As I’m sure many of you already know, the city commission voted last night to accept the 11 Midway Road parcels that sought annexation into the city of Decatur (well 10 of 15 voters among those parcels did.)  The AJC’s April Hunt has a summary of the vote that was posted earlier today.

I wasn’t there obviously, so be as skeptical as you’d like about my opinion – pieced together with sealing wax and commissioner saliva – but it seems that the city commission just wasn’t ready to an about-face and start denying annexation requests, even though the note from Peggy Merriss (page 67 of materials for the meeting) indicated that this annexation didn’t really fall under the city’s annexation deferral plan since “it was recommend the City Commission should not accept single or small lot annexation applications that are randomly placed in mid-block areas of adjacent streets that do not support the City’s interest in clarifying city limits.”

I still stand by my earlier metaphor: the hornet’s nest has been kicked.  Look no further than the Superintendent’s striking note to the commission on page 81 of the materials that essentially states “Please deny any further annexations in this area.”  Wow.  Now there’s a difference of positions!

Going forward, I think we can all agree that it wouldn’t be all that prudent for the city to continue to accept annexations while the school system struggles under a bloated school system.  But lord, it would be even worse if we simply started blanketly denying annexations with nothing more than a request from CSD in our hands.

So I resurrect my old call that for the sake of CSD, the city commission needs to figure out where it stands on annexation now, not in 2011.