How Much More City Annexation Can DeKalb Take?
Decatur Metro | March 9, 2011Annexation isn’t just a topic of conversation around Decatur. Though our city has long been toying with the idea of expanding its limits in order to increase its commercial base, there hasn’t yet been the almost necessary outcry by surrounding residents looking to trade their DeKalb-run services for Decatur to make it happen.
However, it’s a different story further north. The initial benefits of the newly-minted city of Dunwoody – which captured millions of dollars of DeKalb County property tax revenue after its late-2008 creation – has other northern residents weighing the benefits of more local city government services and functions.
Georgia State Rep. Mike Jacobs recently wrote on his blog he’s been hearing “increasing discontent with DeKalb County Government: rising tax bills, fewer services, inefficient government, and a lack of confidence that things are going to get better at the county.” As a result, he’s introduced House Bill 428, which allows for “adjacent municipalities to annex neighborhoods in an “unincorporated peninsula” (an unincorporated area that is 75% or more surrounded by cities) after the adoption of a city council resolution and the passage of a referendum by the citizens in the unincorporated area.” The bill also takes away the County’s unilateral veto power in preventing such annexations, according to Jacobs.
Whether this currently unincorporated peninsula would become part of Dunwoody or its own “City of Brookhaven” is far from being addressed, let alone decided, however these renewed talks about yet another northern annexation leads to a very serious question: How much more annexation can DeKalb County take before its only option is even more massive layoffs and reductions in services and/or large tax increases?
In response to this new Brookhaven annexation push, the DeKalb Officers blog flatly stated recently “We believe if either of theses happen, annexation or the formation of another city, Dekalb County will collapse. The Northlake/Oak Grove/Emory area cannot sustain today’s spending and looting.”
If not totally collapse, what would a DeKalb with little northern property to call its own look like? Will taxes rise to a point where the current lower tax-rate advantage is eliminated and everyone begins calling for annexation by the nearest city? Or will the county be forced to scale down to a point where services are much more meager than they even are today?
Some Dekalb services are extravagant. For example, Dekalb could easily scale back garbage pickup. I live in unincorporated Dekalb. We have trash pickup Monday and Thursday, curbside recycling on Wednesday, and lawn refuse pickup on Friday. Once a week trash pickup would be adequate, and is the norm in many, if not most, incorporated areas.
I don’t think Dekalb’s services are meager. Compared to CoD, they probably are, but that’s not a fair comparison.
We’ve always felt that 2x/week trash pickup is excessive. How much trash is the average household producing, anyway?
Most of the year, I can easily bring my trash to the curb once every two weeks without creating an overflow.
woah now you get pickup twice a week?! in CoD it’s once a week tops!
City of Decatur only picks up once a week but it does top of the driveway/back of the house pick up while most other jurisdictions make you lug your cans out to the curb. We have quality vs quantity garbage pickup!
I don’t want county workers coming into my backyard.
I lug my trash to the curb. Do you have to make arrangements for trash (and recycling?) to be picked up at the back of the house? This would be great when I’m out of town for a weekend.
Uh oh. Hope I haven’t ruined anything for anyone, especially the lazy garbage toters in my family. We aren’t the only ones getting backyard pick-up in City of Decatur, right?
Decatur will pickup in your back or side yard if they can safely access it via a driveway or the like.
In areas with pronounced urban-rural divides, I value having separate governance for cities. In our case, a relatively small county well inside a metro, I’d rather have a consolidated city-county. Forgive me my sacrilege, Decatur.
DeKalb Sanitation is an enterprise fund and does not receive any operating monies from the general tax fund. So reducing garbage pickup would not lower your property tax bill or save the County any money.
But they could lower the charges that go into the enterprise fund.
Mike Jacobs was talking about county services, not just taxes. Sanitation is a county service. In my opinion, Dekalb citizens are over-serviced in this area. Our sanitation bills could be reduced if the service were reduced to one trash pickup per week, and perhaps one lawn pickup every two weeks during certain parts of the year.
I have worked with and around DeKalb County for 12 years through 3 different CEOs. DeKalb County Government has some amazing employees. I even like the CEO and the commissioners. Yet there is a disfuctionality that is difficult to put a finger on that pervades the County. For one thing, each Department acts as fiefdom to itself and it is difficult create interdeparmental interaction. Moreover, there seems to be a culture of fear rather than innovation. I have suspected the reason for this is the politicized nature of the county’s operations. Because operations are run by an elected position, the CEO, operations lack a strong independent identity. In reaction to dealing with the constantly changing political winds they hunker down within their departments instead of viewing themselves as part of a larger DeKalb County Team. In fairness to the County, there have always been some very strong differences along the North/South divide within the county that exacerbate the issue and are difficult to overcome. Still, if operations could take a more unified and consistent approach, I think they could be more effective in overcoming the issues that face the county. Regardless, until the conflict is resolved, areas will continue to want to be annexed.
I think you nailed most of the issues with DeKalb. A lot of the dysfunction comes from the form of government since an elected official is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the county. Rather than creating accountability to the voters, the nature of the CEO’s position makes it politically difficult to make tough decisions. The Commission-Manager form of government actually works because it gives the elected officials political cover to make the unpopular but necessary decisions.
The other problem for the county government is the geographic and demographic make-up of the county with more affluent areas in North DeKalb and lower income areas in South DeKalb. Since the majority of the county’s revenue comes from property taxes, inevitably North DeKalb ends up footing more of the bill than South DeKalb. When areas like Dunwoody incorporate, they can provide more services at the same or lower tax rates than the county due to their higher property values. I doubt there’s any way the county could find enough efficiencies to compete with that. Meanwhile, as more and more territory is annexed or incorporated in North DeKalb, the revenue available to the county erodes and the services available in the remaining unincorporated areas decline. This creates a downward spiral where the unincorporated areas become less and less desirable and property values continue to fall. The racial component also inflames both sides of the north-south divide.
For areas in the far northern part of the county like Dunwoody, the fate of South DeKalb matters very little. But cities like Decatur in central DeKalb should have a greater interest in the surrounding unincorporated areas thriving since these problems could potentially encroach upon Decatur. I think Decatur residents sometimes have a very insular mentality that what happens outside of the city limits has no effect on them. I also think there’s too much of an adversarial relationship between the county and city governments due to HOST or other issues that makes it hard for them to work together for their mutual benefit. One exception, which I hope becomes the rule, was the relocation of CCP Games to downtown Decatur. From all accounts, City of Decatur and DeKalb County worked together with the State of Georgia to make that happen.
The same north/south conflict is there in Fulton County, with the same result – incorporation of Johns Creek, Sandy Springs, and Milton.
You’re forgetting one of the main services of government. To provide jobs to the people that helped them get elected and or their perceived constituent base.
Hence more garbage pickup then you need. Dekalb could probably get by with far fewer employees than they have.
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Quite frankly, it should come as a surprise to no one that the “cash cow” (aka North DeKalb) has decided to put up fences and end the at-will grazing. How long did the DeKalb County government and South DeKalb think North DeKalb taxpayers would continue to shoulder the financial burden while being called racist? To illustrate further, read “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg,” and “The Grasshopper and the Ant” (Aesop’s Fables).