming to see about us and that raises strong concern,” Williams said.
Taxpayers have brought this up during public comment at several past meetings, and they want something done about what their calling unethical behavior.
Fernandes said she also went by Carn’s house. His wife wouldn’t talk, and it wasn’t believed that Carn was home.
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