Saturday, June 7, 2014

Community meeting to review and discuss DeKalb County Acquisition of South DeKalb YMCA [June 9]

via Beth Nathan @ Civic Association Network (CAN)
Come discuss whether the currently proposed public-private partnership with the South DeKalb YMCA is an appropriate expenditure of county Parks Bond dollars or a windfall for the YMCA.   
Carpool with some neighbors. Let's generate a LARGE turn-out of citizens from multiple commission districts who care about county planning and decision-making.   
A vote on this item is scheduled for the June 10 BOC agenda, having been deferred several times. 
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COMMUNITY MEETING to review and discuss DeKalb County Acquisition of South DeKalb YMCAMonday, June 9, 7 pm, Tucker Recreation Center, 4898 LaVista Road, Tucker    sponsored by Commissioners Rader and Gannon
DeKalb County is considering spending approximately $5 million of the remaining Parks Bond dollars (approx $1M from district-allocated funds and $4M from countywide funds which is ~38% of remaining countywide funds) to acquire the South DeKalb YMCA and then lease it back to the YMCA for 50 years at $1/year.  The YMCA is to devote the purchase proceeds to site improvements. This YMCA is geographically close to several other DeKalb recreation/health facilities (parks & senior centers). The local community has said that they need this improvement to local recreation/health facilities because the local population is very dense and not very healthy; they also say that this proposal is consistent with the Recreation, Parks and Cultural Affairs Master Plan. An easy introduction to the proposal is found on Crossroads News: http://crossroadsnews.com/news/2014/apr/11/dekalb-county-acquire-south-dekalb-ymca/
Many important details are summarized in SoDeKalbYMCA_DetailOverview.pdf, compiled by Commissioner Rader's office
Source documents on this proposal, the RPCA Master Plan, and parks bond funding are available on the Civic Association Network's website in the reference materials section.  See http://www.can-dk.org/file-cabinet/parks_gardens/southdekalbymca
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If you can't attend but wish to share your opinions about this proposal, you can find the Board of Commissioners' contact information here.