Mayor Jim Baskett recently attended a legislative lunch with the DeKalb delegation down at the General Assembly . At Tuesday’s Decatur City Commission meeting, the Mayor provided an interesting recap of the discussions regarding recent annexation attempts. Here’s the quote in full…
We mostly discussed annexation as you might imagine. There was not much agreement by the people that were there about the issue. But the general assembly members encouraged the cities to get with the county to try to have some constructive meetings to do some long-term planning about the issue so they’re not dealing with [annexation] on a piecemeal basis.
Interesting that they feel this way now, and not when the annexation of Brookhaven, Rep. Jacob’s pet project, came up… (Although I am in wholehearted agreement with this approach).
How do you meet and negotiate with DeKalb County government when the CEO, his right hand man, and many in the planning department are rumored to be under indictment soon?
Bribe them?
BAZINGA!
Brookhaven was an incorporation, not an annexation, of a fairly large area with the backing of the citizens involved. I have a feeling that if there was a groundswell of support from the areas COD wants to annex and from the citizens of Decatur you’d hear a different tune from the Dekalb delegation.
I agree. the annexation isuse was a different game in which there were many in the affected area that were both for and against, including many in Decatur.
Perhaps wage a bet that surrounding neighborhoods will one day start begging the City of Decatur to annex them as Dekalb County continues its fiscal and management spiral downwards.