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Agreed! I think Atlanta is a good size. I think annexing the rest of Druid Hills makes sense and maybe a few other smaller annexations.
As a whole I think Georgia gives too much power to counties. I think we need more incorporated cities. I think there also should be more mechanisms to allow municipalities to work together and jointly tax themselves for projects.
THANK YOU!!! The whole "annex" thought isn't about size. It's about devising a "mechanism" to make the municipalities work together.
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Originally Posted by Saintmarks
The above in bold is the issue for Atlanta. This and this alone.
I have gone on about this on several other posts with similar themes on my time here on CD. Georgia counties got into the municipal business when they should have stayed in the business of just being a county. They act like cities without being cities. Some Atlanta counties have made a go of it for a time but the size and unwieldy nature of a county trying to be a city when it AIN'T a city wears after awhile (DeKalb being the prime example). Gwinnett and Cobb are still relatively healthy as far as county governments, but one cannot guarantee this into the future.
I say take away the municipal power of the Georgia county. If an area wants to act like a municipality (insert the word CITY here), let it incorporate and be a true city. If it wants to have no municipal services, let it remain in the unincorporated county and fend for itself.
All of metro Atlanta from the perimeter out another 30 miles should be in one city or another.
I also agree here. All these small counties & pockets of cities all acting independent and in their own best interest yet against each other causes the area to get nowhere because nobody can agree on anything. It's ALWAYS a pissing match between this or that county & Atlanta and so on...
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Originally Posted by atler8
Unfortunately that "..care less about the city" attitude has been all too comon in metro Atlanta & Georgia for far too long.
What is your feeling on schools -- city or county? Some small cities (Decatur and Buford come to mind) seem to do a good job with this.
I am a product of a small town city system that no longer exists. At one time Troup County had the most school districts of any in the state - 4: the county system and the city systems of West Point, LaGrange and my hometown of Hogansville. This gave each of these towns a sense of place and pride that is lacking today now that everything is consolidated with the county.
I would have to look it up, but somewhere in the past (the 70s I think) the state made it where only counties could operate school systems, no new city or independent systems could start up. City systems in existence at the time were grandfathered in, that's why you still see Buford, Decatur, Marietta and Atlanta with separate systems. If a city gave up its city system (like all of the Troup County cities I mention above) they cannot go back and resurrect it.
I am sure the full integration of schools that came along in the late 60s/early 70s had something to do with this law. It seems that it got to the point in Troup that it became tougher and tougher for those cities to maintain separate districts and were forced out of business so to speak. There is still ill will in Hoganville, the last of the Troup towns to give up their system in that the county promised to build a new high school for the town if the city voted to merge. Well, they did, but the citizens of Hogansville thought it would be a new high school in the actual town. The new school, Callaway High School, while still having a Hogansville mailing address is actually closer to the county seat of LaGrange. Building it so far away from town (not sure, maybe 8-10 miles away) is still a sore subject to many back home.
Hogansville isn't the only one that lost out. West Point HS shut down in the early 80s and merged with Troup High which is located on the south side of LaGrange. The original LaGrange HS is still in existence, but it merged with the county a few years after. The city of LaGrange is split between the three high schools now, LaGrange HS gets piecemeal portions of the city of LaGrange and most of the western and NW parts of the county. All of West Point and the south part of the county goes to Troup HS, all of Hogansville and the Northeastern part of the county to Callaway. The HS zones are gerrymandered, it has diluted the sense of community, IMO.
It is a totally different thing for the metro area tho... Where this situation enabled the kids to have a larger school with more amenities in new state of the art facility that the city of Hogansville could never afford, the metro cities that would like to form new systems are definitely much wealthier than Hogansville and could probably afford much better facilities and programs than the counties do currently. But this would probably instill old fears of segregation, so it is a tough call for sure.
Sorry, lots of rambling.... Not sure if I answered your question, but my thoughts on it anyway....
It's got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with a question....WHY?
Do any of you know anything about the City of Boston, one of the most "blue" liberal areas on the planet? The City of Boston is very small. Most of the area that people think of as "Boston" is actually a bunch of other cities and towns, such as Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Waltham, Everett, Lynn, Chelsea, Quincy, and others. Each city/town has its own police, fire, schools, etc.
The issue is that people want local control of their own zoning, police, etc. Why do you think the unincorporated areas of north Fulton incorporated? Why do you think Dunwoody and Brookhaven incorporated?
What is the justification or need for some kind of mega-monolithic municipal entity such as you advocate, other than to suck the tax money out of the productive areas to redistribute it.
Boston still has about 200,000 more people than the city of Atlanta. If the crazy, tiny county system had not existed, I am sure Atlanta would have a much larger footprint in place than it does now. It's not like there needs to be some kind of monolithic, all encompassing mass of city covering the entire metro, but the COA has one of the smallest percentages of its metro area in the core city in the entire country. I would have to research, but I think only Miami has a smaller percentage of its metro area within its city limits of metro areas over 1 million.
Cities like Charlotte, Nashville, Louisville, Memphis, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Austin, etc, etc, with MUCH smaller metro areas have much larger city populations than Atlanta. Where it is unhealthy as you assert to have one monolithic government, neither is it healthy for the core city to be so small.
I would like, at the least, to see much of the area ITP in the city of Atlanta. I would like to see the remaining suburbs expand and cover the rest of the area. The map of Atlanta should look more like Dallas. Dallas has over 1 million, Arlington in the high 300k range, Plano, Garland and Irving over 200k and another 8 (off the top of my head) over 100k: McKinney, Frisco, Denton, Carrollton, Richardson, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Lewisville.
By contrast, you have Atlanta, a very similar metro area (cut Fort Worth of the western side, and they are almost identical) but not a single suburb over 100k and the core city under half a million. You have Atlanta with a bunch of counties acting like cities and holding the cities in. That might have been OK if the counties would stay healthy, but Fulton got unwieldy some time ago leading to the incorporation movement last decade and it is now sweeping DeKalb.
So, there is some place in the middle that would be better for the whole area. But don't know if all the layers will give up their turf to ever see something more sensible come to be, sad to say.
Amen to much ^^^ @3:27!
Funny thing is that as I rode in this morning my mind was tackling the local problems we have that are exacerbated by the teeny, tiny city we have in the center of this huge metro area. I also was going through a list of similarly out-of-balance metros, for lack of a better term & I seem to have also come up with only Miami-Dade/H'wood-Ft. L, etc.
Cities like Charlotte, Nashville, Louisville, Memphis, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Austin, etc, etc, with MUCH smaller metro areas have much larger city populations than Atlanta
But it's meaningless. Political boundaries are useless other than discussing issues directly related to said boundaries. That's why metro areas are discussed and why businesses use metro or similarly defined markets as "cities"
Also, bigger counties would not change Atlanta's boundaries.
Boston still has about 200,000 more people than the city of Atlanta.
My point was more that Boston is about 10% of the metro population, in the same way as Atlanta is about 10% of the metro population, and that the core urban area of what people think of as "Boston" is actually not part of the city itself.
Just pointing out that it's not some white, redneck, conservative plot to discriminate or otherwise foist some political ideology about government. It's historical and it's about local control over your city/town. In fact, just today I saw on WSB-TV that the residents of South Fulton County are again going down the road of incorporation of a new "City of South Fulton" and a large proportion of the residents of South Fulton are not white and not conservative Republicans.
Notice that nowhere is a suggestion that they join and are annexed by the City of Atlanta, despite being adjacent to it.
My point was more that Boston is about 10% of the metro population, in the same way as Atlanta is about 10% of the metro population, and that the core urban area of what people think of as "Boston" is actually not part of the city itself.
Just pointing out that it's not some white, redneck, conservative plot to discriminate or otherwise foist some political ideology about government. It's historical and it's about local control over your city/town. In fact, just today I saw on WSB-TV that the residents of South Fulton County are again going down the road of incorporation of a new "City of South Fulton" and a large proportion of the residents of South Fulton are not white and not conservative Republicans.
Notice that nowhere is a suggestion that they join and are annexed by the City of Atlanta, despite being adjacent to it.
If memory serves me right, the incorporation movement was overwhelmingly supported in all the new Fulton Cities EXCEPT for South Fulton. It was the only one to fail. Many residents in the Sandtown area of South Fulton did piecemeal into the city of Atlanta, the COAs largest annexation in decades. One of the reasons it did fail was many of the potential city dwellers thought joining the city of Atlanta was better than venturing into the unchartered waters of a city of South Fulton.
One of the issues at the time was the state of the schools in South Fulton. Westlake HS that serves Sandtown and surrounding areas was severely overcrowded. This part of Fulton saw numerous new schools going up in North Fulton and felt they were being neglected. The opening of Langston Hughes HS to reduce the overcrowding at Westlake has eased that feeling, so perhaps a city of South Fulton might have a different chance these days.
One other issue that will hurt a potential city of South Fulton is that the remaining South Fulton cities, in fear of being permanently landlocked back in the incorporation blitz, made quite a land grab and took much of the choice pieces of property... primarily Palmetto, Fairburn and Union City. I would have to wonder if a potential city of South Fulton would get the same high marks that other cities on the northern end have gotten for viability as a city. This area has none of the commercial base that Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, et al had to help them make a go of it. Fulton Industrial is about the only thing going for it as far as a potential tax base, and that area ain't what it used to be.
To your other point, Massachusetts is not a good comparison as counties have all but ceased to mean anything there. Georgia has the complete opposite scenario, a strong county layer competing with municipalities. And while you can do a rough estimate and say both have around 10% of their metro area, a closer look (using the latest 2012 census estimates) shows Atlanta with 8.1% of the metro in its central city and Boston with 13.7% of its metro area, so while both are small percentages, Boston's is still a great deal more, more than 50% more than Atlanta has. For comparison, if Atlanta had 13.7% of the metro's population, the COA would have a population of 747,723.
I don't think anyone is saying the metro area should be one huge city of Atlanta. But for the health of the entire metro area, the core city should be strong. Atlanta is teetering on being too irrelevant in its own metro area. The central city should be able to support the things that a central city has that suburban areas don't. Atlanta needs to be a city around 750k at the minimum, over 1 million would be better.
And this from a white conservative that lived in Cobb County.
But it's meaningless. Political boundaries are useless other than discussing issues directly related to said boundaries. That's why metro areas are discussed and why businesses use metro or similarly defined markets as "cities"
Also, bigger counties would not change Atlanta's boundaries.
I heartily disagree. If Georgia had county boundaries more like other states, they would have been less likely to get into the municipal service business in competition with the cities that are within them. I use my current place of residence, Texas as an example. The counties here do the basic county stuff... primarily the business to do with the court system. Collin County, where I live, has a population on par with Gwinett, DeKalb and Cobb, but is almost twice as big as DeKalb and Cobb. The southern areas closest to Dallas have all been incorporated into one city or another. Rural areas to the north are unincorporated and aren't provided with water, sewer, police, etc, etc. When these areas develop, they are annexed into one of the surrounding cities or incorporate into a new city.
If Georgia had not broken into so many tiny counties, it would most likely have developed much like this. All of Cobb, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton, etc, etc, would be totally incorporated in one city or another. The county wouldn't be doing municipal services, it would need to come from a municipality.
Question... Rather than find more people to tax, why not deal with problems in your own community? I am a native of Atlanta and it seems, according to these posts, that some of you want to penalize surrounding areas for nothing more than being...um....surrounding areas. What gives you people the right, (if this were reality), to tax people solely on geographical basis? Dunwoody? Vinings? Brookhaven? Druid Hills? Why do you ITPers want to tax these people to death?
Common goal??? I'm calling BS! Keep taxing and penalizing people and guess what you get? Mass exodus. Atlanta has benefited more from the suburbs than you people have given credit. Maybe its time the ATL leadership took responsibility of its problems and tried to fix them "in house" rather than find other means of revenue to fix an already broken machine. Its the business community that built this town, not some POS government!
Maybe its lack of leadership in the COA. That would be the rational place to start, rather than finding more good people to tax the sH%t out of.
Opportunity, vision, and the free market builds successful communities. Not taxes and government.
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