Some 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.