When we started up the City of Tucker back in 2016, we did it with overwhelming support for our promise to take on three essential services from DeKalb County: planning and zoning, code enforcement, and parks and recreation. As elected officials, we set out to offer a higher level of service for the same, or in some cases less, money than unincorporated Tucker had been paying to DeKalb for years and years. Take a look around our city today and you can see the results. We have streamlined the land use approval process, making things easier and more transparent for residents and developers. We have better maintained properties and rights-of-way being overseen by professional and proactive staff. And we have replaced and modernized playground and safety equipment in every park within our city limits. To imagine that all happened within the first four years of cityhood is very impressive and is a testament to the professionalism and hard work of our staff and elected officials.
We also said we would constantly evaluate all the other services a city is empowered to provide, and consider adopting them whenever we thought we could provide them better, faster and/or cheaper. We promised, and even had it put into our charter, that before we would take on a service like that, we would analyze every facet of it, educate our citizens about it, and ask for your approval via a referendum. And that brings me to a discussion that you may be hearing a lot about; a discussion that I implore you to educate yourself on and get involved with.
In the last few months and even longer, the City Council and staff have been considering whether it would make sense for Tucker to stand up its own Public Works Department. That’s a term you often hear but may not truly understand, partly because it’s used for different things in different places. Your tax dollars go toward funding it, so it is important that you know what it means. In our case, it encompasses potholes and road repair, sidewalks, stoplights and signage, and management of the stormwater that runs off the roads and every property in Tucker. The City of Tucker currently receives those services through two intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) with DeKalb County. We let them keep the property taxes and fees for those services and they do the work just as they did before Tucker incorporated. Now that we are maturing, we find ourselves having discussions about taking on this critical service from the County.
Why? Well, as with the core services I described earlier, we believe we may be able to provide a better level of service than what we’re getting from DeKalb County. That’s not to criticize the County or its Public Works folks. Our staff has worked closely with them to identify and prioritize things that need fixing within our city limits. It’s a big county in population and geography, and sometimes that means our citizens don’t get the kind of attention or responsiveness we think we should be getting. It’s often months between the time a pothole is reported and the time it gets filled by county contractors. We’ve had busted catch basins that have sat broken for more than a year before being repaired. And maintenance of our dams has been neglected, leaving many of us to worry what’s to happen during that next big rainfall.
This month, our City Council will vote on whether to put this issue to a vote on a March 2021 referendum. If so, you would get the chance to have your voice heard at the ballot box, as promised. In the meantime, our city staff will be doing everything they can to educate you on the issue of Public Works so that you can make your decision as an informed voter. And we’ll continue to work with the professionals at DeKalb Public Works to improve the level of service county-wide. We may not choose to put all of Public Works on the ballot; we could decide to recommend only the roads and sidewalks infrastructure, or just stormwater, or both, or neither. But the discussion itself has already produced positive results. We’ve heard about lots of the weaknesses in the current system, and we’ve also found and implemented some real solutions. Whether we decide to stand up our own department or continue with the current system under a “Trust but Verify” model, we’ll be better for having conducted the process and educated the public.
These are big decisions, and whatever the outcome of this one, it’s a process we’ll continue with indefinitely into our future. Our charter allows us to always consider the best way or ways to provide specific services, and our public process for doing so is one of our great strengths. I hope you will follow along, offer your input, and ask any questions you may have about this one. And I hope you’ll always stay engaged and educated about your city government.
