Sharon Sutton: 'I'm Not An Employee, I'm A Commissioner!" No, Ms. Sutton, You're An Idiot

Commissioner Sharon Sutton, known to write bad checks, who had a home foreclosed on and who has unpaid bills, once said she has made some mistakes, but her financial struggles help her better relate to taxpayers.

So Ms. Sutton, also known to never miss a meal, how does staying in a hotel costing $500 per night help you relate to the taxpayers? We wish we could take our family on vacation this holiday weekend, but can't. We have to save money knowing furloughs are looming over the horizon. But even if we could, we can't afford $500 per night for a hotel room.

Are we surprised by her actions? No. What leaves us shaking our heads is how can her fellow commissioners give her a position on the budget committee. But what does surprise us, is she was re-elected in 2008.

No, we take that back. We're not surprised at all. Just look at the state of DeKalb County and the police department with this bunch of yahoo's in office.

Will anything happen? No. They will be re-elected and Brookhaven will become a city.

While We Were Being Furloughed, The Commissioners Were Eating High On The Hog

During 2010, while we were being furloughed and forced to work holidays without pay, the commissioners were eating breakfast and lunch to the tune of nearly $24,000 per year.

They still have their heads in the the taxpayer trough, resting their double chins on the backs of the police department.

Only two commissioners, Rader and Gannon have said the thievery needs to stop, as they belch out of the corner of their mouth, contemplating voting Yea on increasing our pension contributions and decreasing our pension payout.

For desert? Property revenue down even more in DeKalb; could lead to 4-mil tax hike.

Click here for more.

Update On The Employee Relations Committee

The committee is chaired by Commissioner Elaine Boyer, commissioners Stan Watson and Jeff Radar are the current committee members.

The only link I have found to a mission statement of the committee can be found here.

The official description of the committee is this:"Employee Relations and Community Services.

Purpose: The Employee Relations and Community Services Committee will have the authority to handle subject matters concerning the following departments and areas: Citizen Help Center, Community Service Board, Cooperative Education, DFACS, Health Benefits, Hospital Fund, Human Services, Parks and Recreation, Pension, Public Health, and Risk Management."

I have requested to be allowed to attend the next ERCS meeting with Elaine Boyers chief of staff, Bob Lundsten. I have received no reply on my request from Bob.

KenC

Watch WSB Channel 2 At 6:00

Jodie Fleischer investigates police being paid but not on the job. The story includes several metro police departments.

Will some being running for cover in DeKalb?

Watch and see!

DeKalb Spending Nearly $110,000 On 911 System Software

"Vion built the county’s current system, making it the only firm to able to provide the storage and network that matches".

Being the only company that can work on the system, sounds like a shake down.

Click here for more

A Tale Of Two Cities - An Argument For The City of Brookhaven?

"But my experience with the DeKalb County Police Department’s apparent policy that “we’ll call you back and take a report if it’s just a property crime,” is the strongest argument for incorporation."

Click here for more

And If You Think The Pension News Is Bad........

DeKalb taxpayers are now facing a possible tax rate increase after the county appraiser's office reported the tax digest plummeted by $3 billion. Yes, that is a "b", not a typo.

Commissioner May, who just a few weeks ago was hell bent on not raising taxes, had this too say: "We think there's going to be a little bit of everything that's included in our final budget recommendations." "That could include raising the tax rate, laying off and furloughing employees, and further cutting or reducing county services."

Did you catch that folks? FURLOUGHS!

With all this wonderful news, it will be very interesting when the command staff starts pushing down the initiative of bringing the number of traffic citations issued to 2009 numbers, as recently discussed in a command staff meeting.

That would not be a smart move Chief O'Brien. Especially now.

Big Changes To Our Pension?

The Employee Relations Committee (ERC) has a new pension plan that will significantly impact the employees.

The plan is this: Current employees retain the benefits but the employee/employer contributions ratio will change drastically.

Employees hired before September 2005 (Old pension, 2.75 X) contribution ratio will reverse from the 33 percent paid by the employees, 66 percent paid by the county to 66 percent paid by the employees, 33 percent county.

For employees hired after September 2005 to present (new pension plan, 2.25 X) the ratio of contributions will change to 60 percent contributed by the employee and 40 percent by the county.

The latest proposed pension plan for new employees is a defined contribution with county matching 100 percent of employee contributions to deferred comp up to 4 percent of the salary, and increasing to 200 percent from 4-8 percent with county capping its contributions at 6 percent of salary.

New POST certified cops and certified fire-fighters/EMT would be allowed to participate in a complicated "hybrid" defined-benefit/defined-contribution plan consisting of a defined benefit with a 1.25 X multiplier and the county matching 100 percent of employee deferred compensation contributions to 4 percent of salary.

That is the recommendation from the Employee Relations committee.

Loflyer

ERC Pension Proposal 05132001

Pension Board Minutes

After months and months of waiting, Risk Management has finally updated the links to the pension board minutes.

Here is a link to the latest minutes posted for March 2011. Click here for Risk Management's link to all the current posted minutes.

Take the time to read them, your future depends on it. We quickly scanned over the March minutes. We have a concern that the Finance Department spent over 100 thousand dollars of pension money without the permission of the pension board. It seems the FD believes it can tap into our pension without prior approval.

Robert Robinson made a valid argument against the FD spending our money without prior approval. And here is the scary part. Sheriff Tom Brown stated he doesn't need to burden the Finance Department for detailed budgets.

With stupid comments like those of Tom Brown, we warn: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Open Comments

Technical Difficuilties

Blogger crashed Wednesday.

To fix it, they had to make the entire network "Read Only" and then they removed all posts from Wednesday evening onward. We've been checking it every couple of hours from various locations, but we weren't even able to post an update to let everyone know what was going on.

It also has put us two days behind in posting threads, two days behind in going through comments and from what we can tell, may have wiped out dozens of comments from Wednesday onward. So if something is missing, or you had some brilliant observation, or if you had solved world hunger and brought peace to the globe, it might be gone forever.

It should be up an running now.

Burrell Is Upset The Media Has Exposed HIs Ineptness And Unwillingness To Collect 60 Million Dollars In Fees Owed. Stogner Says "Just Write It Off"

DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis Response To Channel 2 Investigation:

"Dear Editor,

The recent coverage by the news media of uncollected accounts receivable in DeKalb County is both incorrect and misleading. The coverage distorts the facts and falsely states that there is a substantial amount of recoverable debt.

The facts of the matter are as follows:

1. The County does have appropriate procedures in place to address accounts receivable on an on-going basis, including the placement of liens against property for unpaid services.

2. The County’s collections ratios are generally equal or higher than the average for comparable jurisdictions. The County’s collection rate for water & sewer service is very high. For the 1st quarter of this year, the collection rate averages 98.42%. That result, given the impact of the recession and the high number of foreclosures in the County, is outstanding.

3. The County is in the process of awarding a new contract for collection services that provides for an aggressive collection effort on those accounts that are deemed uncollectable through the County’s normal processes. The contract award recommendation is currently being processed by our Purchasing Department for submission to the Board of Commissioners.

The media coverage fails to indicate that the collections for certain services by all counties are controlled by the very nature of the service. For example, the collection rate for services associated with medical transportation is historically low, reflecting the fact that a high percentage of individuals transported do not have insurance. Notwithstanding, the County’s collection rate in this area is above the national average. The County also utilizes a private company to both bill clients and collect outstanding amounts.

The media coverage fails to disclose the time fame of the accumulated debt. A substantial portion of the debt goes back several years and has been properly accounted for as “uncollectable.”

Notwithstanding our current high performance regarding collections of accounts receivable, we will not rest on our laurels. Our administration remains committed to pursuing an aggressive accounts receivable policy, both through our internal procedures and through the use of appropriate private collections efforts".

Burrell Ellis DeKalb County CEO

WSB TV response.

"In response to CEO Burrell Ellis’ email regarding our reporting on DeKalb County’s uncollected revenue, we stand by our story.

The report was neither incorrect, nor misleading. In fact, the numbers were all provided by DeKalb County government officials after we filed open records requests. We computed the totals.

For example, the 2010 Water Department document shows a collection rate is 93.95%, not 97% as indicated by the finance director in Tuesday’s budget meeting. The “AR Balance” column is the uncollected revenue rolled forward from previous months and years. You will see as of 12/2010 the total was 43.9 million, exactly as we reported.

County Commissioners have already moved to privatize the entire ambulance transport operation for the county, specifically because the revenue collection percentage is known to be so low.

Recorder’s Court Chief Judge Nelly Withers supplied the data regarding the uncollected fees from probationers who failed to complete the program.

The procedures of sending letters to collect bills (which Ellis references in his email) was deemed not to be enough by three county commissioners during Tuesday’s budget meeting. See video clip below. During the meeting, Commissioner Elaine Boyer questions Finance Director Joel Gottlieb regarding the matter of a collections firm. His answers and her responses eventually end with him acknowledging that there is no collections firm in place currently.

There is also an exchange in the video between Boyer and Richard Stogner, where he indicates that a portion of the uncollected revenue should be written-off because it is several years old. You can watch the commissioners’ response to that suggestion.

Lastly, the clip includes Budget Chairman Lee May discussing his thoughts about the revenue that remains uncollected, and the need for a collections firm and accompanying policy.

CEO Ellis may disagree with the commissioners over whether a collections firm is the best avenue to collect the county’s revenue. However, the uncollected dollar amounts we reported are accurate".

You gotta love Stogner saying something to the effect; Ah Hell, just write it off. The honest working taxpayering citizens will pay it, no problem. We'll just raise taxes.

Click here for raw video.

When Is Recovering 60 Million Dollars NOT feasible?

Did Burrell Ellis really say "if it makes good fiscal sense" he would consider trying to recover 60 million dollars owed to the county? WTH!

Not once during this segment did you hear the word "accountability." Some department heads need to be held accountable for not bringing this to the attention to the commission long before it got to this point.

So typical of Burrell Ellis. Sweep it under the rug and stick it to the taxpayers.

Just wait, one of Burrell's buddy's will be named some sort of director that comes along with a deputy director, administrative aides and take home cars, to "look into" this matter.

The madness continues.

We Suspect That A Commissioner Has Responded. Read And Judge For Yourself

"The blog administrator does a good job alerting you to things that affect your well-being. But he and some of the people posting have also done you a disservice at times by getting you all worked up over half-truths, or complete UNtruths. Everyone is free to say whatever they want - that’s what blogs are all about after all.

Here are some truths:

Yes – there is a revenue shortfall. It has to be made up somehow.
BUT - It was the BOC who made sure, with the separate line item budget, that the police budget can’t be raided by the CEO every time he thinks he needs money. I’ll post the bill if you want to read it.

So NO – they can’t cut police, fire, Sheriff’s Dept, or courts.

YES – furloughs HAVE been discussed – but NOT for ANY first responders.

YES – BOC asked for Public Safety Director’s office and OneDekalb to be eliminated. Your beef is with the CEO, not the BOC, as to why they are both still there.

NO – unpaid holidays is not being considered.

YES – the BOC has recommended 200 job cuts this year, and more each year for the next 5 years. But NOT to first responders.

So what’s left? You said it. Cuts are always controversial, as are tax increases. WWYD?

The one you should be pointing your finger at is Burrell Ellis, not the BOC - who has fought hard to protect police and fire from future cuts, apparently much more than you know.

Guys, if you want to know whether or not something is true, go straight to the horse’s mouth.

Be safe out there".

Anonymous

Commissioners Are Not Serious About Making Cuts

The commissioners, on the heals of learning Wiz Miller has a hard time showing up for work, eliminated his postion of director of public safety claiming, amoung other things, it would save the county money.

Burrell Ellis, in his typical fashion of putting friends before taxpayers, appointed Wiz to director of the emergency 911 center. Now the commissioners have approved a deputy director postion in the E911 center along with an administrative assistant.

The county is broke, and facing a 25 million dollar defict. Rumors are abound of furlough days. Yet the commissioners believe the function of the county government is job creation.

Why does Wiz need a deputy director? To do his job while he is out screwing around on the taxpayers dime, as proven in the past?

The maddness continues.

E911 Operators Now On 12 Hours Shifts

The E911 center has gone to 12 hour shifts to increase manpower and eliminate overtime pay. But in reality, the only thing being accomplished, is a decrease in manpower because of the number of people resigning because of the new schedule.

This Is A Joke, Right?

2011-15
Or click here.

Numerous Police Cars Broken Into - Follow Up

Two questions: 1. Why is a security guard driving a police car around? 2. Why pay one more dime to the security company when the county can get the reserve officers to do it for free? Oh, wait. The reserve program has been axed.

Gwinnett County, As Other Agencies, Continue To Outpace DeKalb In Technology

Gwinnnett Police implements "Citizens Online Police Reporting System."

2009 Dekalb EEO-4 Full Reports

Click here to read, compliment of LoFlyer