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An experiment in government

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Times Staff Writer

At last, Eva Galambos is thrilled with her hometown of Sandy Springs: It has almost three times as many police officers now than two years ago, she says, and the streets are cleaner, and the strip clubs will -- hopefully -- be gone soon.

“The most stunning thing,” she adds, “is that we’re not paying more taxes.”

Galambos is the mayor, so it is not surprising to hear her promote this 2-year-old suburban city. What is striking, though, is the number of public-policy experts and free-market advocates also taking note.

When the affluent suburban community north of Atlanta won its independence in 2005 -- after complaining for years that its taxes subsidized poor communities to the south -- it became Georgia’s first new city since the 1950s. And rather than set up a city hall, the city chose to outsource the bulk of the administration to a private corporation.

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Since then, three more unincorporated enclaves in the county, which covers 529 square miles and is centered on Atlanta, have asserted their independence. Of Fulton County’s more than 960,000 residents, only about 50,000 live outside a city -- and that number could shrink to zero if a proposed fifth new city is created in September.

Instead of establishing bureaucracies, the new cities have chosen to outsource nearly all government services to private corporations, making this the nation’s most ambitious experiment in privatizing city administration.

For decades now, the county has been racially and economically split, with the north predominantly white and affluent, and the south predominantly black and poor. Although the first three new cities were formed in the north, charges of elitism and racism have faded to some extent as communities in the southern part of the county have sought cityhood too.

The dramatic and rapid shift toward an all-city county has sent shock waves through county government.

With potentially no unincorporated areas, county commissioners are, among other things, considering replacing the Sheriff’s Department with a privately contracted jailer. And they are looking at replacing the seven county commissioners with a five-member panel.

Fulton County would continue to collect taxes and provide countywide services such as courts, health centers and senior services.

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For the new cities -- and the overall region -- the future is less clear. As the Atlanta area’s landscape becomes more balkanized, and the new cities design their own governments, questions remain about the more local, privatized system.

Sandy Springs was not the first U.S. city to outsource most services -- it followed Weston, Fla., a city of 65,000 that incorporated in 1996 -- but it has set off a private cityhood movement of an unprecedented scale.

“This is uncharted territory in the United States,” said Robert W. Eger, a professor of public administration and policy at Florida State University. “We’re talking about five new cities whose administration is run by private firms. That’s just never been done before.”

For 30 years, residents of Sandy Springs fought a Democratic-controlled Legislature for cityhood, with legislators refusing to change a law that made it difficult for new cities to be formed. Republicans gained control of the Legislature in 2004 and changed the rules. When Sandy Springs held its referendum on cityhood, 94% of voters approved.

Many who support the cityhood and privatization movement say it cannot be less dysfunctional than Fulton County government has been, especially as population increased by 25% from 1990 to 2000. Cited are the county’s troubled public transit systems, a jail taken over by a federal judge because it was deemed unsafe, and a court with security so lax that a prisoner escaped, stole a deputy’s gun, and killed a judge and two other people.

Some are scathing too about offerings they consider less than prudent. “Fulton County offers services the Founding Fathers never would have dreamed of for any layer of government, such as cable television at posh senior centers or grants to unknown dance troupes,” said Oliver Porter, interim manager of Sandy Springs, in an opinion piece in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

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Yet the movement’s aim does not appear to be lowering taxes or unraveling bureaucracy. Despite their differences, the new cities all seem to share a desire for greater regulation, particularly when it comes to zoning.

In Sandy Springs, a highly developed suburban area with 87,000 residents, this means regulating adult entertainment businesses and updating or replacing older commercial buildings. To the south, in Chattahoochee Hill Country, a less-developed area and home to fewer than 2,200, the focus is on preserving most of the land as rural, with the occasional hamlet.

With phenomenal growth around Atlanta, each city is concerned with who controls development and what gets built, said Douglas C. Bachtel, a demographer at the University of Georgia.

“A lot of people who move in want to see new development,” he said. “But everyone wants to be the last person in.”

All the new cities in the Atlanta area have hired CH2M-Hill Inc., a Denver-based company specializing in full-service engineering, consulting, construction and operations, to execute their particular visions of cityhood.

Each city’s contract is different. Sandy Springs, for example, has only five people on its city staff, and contracts the bulk of its basic services -- tax and revenue collections, planning and zoning, parks and recreation -- to CH2M-Hill.

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Milton, a smaller city of 20,000 also in the county’s north end, opted for a hybrid approach, taking on more within the city and contracting out administration, public works and community development.

Some fear that private companies could be too stringent in enforcing codes and ordinances to boost revenue for the city at the expense of enhancing an overall vision for the city. Others say that’s the point: Code enforcement is the vision of city leaders.

Within Sandy Springs’ first month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that that city’s code enforcement officers had written 51 warnings for such infractions as having a junked car in a yard or failing to mow the grass. The new city also established an adult entertainment ordinance, forcing some clubs to choose between exotic dancers or alcohol. A number of clubs sued. The city also sent building inspectors to job sites to ensure that builders complied with ordinances the county had not enforced.

Many say it is too early to determine the success of the movement away from county government. What is clear is that some cities have more growing pains than others.

In the last year, members of Milton’s City Council fought so bitterly that a group-therapy meeting with a psychologist was organized -- and then canceled because municipal law required it to be conducted in public. This month, the city manager resigned after revealing he had waited four months to tell the council he had missed a deadline that resulted in a probable loss of $900,000 in tax revenue.

Even if the movement of new local governments is successful in local terms, demographer Bachtel said, it could lead to a broader impasse across the region:

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“The jury is still out. There are more people in the stewpot now, elbowing for more power. We might be headed toward an ungovernable area with all these little fiefdoms.”

jenny.jarvie@latimes.com

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