City of Greenhaven proposed for South DeKalb (Homer: campus, cities)

[Forhall]

What are the benefits for Atlanta residents of annexing the areas that make up Greenhaven? I see Atlanta police are already stretched thin, should we be annexing new areas to police? I believe the areas around Memorial Drive bordering East lake are higher crime, would residents of Zone 6 want to add those areas to the zone 6 APD beat? We shouldn't just consider what's best for residents of those areas, but also residents of whatever city they join.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by Forhall

What are the benefits for Atlanta residents of annexing the areas that make up Greenhaven? I see Atlanta police are already stretched thin, should we be annexing new areas to police? I believe the areas around Memorial Drive bordering East lake are higher crime, would residents of Zone 6 want to add those areas to the zone 6 APD beat? We shouldn't just consider what's best for residents of those areas, but also residents of whatever city they join.

I don't see the CoA ever annexing any areas east of Candler Road.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by Gulch

I don't see the CoA ever annexing any areas east of Candler Road.

City limits are already a little bit east of Candler, circa Memorial. That's the easternmost extent of Atlanta:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3879604

Atlanta should only annex just slightly further right there, corresponding to the 30317 zip code, getting just the rest of those few streets:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3147572

It should also annex Parkview which is in Atlanta 30317.

And then it should annex as much as possible of the rest of Atlanta 30316, which is the remainder of East Atlanta, plus Gresham Park, and the 'Constitution' area (which has city-owned property, I believe):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3436881

And that's it. The rest of that area is unincorporated Decatur, and that's where most of the crime is. That can become a new city.

[travelinFool]

Originally Posted by primaltech

City limits are already a little bit east of Candler, circa Memorial. That's the easternmost extent of Atlanta:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3879604

Atlanta should only annex just slightly further right there, corresponding to the 30317 zip code, getting just the rest of those few streets:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3147572

It should also annex Parkview which is in Atlanta 30317.

And then it should annex as much as possible of the rest of Atlanta 30316, which is the remainder of East Atlanta, plus Gresham Park, and the 'Constitution' area (which has city-owned property, I believe):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3436881

And that's it. The rest of that area is unincorporated Decatur, and that's where most of the crime is. That can become a new city.

Thanks Vinings for knowing what’s best for my ‘hood.
Downtown City of Decatur has had muggings, a murder, carjackings, and broad daylight robberies. Vinings has had high profile crime, but both have low crime rates. The rest of Decatur is not a high crime area. 30030 excluding COD has median home prices in the $400’s and sales in the $900’s.

Decatur 30032 has had some of the highest home appreciations in the entire Metro area growing 20% the last several years. Atlanta/DeKalb 30316 has had strong home price appreciation as well.
These are the areas that have been the most viligent against Greenhaven and are the backbone of Neigbors Against Greenhaven http://NeighborsAgainstGreenhaven.com
It’s a perception of crime more so than a high crime rate. East Lake and Kirkwood were a war zone not so many years ago and now you have half million + dollar homes.

Lost in the annexation debate are the mainly African American seniors who toughed it out and didn’t move. Went to meetings held by Rep. Howard Mosby and Rep. Bee Nyugen and one with Senator Gail Davenport and 99% of the black seniors were against annexation. 90% of the white Millennials were for annexation, which is a knee jerk reaction to this Godawful Greenhaven cemetery cityhood idea.

[travelinFool]

Greenhaven Now and Kathryn Rice attempted to get legislation for Greenhaven, ga and lost in 2019.

Here is a really good read on the history of Greenhaven, Ga and the players around it who are all unsuccessful politicians like Kathryn Rice, Kenneth Saunders III, Annette Davis Jackson, and Dean Heard.

https://neighborsagainstgreenhaven.c...-it-all-began/

[AcidSnake]

Originally Posted by travelinFool

Lost in the annexation debate are the mainly African American seniors who toughed it out and didn’t move. Went to meetings held by Rep. Howard Mosby and Rep. Bee Nyugen and one with Senator Gail Davenport and 99% of the black seniors were against annexation. 90% of the white Millennials were for annexation, which is a knee jerk reaction to this Godawful Greenhaven cemetery cityhood idea.

Black seniors know that if Greenhaven becomes a city, automatically the taxes will immediately get hiked. And that there will be additional service fees and they will lose out because of living on fixed income.

Also, the youth who often live with black seniors tend to suffer from unstable employment issues, compounding the economic hurt of cityhood.

White millennials like annexation...because they know the higher taxes and additional service fees will by default push out what they feel is riff-raff lingering around and bringing down the area with crime and lack of maintenance of housing.

And since white millennials typically benefit from the prejudice/racism premium inherent in Georgia employment...they have reasonable expectation of having stable income to deal with higher taxes and additional city service fees if/when cityhood becomes a reality.

The Greenhaven cityhood situation may get pushed off the table in this current Georgia general assembly session, but I don't think it will go away.

South Dekalb just like South Fulton and the rest of south metro Atlanta...will have a lot of potential, once the developers have totally exhausted developing every inch of North Metro Atlanta.

Trust on that one.

[arjay57]

What about the argument that Greenhaven gets the county out of the business of providing municipal services?

And couldn't a city be formed without raising taxes?

Originally Posted by AcidSnake

Black seniors know that if Greenhaven becomes a city, automatically the taxes will immediately get hiked. And that there will be additional service fees and they will lose out because of living on fixed income.

Also, the youth who often live with black seniors tend to suffer from unstable employment issues, compounding the economic hurt of cityhood.

White millennials like annexation...because they know the higher taxes and additional service fees will by default push out what they feel is riff-raff lingering around and bringing down the area with crime and lack of maintenance of housing.

And since white millennials typically benefit from the prejudice/racism premium inherent in Georgia employment...they have reasonable expectation of having stable income to deal with higher taxes and additional city service fees if/when cityhood becomes a reality.

The Greenhaven cityhood situation may get pushed off the table in this current Georgia general assembly session, but I don't think it will go away.

South Dekalb just like South Fulton and the rest of south metro Atlanta...will have a lot of potential, once the developers have totally exhausted developing every inch of North Metro Atlanta.

Trust on that one.

[travelinFool]

Originally Posted by arjay57

What about the argument that Greenhaven gets the county out of the business of providing municipal services?

And couldn't a city be formed without raising taxes?

It doesn’t because they are only taking code enforcement and parks. Everything else police, fire, horrible watershed department. Etc will still be DeKalb so what’s the point?

In other news, https://neighborsagainstgreenhaven.c...an-it-like-hi/ Neighbors Against Greenhaven report
State House District 152 Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, will announce later today that he is resigning from his seat in the House after moving to St. Simons Island.

He is Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee. This committee determines if Greenhaven moves ahead. The policy’s he has endorsed in the past have not been good for DeKalb County or Metro Atlanta.

Rep Ed Rynders of Albany. Supporter of Greenhaven

A 17-year House veteran, Rynders revealed to The Albany Herald that he has health concerns that are part of a “perfect storm” of issues that led him to make the decision to step down from his seat in the House with a year left on his current two-year term.

“My wife, Jane, and I had already been talking about what we would do when we retire, and two of the places we talked about were the Georgia Coast and Athens,” Rynders said during a lengthy Thursday-morning conversation. “The local (Lee County) school system also made some personnel changes that would have made my daughter (Megan Ealam) one of my wife’s supervisors (at Twin Oaks Elementary School), which had the possibility of being awkward.

We wish him good health, but he did everything he could to hurt other parts of Georgia. He is mean and vindictive. He treated his fellow Georgians in Metro Atlanta with disdain and many times outwardly disgust. As Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee he ran it like his own little fiefdom. He would change times of meeting or locations at the last minute even when hardworking citizens had taken time off of work to speak in front of the committee. He has spoken on the record that he didn’t care the Greenhaven and Vista Grove bills were good for DeKalb or not as long as it was presented within the rules.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by arjay57

What about the argument that Greenhaven gets the county out of the business of providing municipal services?

And couldn't a city be formed without raising taxes?

Originally Posted by travelinFool

It doesn’t because they are only taking code enforcement and parks. Everything else police, fire, horrible watershed department. Etc will still be DeKalb so what’s the point?

In other news, https://neighborsagainstgreenhaven.c...an-it-like-hi/ Neighbors Against Greenhaven report
State House District 152 Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, will announce later today that he is resigning from his seat in the House after moving to St. Simons Island.

He is Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee. This committee determines if Greenhaven moves ahead. The policy’s he has endorsed in the past have not been good for DeKalb County or Metro Atlanta.

Rep Ed Rynders of Albany. Supporter of Greenhaven

A 17-year House veteran, Rynders revealed to The Albany Herald that he has health concerns that are part of a “perfect storm” of issues that led him to make the decision to step down from his seat in the House with a year left on his current two-year term.

“My wife, Jane, and I had already been talking about what we would do when we retire, and two of the places we talked about were the Georgia Coast and Athens,” Rynders said during a lengthy Thursday-morning conversation. “The local (Lee County) school system also made some personnel changes that would have made my daughter (Megan Ealam) one of my wife’s supervisors (at Twin Oaks Elementary School), which had the possibility of being awkward.

We wish him good health, but he did everything he could to hurt other parts of Georgia. He is mean and vindictive. He treated his fellow Georgians in Metro Atlanta with disdain and many times outwardly disgust. As Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee he ran it like his own little fiefdom. He would change times of meeting or locations at the last minute even when hardworking citizens had taken time off of work to speak in front of the committee. He has spoken on the record that he didn’t care the Greenhaven and Vista Grove bills were good for DeKalb or not as long as it was presented within the rules.

I've said it on here till I'm blue in the face but Georgia's laws that allowed counties to provide municipal services to areas that were urban/suburban enough to need municipal services (and in my mind that is when you need municipal water and sewer instead of a well and septic) is the problem in Georgia. The county getting in the municipal services business is the extra unneeded layer of government. With laxer zoning laws, the county system that provides these services has greatly contributed to the "sprawl" of metro Atlanta as vast tracts of land have been surburbanized without the tighter regulations that a true city requires in the form of zoning density.

Georgia made it's bed decades ago. It would take a wholesale reworking of the system and it would have the state getting involved. The county municipal service system works to help a county develop faster but after a while, the system is unwieldy and doesn't work. Why Fulton has no completely municpalized and why DeKalb is well on its way. That it works nicely now in Cobb doesn't mean it will forever.

Onc again, my mantra. If it needs municpal services, they should come from a municipality. Not the county.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Georgia made it's bed decades ago. It would take a wholesale reworking of the system and it would have the state getting involved. The county municipal service system works to help a county develop faster but after a while, the system is unwieldy and doesn't work. Why Fulton has no completely municpalized and why DeKalb is well on its way. That it works nicely now in Cobb doesn't mean it will forever.

Onc again, my mantra. If it needs municpal services, they should come from a municipality. Not the county.

Agreed 100%. Sadly, Cobb and Gwinnett govern like it's still 1980.