Saturday, July 11, 2009

Commissioners Want To Stick It To You Again

When the money isn't going out the back door, DeKalb County Recorders Court takes in more fine levies than any other in the state. To the commissioners, that is not enough.

Now they intend to tax you further by charging somewhere in the area of $3.00 to park if you visit Recorders and Magistrate Courts and the DeKalb County Jail.

Click here for CrossRoadsNews article.

9 comments:

Free Advice - said...

Beat the parking fee and save time.....Pay the fine/"voluntary tax" via the internet.

Anonymous said...

Now you have to pay parking to get someone out of jail or attend a traffic court session. This commission board is not very people friendly.
Then look at what the school system wastes every year in spending and building.

When will it end?

Anonymous said...

I don't have a problem with charging people who want to visit CRIMINALS in the jail! $3?? Make it $10!!

Anonymous said...

DeKalb is deep trouble with the loss of revenue, and upping the parking fees for citizens on county business is not going to solve the revenue shortfall and will only piss off the constituents.
DeKalb has vastly increased non-essential social services to its citizens over the last 15 years at the expense of county employee salaries which has recieved no COL or market increases. Dekalb employees work for twenty percent less than surrounding governments pay whilst working 30 percent harder. At every opportunity the county management has consistantly screwed the average employee whilst making sure that elected officials receive whopping 50 to 100 percent raises over the last decade, increasing personal staffs by 100 percent, and moving into beautiful new offices.
I have yest to see Mr. Ellis or the Commissioners tour county facilities to see that many of us work in dumps that are poorly maintained or rennovated. The commissioners will not even fix the roof to the Maloof auditorium which speaks volumes of their priorities. The main doorway into the auditorium has wall paper peeling because of the roof leak. Other areas in the building look even worse. But the county is too busy extending non-essential services to maintain even its most important public spaces.
In the upcoming budget crunch the county will undoubtedly dump on its employees again. Instead of eliminating wasted and un-essential functions and personnel, you can bet the county will just furlough more employees and decrease essential services to its citizens and claim they must increase taxes to maintain the essential services.
Here is just a start of some things the county can do. Privatize or sell the new Arts and Culture center. Do the same for the aqua and skatboard parks. Sell the church on Flat Shoals Pkwy. (I can't tell you how much the county has wasted on this questionable property and deserves a grand jury to look into it.) Sell what is left of the executive park office complex on Memorial drive. Privatize the Lou Walker Senior center to the YWCA or YMCA.
DeKalb needs to concentrate on the basics of local government; Fire/police, sanitation, water & sewer, roads and drainage, court systems, traffic engineering, etc. and encourage private enterprise and civic groups to provide the culture and entertainment to our citizens.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the last post. The commissioners need to take a pay decrease also. They are constantly mentioning taking the livelyhood from the hardworking employees. (What about you taking furlough and decrease?)

Anonymous said...

Dekalb County needs too be in prayer....for itself.....seriously.

Anonymous said...

Sell the church on Flat Shoals Pkwy. (I can't tell you how much the county has wasted on this questionable property and deserves a grand jury to look into it.)


1) That church was formerly the church of the disgraced Earl Paulk. It was the site of Vernon Jones' inauguration. Vernon also had the county purchase it at almost double the appraised value.

2) Four large and expensive HVAC units were stolen from the site. The Parks & Rec. Dept. is in charge of maintaining the property, and didn't even report the theft to the police dept., and they hid the theft from the local media.

Anonymous said...

Why does the county own a church?? LoFlyer made several excellent points. Government needs to look within for savings rather than continuing to nickel and dime the citizens during tough times. Remember folks, when government says increases are temporary, they are lying. They never plan on lowering those items. The county probably is doing this to discourage folks from fighting their traffic tickets. Oh I forgot, there are some officers on this blog that live to write tickets and then bitch about their working conditions and how nobody wants to help them.

Anonymous said...

Here is what I do know about the church on Flat Shoals Pkwy.
It was bought with green-space funding.
It was immediately leased to a minority video organization for one dollar a year. (Including full utilities). The venture collapsed soon afterwards and word of the failure was suppressed probably due to political embarrassment and fallout.
The county continued to pay for the utilities as the building sat unoccupied for a year and a half until it was decided to move the DeKalb County TV (DCTV) section along with the Arts and Culture (A&C) people into this large facility. Somewhere along the line, the tennis courts in the back of the property were refurbished. (The tennis courts were the only facility on the property actually used by our citizens)
After 10 grand was spent remodeling the church for the DCTV and A&C sections, the groups never did move in. DCTV rightfully needed to be in the Maloof building where 90 percent of their filming occurred, and A&C wanted to stay in Decatur also, they did not want to lose their close contact with the CEO and BOC.
The building is unoccupied to this day.
DKPD deserves some thanks for keeping a close eye on the property, and keeping vandalism and burglary to a minimum with the unoccupied facility.
I do not know who the commissioner was who approved buying this property with Green-space bond issue money, but it is open record stuff. This was reported in the AJC and no one pursued an investigation. Thanks Gwen! (Sarcasm off!)
Keep ‘em flying, guys!