The August 8th Dunwoody City Council Meeting lasted over 6 hours, starting at 5:30 and ending near 11:30 pm and that was only after we deferred a number of item to the next meeting, therefore let me highlight several issues that were discussed last Monday as I believe they are important. The first item I will report on is our meeting with DeKalb County, in the next post I will discuss our meeting with the Path Foundation.
DeKalb County needed to get us to sign off on a form reaffirming our Service Delivery Strategy which delineates which governmental entity provides which service. For example for Police - the City handles the task, for Fire & Sanitation the City of Dunwoody could legally do those services but we contract out with the County to provide those services for us. At the start of city hood 13 years ago, DeKalb provided what I considered a Gold Level - outstanding services at a fair rate therefore the original Council decided to stick with them. When it comes to EMS Ambulance Services, the City wanted to take those over a few years ago as the DeKalb Contractor AMR was having issues on response timeliness but the City was told by the State that only DeKalb can provide or contract for those services in DeKalb County; therefore we are stuck with DeKalb overseeing that service.
With DeKalb needing our approval of this form, we requested updates from the County on a number of services, namely Sanitation & Fire / EMS and they provided detailed overview of the services and the issues they have been facing on manpower and hospital hold times for EMS. I would like to thank Commissioner Robert Patrick, Chief Operating Officer of DeKalb County, Mr. Zach Williams, Director of DeKalb Sanitation, Ms. Tracy Hutchinson and DeKalb Fire Rescue Chief, Mr. Darnell Fullum for the informative presentations.
For sanitation the manpower shortage issues were negatively affecting services therefore the County Commission put out an RFP and hired a contractor to supplement sanitation collection. This solution has seemed to fill the void as the resident complaints of missed collections have dropped to almost zero.
On EMS, DeKalb Fire Rescue does a fine job getting a local fire truck with a paramedic to the scene to save your life, do CPR, stabilize the injury but the ambulance service has been not only spotty but at times almost delinquent. Mayor Shortal and DeKalb Fire Chief put an MOU into place a few years ago to increase services for EMS but a number of the items in the agreement have never come to fruition. Mayor Deutsch specifically asked Fire Chief Darnell Fullum at the Monday meeting for an update on that agreement. I questioned why hasn't DeKalb contracted away or supplemented ambulance services the way they have done for sanitation? DeKalb County raised the tax rate on Fire Rescue and by not providing adequate life safety services by increasing the number of ambulances, I see this as a deficiency of the County's oversight. In my remarks I asked for better as we are at their mercy as the State won't allow us to handle. The Mayor has a few ideas and there is a new SPLOST vote happening in the near year whereby maybe that penny sales tax funding stream could be used to solve this problem.
As an FYI, I also see that AMR is now in the news for the cost of their services and them not taking most insurance.
The meeting with DeKalb was fruitful as I asked a bunch of other questions and I am truly thankful for the partnership we have built with DeKalb County. The video below is just 12 mins and it really just gives you a small flavor of the 6 hour council meeting.
