Tucker financially feasible to form city

Santa Claus made a special delivery to Tucker residents Dec. 21.

More than 100 Tucker residents gathered at the downtown Tucker Square on Main Street to learn from Jolly Old Saint Nick that the proposed City of Tucker is financially feasible based on the study conducted by Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Frank Auman from Tucker 2014 said this was a historic day for Tucker.

“It’s no surprised that Tucker is a great city,” he said. “It’s just never been formally a city and now we’re on our way.”

According to the feasibility study, the city of Tucker will start with a surplus of approximately $3.3 million. Based on the mix of residential, commercial, industrial, institutional and public properties taxes, Tucker expects to have annual revenue of approximately $16.6 million and annual expenses of approximately $13.3 million.

“These numbers are based on the current tax level which means no property tax increase is necessary,” Auman said.

The study also said a Tucker city councilmember would represent 7,000 residents, which is a 93 percent decrease in the current 100,000 plus residents per DeKalb County Commissioner.

Tucker 2014 President Sonja Szubski said Tucker residents have factors in their favor that do not exist in other cityhood efforts.

“Tucker has dozens of active civic and citizen groups already fully engaged in the services being proposed initially for the City,” she said.

Those services include parks and recreation, planning and zoning and code enforcement.

“This means that Tucker can hit the ground running from day one with local expertise that allows the city to standup on a solid foundation,” Szubski added. “As the city moves forward, the community can determine if there are additional services to be added such as public works and public safety that make sense both fiscally and effectively.”

With the results of the study, Tucker 2014 officials expects state legislators to pass the bill that will define the city of Tucker and give residents of Tucker in the proposed map the opportunity to vote on it May 20, 2014.

The proposed map overlaps parts of the proposed cities of Lakeside and Briarcliff. Lakeside proposed map includes Northlake and north to Chamblee-Tucker Road. It also includes part of Tucker’s 30084 ZIP code.

State legislators will have to pass one or two maps that do not overlap each other.

“We’re winning on the merits of the arguments. We’re winning the public,” Auman said. “We’re going to be talking about Tucker and all the reasons why it’s important for Tucker to become a city. We’re going to respect our neighbors to the instinct that they respect us.

“We want to talk to them about working that out,” Auman added. “They can have the same benefits we have.”