The Dunwoody City Council spent two days in North Georgia with Dunwoody City Leadership discussing a handful of important topics in order for City Office Directors to get a flavor of where we as a City should be going, doing and setting priorities. There was no member of the public in the room the first day and I am unsure how many people were able to follow along on the zoom connection for more than 6 hours and then the second day we only had Dunwoody Crier Reporter, Mr. Hayden Sumlin in the room who was able to put together a nice article linked below. I have included all the documents provided to Council for discussion and linked a few other recaps from Councilman Rob Price, Facebook Posts and a post from The Other Dunwoody Blog which is a blog that has been around for many years giving his opinion on city decisions.
We as a Council discussed street lights missing on main corridors and how to fix this, we discussed the 12 ft path moving forward on Mt. Vernon, staff wants us to think about reducing our fire codes for residential buildings, we discussed park needs and Peachtree's Field that we are obligated to maintain, staff would like to add employee retirement benefits for medical, we discussed City Service contracts that are about to be rebid and possibly bringing more staff in house to save money?, we discussed police staffing / raises, drones and EMS Service and finally we also discussed (very limited conversation) City Charter changes to add emergency powers, judge term limits, council compensation and finally special tax districts.
The city has been aware of this operational financial issue coming toward us for years with our main source of revenue locked at the maximum tax rate, our home values locked, with salaries and service desires of the community escalating faster than revenue is growing.
There was no real discussion of service cuts (but they could be on the table) and many of the financial constraints written into the charter (property freeze, 1 mil reduction, and possibly the maximum tax limit) would need to be removed by a referendum, therefore the easiest solution being brought forward was a special tax district for public service as a separate line item on the tax bill. Of course the devil is in the details and at the moment there are no details available so I started asking if there was special service tax issued would the general millage rate (that now funds public safety) be reduced to a lower level and I received push back on the line of questioning. Here is a link to a Facebook post where there is lots of good conversation on a possible tax increase. If this special tax district for public safety is enacted what is stopping a future Council for enacting a special service district for Parks next? The operational funding issues are real and service cuts haven't been discussed but they may be on the table soon?
Dunwoody City Council discusses tax increase at strategic planning retreat - Dunwoody Crier
Mayor Lynn Deutsch said the elephant in the room is the city’s looming shortfall in operational funding, while also pointing to the fact that Dunwoody has not spent its reserves yet. While the city has budgeted the use of reserves for the past two years, its conservative budgeting has kept it out of the red.
...
Councilman John Heneghan, elected to the inaugural City Council in
2008, said former officials told residents that any tax increase would
come to a citizen vote via a referendum.
Heneghan asked if the special tax district for public safety would be a back-end property tax rate hike, or if the city’s existing millage would be reduced to even out an increase.
“I’m all in on public safety, it’s the number one reason for government,” Heneghan said. “Back in the day, we said we were going to go to the residents with anything above the tax rate that we’re currently at.”
Other elected officials pushed back on a measure reducing or evening out city revenue, saying the point of a special tax district would be to increase operational revenue.
Recapping 2024 Retreat Direction and Deliverables
Council SWOT Analysis/Setting 2025 Retreat Direction
Streetlights
Mt. Vernon/Ashford Dunwoody Corridors
Concrete and Steel in Construction
Federal Funding Update
Public Investments to Improve Commercial Areas
Defining Downtown Dunwoody (What, Where, Why)
Veterans Memorial - Funding
Homecoming/Wildcat Parks
Peachtree Middle School Turf
Drones / Flock / EMS Service / Staffing / Technology
Speed Limits
Boards and Commissions
Municipal Service Rebidding
Proposed Charter Changes 2025 and proposed 2020 changes.
2024 City Manager Monthly Reports
2024 Quarterly Departmental Reports
2024 Quarterly Financial Reports
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