Decatur Opts Out of DeKalb “Double Taxation”, Saves Residents $$
Decatur Metro | September 21, 2010Some of you may remember a post from back in March, when we reported on the passage of House Bill 1508, which allowed DeKalb’s cities to opt out of certain services already provided by cities, but still taxed by the county. Those services included 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.
At last night’s Decatur city commission, the commissioners voted to opt out of both basic police and the parks and recreation “services” for four years. By officially opting out of these two areas that DeKalb has never supported anyway, Decatur property owners with a $400,000 house will save an average of $120 a year on their DeKalb taxes. The commission will be able to renew their decision in four years.
The City Manager recommended NOT opting out of the streets and roads or the “non-basic police services” at this time.
While the reason for holding onto “non-basic police services” is sort of obvious – Decatur PD doesn’t have a K-9 division, bomb squad or a SWAT team -, the commission and especially the mayor made it clear that regarding the roads portion of the tax, which primarily pays for maintaining the city’s traffic signal system, that they would hold their nose and keep paying the tax for at least four more years.
Why would Decatur continue to pay the County for something that has tied its hands for years as residents complained about poorly timed signals?
Well, according to the City Manager, DeKalb County has recently received a significant grant to upgrade all the traffic signals in the county (including Decatur) and opting out now would preclude Decatur from receiving this benefit. Therefore, the City Manager and the commission decided to maintain this tax for now and revisit the issue in four years after the grant upgrades had been made.
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Does this mean that city residents won’t be paying to support county parks? I wonder, if we’re not paying the county for parks, will Decatur residents still be eligible to use the parks?
No. Decatur residents will be prohibited from using Dekalb County Parks.
No. It’s just the taxes we’re paying DeKalb to maintain Decatur City Parks….which they don’t do.
So, DM, what you’re saying is that we were paying DeKalb to maintain OUR parks, and they weren’t?
Right. Just like we were paying them to provide basic police services and they weren’t. We were being double-taxed because DeKalb refused to break any of this stuff out prior to this year.
The mayor mumbled last night that it took 19 years to straighten this out.
What? Anyone can use any public park. Nobody is waiting at the gate of parks checking the addresses of park visitors.
Yeah, but I think it they do spot checks. If they see a Decatur address, out you go!
At least we are paying the street portion of the tax so that we can keep driving on the roads and utilizing the traffic signals.
Eric, do you know for certain that what you are saying is correct? I.E., you’re a city or county or parks official? My question was legitimate, and if your answer is mere speculation, I’d really like to know that.
A while back, we did have a discussion about people who live outside of Decatur not being allowed to use the Dog Park.
Diane,
The Dekalb County park rules are linked below. Nowhere in these rules does it prohibit non-residents or City of Decatur residents, or anyone else, from using the county parks.
http://www.co.dekalb.ga.us/parks/pr-park-rules.html
Well to be honest with you it wasn’t quite speculation – only sarcasm. Not very nice of me.
Trust me, Dekalb County police and/or parks department are NOT doing spot checks on park visitors. They don’t have the money or manpower. The only way anyone is going to ask for your papers in a Dekalb park is if your being accused of breaking the law, and no cop is going to consider simply being at the park a violation of the law.
Now, if you told me City of Decatur did spot checks on park visitors, I’d believe you.
A good test would be the pools, e.g. Medlock. Can Decatur residents pay to use them just like non-Decatur county residents can?
I sense some leg-pulling going on in this thread.
I think we should worry about the Dekalb Co funding and their school accrediation. If they lose that and nearby property values plummet its not good for us…
Having just gone through an appraisal even though the comps were in city of decatur their writeup on neighborhood trends went to the Memorial Drive live… extended ing beyond city of borders… a point I argued and couldn’t win.
This is all so overwhelming, dealing with corruption and incompetence at school and county levels of governance. Is there any way to do intelligence and proficiency tests on politicians before they are allowed to hold office, and even more importantly, some psychologic testing to screen out folks with major personality disorders. Or would there be anyone left?
I think this is fantastic news. Our taxes are so high, and it’s always felt silly that we were paying so much to Dekalb without really getting anything. Glad they worked this out.