On the agenda for tonight’s city commission meeting – adopting the Annexation Master Plan. The vote was delayed 2 weeks due to a death in City Manager Peggy Merriss’ family.
If you’re wondering how this works in regards to the school board having delayed it’s own vote of support for the master plan, the AJC’s Bill Banks reported late last week…
“I would think [the plan] would be considered with some contingent language referencing the City Schools adopting a resolution of support,” City Manager Peggy Merriss wrote in an email. “The City Commission wants to be supportive of [the board], so I am sure that they would take [its] concerns to heart in making a decision.”
I really hope people turn out tonight to offer public comments about annexation. Lots of virtual talk. It would be nice for people to show up when it counts.
I think more people would show up if they would only tell us! I just read this on my neighborhood newsletter and I am in Section D.
Yup, when elected officials look out in a meeting and see only a few folks watching and making public comment, they don’t think “Oh, it’s a school night” or “It’s a Monday night during the hectic holiday season” or “We should have broadcast this better” or “Folks are numb with all the issues on their plates right now, from annexation to Ferguson to tax breaks…” They think “Oh, there’s just one or two bloggers making most of those posts; they don’t represent most residents.”
“The vote was delayed 2 weeks due to a death in City Manager Peggy Merriss’ family.”
The vote was apparently scheduled earlier and citizens have had two more weeks to prepare. I remember reading a similar notice after the last meeting.
I will be there! I’m going to give my two cents for sure. Believe me–I’m tired, busy, and overwhelmed with holiday and end of semester school stuff–but I’m dragging my haggard self out and letting my voice be heard. Please join me!
Bigger area, bigger problems and more expensive. A bigger house never gets cheaper.
This really is ridiculous. Hopefully we’ll at least get a discount on the Learning Cottages.
Are they voting before CSD has given a decision? I thought CSD needed more time from meeting last week. Thank you to those getting out tonight, I’m a little beaten down by how many questions aren’t answered.
1- Why not show a range of students for annexation.. it could range high to low and will certainly change over time. Right now Only 750 I believe
2- If this is all about lowering taxes – or keeping from going up what is the $ impact for average decatur homeowner
3- I hate that we’re grabbing more retail when so many spots in decatur seem woefully under commercialized ( the ace on college, vacant spots all over town…)
My guess: The City doesn’t need CSD’s concurrence to vote. It is under some time pressure from the cityhood applications. If CSD concurred, it would help the City’s case but with whom and how I’m not sure. But the City is not going to stop its plan to annex just because CSD doesn’t concur.
What I want to know is: how valid is the contention that the City of Decatur (and therefore CSD since it depends on City revenues) must annex to survive?
sfmaster,
For your 3rd point, do you mean that commercial property in Decatur has not been filled up with tenants or that it has not been re-developed enough to maximize its commercial potential?
I can say with certainty the Ace building on College is in significant disrepair and likely a contributing factor to the abrupt exit by that business. That doesn’t stop the property owner from having to pay their taxes though.
For ever house annex just wait two years. They will sell to a family of two or more kids. Congratulations to the kids who will get a great education in an over crowed school system. Soon to have trailers at every school parking lot. 2014 to 2020 a upswing to 10,000 kids in the City of Decatur schools. By 2025 20,000 kids since it is the greatest schools of Dekalb County aka City of Decatur. Do not worry about the money it is coming from the Commercial property that will last for only two years. Since City of Decatur allows mixed used property there will be twist in two years. Most of the all commercial property will be swinging to the mixed use motto. Stores below kids above in new apartments. Go Kids to a Great School System. Yeah.
Mixed-use developments are assessed as commercial. And 1- & 2-bedroom apartments do not bring in the school age kids that single family homes do. How many times does this need to be pointed out?
The areas of annexation are full of 1-3 BR apartments. I live next door to apartments/town homes that are 2 BR and each of the units has 1-2 children that attend CSD. The idea that no children will live in apartments is foolish and, while repeated ad nauseum by consultants and folks like you, is completely unfounded.
Nice straw man. I didn’t say apartments bring in “no children.” I said apartments do not bring in the kids that single family homes do, especially the new mixed-use developments. And I was answering the above comment that seemed to allege that these mixed-use centers would not be assessed as commercial property. At least I think that’s what the comment was trying to say.
Anyway, I am not a consultant. I’m a CoD resident and in my condo complex there are four school aged children. Four total. But that’s an unfounded anecdote just like your “data.”
I had this whole write-up on yield rates of apartments vs single-family homes, but I deleted it. It would be lost on “folks like you.” I’m so tired of the sniping with this annexation debate.
Agreed Rival.
I think it was Scott who commented it would be nice to have a discussion on how we can all make the inevitable work instead of the constant “the sky is falling” debate about school crowding from annexation.
Whoa! Whenever anyone says straw man I cringe. It’s the same way I feel whenever someone says correlation does not imply causation. Worthless.
Actually, I disagree. The straw man fallacy is one of the most frequently occurring fallacies on DM. The more it’s exposed when it occurs, the more focused the conversation can be.
Related – I’m thinking about doing a series of posts next year from the “You are not so smart” author from the Decatur Book Fest where we take the time to analyze our own conversations based on the multitude of human discussion fallacies.
I prefer a snowman argument.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/168916/
“The straw man fallacy is one of the most frequently occurring fallacies on DM. ”
+1. Not one person that I recall has said that apartments/condos bring in no children, just that single-family is likely to bring in more. Another straw man retort I see a lot is when someone mentions that some people do things for racist reasons, it’s distorted into “all white people are racists.”
Whenever someone says straw man I think of the Wicker Man and it creeps me out.
“Not the bees!”
I agree, though DM is correct about the straw man frequency, the problem is posters here tend see all misrepresentations as strawman arguments, which they are not. A strawman fallacy takes a lot more thought to develop.
So if I understand correctly, folks should instead just claim that their argument is being misrepresented?
No, but people do that too, all the time. In this case one part of the poster’s argument was misrepresented as none when they said few. A strawman attack would have stated something like apartment dwellers would have enough extra cash to send their 1.62 kids to private schools and therefore would count in CSD.
That is…would NOT count in CSD.
Perhaps I should have been more clear. Without knowing how the consultants came up with their numbers of children, and knowing there are many multi-family apartments, townhomes, and condos in the areas to be annexed–both existing and in development–I think the estimates of children coming into CSD is low. Add that to the new apartments, townhomes, and condos within the city limits being developed, and the extremely high demand of rentals in the city, and I think there will be an influx of families with children that is not being accurately accounted and planned for.
I am not exaggerating when I say that every unit next door to me has 1-2 children, and I know several single parents who want to keep their children in CSD and have had a really hard time finding housing in the city when for a number of reasons they have had to move. I am just concerned that the numbers are lower than they will be once the annexation is done. I am also tired of everyone downplaying the contribution of apartments.
It’s not a straw man argument, nor am I saying the sky is falling. I just want the decision makers to be properly informed since we have some very real changes facing us that will affect our children’s education and the quality of life in our city.
There’s no doubt there is going to be a significant increase in enrollment, with or without annexation. The question is where will the new schools be built, and presumably annexation makes it easier to acquire space for them.
Without annexation, CSD needs more space but there’s a chance that portables and more building onto existing schools might address that, especially if the City would have let CSD have the Callaway Building. Enrollment comes in waves and this wave could crest (…although not until every last home in Decatur that is valued under $400,000 is torn down and a megahome put up in its place.) With annexation, we’re locked in. We are locked into needing to buy land at market price to build more school buildings. Or we could have drawn the annexation lines so that we acquired some school buildings along with commercial property. But then we would have gotten residential property that the City doesn’t want.
The message I get from the Decaturish recording of the CSD/COD meeting is that COD has been told (by ???) for years that it needs a better commercial/residential property ratio or it will ….. Now it’s going to fix that. It’s the …… part that I don’t understand. What really happens if we don’t take care of the ……? Are we doomed? Inconvenienced? What?
The …… is answered in the most recent annexation post, the one with no comments yet. Here’s the quote from it:
“If the annexation happens in its approved form, Decatur would go from having an 85%/15% residential/commercial split to a 76%/24% split, according to City Manager Peggy Merriss. As someone who’s been writing about this issue since 2007, this has long been the rationale given by the city for annexation – to help keep residential taxes down. The November school board study reiterated this stating that without annexation, the school board would be forced to raise the tax millage rate due to these increased enrollment levels.”
So far as you believe the projections for new enrollments originating inside the current city boundaries, we’d likely be doomed/inconvenienced with higher taxes. As you note, the projected students will need to be accommodated one way or another — new or expanded facilities — and the tab on that is more manageable with a larger commercial tax base. Otherwise, existing taxpayers need to pick it up.
People in Decatur have not really shown themselves to be amenable to the idea of rezoning residential property to commercial to accommodate this so annexation is the only practical way to bump up the percentage. That’s the one thing that I haven’t really seen from folks against annexation: the plan to cover costs associated with current-boundary increases in students.
I believe Decatur City Schools are very strong, but not the best in DeKalb per published reports (US News). They don’t place in the top 50 in GA. Chamblee HS and DeKalb School of the Arts are rated higher in the county.
Both of those are focused, specialized schools, rather than general, broad-population schools.
For K-8 there is no question that Decatur City Schools are the best public schools ITP, but it is true that Chamblee, Lakeside, Dekalb School of the Arts, Druid Hills, Grady, are all also great high schools.
No question? Best ITP? I think both Fernbank ES and Chamblee Middle would disagree. Take a look at the CRCT scores for 2014 for grades 3-8. I think you might be enlightened. Sure, there’s more to a school than CRCT scores but I’m tired of the tag line that Decatur City Schools are the only good schools ITP.
Decatur is the only good school SYSTEM intown. There are other good schools here and there, no one’s disputing that, but for consistency of quality you won’t do better than Decatur.
I guess if there is one thing we can say with some confidence, it’s that, after this round of annexations (assuming they happen), there will never be anymore.
Never say never. Oakhurst was an incorporated city when it was swallowed up in the early 1900’s. Avondale needs to sleep with one eye open.
The Annexation Plan passed unanimously. There were three people there to speak out against it. There were two additional people from Medlock Park who are opposed to Decatur taking their commercial property. Get ready for the onslaught. I predict heaps and heaps of apartment home communities with heaps and heaps of children.
You want me. You, officially, still want me.
What happens next?
Pressure the Board of Education not to agree to the annexation plan.
I’ll keep asking this in the vain hope that I’ll get an answer: how valid is the contention that the City of Decatur (and therefore CSD since it depends on City revenues) must annex to survive?
The biggest issue is residential vs commercial tax base. COD has a particularly low ratio of commercial and having more commercial, which typically generates more in revenue than the cost of services, would help.
But hasn’t that been the case forever? And we have survived all this time with this bad ratio of commercial to residential. That’s the disconnect I am struggling with.
Must annex to survive? I don’t know if anyone is actually claiming that, but, if so, it’s obviously false. Decatur is a wealthy community that can choose to (a) spend less, (b) tax more, or (c) annex. The reasons why it’s choosing (c) are obvious.
“Must annex to survive long term” is the tone of the CSD/COD annexation info meeting from around 10 days ago that Decaturish recorded and posted. Or at least how I heard it. Otherwise, I don’t think CSD would have much interest in supporting annexation at all. Now they seem to cautiously support it as long as it is done in such a way that COD provides adequate assistance and there isn’t a disastrous immediate impact on students. Buildings, portables, teachers, support staff, supplies, buses etc. don’t appear at the snap of a finger.
I would add (d): acquire land on which to build schools. Which probably requires choosing (c).
For those interested in the special called meeting of the CSD board meeting where the annexation resolution will be discussed, it is slated for December 17th at 7:30 pm.
Peggy Merriss repeatedly mentioned during Monday night’s commissioner’s work session and again during the business meeting that the CSD Board special meeting was scheduled for the 18th. That appears to be incorrect.
Oops – scheduled for 7:30 am on 12/17, not 7:30 pm as mentioned above.