The Legislature and the coming Battle for Northlake Mall (Atlanta: house, university)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by SAAN

For all these area that want to take their money, start their own city, and have nothing to do with Dekalb, will they have their own separate Fire Department and Police Department as well too or will they expect Dekalb County to come to their rescue in a time of need?

I think like Dunwoody and Brookhaven, they will have their own police, but rely on DeKalb Fire Rescue.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by SAAN

For all these area that want to take their money, start their own city, and have nothing to do with Dekalb, will they have their own separate Fire Department and Police Department as well too or will they expect Dekalb County to come to their rescue in a time of need?

They have to provide at least three services. I think all of them will create their own police departments. Not sure about fire.

[JPD]

Originally Posted by SAAN

For all these area that want to take their money, start their own city, and have nothing to do with Dekalb, will they have their own separate Fire Department and Police Department as well too or will they expect Dekalb County to come to their rescue in a time of need?

Fire is provided by the county in new cities, generally. I can't think of any exceptions. As is trash/recycling, schools, and some other services which vary from city to city. Residents of cities still pay the county for the services they get from the county.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by JPD

Fire is provided by the county in new cities, generally. I can't think of any exceptions. As is trash/recycling, schools, and some other services which vary from city to city. Residents of cities still pay the county for the services they get from the county.

Sandy Springs and Johns Creek have their own fire departments.

[Marsha33]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Yes. But they are paying less taxes to the county.

Counties in Georgia basically just operate as very large cities. So they have higher taxes to cover all the services they are providing. When you have cities that are providing those services instead then you don't have to pay that share to the county. Many cities have lower taxes than living in the unincorporated county.

The city taxes for small cities is usually lower than the county taxes but overall when you add those two together, it is higher than just paying county taxes for living in the unincorporated part of counties. The benefit of living in an incorporated small city is it's much easier to get the Southern hospitality when dealing with government offices and they tend to respond more to the smallest of issues. I think DeKalb and Georgia need to come up with better ways to incorporate cities. It doesn't seem fair for some well connected and wealthy people to just grab the most ideal areas and abandon the other ones. Mary Oliver is probably right about there needing to be an all or nothing approach. There needs to be some thought about what happens to the rest of the county.

[SAAN]

If you cant start your own school system (since that is the biggest complaint about DeKalb), what is the point of all these areas starting their own city. It seems like the end result is high taxes to live in the area and if they have their own police force, they write tickets for almost anything as a way to raise revenue. Dunwoody, Milton, Avondale, Decatur Police always have people pulled over when I go through those areas, since a normal road gets a new 35mph speed limit and people get tickets all day long.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by SAAN

Dunwoody, Milton, Avondale, Decatur Police always have people pulled over when I go through those areas, since a normal road gets a new 35mph speed limit and people get tickets all day long.

35 mph is plenty fast for a residential street and for most commercial streets in heavily developed areas.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by Marsha33

The city taxes for small cities is usually lower than the county taxes but overall when you add those two together, it is higher than just paying county taxes for living in the unincorporated part of counties. The benefit of living in an incorporated small city is it's much easier to get the Southern hospitality when dealing with government offices and they tend to respond more to the smallest of issues. I think DeKalb and Georgia need to come up with better ways to incorporate cities. It doesn't seem fair for some well connected and wealthy people to just grab the most ideal areas and abandon the other ones. Mary Oliver is probably right about there needing to be an all or nothing approach. There needs to be some thought about what happens to the rest of the county.

There are many cities + county property tax rates that are lower than unincorporated county rates. Including basically all the new cities created in the past decade.

It should not be this way. Having counties provide all the services they do is silly. Counties should have lower tax rates but in Georgia they are acting as large cities so they often have higher tax rates than living in an actual incorporated city.

[jero23]

Originally Posted by lastminutemom

First, I don't disagree about the made up cities. That said, folks in Tucker aren't really interested in Cityhood except that they are being pushed into this by the other efforts. Residents of Tucker have had cityhood discussions for years and they have gone nowhere. The current effort is reactive -- and I am not sure that is fair to them. The leadership of the Lakeside effort in particular have been kind of nasty, in my opinion.

I happen to believe that if most of the folks in that large swath of DeKalb want to be incorporated, then let them, but as one city. Someone from the Lakeside effort told me if would be too big, but I responded that Sandy Springs and Roswell seem to work fine, thank you very much.

Atlanta doesn't want more neighborhoods in DeKalb, they want Druid Hills and Emory and that is it. They don't want DeKalb's poor neighborhoods.

Well, I would tell those in Atlanta City Hall it is "all or nothing" with these locales in DeKalb. You cannot cherrypick only "wealthier, predominately white neighborhoods" and leave out the non-white, working and middle class ones. It says that "non-white, working class individuals" are undesirable and that type of mentality is downright foolish on the City of Atlanta's part.

[jero23]

Originally Posted by jsvh

There are many cities + county property tax rates that are lower than unincorporated county rates. Including basically all the new cities created in the past decade.

It should not be this way. Having counties provide all the services they do is silly. Counties should have lower tax rates but in Georgia they are acting as large cities so they often have higher tax rates than living in an actual incorporated city.

Some counties operate these ways because they are essentially "urban counties", and with that responsibility comes providing base municipal services to all citizens (police, fire/rescue, sewer, planning/zoning, development services, etc.) I do agree some counties need to reevaluate their overall property tax millage, but incorporating an arbitrary municipality with no sense of place or true sense of community vis-a-via a "town center" or "main street" is foolish at best.

As another poster said, most of these reactionary municipalities are essentially faceless places where their only source of income are traffic tickets, property taxes, and a collection of chain stores. I ask people nowadays where is the "downtown area" of many of these reactionary municipalities formed in the past decade. Most of these places don't have any because they are essentially the definition of a "faceless place" with an office building as a "city hall" and still receiving many services from other sources aside from the "municipality" itself.

This seems to be a common regional phenomenon in the Deep South where we all want to create fiefdoms separate from our regional neighborhoods because "we think we know what's best" and "they don't know anything about this place". 9 out 10 times cannot afford to duplicate these essential services in a time where most people are rebelling against additional layers of governmental bureaucracy. We ought to take a note from our fellow Southern neighboring metro areas outside of the Deep South for insight and possible solutions to this problems.