CEO unveils final budget proposal
by Andy Phelan
andy@dekalbchamp.com
Citing slow sales tax collections, the property assessment freeze and predictions of a recession in 2008, the CEO backed off an ambitious plan to double the size of the police department in the final budget proposal of his administration.
Dubbed Police Chief Terrell Bolton’s “Roadmap to Success,” the four-year, $100 million plan called for more than 700 officers, an 8 percent across-the-board pay raise and would allow officers to take their patrol cars home.
The first year cost would have been $25 million. Instead, the CEO proposed about $2.2 million more for police, which would provide 50 additional officers, nine more dispatchers and $740,000 in pay raises to about 275 officers.
In all, his $622.9million proposal is a 2.1 percent increase from 2007. Since 2002, when operations cost residents $444 million, the budget has grown 40 percent.
The county is predicting it will only collect $1 million more in sales taxes in ’08 than the $100 million brought in this year.
Much of the slowdown, said the CEO, is linked to the increasing foreclosure problem that has plagued DeKalb for years but now has reached every corner of the country. Each month, the county reports more than 1,100 new foreclosures.
In June, the CEO told his department heads to hold their spending at 98 percent of their 2007 allocations citing the property assessment freeze and the prospects of Dunwoody becoming a city in 2008.
Together those two measures could cost the county about $18 million a year, officials said.
County employees are eligible for up to a 4 percent merit increase in pay based on performance. The proposal now goes to the Board of Commissioners for consideration.
For more information, visit you local library for a copy of the 2008 budget proposal.
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