With the city council and city attorney’s by her side, Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson announced in the council chambers that the city needs to make every effort they could to keep from paying $12 million awarded to a Savannah woman by a Chatham County State Court jury.
“We are the stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars,” Jackson said.
The announcement that the city would be appealing the award came after a closed door meeting on Friday afternoon.
Jackson said that the case had already been talked about enough in “social media” and the council did not have any more comments regarding the matter.
Shanta Greene, 31, was awarded $12 million by a jury on Aug. 21 after day-long deliberations in the nine-day trial. Greene had filed suit against the city after being seriously injured on July 2, 2010, when a live oak tree limb fell and impaled her in the passenger seat of a pickup truck on Bee Road at 42nd Street. She lost her right leg and pelvis and sustained an assortment of related physical injuries and a brain injury.
Prior to the closed door meeting, the council spent about an hour discussing what projects they wanted to make priorities for the upcoming 1-percent sales tax referendum in November.
The council expressed support for keeping a new arena as a funding priority, despite learning from City Manager Stephanie Cutter that the county rejected their request to designate $120 million for the arena as a Level 2 project that would receive funding before other projects.
Chatham County Chairman Al Scott said he did not want funds being withheld from the other municipalities, Cutter said.
The council also has to reduce their funding request from $303 million to $190 million. That means they will have to reevaluate what projects they want included, Jackson said.
“We’re going to have to make some sacrifices,” she said.
The county is planning on funding about $122 million worth of projects from the tax, which is expected to raise about $370 million, Cutter said.
Cutter recommended the council select a site for the arena without conducting a planned location study of four locations.
The council expressed support for locating the arena west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, north of Gwinnett Street, where the arena was originally expected to go when the referendum went to vote in 2006. Some aldermen recently took a tour of the location, as well as the three other sites, which included the existing Civic Center. During the tour, aldermen learned from staff that the city had already acquired enough property there for the arena, despite being told otherwise in the past.
The council is expected to make a formal vote on the arena at their meeting on Sept. 5.