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Sandy Springs adopts budget of $1.09 billion General fund spending expected to rise by 15% By HAYDEN SUMLIN hayden@appenmedia.com
Namari Dance Center students open “From Africa to America” June 19 at City Springs with a dance number to “Mary Don’t You Weep.” HAYDEN SUMLIN/APPEN MEDIA
Juneteenth at City Springs wows crowd By HAYDEN SUMLIN hayden@appenmedia.com SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — A tribute to freedom and liberty on Juneteenth at City Springs drew thousands to celebrate and learn. More than two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced enslaved Black people were free. Juneteenth, made a federal
holiday in 2021, celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States when all Americans were finally freed June 19, 1865. The City Springs celebration, sponsored by the cities of Sandy Springs and Dunwoody, brought together the Perimeter area on both sides of Ga. 400 for a whirlwind of performances, educating and fun. The day’s festivities flowed across the City Green and into the Byers Theatre lobby, where high schoolers from Dunwoody,
Sandy Springs and Douglas County discussed their works in an immersive art exhibition. PeQue Brown, founder of LIQUID Arts studios, worked with local high school artists to create canvas pieces representing what freedom means to them. PeQue’s wife, Kelli Brown, said it’s all about youth artists and supporting the next generation. The pieces incorporate
See FREEDOM, Page 7
SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — Sandy Springs adopted the city’s 2025 budget at the June 18 City Council meeting, a spending plan totaling $1.09 billion. The city’s 2025 budget calls for an additional $20 million in operational, or general fund, spending from the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The city’s 2025 general fund, totaling $155 million, represents what it costs to run the city. It covers operations and personnel expenses across city departments and transfers to various sub-budgets. The budget is based on maintaining the city’s property tax rate of 4.731 mills. The spending plan sets aside about $32 million – or 25.6 percent of expenditures – in general fund reserves. “That does not change our financial policy,” City Manager Eden Freeman said. “[It] requires that we keep 25 percent of our general fund budgeted expenditures in our rainy-day fund from year to year.” The reserve is important, given dwindling revenues from commercial property taxes, increasing insurance costs and other inflation factors.
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