Dunwoody Parks Bond Referendum Could Be on Fall Ballot

The Dunwoody city council started preliminary discussions Friday about holding a bond referendum this fall to raise capital to renovate and add to the city’s parks system.

The referendum, which officials said would likely be a 1.5 mill property tax increase, which would net $54 million over a 30-year bond period, would be put on a local ballot in November if the council passes a resolution on it.

The idea was brought up Friday during the council’s second annual retreat, an 11-hour marathon meeting that covered the city’s four in progress long-term plans, along with issues from assessing the size of the city’s police department to publicly publishing every city expenditure on the city website (while those records are open, the city does not currently publish every expenditure online).

But the issue that seemed to garner the most interest for moving the council moving quickly was the city’s parks plan.

The council heard about all the city’s master plans including those for Georgetown, Dunwoody Village, but focused in on how to fund the transportation and parks plans.

Rough estimates say the projects for the parks and transportation master plans would cost about $60 million each, or $120 million in total.

 “I think we just do parks and hold off on transportation,” said councilman Robert Wittenstein. “I don’t feel the burning need to do the transportation stuff. It feels like we can wait until later on that, but I feel a burning need to do the parks now, because some of that is property acquisition.”

The parks master plan, which was presented to the council Friday, includes many upgrades to city parks as well as several ideas for expanding the parks system, including new parkland and greenways.

“There’s not a ball field, trail, path or garden that I don’t absolutely love, I love it all,” said Councilman Doug Thompson. “But now you get to the hard part of it – the price tag. I absolutely love every bit of it, but realistically and logically I don’t know what I could even fathom asking taxpayer to come up with that.”

The council discussed a 1.5 mill increase that would fund that parks projects.

For a 1.5 mill bond increase, it would cost a homeowner $60 per year for each $100,000 in market value of their property value. So the average home in Dunwoody, which is around$350,000, a 1.5 mill increase would cost them $210 per year, or $60 per every $100,000 of property value.

For a 1 mill bond increase, it would cost a homeowner $40 per year for each $100,000 in market value of their property value.

Mayor Ken Wright said he sees city residents as having the opportunity to upgrade the city's parks through investment.

"The way I look at it is these are investors," he said. "Does the investor wish to vote on this initiative? Either you want to invest or  you don’t want to invest."

City Manager Warren Hutmacher recommended that the council get numbers on public support and to figure out if some projects are more popular than others.

“I’d recommend you do some surveying, some professional surveying to get a sense of what is palatable,” he said. “You can sort of set your boundaries around that.”

If the council were to go ahead with putting a bond referendum on the ballot, they would have to pass a resolution at least 90 days prior to the November election date.