New city will make DeKalb desirable again

Change is never easy. It’s often more comfortable to stick with something familiar, even something detrimental to our daily lives, than to embrace something new. That’s why it is tough to quit smoking, start exercising or eat healthy.

It takes courage to change. And I’ve certainly witnessed a lot of courage bubbling up among my fellow residents in the LaVista Hills community over the past few years as they have concluded that DeKalb County is not taking care of our needs.

As a result, residents see less risk in change than in staying with the status quo and hoping DeKalb will become a functional government within the foreseeable future. They want to govern themselves through the creation of their own city in North-Central DeKalb – the city of LaVista Hills.

Residents in our community often contend with cavernous potholes, an absence of patrol officers and lengthy police response times, parks deprived of maintenance, and a broken permitting process.

Neighbors also lament overcrowded roads and schools as DeKalb planning and zoning officials approve projects with no regard for their impact on our neighborhoods. Then there is the probe from former Attorney General Mike Bowers that found so much corruption in DeKalb that he termed the government “rotten to the core.”

DeKalb’s government has become bloated, out of touch and wasteful of taxpayer money. With a local city council comprised of neighbors who live in our immediate community, we will have a government more responsive to our needs. We will transform our area if we follow the path of new cities, like Sandy Springs and Dunwoody, and vote to incorporate.

What residents will see with a new city:

• Our own police force. More than 100 sworn officers are projected for our area to keep the streets of LaVista Hills safe.

• No tax rate increase. The University of Georgia's prestigious Carl Vinson Institute of Government confirms sufficient revenue is already here — including a hefty annual budget surplus — to provide city services without a tax rate increase. CVI has never missed on financial projections for newly created cities.

• Fiscal efficiency. DeKalb officials raised property taxes in recent years, including a staggering 4.35 mill tax increase in 2011. At the same time, these officials rejected recommendations from their own 2010 Georgia State University study that recommended downsizing the bloated county payroll by 900 employees, shifting to 401(K) retirement plans and contracting services with private partners. Partnering with the private sector to spend taxpayer funds efficiently will be the standard in a new city of LaVista Hills.

• Influx of quality economic development. As we govern ourselves locally, LaVista Hills will be a friendly place to open a business that fits our community's needs. Entrepreneurs will no longer have to endure endless red tape to start a business or relocate to our part of the county.