UPDATE: Decatur City Manager Peggy Merriss has confirmed that Rep. Drenner added Decatur Terrace to the partial Decatur annexation bill that she sponsored and read on Monday.
The AJC reports…
State Representative Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates, read three local annexation bills Monday, including a portion of Decatur and all of Avondale Estates. Each passed through the policy committee, and now need 9 of 16 signatures from DeKalb delegates to reach the House.
In a surprise move, however, Drenner introduced the Avondale master plan minus the Decatur Terrace neighborhood, south of College Avenue between Avondale and Decatur.
The AJC also reported that Avondale’s acting Mayor and City Manager said that Decatur Terrace would be added to Decatur annexation map. However, City Manager Peggy Merriss has stood by the existing Decatur Annexation Master Plan and repeatedly stated that the city doesn’t want to include any more residential areas in its annexation efforts, due to concerns with school enrollment levels.
I’ve followed up with Ms. Merriss for comment.
Photo courtesy of Rep. Karla Drenner’s Facebook Page
Um, what? Decatur has never said it wanted Decatur Terrace!
HB 520, the LaVista Hills bill, has just been presented in the Senate… Amendment offered and presented by Parent to “make some minor changes to this legislation that everyone agrees on.” Sounds like slight redrawing of map. Live broadcast going on now. The Tucker bill is next.
Parent’s amendment failed, leaving (as I understand it), around 1,500 or so people (households?) to have to seek de-annexation at a later date. Apparently, the people in this area don’t want to be in LaVista Hills and LaVista Hills agrees that it doesn’t want this area. LaVista Hills bill passed. Tucker passed as well.
I hope Decatur doesn’t take a partial annexation deal just to get something. Remember the biblical story when King Solomon proposed cutting the baby in half? Sometimes half of something is not better than getting nothing at all.
A bad annexation deal with too much residential is not better in my opinion than walking away with no deal. We need the commercial tax base not more residential to add to the schools. Ms. Merriss please help Decatur fix the problem not increase the student enrollment.
Old Testament, ftw!
I always thought that the false mother was pretty dumb to say okay to the baby slicing. She couldn’t see where King Solomon was going with that? I guess society wasn’t quite so child-centric back then so her reaction seemed more plausible.
But in Decatur’s case, cutting the babies in half would actually help solve the school crowding problem.
What are you talking about? It would double enrollment!
You did not go to medical school, I presume.
Aren’t there worms that, if you cut them in half, become two new worms? I vaguely remember this from fishing expeditions when I was very young. Could this kind of division explain the population explosion in COD? It certainly seems logarithmic which doesn’t make sense because it’s occurred in much less than a generation.
Henceforth, I shall refer to all of our neighbors’ recent progeny as “worm.”
+100
So what’s Decatur Terrace? The Katie Kerr area?
Decatur Terrace is the section of small older houses at the corner of E College and Katy Kerr. It does not include Katy Kerr homes and Forrest Hills. There are 144 houses there.
Decatur’s whole approach to annexation seems very timid politically, considering the tactics of other groups that want to leave DeKalb. Brookhaven, Druid Hills and Medlock have used political tactics that seem to be more effective.
Decatur has refused to consider commercial property that Avondale wants, even though the property owners want no part of Avondale and want to be in Decatur. Decatur has been outflanked by Together in Atlanta on the Parcel “A” properties, and apparently lost their legislative sponsor Mary Margaret Oliver, who had promised to introduce the entire annexation bill, not a portion of it with more residential than commercial. Suburban Plaza appears to be out because Medlock was more aggressive politically.
The only areas in the introduced bill include Parcel B minus a lot of the commercial, the United Methodist Children’s Home and the Area D residential properties. The UMCH pays no taxes and adds a lot of children to the schools. I thought Decatur’s goal was to acquire properties that bring in more revenue than the associated education costs. This plan does not seem to do that, so we are going to be left with more school space issues and students, little added commercial property and higher tax bills?
I understand those that might be proud of their leaders for taking such a high-minded approach, but let’s be honest. Annexation/Cityhood is about money, land and politics. If you don’t have the stomach for the fight, then pull the bill and stay on the sidelines. Nice guys finish last in cityhood/annexation.
There is nothing high ground about Decatur in this. They want to take commercial property without the surrounding residential. Its the height of arrogance to want the rest of DeKalb to subsidize their schools. They want the centers at Clairmont and N. Decatur, but leave out Clairmont Hts. and wrap their boundaries around to skip the apartment complex. They wanted all the commercial to N. DeKalb Mall but leave out Medlock.
The area that Drenner is supporting still includes a lot of commercial north of North Decatur without residential. In fact, it looks like Decatur is getting most of the commercial south of North Decatur without getting the heaviest populated areas.
As they say, eventually you run out of other people’s money. But sometimes, it appears, you don’t get to take it in the first place.
Except for one thing. A sizable percentage of the retail catchment areas for both the prime commercial locations being considered fall within Decatur. Which means Decatur residents are currently subsidizing DeKalb schools. If the tables turn, isn’t it just tit for tat?
I agree that while Decatur is being timid new cities are being introduced to ‘create’ what they want. If Decatur was introduced as a new city it wouldn’t qualify under state rules because of the lack of commercial properties
Decatur has a much stronger connection to the proposed annexed areas than Medlock. Medlock and Clarimont Hts want to do the same thing Decatur is proposing, secede from DeKalb. Give me a break saying that its about the children. It’s about getting into Decatur or Atlanta, and then whining about it if they choose not to annex your area.
+1
Medlock is not a single person. The citizens of Medlock wanted a chance to vote on a referendum, not necessarily to be in a city. Our population is pretty diverse and has a lot of people with different needs and desires. There are no guarantees which way a vote would go if there is one. And if we had been up for Decatur annexation there would have been a lot of people vocally against that, trust me.
This. I don’t understand the thinking behind publishing a proposed annexation map months and months ago, which basically amounted to a wish list of coveted commercial properties, refuse to consider or negotiate any changes, yet giving groups opposed to or shut out of the map ample time to marshal the opposition and sink it, and they/we apparently have little to no political support for going forward.
TiA did not release its proposed Atlanta annexation map until the bill was proposed. LaVista Hills didn’t release their map until they absolutely had to when it went to committee.
I guess Decatur’s approach was more above-board about it, but it does seem like a recipe for how to get almost the exact opposite of what it said it wanted.
We’re going to get mostly new residential, if this goes through, and very little commercial. And, if Atlanta’s bill goes through, they will get virtually all of the surrounding commercial properties as well as Fernbank, Druid Hills High and the Medlock school building.
I guess I need to prepare my kids now for trailers and alternating school schedules.
LaVista Hills and Tucker have had maps out for a year and a half and lots of public meetings.
Now Atlanta is a different story, but they probably won’t get what they want either. Decatur’s planning process was the way this is supposed to work, not the way Atlanta has done it.
Tucker’s map may have been out that long. But LaVista Hills, in it’s current incarnation, did not *exist* a year and a half ago. There were two independent cityhood initiatives – Lakeside and Briarcliff – with two different and competing maps – a year and a half ago. They then announced that they would join forces – but no updated map. They certainly did not end up just combining the previously proposed maps. They did not release the map they took to the legislature – or the name LaVista Hills – until this past November.
http://briarcliffga.org/652/
Not that I am deriding the effort. They have gotten further in their stated efforts than Decatur did in its.