Back during our most recent ice storm Mike Mason, mayor of Peachtree Corners, received a call asking him to drive over and pick up a dead deer that had unfortunately, for the deer and the mayor, expired in a constituent’s front yard.
Lois Salter, mayor of Berkeley Lake, has had calls when a resident’s power has gone out. Last time I looked, the Berkeley Lake dam renovation didn’t include a power plant.
Both mayors accept phone calls, emails and interruptions to a night out for dinner with the same graciousness and genuine concern for residents that got them elected in the first place.
I recently asked both mayors to sell me on the benefits of living inside city limits, and as is often the case, paying additional property taxes for the privilege.
According to Salter, Berkeley Lake’s 2.67 millage rate provides residents with community services including property maintenance enforcement, additional security patrols, more affordable waste collection, street lights, attention to right of way maintenance and community activities like festivals and Earth Day events.
More importantly, Salter sees it as her role to bring a voice within county government for the city’s approximately 2,000 residents and 215 businesses. You might say, the soft-spoken, quietly determined Salter can be the squeaky wheel that gets heard.
Entering its second year as Gwinnett’s most recently chartered city, Peachtree Corners has, so far, been able to operate without any additional property tax. Working with a limited service model, Peachtree Corners is focused on local control of planning and zoning, code enforcement and trash pickup to provide “quality of life services.”
Like Salter, Mike Mason, along with members of the United Peachtree Corners Civic Association, saw a need for the 38,000 residents in the area to have “self-determination,” or as some people call them, “a homeowners association on steroids.”
Mason and city leadership wants to keep the focus on “whatever we can do to provide safety and improve quality of life for our citizens.”
The city plans to create a town center inside a central business district as part of a Livable Cities Initiative partially funded by a grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Code Enforcement officers have been sweeping aging apartment complexes looking for violations and asking property owners to resume compliance. The first sweep resulted in over 400 violations.
In another effort Peachtree Corners is partnering with Dunwoody to develop a comprehensive land use plan for the Winters Chapel corridor. Using SPLOST funds, the city plans to safely integrate pedestrian traffic across Peachtree Parkway and widen the ramp from Peachtree Parkway onto Peachtree Industrial Boulevard.
And to divert a few of those after-dinner home phone calls asking the mayor to fix a bulging sidewalk, Peachtree Corners has a mobile app that allows residents to photograph and report problems.
That said, Mason and Salter recognize the elderly resident who calls smelling a gas leak might not be technologically savvy. They’ll still be happy to provide the gas company’s phone number. They’ll probably even call back later to check on their neighbor, just to be sure she’s doing alright.
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