As More Cities Incorporate, County’s Role Evolves

At the unveiling of Brookhaven’s new city logo, Mayor J. Max Davis defended the relevance of DeKalb County government.

“To say or think that the county is irrelevant, to me is just a little silly,” Davis said.

Brookhaven is the latest incorporated city in DeKalb county, and more areas like Lakeside, Briarcliff and Tucker have also been pushing to incorporate.

But in regard to local services, Davis said Brookhaven has seen an immediate improvement in some areas, like policing, since transitioning to cityhood in December. He said on the services Brookhaven is providing, the city is better suited than the county to address the citizens’ needs.

But Davis insisted services like the fire department, the health department, courts and jails remain important responsibilities of the county.

“Those are big-ticket items best suited to county to leverage across a large area,” Davis said. “Those are very expensive infrastructure service companies, and I think those duties are well suited to a county.”

DeKalb Commissioner Jeff Rader points to Dunwoody and North Fulton as examples of newer municipalities that are increasingly pushing to provide their own services. And Brookhaven might privatize trash collection and has been in talks to join a regional fire department with Chamblee and Dunwoody.

Rader said that push from municipalities to provide their own services diverts money from – and could cripple the quality of – some countywide services. The biggest challenge the county then faces, he said, is maintaining county services with a smaller tax base. 

County citizens pay into a general fund to supplement courts and jails, and municipalities pay water and sewer utility fees to the county.

The problem, Rader said, begins at high-level services.  He points to gang and bomb units as examples of county programs dependent on a large tax base.

“Increasingly I think we’ll have to see whether or not we can maintain those more non-basic type of services with a smaller tax base for our police department,” the commissioner said.

And as more municipalities continue to divert tax dollars from the county by providing their own services, Rader said that could affect other, wide-based county services.

“Once you start to cut that up and restrict use of those tax revenues to one area or another you create winners and losers,” Rader said.

The commissioner said the solution could be to work with cities to fund some programs. He said no talks have been organized.