Got To Get That EST

DateTime::getTimestamp() returns unix timestamp.
That number is always UTC. What you want is format the date according to your time zone.
Use this if you have multiple time zones and don’t want to fiddle with the server time settings.

$dt = new DateTime("now", new DateTimeZone('America/Detroit'));

echo $dt->format('m/d/Y, H:i:s');
echo 'EST';