Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Flashback to 2008 to show the work done prior to becoming the City of Dunwoody

Looking back.

With hot and heavy discussions going on at the State Capital regarding the creation of new cities, I figured I would reach far back into my personal archive of documents to show some of the work that was done behind the scenes.

There were three groups, Citizens for Dunwoody was 501 c3 non-profit and they were the research and educational arm set up around various task forces that were focused on a specific aspect of city operations. The Dunwoody Action Committee was a PAC to raise money to hire lobbyists and Dunwoody Yes! was the 501 c4 non-profit to push as an advocate to get out the vote in the time frame between legislative passage and the referendum.

Senator Dan Weber & Community Leaders outlined the key factors concerning the City of Dunwoody, the Carl Vincent Institute report of City Feasibility was analyzed and scrutinized from every angle and in the end after numerous tries, the final version of the City Charter SB 82 was passed and signed by the Governor. On July 15th, 2008 the residents of the future City of Dunwoody went to the polls and approved the City Charter by 81%. Mayoral and City Council elections soon followed and the City started operations on December 1, 2008 where the City Council set the tax level at 2.740 mills which is what DeKalb was charging us at the time and it is the exact same tax rate that the City of Dunwoody is still charging today whereby we have the lowest tax rate in DeKalb County.

Looking back through my old blog posts, I couldn't be prouder of this community and all of the people who assisted as I can tell you that a great deal of time and effort went into starting and later successfully operating this City. Below are all of the various Task Force Reports that were completed prior to incorporation and looking back I am sure some of the numbers were a little off in a few places but I can tell you we worked very hard at incorporation and many of those same people continue to be heavily involved in the community today.










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