Nancy Jester Reports: The Pension Legacy Tax - Bad for DeKalb

Nancy's office distributed the following item this morning.

A DeKalb legislator wants to financially penalize DeKalb cities for incorporating.  But not ALL cities.  Just the ones that incorporated in this century in order to stem the financial hemorrhage due to corruption and mismanagement.

I wonder what Mary Margaret Oliver stands to gain from this little trick if it is allowed to pass....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

The Pension Legacy Tax
Punitive and Based on False Assumptions

I am writing to alert you to a potential property tax increase coming from the Georgia General Assembly. House Bill 711, sponsored by Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Druid Hills), seeks to add a special tax district to cities formed after 2005. Rep. Oliver believes that newly formed cities owe, what she refers to as, "pension legacy costs". The notion that these legacy costs exist is false and here's why.


1. Newly formed cities continue to pay fully into the General Fund and the Fire Fund. Embedded in these funds are the costs for benefits, including pensions for the employees providing these services.


2. Newly formed cities continue to pay fully into the self-sustaining funds of Sanitation and Watershed. Embedded in these funds are the costs for benefits, including pensions for the employees providing these services.


3. DeKalb County lowered the millage rate for the Police Fund (a fund newly formed cities do not pay into) in the 2015 budget.


4. DeKalb County did not reform the pension benefit system until December 2015 - 7 years after the formation of Dunwoody.


5. DeKalb County used unrealistic actuarial assumptions that negatively impacted funding.


If DeKalb County believed there was a crisis in the pension plan, chiefly driven by the new cities no longer paying into the police fund, why would the county lower the police fund millage rate in 2015? If the county believed that the crisis was caused by newly formed cities, why did pension reform not occur until just a few months ago in December of 2015?


House Bill 711 is only directed at newly formed cities. It is punitive, based on false assumptions, and is not congruent with the facts. Make no mistake about it, it is a discriminatory tax aimed at Brookhaven and Dunwoody. It is a bailout that would allow DeKalb County to continue poor fiscal management.


Read the full post - with facts on Understanding DeKalb's Millage Rate System here: http://ow.ly/YAgSH

And the Winner is.... (Win Two FREE VIP Tickets to Taste of Dunwoody 2016)

This afternoon, right around dinner time, we had the official drawing. Names on pieces of paper in the Tupperware bowl and the winner was ceremoniously chosen by my 5 year old son (who has the least amount of interest in this contest, so he is clearly unbiased.)

And the name he chose is........

Rick Callihan!

Rick - email or call me I have to submit names to the guest list tonight.

Thanks everybody for playing. Please try again next year when SDOC will be sponsoring again.

Taste of Dunwoody 2016 is coming up THIS Saturday, February 20. SDOC is offering two FREE VIP tickets to our supporters. If you are in the Dunwoody/North Atlanta area and would like to attend the community event of the year here's all you have to do:
1) Like SDOC's Facebook page

2) Post your name to the page

3) I will pick a winner at random from the list of visitor posts.

(Required disclaimer: I acknowledge that this giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.)

And... GO!!!






SDOC is proud to support Taste of Dunwoody and Dunwoody Friends of CHOA as a platinum sponsor

DeKalb Super Visits Dunwoody HS February 9

Tuesday, February 9
5:30 PM

Dunwoody High School

Do we have a volunteer to webcast the meeting via Meerkat / Periscope / YouTube?

Dunwoody Town Hall January 21 - LIVE

UPDATE:  Meeting and broadcast ended at 7:50 EST.

Thank you John Heneghan for installing Periscope.

https://www.periscope.tv/w/aXFlIjEyMDI3MDUxfDFaa0p6YXpRV0JyR3YaqkFIkZnAPIHA-WkN7wl84p234QbEPWnt2fl9lDv8vQ==

Periscope video just won't embed in a frame - I tried.

Hit the link and listen in.

Commenting is available if you watch on your iPhone or Android via the app.

City of Dunwoody Meetings and How to Participate

Last night, Dunwoody held a meeting to discuss an updated plan for our city's parks and the outreach that would go along with that.

It was at exactly the same time as the Planning Commission meeting at City Hall where several zoning variance requests were discussed, including those involving a proposed townhome development in Dunwoody Village.

Next week is the first Town Hall of this administration.  Topics for discussion are being accepted at www.connectdunwoody.com.

These meetings have some traits in common:

1)  They are all held in the early evening during prime commuting or family care hours.
2)  There is no live broadcast of the meetings so those unable to attend cannot observe and be informed.**
3)   There is no mechanism for remote feedback from the community outside the meeting room.

**City Council meetings and other meetings held in council chambers are streamed online via the city's SIRE system which organizes official calendars, agendas, and minutes.  However, SIRE's video encoding permits the live feed to be viewed only on Internet Explorer, on a standard laptop or desktop.  It is not possible to view it on any other browser, including the new MS Edge.  They also cannot be viewed on any tablet or smartphone.  The technology is so limited it is almost obsolete in 2015.

Meetings or other informal gatherings (eg, Coffee with a Cop) in the afternoons or evenings are an essential part of soliciting feedback from the public.  But as I have posed elsewhere in DWG, meetings at this particular time frame self-selects for only that part of Dunwoody citizens that are not caring for families at home.  Their time is their own.

Those of us who are meeting buses, running carpools, shuttling kids to activities and doctors' appointments, preparing dinner, managing homes, helping with homework and projects, getting younger children bathed and in bed, as well as working our tails off to earn and provide are not able to share their input in the context of the event because they cannot be in THAT place at THAT time.

I have made requests to city hall to make meetings and live feedback available via social media and streaming video.  Others have done the same via Facebook.  I haven't the foggiest idea whether that will happen or not.

In the mean time, SDOC has a solution.

I would like to contribute SDOC's infrastructure and social media assets to the cause of making public meetings available online to families unable to attend. 

This effort will require some collaboration and logistic testing to determine the best method to stream events.  There are options for streaming video via website and social media, as well as live chat for feedback.

If any Dunwoody citizen is interested in collaborating on this effort, please contact me at duncan@sdocpublishing.com.  

Let's make Dunwoody's official events accessible to more of Dunwoody's citizens!

Water will be shut off temporarily as part of Dunwoody Mt Vernon water main upgrade

From Reporter Newspapers:


Mount Vernon Road’s ongoing water main work requires water to be shut off on Fri., Jan. 8 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for those homes and businesses on Vernon Ridge Drive, Vernon Ridge Court and Thornhill Court in Dunwoody.

The city of Dunwoody began working with DeKalb County on the water main pipeline replacement project in March. The project is part of a rehabilitation program by DeKalb County to address the aging water pipelines within Dunwoody and throughout the county. The Mount Vernon Road project will involve the replacement of two aging water mains with one new 16-inch diameter main.