Dunwoody City Manager outlines his vision for a Police Department

Though tonight's meeting had a lot on the agenda, much of it procedural, either tying up loose ends from the Midnight starting session or prepping for the marathon sessions that it looks like we are going to have next week.

That being said, there were a number items of interest to listen for on the audio but many of the procedural items could be skipped. If I had a limited amount of time to listen to the audio from the meeting, I would look at the agenda and then start at the public comment. After the public comment I would then jump to section "I" with the introduction of Chief Grogan and stay for the City Implementation Update. Then I would skip most of new business and jump to item "J 10" which starts a long conversation on the future of the police department and listen until the end.

Unfortunately our Mayor was under the weather and we wish him a speedy recovery. Councilman Wittenstein was also missed at the meeting due to work travel.

12082008_audio.mp3

Some of the items you may want to listen for...

Public Comments from Dunwoody based builders looking for the moratorium to be lifted and a later discussion that it may be lifted on December 31 with permit applications being accepted prior to that for a possible Dec 31st approval.

Public comment asking for more public comment time prior to each new ordinance vote and a later discussion that asked to put it on the agenda for action at the next meeting.

A discussion of the 2008 and 2009 Dunwoody business licenses and the procedures that the city will be following to grant them.

An update of our future Dunwoody Court System and the impact it has on the DeKalb County Police writing tickets in Dunwoody.

The approval of the police pay and management structure of the Department which was preceded by an in-depth discussion from the City Manager, the Chief and the Council regarding the over all structure of the Department. (Thin management structure, 12 hour shifts and a total of 44 personnel were estimated when including civilians.)

The meeting ended with a discussion of our future meeting schedule since we already have an action packed public hearing on the 18th regarding zoning, signs and sexually oriented businesses. At the moment the work session for December 15th is still on the schedule but it might get cut or combined with a voting meeting and the voting session of the 22nd is also questionable due to limited availability of several council members. The missing council members will be polled as to availability and the meeting schedule will be set.

All in all, even with all the large amount of procedural stuff we covered, it was still a very good and productive City Council meeting.