"Trying to make his case in an ongoing political battle, DeKalb County's CEO said Tuesday that police officers and firefighters will have to be laid off if the commission doesn’t raise taxes."
Why is it the politicians always threaten to layoff police and fireman when times are tough? You never hear of them making threats to layoff sanitation. You never even hear them threaten to cut sanitation service from twice a week pick up to once a week pickup.
Why is it that DeKalb County along with the city of Atlanta are the only major metro area governments to offer government run sanitation when all others are privately contracted out? One word: votes.
Click here for AJC article
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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19 comments:
F*$K Vernon Jones and now F*$K Ellis. Why is it that sionce the election of Obama everyone thinks that we can spend spend spend and then just raise taxes and cut the truly important things. I could not be more pissed off about this if I tried. We need to lay off police and fire my ass!!!! We don't have enough of either as it is. Riddle me this batman, why do we have a CEO and a Director of Public saftey. We have a police chief and a fire chief and the CEO should be their boss. Millers salary alone could pay for 2-3 new police/fire recruits yet we pay him to essentially do nothing but point fingers and play the blame game. This county is more and more corrupt every day. We're at in a huge financial situation yet no one has yet to find the $100 Million or so from recorders court that would easily put us in a budget surplus. WTF is wrong with this place?????
"The deficit occurred because of a $1 billion drop in the tax digest, along with a loss of sales tax and revenue from the incorporation of Dunwoody", Ellis said.
Thanks Vernon Jones...and Vern wants to do for the state of Georgia, what he did for Dekalb County.Do us a favor Jones, move back to where you came from and do for them what you did TO us !
So after layoffs, all that will be left are a bunch of rookies who only know how to write tickets.
Something that I have not read on here with regards to the budget has been the cost of overtime expenses. A while back some officers were looking into different shift ideas. One idea that was looked into was 12 hour shifts, basically an officer would work three days a week at 12 hours per day. This would equal to 36 hours a week and the remaining hours would be folded into the officers pay to equal 40 hours. The idea is that every week there are 4 hours of built in time that does not have to be paid out in overtime. Examples would be staying late after shifts, court time, call outs, etc.
This would not need to be associated with all units within the department since not all units/divisions face these issues. However with this in mind you could theoretically have a 24 hour CID and or Special Operations Unit. With a 24 hour CID it would eliminate the need for an on call detective. Additionally you could have a 24 hour Special Operations Division which in turn could increase traffic enforcement and or be used as a Drug Interdiction Unit all can increase revenue.
I know that some will say that no one will agree to give the 4 hours without work being done but until someone asks or suggests it, no one knows what will happen. The whole idea is to save money.
Don't forget to thank the waddling Judge Walker who failed to do her job in Recorder's Court!
I am going to make some observations and try to be as non-political as possible. Local county governments are easily expanded, and can contract with some loss of service to all, just a few, or none at all depending on the choices made. The bottom line is do not raise the taxes as that pisses off the citizens. It is possible to convince constituents to accept a tax increase if the government cuts the really important positions which affect the public welfare, the court systems, Fire & Public Safety and EMT's, and throw in a few more high visibility items, Libraries and Parks and Rec, then convince the citizens the cuts in service cannot be made anywhere else in the budget and a tax increase is warranted. This is the standard tactic for governments unwilling to make the tough choices and decisions to cut waste and inefficiency and continue to raise taxes rather than cut non-essential services.
Ellis and the BOC appear out of touch with reality with proposals ranging from Ellis's 17 percent increase in the CEO's office budget to the BOC's recommendation of 8 unpaid holidays plus furloughs for employees indicating that they are clueless on how to streamline the government and bring efficiency and savings to DeKalb while maintaining the core functions.
I'm with Lee May on this one if he is serious. We need a thoughtful and complete overhaul of DeKalb. From the top down including abolishing the CEO's office.
Hey Guys & Gals....words of wisdom. If you can find a place to go then you really need to jump ship cause this ship is sinking fast and everyone left aboard is going to drown....it's obvious that the powers at play have absolutely no desire to try and fight to maintain any integrity for the employees....you can not continue to turn to the people that make the day to day operations of this county function and continue to ask them to sacrifice more and more and more...where does it stop?...to hell with asking they just flat take it from us....The answer is it doesn't stop. Once they realize that the masses of this place are going to just sit back and take it then they will shove it so far up your a$$ that it never sees the light of day again. This county is on the verge of going broke people. It's really time that you start looking for someplace to land when you jump....otherwise you'll be a casualty from this sinking ship.....
Boy there's a lot of shit taking the focus off Sutton.
Scary, but I don't think it will happen. If this retirement stuff happens and then they try to cut 151 officers we wouldn't have a uniform division...5-6 officers a watch trying to cover a precinct.
Are the 151 police positions new/unfilled positions or is he talking about actual officers?
Keep blaming Vernon if you want to but Ellis is full of crap. How can he justify increasing his own budget by 17% when times are suppose to be so tough. He has doubled the CEO's office staff on top of that, brought in an unnessary Public Safety Director that bypasses Chief O'Brien to go through Dale Holmes to conduct Police Department business, and now Ellis talks about laying off police officers.
The open positions that we have from resignations, retirements and terminations are already frozen and won't be filled so we are already behind the eight ball. We will fill the positions we got with the stimulus money but that's it. Wake up people, Ellis is not as pure as we thought going in to the election.
If the CEO is trying to make a point, why the hell doesn't he just give us REAL furlough days that we can spend with our families or out working a part time!
Quit forcing us to work for reduced wages in order to make it look like the county is fully funding both police and fire. Stop the shell game and let the citizens learn first hand.
Looks like Im taking a sick day today! Im feeling a little blue.
Funny that Ellis didn't support an increase for PD prior to his CEO election/campaign. Times were not quite as tough then. And here we are...now that he's in office. ugh.
o the owners of this blog:
I believe that we are reaching a point where the board is going to pass some serious furlough days for us all. There has been the idea of legality about these cuts.
I recommend that you establish a PayPal account for us to donate $10 to go towards retaining a lawyer to investigate the legality of these cuts. If all we do is sit back and complain nothing will get done. Most people are too afraid to do this on their own and budgets are tight. The Union idea didn't fly and with the whole Maleek situation most people will be scared off from another round.
You pool the money and seek out a lawyer. It sounds like you have connections so get a retiree to be the "face man" until we find out whether or not we have a case. This way we find out our legal rights and no one sticks their neck out.
FROM DEKALB OFFICERS: Sorry, but Paypal accounts and the exchange of money requires names of individuals and we are not giving our name up anytime soon.
Georgia is a "right to work" state and that is why unions never workouy. By law, work contracts and bargaining agreements are pretty much worthless.
As much as we hate it, the county can cut wages, cut hours and layoff people to their hearts desire.
But you can count on the cuts to affect people who can do the less damage to the politicians. That is police and fire because the majority of sworn personnel live outside the county and cannot vote. On the flip side, the hourly wage earner at sanitation and roads and drainage numbering in the thousands do live in the county and they along with their family and friends also live in the county and they can vote.
To the commissioners, it's about self preservation.
DeKalb Officers: Georgia IS a right to work state, which essentially blocks all collective bargaining. HOWEVER, right to work does not override federal law; if DeKalb County violates federal law regarding pay, hours worked, etc, we have the right and ability to fight it in court, regardless of right to work laws.
What? You pooped in the refrigerator? And you ate the whole wheel of cheese? How'd you do that? Heck, I'm not even mad; that's amazing!
Dear CEO Ellis,
Has Public Safety changed from being #1 on your list just because Terrell Bolton is no longer over the DKPD? I assure you it hasn't changed for the citizens of this county.
Our officers have been through enough without hearing the words furlough and layoffs! The citzens of DeKalb deserve better than the "quick fix" of police layoffs, which will result in long-term problems for Public Safety and our County.
You can find a way. I repeat, you can find a way. Keep the DKPD intact!
---------------------------------
And to the DKPD Officers and Citizens:
Let our CEO know how you feel DKPD layoffs this via e-mail.
ceo@co.dekalb.ga.us
Copy the commissioners on it too:
njmcbrid@co.dekalb.ga.us
jrader@co.dekalb.ga.us
larryjohnson@co.dekalb.ga.us
sbsutton@co.dekalb.ga.us
lmay@co.dekalb.ga.us
kgannon@co.dekalb.ga.us
conniestokes@co.dekalb.ga.us
Can you say FULTON COUNTY thats how it starts
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