It's All About Priorities
DeKalb County's police force is woefully understaffed and underpaid. Currently, DeKalb has 1.4 officers per 1,000 residents. The national average is 2.7 officers per 1,000 residents.
As a result of DeKalb's comparatively low police staffing, wait times for an officer to arrive at the scene of an incident that is not a dire emergency often can exceed 30 minutes.
Commissioners Burrell Ellis, Elaine Boyer, Jeff Rader, and Kathie Gannon recently sponsored a sensible proposal to increase pay for sworn officers by 8% and add 127 new officers to the DeKalb County Police Department. Their proposal would be funded by trimming non-public safety functions of the county government by 1.25%.
Commissioners Larry Johnson, Lee May, and Connie Stokes voted against that proposal, saying they favored a property tax increase by way of hiking the millage rate in order to fund the police positions and pay raises.
The Ellis-Boyer-Rader-Gannon proposal prevailed on a 4-3 vote. However, CEO Vernon Jones vetoed it, saying that he was carrying out "the will of the people" in supporting the Johnson-May-Stokes proposal for a property tax increase.
The will of the people??? On what planet?
As Commissioner Boyer points out: "Since Jones became CEO, the county's budget has grown more than 54 percent while the county's population has grown about 29 percent." Moreover, a recent audit of county contracting practices uncovered a troubling pattern of creatively structuring no-bid contracts in amounts just below the competitive bidding threshold to the same vendors for the same services over and over and over again. As a result, our county government has paid millions of dollars to vendors in violation of competitive bidding safeguards.
An attempt to override the CEO's veto could occur as early as this Tuesday's county commission meeting. In order to override the CEO's veto, five votes are required. To reach five votes, one additional vote is needed from among Commissioners Johnson, May, and Stokes.
Please call or e-mail these commissioners today. Their contact information is as follows:
Commissioner Larry Johnson, District 3
larryjohnson@co.dekalb.ga.us, 404-371-2425
Commissioner Lee May, District 5
lmay@co.dekalb.ga.us, 404-371-4745
Commissioner Connie Stokes, District 7
conniestokes@co.dekalb.ga.us, 404-371-3053
County spending has grown in excess of the rate of inflation and population growth. Meanwhile, important areas such as public safety have not kept pace. The Ellis-Boyer-Rader-Gannon plan would rein in the county budget while setting the right priorities for our community.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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2 comments:
Mike Jacobs does a great job here at the capitol. I second his recommendation that you get the phones working to let these commissioners know you mean business on the pay raise. Taxes dont have to be raised at all to cover what you deserve. The bloated, top heavy government of DeKalb County needs some sort of diet anyway.
8% raise?
How do these politicians keep getting away with calling a 4% across the board increase an 8% raise.
We all know the other 4% is based on annual evals. Only a select few (the made men and women) get the full 4%.
Vernon and his crowd instituted the new system to insure that the county would not be paying out as much for raises. That is how they got rid of the annual 5% merit raise and why officers won't top out until just before retirement.
For the last time, IT IS NOT AN 8% RAISE!
It's 4% minus the increase in benefits and the increase in pension contributions.
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