A College Park City Council meeting got moved 240 miles away to Savannah this past Sunday, and fifteen residents got in their cars and drove four hours to attend anyway. That should tell you everything about how this one is landing back home.
The meeting was called to select a new destination marketing organization for the city, the kind of decision that quietly steers millions of tourism dollars. But instead of holding it at city hall, council scheduled it for Sunday afternoon in Savannah. Even Mayor Bianca Motley Broom could not attend.
What the Council Actually Voted to Approve
The city’s new destination marketing organization is Destination Must Visit Tourism Alliance Incorporated, a Maryland-based firm. Public records show the company was officially incorporated on May 26, 2026. The RFP that College Park issued closed on June 22. That means the firm just handed responsibility for marketing one of the most airport-adjacent convention markets in the country did not exist as a legal entity until 27 days before the bid closed.
The company has no documented public track record in Georgia tourism. According to residents who attended the Savannah meeting, the expectation is that Destination Must Visit Tourism Alliance plans to subcontract the actual marketing work to local parties. “There’s a bigger deal in play here,” one attendee told reporters. Which raises a question this council has not yet answered publicly: a bigger deal for whom?
Why Savannah? Follow the Calendar.
Mayor Motley Broom and council members were in Savannah for the Georgia Municipal Association Annual Convention. The mayor is the outgoing president of the GMA, and at the time council called the special meeting, she was presiding over a convention session. She was institutionally unavailable to attend a vote on a contract worth millions in tourism dollars. Council members were not.
Richard T. Griffiths, a spokesman for the First Amendment Foundation, which advocates for open government, said the setup created a “cloak” over the city’s business. “It shows a complete disrespect for the citizens of College Park to have a meeting in another city, four hours away,” Griffiths told SaportaReport. Residents who made the drive said they believe the location was chosen specifically to keep the public out of the room.
Did the City Break the Law? Possibly More Than One.
Mayor Motley Broom said council may have violated Georgia’s Open Meetings Act, which governs how and where public bodies can conduct business. Her specific concern: the meeting agenda was not posted at the Marriott Savannah Riverfront Hotel, where the special called meeting was held. That posting requirement is not optional. A mayor publicly questioning the legality of her own council’s vote is not a small thing. It is the kind of split that ends up in court or in front of the Attorney General’s office.
There may also be a separate issue at the state level. The Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association sent officials a letter on June 23 warning that replacing the city’s destination marketing organization without the consent of its current marketing partner and the state Hotel-Motel Tax Performance Review Board could violate state law. Mayor Motley Broom has published the letter on her website. College Park is a member of the ATL Airport District, a multi-city regional DMO that currently receives 1.5 percent of hotel-motel tax revenues directly under Georgia statute. The District uses those funds to recruit conventions and large events to the Georgia International Convention Center and Gateway Arena, and markets the entire airport corridor as a unified destination. Unwinding that relationship is not simply a matter of council preference.
When the trade group representing the hotels whose tax dollars fund the entire system is publicly warning of legal exposure before the vote is even cast, that is not a speed bump. That is a stop sign.
The Mayor Said No to This Idea Over a Year Ago
What makes the council’s move harder to read as procedural oversight rather than deliberate action: Mayor Motley Broom has opposed replacing the ATL Airport District on the public record for more than a year. In a March 2025 meeting preview posted to her website, she wrote that the existing ATL Airport District arrangement “is a good one” and warned that a separate DMO could create “governance concerns, transparency, and oversight” issues and the potential for “political favoritism.” That post reads differently now.
Council moved forward anyway, without her, in another city, on a Sunday.
Why the Contract Matters
A destination marketing organization handles tourism promotion, convention bookings, and visitor outreach for a city. For a place like College Park, which sits next to the world’s busiest airport and pulls real convention traffic, this contract is a meaningful pot of money and influence. Whoever holds it shapes how the city presents itself to every visitor flying in.
That is exactly why the selection process should have been transparent, locally held, and open to the people it affects most. This is not a procedural rubber stamp. This is the kind of decision residents would normally pack a chamber for.
This Is Not the First Time
11Alive reported in2024 on at least nine open government complaints filed against College Park tied to a controversial rezoning vote. The Attorney General’s office received those complaints, sent mediation letters to the City Attorney, and four of the complaints came from Mayor Motley Broom herself. So when residents say they believe the Savannah meeting was strategic, they are not reaching. They are pointing at a track record.
Transparency fights at city hall are happening all over the metro right now, and they connect to bigger questions about how local government actually serves the people who fund it. We have been tracking how policy decisions ripple through Atlanta’s neighborhoods, and this one sits at the intersection of tourism dollars, airport corridor development, and the basic question of who gets to be in the room when public money changes hands.
What Needs to Happen Next
College Park council should revote this selection at city hall, in public, at a normal hour, in full compliance with state law. Anything less and the legal challenge writes itself.
The residents already proved they will show up. Who are the real parties behind this contract, and are they willing to say so in front of the community that will pay for it?
Driving four hours each way on a Sunday to witness your own elected officials vote is a flex of citizenship most cities never see. But the story has grown past the meeting location. A Maryland company was incorporated less than a month before the RFP closed. A mayor who had publicly opposed this change for over a year was locked out of the vote by a meeting she was scheduled to lead. A state trade group warned of legal exposure before the gavel fell. A subcontracting plan that suggests the real beneficiary of this contract has not yet been publicly named. The biggest question I’m left with is why? Why did the council jump through all of these hoops instead of just maintaining their current course of action, and when will the citizens and mayor of College Park have the answers they so deserve? And my question to you is, how far would you travel to make sure the financial success of your neighborhood was protected?
