The Brookhaven City Council held a Special Meeting - the last of 2012 - Friday at the Brittany Club.
The Meeting began at 3:30PM and there was a full council in attendance. Mayor Davis led the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Reports and Presentations – Bill Riley, Interim City Attorney
(Video Link to this presentation here)
The Meeting began at 3:30PM and there was a full council in attendance. Mayor Davis led the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Reports and Presentations – Bill Riley, Interim City Attorney
(Video Link to this presentation here)
- Current Status of Intergovernmental Agreements (IGA’s) with DeKalb County
- Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) – Elections work not started (low priority)
- Animal Control – Had discussions with DeKalb County trying to determine need for IGA or whether DeKalb will continue to provide service without one
- Water and Waste Water – Discussed with DeKalb County whether to adopt similar IGA to Dunwoody. DeKalb will continue to proved water and waste water services. Brookhaven will be required to pass parallel ordinances that pertain to water and waste water within the city. We will swear in DeKalb County officers and they will be coming to municipal court for the purpose of deciding on violations of ordinances.
- Fire – Anticipate adopting the same Fire IGA as Dunwoody, although this could change. Negotiations are still in progress. Brookhaven may not need to have and IGA specifically for fire services.
Councilman Eyre questioned, “Does our Johns Creek Building code conflict with DeKalb County in respect to water and sewer?” Riley explained, “What we’ve done is, we are going ahead (after Ms. Garrett talked to the County) we’re just going to adopt DeKalb County building code [instead of John’s Creek] for the purposes of their ability to carry over the various type of activities that they may continue to do under an IGA. We anticipate we will work out some agreement for the various projects they [DeKalb County] is already on with the help of the Development Department, we’ll make a determination of where the cutoffs are going to be – where we will uptake and where the county is going to leave off. In order to ensure continuity of these [projects underway] we are going to bring to you a customized county building code that will parallel theirs and will be amended before the end of the moratorium.”
Police/911/Municipal Courts IGAs
(Video link to this presentation and discussion)
Police/911/Municipal Courts IGAs
(Video link to this presentation and discussion)
- Next week Riley will work with DeKalb County to nail down transfer of services
- Christopher Pike (CFO, City of Dunwoody) has been working to compile numbers on where we want to start with police services.
- Municipal Court probably won’t need an IGA
- Can make a clean cut on January 17, 2013 for municipal court being researched
- Likely court dates would fall after February 1st when our municipal court will begin
- Brookhaven will provide our own ticket books for Code Enforcement, Water and Sewer, and the Fire Department for Fire Marshalls.
Councilman Eyre brought up the topic of costs and manpower allocation (link)… “What we are expecting or what we’re negotiating for as far as numbers, type of officers, and how does that work in the IGA? Do we have a specific number that we would request?” Riley responded, “I can tell you what I believe they [DeKalb County] will do… I believe they will say that we have these many beats in Brookhaven and it takes 5.27 officers of whatever to run a beat, so you’re gonna pay 5.27 for the beats, they are gonna look and pro-rata everything that’s overhead they spread across the entire county and they are going to look at us to pay based on population versus on the service delivery.” Eyre continued, “Can we increase, for instance, the number of beats if we don’t think that it’s adequate for what they’re providing?” Riley responded by saying “Well, here’s the problem Mr. Eyre. The problem is, the county’s position will be that we [DeKalb County] are an integrated Police force that goes for the entire county and we are not going to dedicated officers to Brookhaven. They took that exact position in Dunwoody. They will move officers where they are needed. If there is a monumental collapse on Buford Highway, they will pull officers from all over the county. We will not be bound to the four or five officers who should be in Brookhaven and the same is true that if there another situation in another part of the county, they will pull people off beats here.” Riley added, “The unfortunate consequence of living in a nice place like this is often times other places have a more severe need for police man power.”
Councilman Eyre asked (link), “Do we have the opportunity to define response times...?” Riley, “We can certainly ask for those kinds of things… but they are going to take they unwavering position, that with one single body of a police force that they are going to use that force for the benefit of every citizen in the county and push resources to wherever they have to be – whenever they have to be. I don’t think they’ll [response times] are going to get any better, we can ask for these things. I think the best position we can take on this is to minimize costs.”
This strikes at the core of what some Brookhaven citizens have been pointing out for the duration of the creation of the City of Brookhaven process. DeKalb County has the ability to “load-balance” with a massive police presence when needed. This leaves citizens in Brookhaven asking whether or not a Brookhaven Police force will be able to dispatch 100 officers to a situation when the Brookhaven force has far fewer numbers – hopefully it will not take a monumental occurrence for the Brookhaven citizens to find out. Will we actually have better coverage with our own force of 53 officers as suggested by the CVI? These and other questions the citizens and city council cannot answer at this time.
Continuing on the topic of Police, Mayor Davis stated, “When Dunwoody incorporated they paid $400K per month.” Christopher Pike injected that the number was actually $451K per month. Davis continued, “Are we expecting somewhere similar?” No definitive answer to the Mayors question was offered.
More on each of these topics and much more on videos found here. As it happened.
Councilman Eyre asked (link), “Do we have the opportunity to define response times...?” Riley, “We can certainly ask for those kinds of things… but they are going to take they unwavering position, that with one single body of a police force that they are going to use that force for the benefit of every citizen in the county and push resources to wherever they have to be – whenever they have to be. I don’t think they’ll [response times] are going to get any better, we can ask for these things. I think the best position we can take on this is to minimize costs.”
This strikes at the core of what some Brookhaven citizens have been pointing out for the duration of the creation of the City of Brookhaven process. DeKalb County has the ability to “load-balance” with a massive police presence when needed. This leaves citizens in Brookhaven asking whether or not a Brookhaven Police force will be able to dispatch 100 officers to a situation when the Brookhaven force has far fewer numbers – hopefully it will not take a monumental occurrence for the Brookhaven citizens to find out. Will we actually have better coverage with our own force of 53 officers as suggested by the CVI? These and other questions the citizens and city council cannot answer at this time.
Continuing on the topic of Police, Mayor Davis stated, “When Dunwoody incorporated they paid $400K per month.” Christopher Pike injected that the number was actually $451K per month. Davis continued, “Are we expecting somewhere similar?” No definitive answer to the Mayors question was offered.
More on each of these topics and much more on videos found here. As it happened.
| 12.28.12 Agenda |
