Friday, February 17, 2012
Guv'ment Brookhaven on its way to cityhood
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 1:18 PM
And the state House just passed Republican Rep. Mike Jacobs' bill to create a city of Brookhaven Ashford TBD by a nearly 2-1 margin.
In the minutes leading up to the vote, incorporation opponents — DeKalb Democrats all — made their cases against HB 636:
• Rep. Elena Parent explained that many of the residents in and around the proposed city have issues with the name, the boundaries, and the likely impact of Brookhaven incorporation.
• Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, who is nothing if not frank, said the proposed Brookford was another in a series of "designer cities" conceived by affluent communities as a way to cherry-pick the most lucrative portions of the county tax base. Allowing this trend to continue will endanger regional stability. Strong words, but hard to deny.
• Rep. Karla Drenner argued for local control, since Jacobs made an end run around the DeKalb House delegation by filing his bill as general legislation. "How would you feel if one member of your county delegation came to the General Assembly and, because of party affiliation or whatever, was able to get his bill passed?" she asked. Well, since DeKalb is only one of a handful of Georgia counties with Democratic majorities, most GOP lawmakers presumably are fine with those odds.
• Rep. Howard Mosby just told an entertaining story about a foul-mouthed parrot and spent a while rambling — I assume to give his colleagues time to scare up votes to defeat the bill.
But no dice. The final vote: 101 yeas, 57 nays. The city of Ashhaven next goes to the Senate!
BONUS — The aforementioned parrot joke: A man buys a parrot at a pet store, but when he brings it home, it proceeds to curse him with a long string of profanities. Fed up, he sticks the bird in the freezer to shut it up. A little while later, realizing he paid too much for his new pet simply to kill it, he releases the parrot and asks if he's learned his lesson. "Yes, I'm very sorry for insulting you and I won't do it again," the parrot says. "But I have to ask, What did that chicken in the freezer do to you?"
Believe it or not, this joke brought down the House, but what did it have to do with opposing a city of Brookhaven?
"DeKalb is like that chicken in the freezer," Mosby told lawmakers. "What did DeKalb ever do to you?"
Comments (28)
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Great news! One more fiefdom to fight with in the battle for regional progress! :-)
Oh Scott (Henry)! Not everyone can nor wants to be in the city of Atlanta. All settlements histories and boundaries start and end somewhere; and many of them make no relevant sesne or claim on a land area to be taken more virtous, or righteous than another. The Six flags of Texas, Califi-mexico; Need I say Spain, France England, the Falklands;
C'est la Vie
Poor Scott!
"Not everyone can nor wants to be in the city of Atlanta"
And not everyone "can nor wants" to understand the subject at hand before shitting out uninformed opinions either, apparently.
Oh Chuckie. Please (Cheeze)! I understand the issues! Duh~ not that complcated. It's called control of neighborhoods, money, police, development. Hmmh. But Dakab Ko and Ko wants to keep the money and power and that is what it is! Ouch that hurt!
Just promise to tell people that you're not from Atlanta when you go out of town, then. Thanks in advance.
It's a matter of perspective, depending on where you live in DeKalb.
If you live in unincorporated DeKalb, you are furious because more of your sugar tit is being taken away. To maintain the same level of services you now enjoy, you must pay more taxes.
If you live in Ashford/Brookhaven/TBD, you breath a sigh of relief. You finally get some measure of control over your destiny by getting part of it out of the hands of the Courthouse Crowd. You also know that you will get more benefit from your taxes.
If you're looking at the long term, maybe North Fulton and North DeKalb will be reborn as Milton County. That would certainly put the Fulton and DeKalb County governments on a strict diet.
man, i hate it when i have to share with people. how can i be in control of my own destiny when people do the speed limit in the fast lane?????
really tho this anti-social 'me first' mentality is why georgia has more counties than any state except texas
and is also why atlanta is an anemic city on the level of phoenix, prone to collapse at the slightest push. wonder what all the greedy suburbanites are gonna do when their property values crash for the final time?
"Oh Chuckie. Please (Cheeze)! I understand the issues!"
Apparently you don't. DeKalb County and Atlanta are two different entities. What are the chances of you being able to comment intelligently on this subject when you can't grasp basic shit like geography?
"Allowing this trend to continue will endanger regional stability. Strong words, but hard to deny."
Yes, very hard to deny. No region has ever survived without a system of counties, rather than cities, providing municipal services to areas in and around an urban core.
Moron.
"Yes, very hard to deny. No region has ever survived without a system of counties, rather than cities, providing municipal services to areas in and around an urban core. "
too many regional players does endanger regional stability
for an illustrative example, check out 2:40
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr7KB-tA-wU
If Burrell "Taxes for ALL!" Ellis along with his predecessor Vernon "I'm the King, that's why" Jones actually LISTENED to the constituents in the north part of the county and did more than pay them lip service to their concerns, this push for a new city would never have happened. If the CEO wants to blame someone, he can go look in the mirror.
this is what incorporation is like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5BdyIGtYcg
In terms of regional issues I believe DeKalb still would run things. I.E. MARTA is still a DeKalb and Fulton agency. And Regional Roads are still maintained and planned by GDOT. Same with DeKalb's Water and Sewer.
Kind of wish there was the same organized outrage regarding the Dunwoody Cityhood, which clearly took a unfair portion of the taxbase.
Grady is at the county level, as are Senior Services and whatever other aid DeKalb provides.
I'm sensitive to the charge of Cherry Picking but from the numbers I've seen it doesn't appear to be that way the proposed city of Brookhaven is getting an inappropriate level of commercial space. There's the sliver of the Perimeter Center inside 285, and the smaller commercial space next to 85. And Burrell Ellis was saying the area didn't have sufficient tax base, so I'm wondering which is correct?
Yes the City of Brookhaven ends up having a little more cash than if in DeKalb, but that is from the fact that as a city they create a new revenue stream via the franchise fee tax - which is kind of ironic these Republican Areas succeeding by raising taxes.
Bottom line, many in this proposed city of Brookhaven were not pushing for a city. But when they let Chamblee annex everything east of Chamblee Dunwoody up to 285 and let Dunwoody take everything North of 285 it been kind of an unsettling experience to live in an area that almost entirely surrounded by cities and that swayed a lot of people.
Though while I've always thought of my neighborhood has nice, I didn't realize this was going to be ""designer cities" conceived by affluent communities" Wow I almost feel like i live in Historic Brookhaven or Buckhead now!
Oh and lets be clear, besides the fact they put everyone else up here in Cities (Chamblee annexation and Dunwoody) the deal was further sealed by DeKalb raising property taxes so dramatically. Shoot I'm a Dem that used to defend the County but a 23% increase during a recessionary period where we have low inflation?
Just a miniscule example but the County just approved replacement of the 2nd Helicopter that crashed sometime ago. With much smaller Police coverage area for DeKalb isn't that the perfect time to maybe scale back police services by going to 1 Helicopter? And they approved building a new Senior Center? And a new Police Precinct next to Chamblee (and in the future Chamblee)?
"this is what incorporation is like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5BdyIGtYcg"
You mean once incorporated I can buy magic mushrooms at the Brookhaven Kroger? ;-)
I KNOW BASIC GEO. CHUCKIE! BUT what you are talking about is very basic. I am off to ATL-port to transport myself out of this shi-hole, and get away from people like Chuckie!
My point is Oh Scott is so "atl" is the best and up Mayor Reed's hole that any other city anywhere else should not be - menawhile atlanta's geographically layout fromt eh airport to chastain park is a huge boondoggle of randomness ;
we need a new city/county system. ours isn't working— you've got too many chiefs and not enough indians, making accomplishing anything on any kind of regional scale impossible.
before you boo me— listen to the plan—what atlanta needs to do is annex chamblee, decatur, doraville, college park, east point, sandy springs, dunwoody, "Ashford", smyrna and marietta into the city of atlanta.
then, we need to have a system of "boroughs" of sorts, where each former city gets their own independent, local government, that votes on and discusses local projects such as road improvement, zoning, etc., and once approved, the city of atlanta has to budget for it, no "veto" power.
meanwhile, the larger city of atlanta has a unified police force that is divided up into "zones" amongst the cities— they keep the same officers and local precincts, but the paperwork, 911 call station, computers, are all interconnected into the APD.
how many times have you been on the road somewhere, needed to call 911, and then told then where you were and were told "wait, that isn't our area. let me transfer you to dunwoody police".
in addition to police, the city of atlanta would also provide trash pickup, mass transportation, and many other services that are a regional interest.
if individuals within a boundary were under the jurisdiction of the general "atlanta" city council and wished to have more control over local issues, they could vote to become another borough.
in this system, there would be no red tape, communication between parties would be eased and there would be a unified government.
why can't we do this, and simplify everything??
@ kiteless
Why? Because, at the end of the day, the citizens of the cities to be annexed into Atlanta would have to vote for the annexation, and they would not do so. I live in one of the cities mentioned and, while it's far from perfect, it's far better than Atlanta. I get better services for lower taxes where I am. That's why.
"I want to live close enough to skim all possible value from the city core, but not so close that the lower classes might breathe on me. I'm also in favor of a locking gate mechanism of some kind."
Just go ahead and say it, brother.
This is the inevitable outcome from the actions of politicians like Vermin Jones. Have you seen how he set himself up for life from his political office?
Taxpaying (i.e., white) DeKalb County residents, anally raped by their local (i.e., black) politicians - who follow up by pouring sugar in gas tanks - are cutting themselves loose. And why wouldn't they?
DeKalb County is a place where the black voting majority votes itself bread and circuses from a white minority which increasingly wants out.
So be it.
no, he's honestly one of those retards who got a government job and has welfare for life who also likes to whine about lazy blacks who don't pay taxes
basically a racist who isn't even smart enough to realize he's a racist
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