County, Cities at Impasse Over Cost of Services
Visited 450 times, 1 so far today Print This! | Twitter This!
Mediation between Gwinnett County and its municipalities to resolve a dispute over service delivery and the cost of services has failed, probably setting the stage for the court to resolve the disagreement.
I don’t claim to understand all of the issues and I know that it is dangerous to trust the GDP and AJC reporters, who probably know just as little. With both county and city spokespersons wildly spinning the issues in their favor, it is difficult to sort fact from fiction.
The primary disagreement, it seems, is over whether or not city residents should get a break on county property taxes if their municipality provides police services. It is a complicated issue but, frankly, this seems like much ado about nothing and here’s why.
City residents do benefit from county police services, even when a city PD is available. Police services are not purchased on a “per incident” basis like a user fee… your property taxes ensure that the police are available when you need them, even if you never call. The county PD is available to serve you, whether you live in incorporated or unincorporated Gwinnett.
A county officer has the authority and will respond to your in-town home if a city officer is not available, or if he is needed for backup. Further, I see county cars enforcing traffic laws within cities all the time. Then there’s the obvious… when your neighbor takes hostages and barricades himself in his home, it is a county-funded SWAT team that will respond. Most drug and gang enforcement occurs at the county level as well.
It does not cost the county any less to make police services available to city residents than it does to unincorporated residents, so why should city residents be charged less for the benefit?
But what if the city and county agree that the city will become the primary provider of police services within its boundaries and that the county’s role will be diminished? Shouldn’t city taxpayers get a break on their county taxes, so that they do not “double pay” for police protection or pay for a service that they do not receive?
Of course, they should. But should it be a 100% break? Should the portion of their county tax bill for police be eliminated completely? Certainly not, for the reasons described above.
See… I told you that it was complicated.
The posturing by both sides has harmed the effort to reach an agreement. Chairman Charles Bannister’s “plan” to provide police services to the entire county is nothing more than a threat to influence the service delivery negotiations and an effort to protect tax revenues.
Meanwhile, several of the county’s mayors including Snellville’s Jerry Oberholtzer and Suwanee Mayor Dave Williams have unnecessarily alarmed their constituents by falsely claiming that Bannister wanted to “take over” city police departments.
I don’t have the answer, but I do know that Gwinnett County residents—both those within the cities and those not—are ill-served by officials who refuse to negotiate with intellectual honesty and in good faith.
Behind the backing of County Commission Chairman Charles Bannister, the county has promoted a plan in which county police would deliver complete service throughout the county, including the nine cities that have their own police departments.
Lawrenceville Mayor Rex Millsaps called the plan misdirected.
“If anything, taxpayers in the nine cities that provide their own police should receive a county millage rate credit, because they don’t receive full police services from the county,” he said.
Judge may have final say in tax dispute | ajc.com
