Loganville's Settlement in SDS More Than $1.2 Million

After more than three years, Loganville signed a Resolution at a Special Called meeting Tuesday accepting a settlement from Gwinnett County on the Service Delivery Strategy Agreement. Each city in the county, except for Lilburn, was expected to do the same. Earlier in the day the Gwinnett County Board Of Commissioners approved the deal essentially bringing to a close the multimillion-dollar dispute.

"The county has been double charging our Gwinnett County taxpayers for fire and police services as well as other things such as roads, planning and development and EMS services," said Loganville Mayor Ray Nunley.

“An agreement has been reached,” said Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson in a released statement. “The parties have worked continuously since the Court’s final ruling in October 2011 by addressing the County’s unique budgeting and service provision issues.  The Court provided clarity to the parties that allowed us to resolve these differences. In the last two weeks, both sides have come together to address the remaining tax equity and service issue disputes.”

The settlement strongly favors the cities with the terms of the settlement strongly favor the cities with Loganville getting a total of $1,278,336 in the agreement. Loganville City Manager Bill Jones provided council members with a summary of the agreement prior to the unanimous acceptance of the resolution approving it. (See PDF attachment).

In the agreement, Gwinnett County would make a one-time cash payment in the first year in the amount of $165,440 and a Fire Fund Credit to be used for rollback of EMS costs to the city of $820,000.

"At an agreed amount of about $14,857 per year, this fund will take about 55 years to deplete," Jones said.

In addition, there would be total cash payments for years two to seven of $167,460 and an additional rollback value for Police and Planning totalling $125,436.

Loganville City Councilwoman Michelle Lynch thanked the mayor and city manager for all the hard work in helping bring the matter to a resolution.

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart as a Gwinnett County resident," Lynch said.

"This is a win-win for everybody," Nunley said, adding that he did not believe it would have been the issue it was had Chairman Charlotte Nash been in the chair at the Gwinnett County Board of Commissions three years ago. "She has helped bring this matter to a conclusion."

The dispute began when the county sued cities in the GwMA. At issue was whether the cities would pay the county for services they do not use, such as police.

The "police service district" is a . That ruling strongly favored the cities in the dispute, and ordered Gwinnett County officlals to set up a special district to administer such functions as police.

Also, notable fallout from the dispute is that police agencies in several Gwinnett cities and the Gwinnett Police can't use radar or laser to track speeders.

A joint city-county ceremony was scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Historic Courthouse in Lawrenceville.

Various Patch editors in Gwinnett County contributed to this report.