Sagamore Hills, North Briarcliff, AND Druid Hills All Considering Cityhood?
Decatur Metro | September 24, 2012I like a good game of “Telephone” as much as the next guy. So let’s play, shalt we?
According to Patch, the AJC reported in their Sunday fish-wrap (but not yet on their website) that residents of Sagamore Hills and North Briarcliff communities in northern DeKalb County are now also considering cityhood, after Brookhaven became the latest new city in DeKalb after a July vote. Non-Brookhavians may recall that particular vote as the “Hell No T-SPLOST!” vote.
According to Patch’s Jonathan Cribbs article, a community leader in the area made mention of potential Sagamore Hills city limits as “a combination of areas south of I-85, bookended by Northlake Mall on the east and the proposed commercial development near North Druid Hills Road on the west…”. Cribbs also makes mention of an AJC map included with the article, which tags Druid Hills as another area interested in becoming an independent city.
Seems like the city trend in northern DeKalb might be beginning to snowball.
(NOTE: Cribbs’ article also states the AJC piece features some mention of Decatur’s recent annexation musings. If/when I get that full article in front of me – or more likely when one of you all fills me in – we can discuss that too.)
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Tucker has also considered incorporation.
I lived in Tucker for a long time until recently (and still own a house there).
Tucker determined several years ago that it did not have the economic base to support incorporation. Surely now that their downtown is revitalizing the numbers are more in their favor. Tucker would have to include Northlake area businesses/hotels/mall in their boundaries in order to create a large enough economic base to support a city. But if this DM entry is true, Sagamore is going to try to grab those, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat Tucker to it. Tucker pushed very hard for incorporation for a long time, and people there are burned out on the effort.
I was loudly and actively opposed to Tucker becoming a city while I lived there. That was based on conversations I had with some of the people leading the effort. I felt that some of their ideas were stupid and backwards (such as opposing a Brain Train/commuter rail station). I would support their incorporation now, though. A lot has changed for the better in Tucker in the last few years.
Quick! We’d better annex everything we can while we still can!
Quiet you.
So eventually we will have white cities surrounded by black unincorporated DeKalb.
You do realize that Brookhaven and Chamblee are less ‘white’ than Decatur, right?
Regardless, my assumption is that Lithonia will move to annex Stonecrest, city of Atlanta will annex more of DeKalb, and/or DeKalb will incorporate into the city of DeKalb to collect franchise fees (and that move will probably happen sooner than later as the political obstacles from that movement are being removed through separate incorporations.
Chamblee was incorporated over 100 years ago. If you want to think that the more recent incorporations of Sandy Springs, John’s Creek, Dunwoody, and Brookhaven aren’t forms of white flight, that’s fine.
Areas annexed by Atlanta would add students that would attend Atlanta Public Schools. This would be very complicated.
There was discussion at one time about creating a City of DeKalb. One of several reasons was that it it far more difficult for one city to annex area from another city than from an unincorporated area of a county.
More government! Less government! RIDICULOUS. I’ll stop there.
In the long term this is a good thing, as it will provide many DeKalb residents more insight and control over their local government. We here in Decatur know very well how much better it is to have a right-sized municipality.
What will be interesting is if/when separate school systems start to emerge.
My understanding is that the creation of new school districts can only be done through a change in the state constitution.
Would creating new smaller school districts maybe be a better amendement that state charter schools? If a county just cannot pull together a decent public school system, but its cities can, then empower the cities rather than private entities from out of state that are not going to have the same kind of social investment in local students.
If anyone thinks that city borders drawn to maximize revenue from commercial property are obnoxious, just wait until they’re also drawn to ensure the most “attractive” student populations for new school districts. Yikes.
(That said, I do support smaller districts. Just that getting there will be a messy road.)
Good point. Don’t have an answer to that. To Decatur’s credit, the reason our schools have become less diverse is not at all by design. In fact, the city and schools valued economic and racial/ethnic diversity over the last two decades. But what started out as urban pioneers moving into low income areas evolved into gentrification and now is massive upscale development.
City of Decatur has essentially become a private school district, though not necessarily by design. Driving through the area recently I noticed the amount of McPrairies that are shooting up and you have effectively zoned out diversity. In addition with the price of land and the current zoning practices you can’t build a home there for under $300k thus not allowing you to have a diverse neighborhood. Not a value judgement, just an observation.
City of Decatur is reaching it’s tentacles out to additional areas nearby including Midway Woods. With 700 homes that would greatly increase the number of students in the school system. This is beyond the current 5 areas in the current annexation.
They are even sending Peggy Merriss to their meeting tomorrow to encourage them to vote in favor of annexation.
What is a McPrairie?
Prairie style homes being built by a certain architect all over Decatur
It’s a certain builder, not an certain architect. He is the builder’s hired gun, does plenty of other types of work, and lives in a tiny house in Oakhurst. Just sayin’.
that’s actually very cool. would you forward his info to ?
https://decaturteardowns.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/capture-segway-205-maxwell.jpg
I don’t know incorporation is the solution, but the urge to do it is entirely understandable. People are frustrated, sad and angry about the functioning and malfunctioning of DeKalb County government. And right in the middle of it sits the City of Decatur, which has avoided a lot of metro Atlanta’s typical dysfunction in part of because of its city government.
article still not on AJC website–what gives?
The real reason for forming new cities–city schools see body of article:
http://www.thecrier.net/our_columnists/article_5bd46dc2-121d-11e2-a5cb-001a4bcf887a.html
BTW–when people become dissatisfied with the cherter process and feel 100% funding is due ANYBODY–private school vouchers will be next–slippery slope.