Proposed North DeKalb Cities Can’t Agree on Borders
Decatur Metro | November 17, 2014 | 10:19 amUPDATE: It looks like the former “City of Briarcliff” has decided on “LaVista Hills” as the name for their proposed city, which would be the biggest in DeKalb.
From the AJC…
Three communities seeking to become cities — Tucker, Lakeside and Briarcliff — couldn’t agree this weekend on how they would share borders, meaning state lawmakers will likely step in.
The DeKalb County neighborhoods were still hoping to strike a last-minute deal Sunday, said Mary Kay Woodworth of Lakeside Yes, which has been working closely with Briarcliff on a combined cityhood proposal.
Georgia representatives had set a Saturday deadline for cityhood movements to reach a compromise on boundaries.
The Lakeside-Briarcliff group planned to unveil the name of its potential city and a map on Monday, Woodworth said.
Possible names for the Lakeside-Briarcliff city include Briarlake, Lavista, Lavista Hills, Briarton and Briar Vista.
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They seem to have arrived at the name of LaVista Hills:
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/lavista-hills-announces-plans-to-become-georgias-n/nh8k6/
Thanks!
For Decatur observers and nearby neighbors, the most important news here is that LaVista Hills does not plan to come down to the areas Decatur is looking at for annexation. The map seems to come down only as far as N. DeKalb mall and then follows N. Druid Hills Rd.
So everything you’ve heard about why Decatur is rushing to annex now — because if we don’t the areas will be swept up by some other city, and the choice is no longer between Decatur and unincorporated DeK but which city — none of that appears any longer to hold.
Yes, exactly! There is no urgency for those of us near Emory to join any city! And I certainly feel no urgency to help the City of Decatur pay for it’s schools that they have not planned for properly.
Decatur has planned for our schools. What we didn’t plan for was the utter meltdown of your municipality, driving thousands of students into our town.
But I guess you’re right – we should have seen that coming. It was obvious DeKalb county residents couldn’t hold their government accountable. Our fault!
By that logic the people who caused all the overcrowding are current CoD residents who bailed on DeKalb over the years, not those of us who have stayed unincorporated and tried to make the best of it.
Totally missed the headline about Decatur seceding from DeKalb.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but just because you live in an incorporated area be it Brookhaven/Dunwoody, whatever, doesn’t mean you stop caring about voting in a gubernatorial election, or for that matter, if flooding affects my neighbors in S. GA even though I don’t know them. I don’t get this, I live on this block, and screw the entire planet around me attitude. You may not have meant it that way, but your post is basically everything I hate about this planet, selfish selfish selfish.
D’accord. Thank you.
Well, to be fair about it, DeKalb does have a relatively new super and board, so it’s not as if nothing has been done about the school system’s problems. At any rate, I was under the impression that the growth in Decatur schools was as much about their perceived high quality as it was about the lack of quality in DeKalb schools. Now you seem to be suggesting it’s all about DeKalb and has little to nothing to do with Decatur.
And of course the fact remains that Decatur has the ability to control its taxes and spending on schools. If your schools need more money, raise your taxes. DeKalb’s problems hardly justify Decatur’s cherry-picking of commercial properties solely to avoid a tax increase Decatur can afford to pay.
“so it’s not as if nothing has been done about the school system’s problems.”
But, that isn’t the result of DeKalb voters. And one of the removed school board members came pretty damn close to getting elected again despite the fact he was removed for incompetent and/or corrupt practices.
You are assuming that the City’s stated objectives for annexation are not fig leaves hiding other motivations. Bless your heart.
Of course there is always the favorite catchall objectives at the end of their annexation proclamations such as: “Cleaning up the City Borders” and “Controlling the Gateways” that could justify any outward expansion in any direction indefinitely.
If there are fig leaves, what is your guess as to what they are hiding? In the past, I’ve always found the City to be relatively transparent, with things like Decatur 101 and budget learning sessions for those of us who are civic beginners, but the mood on this blog lately has been one of cautious skepticism. What IS the motivation of the City? Are we in financial trouble? Is it about finding school buildings or land for them? What is it?
I think there may be some back room deals in place – LaVista Hills is leaving that property for CoD in exchange for CoD’s cooperation/support of their other efforts.
Who knows? I honestly think they want revenue and are trying to better balance the commercial tax base v. the residential tax base. The existing commercial areas downtown are highly skewed toward tax-exempt property like churches, government property, Marta, low income housing and the like, so they need some new commercial options.
However, the annexation map comes out and city officials are proposing to take lot of residential and the United Methodist Children’s Home, which is a tax-exempt property with projected 40-50 students. The Parkwood annexation is extremely questionable fiscally, and the projections of the consultants they hired seemed to grossly underestimate the number of students that will attend school here. For example, they project 30 students from the 538 unit MARTA parking lot development on College Avenue. The other projections from the new planned developments and the proposed annexed areas are similarly unrealistic based on past patterns and the problems with the DeKalb school system.
Add to that that Decatur is not considering the annexation of the Rio Circle commercial properties though their owners that have begged Decatur to take them and have rejected, in writing, annexation by Avondale. They don’t have to take any residential with these.
The city is justifying annexation as a fiscal necessity because of the schools, but the reality of the maps and methodology is a perpetuation of the revenue/cost imbalance in parcels C&D and a lot of A. There is a disconnect between the message and the results so far, and that leads me to questions about hidden agendas. Maybe the agendas are good, but why not tell us what they are. If you want to annex only commercial and just take residential between, then that meets the stated objectives. If you want to go beyond that, or fall short of that in the case of Rio Circle, then explain why.
A recent post by the new city addresses the areas to the south that are not included. It appears the new city will propose annexing those areas in the future. So Decatur needs to annex or risk losing these areas.
As an outside observer, it looks to me like they decided to focus on their battle with Tucker over North DeKalb Mall rather than pursuing a two-front war that would make them look overly greedy.
Northlake, not North Dekalb. Tucker’s map doesn’t go anywhere near North Dekalb mall.
We have two rental properties; one in postal Decatur, one in Tucker. Both will be in “Lavista Hills” if this map is approved. In the Tucker neighborhood, I’ve seen a lot of “TKR” bumper stickers. People there probably won’t like this (but they’ll prefer it to being called Lakeside). In the unincorporated Decatur neighborhood, the people I know there identify with Decatur, but would just as soon stay in uninc. DeKalb.
Noticed that Tucker would not have its own police force while Lavista Hills would include it as one of the three required municipal services. The current proposal for Tucker would make it a city of about 55k people. Isn’t that really big not to have a police force?
Tucker has a county police precinct smack in the middle of it, so, they may have decided that was a redundancy they didn’t need to spend money on yet.
There is precedent for something like that. Hilton Head, SC, for instance, uses the Beaufort County Sheriff for policing rather than have their own. And closer, Stockbridge, GA, though smaller, uses Henry County instead of a municipal force.
That’s true, though I’m not sure how central it would be if Tucker’s proposed boundaries were in place. And I’m guessing a lot of people are mainly interested in cityhood because of a desire for a greater police presence in their communities, not the same as they have now.