City annexation makes some folks do some mighty strange things.

This morning’s AJC reports that State Representative Ernest Williams (D-Avondale Estates) (D-Stone Mountain) asked the House to vote down extending DeKalb’s tax freeze for another five years, because he’s unhappy that that same body created the city of Dunwoody last year.

Williams said later he wanted to make the point that he does not believe the citizens of DeKalb were treated right last year when the issue of creating the city of Dunwoody was turned from a local matter into one voted on by the full House.

“That [the call for defeat of the property tax freeze] was my way of retaliation. It’s politics,” Williams said, adding that last year DeKalb not only lost Dunwoody as an unincorporated area, but with it $18 million or more in revenue.

While I’m glad that there’s a word in the English language for such an odd form of retaliation (“politics”), I wonder how that explanation will fly with voters come the next election cycle, if for some reason the DeKalb tax freeze is allowed to expire.

From the Dunwoody Crier [via Political Insider]…

The DeKalb County Commission finally dropped its last-ditch lawsuit against the incorporation of the city of Dunwoody last week.  CEO Burrell Ellis applauded the decision, while commissioners basically admitted that the sole reason for the lawsuit was the loss of tax revenue from the area around Perimeter Mall.

An honest, if not legally defensible argument.

Speaking of indefensible arguments, here’s a quote from the article that gives this Decatur resident a ridiculous idea…

With the inclusion of the Perimeter Center area, Dunwoody has a 40 percent commercial base, the same as the county as a whole. If the Perimeter Center was excluded, Dunwoody would be “grossly disproportionate” with residential areas and minimal commercial property. [Dunwoody City Attorney Brian] Anderson said this would be “fundamentally unfair.”

New lawsuit!  Decatur vs. DeKalb County.   “With commercial property making up only 15% of Decatur’s tax digest, we, the residents of Decatur, find this fundamentally unfair.  Give us more.  We need the money.”

Since its incorporation vote a few weeks back, Dunwoody residents have been really busy….which really isn’t all that surprising since they’re creating a city from the ground up!

Active advocates for the city’s creation are now running for public office (like John Heneghan at the old Dunwoody North) and various task forces are churning out all kinds of reports and codes.  I get exhausted just reading about it!

Today, the AJC reports that the governor has appointed 5 individuals to help create a groundwork for the city.  It includes 3 local activists and 2 business reps.

That got me thinking…how can Decatur help out a new city of Dunwoody?

Well, it already seems like they’re looking to us for inspiration.  Over at Heneghan’s blog, he mentions he’s already looked at the Oakhurst Community Garden for a model of sustainable gardening.  In addition to that, a Dunwoody resident has already set up a new blog, called “Sustainable Dunwoody“, which plans promote sustainable practices throughout the new city.  There already seems to be some online consensus that Dunwoody should strive to be a walkable, bikable, green city.

With those goals in mind, what better resource is there than Decatur?  Beyond pointing them in in the direction of  our 2008 Annual Report, entitled “Sustainability”, what else can/will the city of Decatur do to help DeKalb’s newest city?

After being killed in committee nearly a month ago, the bill to create a city of Dunwoody is back on the voting block this coming Tuesday (according to the AJC). I’m not sure what prompted the quick resurrection of the bill (maybe John over at Dunwoody North will fill us in) , but if passed this time around, citizens of the prescribed area would vote on city status this November.

So, why am I writing about Dunwoody in a blog about Decatur? Because my friends, even though we may proudly proclaim ourselves residents of Decatur first, we also pay taxes to another master: DeKalb County.

And why does that matter? Because DeKalb and all of its existing cities (Decatur, Avondale, Stone Mountain, Chamblee) love to fight over our tax money.

A quick recap: Every city that exists or is created within the county takes countless millions in property taxes away from unincorporated DeKalb. DeKalb understandably doesn’t like this and fights against city creation like an overprotective mother watching her son grow up and try to move out of the house. It also has horded much of the 1% Homestead Option Sales Tax (last estimates showed that Decatur was being underpaid by a cool $500,000) that the cities say is rightfully their’s. (The GA Supreme Court should decide this 7 year battle some time this year. A date has not yet been set.)

A quick aside…The other side of this coin is that it is usually the wealthier communities (with higher property taxes) that want to withdraw themselves from county services and ultimately that leaves the county’s poorest unincorporated areas with even less available funding to repair the countless problems that plague them on a daily basis.

So, how would the creation of another city, like Dunwoody, affect those in and around Decatur? Well, as Mayor Floyd has mentioned recently in talks about annexation, if Dunwoody becomes a city, unincorporated DeKalb residents should expect taxes to go up (due to a loss in the tax base) and county services to get even worse as a result. Around Decatur, this might affect the way people in our potential annexation areas think and subsequently vote on annexation into the city.

So, keep an eye on Dunwoody’s city creation and watch for when the Georgia Sumpreme Court finally rules on the HOST dispute. I’ll obviously report on both here. If Decatur can get its share of that 1% sales tax and/or can successfully annex more commercial land into the city, property taxes should come more in line with unincorporated areas (according to Floyd) while retaining the benefit of better services.