Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Neighborhoods Town hall meeting on Ashford, er, Brookhaven… whatever
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 5:15 PM
State Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Whatever, will host a cage match, er, town hall meeting on the volatile subject of a city of Brookhaven on Thursday, Feb. 16, at 7 p.m. in the Talmage Room of the student center of Oglethorpe University.
Apart from Brookhaven — and, for the record, Mike says, "I agree that we need to revisit the name 'Ashford'" — other topics for consideration include transportation and education policy, yada yada, county commission and school board redistricting, blah blah blah, a proposal for a countywide “City of DeKalb,” etc. etc., and…
Wait a second! I'm sorry, what was that last one? A CITY OF DEKALB COUNTY?!? How does that even make sense?
Yes, according to one of DeKalb's 43 independent newspapers, Cross Roads News, state Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-DeKalb, last week proposed turning all of unincorporated DeKalb into a county/city hybrid creature. Apparently, this idea has been around for a number of years, but would seem extra tempting now to those who'd like to prevent every subdivision and commercial node from getting their own city charter. Not that we have any examples of such a thing being done in Georgia, but incorporating all the parts of DeKalb that aren't nailed down would, theoretically, not only put the ixnay on any new cities, but would kill all future annexation dreams for the county's existing cities.
How likely is any of this to happen? My guess is, about as likely as you'll ever hear the phrase "Brookhaven Mayor Vernon Jones."
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
Vernon Jones proposed the idea as a way to charge franchise fees that only municipalities can collect. Hmm Scott i'm sensing you haven't followed DeKalb very closely, I mean really, how is calling DeKalb a city doesn't change the fact its to stretched out and unwieldy to do somethings well. In urban areas I think Fulton got it right by incorporating everything from Atlanta, north into cities. Police, Traffic Court/misdemeanor court and zoning coverage at a county level doesn't work as well. Sewage and garbage collection apparently does.
This is a done deal. Only the details remain to be parsed out. Its been in the cards ever since they let Dunwoody run off with the Perimeter Center.
I think what we should be looking at is if DeKalb is properly shrinking their services and if they are allocating costs correctly.
Still not entirely clear if Brookhaven City would be taking a fair share, but CEO Burrell Ellis did say it didn't have the tax base of Dunwoody and thus would not be fiscally feasible, so that would seem to indicate its not taking an unfair slice of the pie. But I don't know.
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Sorry, i'm I typo king, but want to correct this: Doesn't doesn't belong. S/B
how does calling DeKalb a city change the fact its to stretched out
I could be mistaken but I think there are examples of this in Georgia...I think Athens-Clarke County did this a while ago?
@A, I realize I was unclear, but they're not talking about merging existing city/county govts, like with Athens-Clarke, but with turning unincorporated DeKalb into a city of sorts. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about how this would be different because it's never gonna happen.
A "City of Dekalb" so fragmented by exisiting cities and interstates make no sense, whatsoever". DOA. Townships may make so sense, if they have taxing powers and/or CIDs. Scott Henry is so far up the Dekalb County Commission and Laurenthia Mesh A**, special interest speculative, he would not know what makes snese for a operating City; let alone what is consdered race based bribes of the pay for play that is going on at the city of Atlanta, namely the Airport.
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