Bill Will Allow DeKalb Cities To Opt Out of Certain County Services
Decatur Metro | May 3, 2010 | 10:23 pmWhich means potentially lower county taxes for city residents!
At tonight’s Decatur city commission meeting, Mayor Bill Floyd took a minute at the end of the hour to note the Georgia Legislature’s recent passage of House Bill 1508 during the just-concluded legislative session.
The bill requires that DeKalb County calculate the “particularized millage rates” of four specific district services: basic police services (traffic unit, patrols, etc), non-basic police services (SWAT, bomb squad, K-9 division, etc), parks and recreation, and streets and road maintainable.
Each “special services tax district”, which basically is either a DeKalb city, the county, or “Atlanta in DeKalb”, then has the ability to say “no” to any of these services by sending a certified letter to the DeKalb CEO and commissioners by September 2010 and thus not pay the associated tax next year.
The mayor did not mention which specific services Decatur might “opt out” of (My guess would be basic police and parks and rec), but did say that the planned action by the city would probably knock 1 1/2 points off the county millage rate for City of Decatur residents.
Hooray for not paying for things you don’t receive anyway!
Too bad that traffic engineering isn’t on the list.
Progress!
They’ve been talking about a cost breakdown of county “services” over a decade that I know of. This is a big deal. Now if we can get back some of that H.O.S.T. money….
Mmmmmmmmmm. I love the smell of selective fiscal conservatism in the morning.
LOL!
Guilty as charged.
In every other place I’ve lived, “special services tax districts” usually end up choosing to roll their service organizations into the better/cheaper service provider (most often the county). It’s extraordinary that it works backwards here. A little competition might help.
I thnk there is another side to this bill. How can some residents of DeKalb not pay to maintain County parks? No one uses every County park. We can’t just pay for the parks closest to our residence. City residents are never barred or charged for visiting a County park. It’s the same with library services. County residents (including those that live in cities) pay for the entire library system, not just the one they use most frequently. As far as the road maintenance goes, we all have to pay for the County road system. If the County isn’t maintaining city streets, cities aren’t paying twice for city streets to be maintained. And what happens, heaven forbid, when an emergency ocurrs in a City and a swat team, or the bomb squad is needed? Does anyone expect the County to refuse service? Having those services on standy-by costs money, too. I don’t understand how this bill will work on a practical basis. Maybe I don’t understand this bill, but a court challenge seems likely.
As the post says, a city would be wise to choose judiciously which of the four services it opts in or out of. For specialized non-basic police services and county roads, I’m guessing that Decatur can’t cover the services so it should continue to pay for them through millage. But for parks and recreation, we have our own and don’t need to pay for county services. The impact would be that a city resident would have to pay the non-resident fee for county park and recreation services and would be denied any service that was for residents only. But to simply walk around a park, city or county, you usually don’t have to be a resident.. Anyone from another area or even an international visitor can use the free access elements of park.
“a city would be wise to choose judiciously”…seriously how much is the decision to opt out going to be considered if an police emergency exists? If an emergency exists, nobody is going to say Decatur can’t have that bomb squad. We live in a large urban area and as the saying goes …. happens. I think we want to adequately prepare for these crises. It would make more sense if DeKalb and Gwinnett or Atlanta cooperated and had specialized units to cover multiple jurisdictions, but I don’t see how a municipality opts out. City residents should not contribute to the cost of normal DeKalb police patrols and operation, but should be required to contribute to special services.
Regarding parks, all DeKalb residents have access to all DeKalb parks, so we all pay. If the County offers recreation services (baseball at Medlock, swimming pools, horse farm, golf) it has a program fee. The County doesn’t currently charge city residents more than any other resident. But to say, we have our parks and don’t need the County parks doesn’t quite seem equitable. None of us the right to say, I only drive on a particular set of roads, use these sidewalks and street lights, rely on these traffic lights, depend on this fire station, and therefore I’m only paying taxes on them. Whether we live in a city, or not, we all live in the County. Each of us has the right to vote in County elections and has an equal say in determining county service levels.
Determining the equitable cost of services is not cut and dry. Residents downstream from Decatur benefit from Decatur’s engineering services, but may not pay for them. Residents in Decatur benefit from DeKalb County police catching criminals that operate on Memorial Drive. Untangling who pays for what and who benefits is not as simple as looking at political boundaries.
No. It’s not.
Untangling which jurisdiction is comically corrupt and inefficient, though, is.