For months now, residents of north-central DeKalb have been bombarded with the message that. in response to a corrupt and mismanaged DeKalb government, they should create more government.
Additional city governments will not address the problems facing DeKalb County. The county will still provide the major share of services to residents of these areas. What the new cities will do is increase the number of politicians and increase the cost of government, with no guarantee of improved services.
The cost of having a new layer of government is considerable. According to the projections of the Carl Vinson Institute of UGA, the additional administrative costs for a city of LaVista Hills would be nearly $6.5 million dollars annually. Close to 20 percent of tax dollars would be siphoned off to pay for overhead costs.
These expenses tend to grow. Three years ago, a new City of Brookhaven was projected to need $25 million a year to provide services. Their budget is now $33 million — an increase of 30 percent in just three years. City proponents use spurious millage rate comparisons to claim that tax burdens have not gone up. This is impossible. Common sense dictates that when the cost of government increases the citizens pay for it through higher property taxes and higher fees and fines.
The new DeKalb cities of Dunwoody and Brookhaven started out with projected surpluses. LaVista Hills’ projected surplus is very small — less than 5 percent of the budget. Later investigations done by independent researchers and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have indicated that the city might instead start out with a deficit.
There is very little data that additional city expenses result in better services. Small-city police forces lack many of the resources of a major urban force like DeKalb County’s. Dunwoody is particularly instructive; a 2012 study in Dunwoody found that the small police force there was ‘often overwhelmed’. Just last month, the police chief sent a plea to the city council saying their force was ‘woefully understaffed’ and that they had the lowest number of officers per call of any force in the area. Crimes rates have increased significantly.
City politicians are not immune from the problems that have plagued county government. Adding more elected officials increases the opportunities for cronyism and corruption. Many new cities found themselves wrestling with their first scandals before the terms of the first elected officials were up. To make matters worse, the charters of the new cities have no provisions for independent ethics boards to oversee elected officials — meaning these new politicians have even less oversight that what we have at the county level.
The process that put the two current cities on the ballot was badly flawed. LaVista Hills and Tucker were introduced through a broken legislative process that was not transparent and that ignored citizen input. This resulted in a map that divides communities and neighborhoods.
DeKalb is a rich and culturally diverse county. By working together as a united community, we can confront the challenges we face in DeKalb and build a stronger, more ethical and well-run county. We need to find ways to reach across lines, not draw new ones.
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