Roswell has changed how public safety services are provided to the smaller city of Mountain Park. For now, services will not include a Roswell police response to 911 calls.
For weeks the two cities have disagreed on what the cost of continued police and fire services should be for Mountain Park, a city of 600 residents.
In a special meeting Monday, Roswell City Council approved new 911 services to Mountain Park. Those services would include Roswell receiving and re-routing 911 emergency calls from Mountain Park to other agencies at a cost of $17,500 annually.
Roswell City Manager Gary Palmer said calls for police would be transferred to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department. The Roswell Fire Department will continue to respond to Mountain Park calls, Palmer said.
Roswell council members said they were open to assisting Mountain Park with arranging mutual aid emergency services from other jurisdictions.
“The definition of mutual aid is that it is mutual aid,” Mayor Lori Henry said. “It is not aid being offered by one city to another city.”
Mountain Park is a tiny city that sits off Ga. 92 on the western edge of north Fulton County at the Cherokee County line. Roswell provided full public safety services to the city from 1998 until March 1. Mountain Park didn’t pay 911 user fees during that time and kept money collected from traffic violations.
In February, Roswell City Council voted to have Mountain Park residents pay $374 per resident for public safety services, which is the same amount that Roswell residents pay. Mountain Park residents had been paying $64 each, or $41,700 in total. The 484% increase would pay Roswell $240,000 annually for public safety services, but Mountain Park has refused to pay.
Roswell officials have said they’re concerned about the possibility that Mountain Park will ask the General Assembly to dissolve the city and have it become a part of Roswell. Mountain Park’s infrastructure problems would be costly to Roswell and could bring a property tax increase to residents in both cities, officials said.
During Monday’s meeting, Mayor Lori Henry suggested Mountain Park, if annexed into Roswell, become a gated community responsible for the costs of its own infrastructure, stormwater, roads and lakes.
