As a follow-up to this week's first cityhood meeting, we are hoping to put together a "pro" and "con" panel in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more details.
In meantime, if you have questions that you would like to ask the panel, please feel free to post them here. We will get to as many as we can within the time permitted.
Here are some questions for the January pro/con panel that have been sent to me thus far:
ReplyDelete(1) How much additional money will it cost DeKalb property owners currently in unincorporated DeKalb if:
a) we were to form a City of DeKalb, or
b) we stayed unincorporated?
(2) If a group were to form a very small city, could that entity collect the utility fees for their city that are currently not being collected by DeKalb County?
(3) What services (perhaps all) would the new city of DeKalb provide? If all (which seems logical for such a large city), then wouldn't the current DeKalb CEO’s office with executive functions and BOC be superfluous and would eventually be dissolved?
(4) Has there been any discussion of making the BOC elections non-partisan?
(5) Now that Dunwoody and other new cities like Sandy Springs have been in operation for a while; are the financial projections proving to have been accurate and are they financially self-sufficient, or are they running into some unexpected expenses that are causing budget problems for these new municipalities?
(6) In any future incorporation study, should not the financial repercussions on the REST of DeKalb be included in the study?
(7) Local control of land use and zoning to ensure compatible development is cited as a major reason for creating a new city within DeKalb. Preempting local control by creating a City of DeKalb raises the question of who gets to decide what is appropriate for a given area when the rezoning applications start rolling in?