Almost two years ago to the day, residents living north of Decatur’s borders were sharing their new found neighborly relationships with the AJC, stemmed from their new common enemy – Decatur.

Decatur’s vast annexation plan of 2007-2008, initiated in an effort to off-set the residential tax burden by bringing more commercial property inside Decatur, looked to grow the city limits to the north and east.  While many neighbors on the southeastern edge of the city openly hoped for annexation, the voices on the north-side were almost unanimously opposed.  (The AJC article linked above cites a survey where only 14 of 200 area residents were in favor of being annexed into the city of Decatur.)

But now two years later, the landscape has shifted.  DeKalb County Schools looks destined to close the neighborhood’s elementary school, Medlock, and murmurs indicate that some of those same northern neighbors may now be a bit more open to Decatur’s higher taxes in exchange for it’s coveted school system.

But even if northern residents are more amenable to the idea, there are still other substantial hurdles to overcome.  Back in 2008, the other major opponents to the Decatur’s large-scale annexation plan were many of the city’s current residents.  Two in particular, Judd Owen and Pat Herold, uncovered calculation errors in how the school system’s contractor estimated increased school enrollment.  All attempts at revised estimated enrollments were much higher than the original assumptions, throwing the whole process into turmoil, as it was generally thought that any added commercial property tax, wasn’t enough to offset the cost of school enrollment increases.

So here we are in early 2011 – the year in which the City Manager recommended that the City Commission revisit this annexation question – and it looks like the playing field has changed a bit.  The major challenge for the city – if it still wishes to pursue this – will be to craft an annexation area that has more than enough commercial property tax to offset any student populations around it.  And since nearly all of the unincorporated commercial property the city has eyed in the past is to the north/northeast of the city limits, a more supportive northern population could be just what the pro-annexation faction ordered.