Commission/City Staff Retreat

Feb 8-9^th

Once a year, as we have for at least the past 18 years, your city commission and the city management team meet outside the city for a few days to review what happened over the last year or so and to discuss what we believe might happen over the next few years and thus establish a few priorities and focus our efforts for the next year.

The conversation this year was dominated by the economy and the impact it will have on our community, and it will be significant. Budget preparations for the 2009-2010 fiscal year have already begun and will be finalized in the next few months. Although the city is in strong financial position today, we will be faced with tough choices within this budget to maintain that position through what is being called “the worst economic times since the depression of the thirties”. We will soon be provided by Dekalb County the official tax digest for this year which directly impacts the cities revenues for the next budget year. But especially now we must also look ahead at the next several years and make our best assumptions about what will happen to property values. If the trend continues down, we must begin now preparing for the necessary changes in future years budgets.

But we will survive. It will be harder for the schools as the state continues to cut their funds. We must not only plan the future but also work for today. In addition to the financial issues, look for your city government to focus on several key issues for the coming year.

A.     Create a task force to study and update our land use and development ordinances especially where commercial is next to residential.

B.      Making our city environmentally friendly.

C.     Seek a fair resolution to our concerns about the Service Delivery Agreement between the Dekalb cities and Dekalb County. We do not wish to be taxed by the county for services they do not provide to us.

D.     Continue toward completion of the work scheduled under our bond referendum. This year two of the big issues will be a decision about the public works building and Glenlake Park improvements including improvements to the cemetery. The value for our construction dollars is probably greater today than anytime in past 20 years. So with funds in hand it is a good time to be building GREEN and we are also providing jobs.

There are obviously others issues not mentioned that the city will be working on, but these will consume a majority of the hours available.

I covet your comments and thank you for your support. We have a great city – the best anywhere.

The City of Decatur along with 9 other local governments throughout the US are acting as pilot sites for a program called “Open City Hall”.  The idea behind the project is to provide a way to         increase and diversify citizen engagement in important community issues.  “Open City Hall” will provide feedback through a specially structured internet-based service that will present position statements followed by “Yes/No” questions and an opportunity to comment.

If it works, we would hope it would augment and diversify civil, civic engagement, and more specifically: (a) facilitate easy and convenient participation in community issues, (b) impede a single voice from dominating the public discourse, and (c) improve the efficiency of decisions makers to synthesize large amounts of diverse feedback.

The goals of this Open City Hall Pilot program are to assess the extent to whether this suite of services can:
Assist local governments in addressing important problems with the key stakeholders;
Increase and diversify the amount of public participation on important community issues;
Augment the tools that government leaders and decision makers use to analyze and synthesize the opinions of citizens; and,

Improve the quality of citizen participation and the public’s perception of government-led decision processes.
We will pilot the program for approximately three-months.  There will be a link from www.decaturga.com to the site.  We will be able to get reports that synthesize and collate the results and provide a geographic map of responders.

The Governor has demonstrated once again that he apparently doesn’t understand how local governments work, what their purpose is, how their budgets are established, and how the decisions about revenues and expenditures are decided. He seems to be following closely in the footsteps of Speaker Richardson who proved last year, without any doubt, that he doesn’t understand or have a regard for local governments, nor does he care to. The Mayor of Atlanta gets hammered for a shortfall in revenue and she is vilified, but now, less than four months after the Governor signs his approval of the state budget, his revenue estimates are off by almost 2 billion dollars, that’s with a B, and there is no outcry. It looks to me like someone should ask how that happened. Was the economy not in trouble in March? Should not the buck stop at the governor’s desk? But then the governor says it’s not his fault; it’s those incompetent city and county folks who have messed everything up.

The administration strategy has become very clear. Although I’m a little slow, it has now become obvious even to me. They begin to cut, not their expenditures, but the funds they direct to local governments. The focus of those cuts in the last few years has been education, but beginning last year they shifted their focus to all local governments. Case in point, funds they were collecting and returning to our citizens under the homeowner tax relief grant program are now being withheld forcing local governments to either cut more expenses or increase revenues with a tax increase.

How does this work? An example; they cut state funds to education, then when we, as a community, decide we want to keep our Spanish classes or music and arts or whatever, and decide to raise our taxes to compensate for the shortfall, they point the finger at us and announce our budgets are out of control. We are accused of incompetence concerning managing or deciding how we should spend our money. As the Governor stated “(local governments) have never approached it from the standpoint that they have to tighten their belts”. I invite the governor to come to my community, stand in front of our citizens and tell us we don’t know how to manage our budget. We carefully plan our budgets every year and make hard choices, in front of citizens (not in some back office at the capital), about cuts and tax increases. If we get out of alignment with our constituents, there are two opportunities every month (our council meetings) and an election every other year for us as citizens to straighten it out. And we can’t hide in China or on a plane to Spain. Our mayor’s office is out on the street corner.

So I ask the governor to work with us, not blame us. The solutions to our problems are not under the gold dome, they are out here on the streets with us. I ask the Governor to join us in Decatur for a forum to address this divisive approach. Let’s talk, not point fingers.

The 2007-2008 city budget has been adopted and goes into place July 1. While it is a realistic budget and tight, it does allow the city to continue to move toward its goal of a clean, vibrant and active city. There are significant changes in the way we recruit, hire and pay police officers in an effort to reach a fully staffed force. In November the city will make the last payment on the bonds for the conference center and parking deck which will lead to a decision of whether we continue in that business or sell the facilities. The money we collect from the hotel-motel tax goes toward that debt and when the bonds are paid we will install a tourism board so that we can legally continue to collect the tax. The funds will then be used for maintenance and upkeep. There are funds for a marketing study to look for ways that we can support our existing businesses and restaurants. In these tough times we must continue to look for ways to help our local economy. There are some other key items in this year’s budget which I will address later. As tight as this budget is, it continues to put pressure on us financially through property tax. We continue to look for ways to lower our property taxes and one way to help keeps popping up – Annexation. It is obvious and will make a significant difference in all of our property tax bills. More later. I know I haven’t written much lately but that will improve. Thanks for your interest and patience.