The agenda Monday night is huge but the most important issue for me is towards the end of the night as it is a two part discussion on City Finances.
The first topic is a possible city tax rate increase that would fund inflationary pressures for operational expenses, and if I had my way we would include a mid-year pay raise for our police department. Our City millage (Tax) rate has not changed in 13 years and we are currently burning reserves as we have done in other lean years but now the financial experts are estimating we can't do that very much longer and with higher operational costs facing the city, I believe it would be prudent to think about such a raise in 2023.
As I discussed last Tuesday on my blog, our home values are locked for City Tax rates (the Schools are not) therefore with no raise of the actual millage (tax) rate, my city taxes have been the same since 2009. My total DeKalb County Tax bill is $4,715 and of that I only pay $218 for general City Operations. Dunwoody has the lowest tax rate in the County because we have so many
businesses that pay a large share of our taxes, we are able to keep
residential taxes low. My bill is similar to the home with the $400,000 value listed below therefore if we decided to raise the tax rate from 2.74 mills to the 3.04 mill cap, my expected tax rate might go up $45 in 2023 for City Operational Services.
This possible raising of the millage tax rate would bring in about One Million Dollars and I believe that would be allocated very quickly for Public Safety and other operational needs. Public Safety is Council's highest responsibility and this possible tax increase would go a long way to funding these increases.
Last year, we raised police pay and restructured the entire pay chart as requested by DPD Management but yet the cities all around us doubled our proposed salary increases therefore we actually lost ground on the salary comparisons between cities but we provide an excellent compensation package over all. I recently saw Chief Billy Grogan on TV talking about officer pay and the many reasons that officers leave law enforcement. In discussions with Mayor Deutsch, I am looking forward to moving forward with additional funding for our officers.
The second topic of City Finances steps away form the day to day operational responsibilities to Council's wish to fund projects and priorities important to the community. Last Tuesday, prior to a the first discussion on a possible bond referendum, I posted my preliminary thoughts on what might happen at the meeting and the way a bond referendum might go if Council decides to move forward after talking folks and having public informational sessions. If you haven't read it, please do, here is the link.
Based on list of almost shovel ready projects that was whittled down to what could be completed short term, Council is exploring a possible $40 million bond referendum that would be paid back over 20 years to possibly fund projects like those on the list. If the city moved forward putting that medium bond request to a ballot and the citizens approved, my tax bill would go up approximately $116 dollars for the bond.
Council has been working diligently on a parks and paths plan that we would like to move forward with unfortunately there are a number of moving parts and though we published perspective plans for parks (and then pulled them back) we are still working through a number of issues to make sure we are serving the greatest good before finalizing plans for re-vetting with citizens and then approval. These moving pieces make determining cost and timing impossible therefore as nothing is final there is no way to place a specific project list to a possible bond referendum. Here is a likely list being floated but it is not a specific list, if you read the declaimer it is just a possible list. If a bond moves forward it would state that it is for Parks and Transportation but no specific projects listed.
I believe we have been good stewards of your money, have done wonderful things in our parks and if the moving parts align, the recreational space needs of the community will be much closer to being met. Unfortunately it takes trust on the part of the citizens that the Councils plans and priorities match the citizens desires, so I do understand the reluctance. If the $40 million were passed by the community it would facilitate construction starting sooner rather than later as our children are not getting any younger.
The table below shows what the financial impacts would be with a tax increase to 3.04 and a $40 million dollar bond. In my case the general tax bill in my situation would go up by $161 dollars ($45 for operations and $116 for projects.)
If the community doesn't trust Council to make wise decisions on parks development and wants hard plans for all open spaces in the community, we can't give you that today but we could a year from now. One scenario that may work best for all involved, is to have Council move forward for the operational millage raise but also have the City Staff finalize park plans so that a year from now a detailed project list can be specificity tied to the bond referendum. This time would allow us to update the MOU with DeKalb County so we could put artificial turf on the Peachtree Field where we have already installed lights in order to maximize our use on the 25 year lease we obtained to use the fields after school hours.
This delay scenario also moves us closer to the removal of the last DeKalb Counties Parks Bond and removal from our tax bill. In my case I paid $71 dollars for that bond and if removed it would come much closer to washing out any increase that Dunwoody is contemplating.
I can tell you that Council has not made any decisions on these matters, we are weighing the financial numbers that keep coming in and comparing them to tangible benefits and human costs as described by the citizens that will be impacted both pro and con.
I am looking forward to the discussion on Monday night and please do feel free to give feedback to the entire City Council in any medium you feel comfortable.
council.members@dunwoodyga.gov is an email address that will get your messages to all of us at once.
Thanks,
John
