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Brookhaven City Council Holds Special Meeting 12.28. Police I.G.A. among the topics on the agenda.

12/30/2012

5 Comments

 
Picture
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)
  • 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.
Returning to Water and Waste Water, Councilman Eyre asked, “Who is responsible for making repairs to roads when a repair is made by Water & Sewer?” Riley replied, “If they [Water and Sewer] are the ones who cut it up to get in to it, they are responsible for the repair. If one of their pipes blows up and damages one of our streets, they are responsible to repair it.”

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)
  • 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
Mayor Davis questioned whether DeKalb County Police would have Brookhaven ticket books since DeKalb County’s courthouse address currently appears on citations. Riley explained that the City of Brookhaven would provide address labels, which DeKalb County officers will add to citations issued in Brookhaven directing people to the Brookhaven Municipal Court, as has been done in other new municipalities.
  • Brookhaven will provide our own ticket books for Code Enforcement, Water and Sewer, and the Fire Department for Fire Marshalls.
Mayor Davis asked, “For the IGA [Intergovernmental Agreement] for Police, they’re going to know the borders of the city?” Riley answered, “The borders of the city are pretty well… there’s not going to be much question.” Mayor Davis continued, “Is there going to be an opportunity to train DeKalb County because their zones don’t necessarily line up with our boundaries?” Riley answered, “I think that it is going to be pretty easy for them.” Davis pointed out that he could foresee potential problems with jurisdictional issues and wants to be sure they are kept to a minimum. However Riley didn’t seem concerned that this would be an issue.
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.
12.28.12 Agenda
File Size: 49 kb
File Type: doc
Download File

5 Comments
Brookhaven Resident
12/30/2012 09:58:05 pm

If the city of Brookhaven police force does end up with a smaller number of police - such as 53 the CVI suggests - if we do have a big problem in our city and we call on the county to assist us, will we then be charged for their presence? What will that cost be? Would it be then prudent to assume that net net over the course of a year for instance that we will actually be paying MORE for our police coverage?

Reply
Rick Lutz
1/2/2013 11:29:00 am

These videos are very revealing.

Rebecca Chase Williams, for all of her years of reporting and being around government, disappointingly, shows just how uninformed she actually is. Was there not an email that she sent out regarding her lack of knowledge about the CVI Brookhaven study finances where stated her understanding of the information was “above her pay grade”? What a winner.

I think Bates Mattison tries to involve himself in city council conversation just to get some “face time”. Other than that he is extremely irrelevant to the progress of Brookhaven.

For someone that has been involved in the movement to create Brookhaven for the past two years, J. Max Davis absorbed little and certainly did not ask the probing questions you would have thought he would have from the mayors of the cities he recruited to assist him to sell his new city. I would have thought he would have been better prepared for his position than he actually is. Good thing for him that there is limited council attendance and coverage.

For someone new to the political scene, Joe Gebbia shows interest and a sincere desire for the city to succeed. This man actually pays attention and asks relevant questions.

My next to the last comment is not going to be popular, but Jim Eyre apparently has Brookhaven’s best interest at heart. He pays attention, thinks perceptively “down the road” about issues, asks questions he has actually thought about and anticipated, and just may become a guiding figure of our new city. I would even bet that J. Max Davis consults in private with him. The question is, would this man serve us better as district two councilman or would we actually be better off with him as mayor? I am thinking mayor may have been his better calling for service to Brookhaven citizens.

Lastly, there is a disturbing and regular occurrence in all of these videos. Attorney Bill Reilly is regularly consulted for direction. That is to be expected given we have a city on a learning curve. The disturbing part is when he states some of these conversations should be private.

Is this Brookhaven or is this Reilly?

Reply
Hamilton Beach
1/2/2013 12:49:44 pm

There is no way that st the pace the city council is moving that anyone has gad a chance to fully study what Riley continues to put on the agendas. These folks are just voting on Riley's reco's without fully understanding it. Shameful.

Reply
Rick Lutz
1/2/2013 12:29:13 pm

Another thought, I see that J. D. Clockadale and Chris pike from the City of Dunwoody have some kind of employment with our new city. I am not taking exception to this as much as I am concerned as to our being prepared for the time needed to prepare for our new city. Please remind me why our new city was rushed in the fashion that it was to begin with? Would we have not been better served with a city that was developed and designed in a more well thought out manner?

Reply
Shallamar. The Thinker of Brookhaven.
1/2/2013 12:44:01 pm

Sir,
Although there are countless teachings that instruct how to obtain enlightenment in a future life, almost all of them are nothing more than expedients, as the ultimate instruction there is simply no teaching that is superior to the true practice of the awakening to one’s own nature.
We have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way, we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is remember to keep a positive attitude. It will keep our burdens light.

"To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see." - Helen Keller


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