Atlanta's Cityhood Movement (Sandy Springs, Marietta, Alpharetta: income, income tax, live in)

[Forhall]

Originally Posted by Gulch

Go to Cali and NYC and you'll here the same complaining about their tax dollars going to poorer states.

Source: Used to live in NYC.

From some people, yes, mostly the same types you hear from here. But luckily those states are majority progressive, people who are fighting for universal healthcare, etc even if it means more taxes.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by Gulch

Go to Cali and NYC and you'll here the same complaining about their tax dollars going to poorer states.

Source: Used to live in NYC.

Doesn't make it any more well founded.

We're living in a society. The entire point of a society is to pool resources to accomplish more than any any of us could on our own. By hyper-segmenting the metro, we're throwing up roadblocks, sometimes literally, to improving the metro in a way that serves all of us.


I can't blame people for wanting their own town to 'save on taxes' or 'keep money local' or whatever other dog-whistle way of saying they don't want to pay for poor people there is, but I'll call them what they are: selfish, and short-sighted.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Most populous, I meant

Even then we would be #3 (if we just consolidated Fulton, Gwinnett, Dekalb, Cobb, and Clayton) with 3,698,404 residents, just behind Los Angeles with 3,971,883 residents. That would be a MASSIVE city though. Aside from the obvious political improbability of that, it would be a logistical nightmare to manage as we have spent some many years building disparate systems to manage everything in the counties.

I'm not opposed to the borough idea however, though I would limit it just to the City of Atlanta and Dekalb County along with the Tri-Cities and maybe Sandy Springs/Dunwoody.

[Hokiehaven]

Originally Posted by primaltech

Here's a silly idea. They should just take the 5 counties, and incorporate/combine everything to become one city of Atlanta, with 5 counties/boroughs, like NYC did. Dissolve all the other cities, and make them all neighborhoods of Atlanta. Give everything an Atlanta address, with city-provided services.

Then I believe we'd be the second largest city proper in the country, behind only NYC.

Also it would solve a lot of our regional dysfunction type problems. Transit, being the big one. And other, less tangible cultural battles and discord would be diminished if not eliminated. And the Braves would be in Atlanta again!

It's unfortunately a really silly idea.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

Even then we would be #3 (if we just consolidated Fulton, Gwinnett, Dekalb, Cobb, and Clayton) with 3,698,404 residents, just behind Los Angeles with 3,971,883 residents. That would be a MASSIVE city though. Aside from the obvious political improbability of that, it would be a logistical nightmare to manage as we have spent some many years building disparate systems to manage everything in the counties.

I'm not opposed to the borough idea however, though I would limit it just to the City of Atlanta and Dekalb County along with the Tri-Cities and maybe Sandy Springs/Dunwoody.

It would certainly require a rebuild of the city's government from the ground up. It's not that it couldn't be done, nor that it couldn't be done well, just that I doubt it could be done without screwing the whole thing up with craptastic political infighting.


I think a better angle to take, is to generally do our best to improve the core city as best as possible, and let people know that we're open if they want to attempt to be reannexed.

[ronricks]

Originally Posted by Forhall

You sound gleeful about that. People always have the "i got mine, i dont want to help anyone else" mentality until they're the ones in need.

For example, while you're laughing at rural Dekalb if Lavista pulls out, NY and California are laughing at Georgia if THEY decide to pull out. You live in a bubble and don't realize how much wealth there is outside of Atlanta metro, and how much your own services are paid for by people wealthier than you. How much is Georgia paying for the i85 bridge repair? Less than 10% thanks to the federal government, and you can thank the RESPONSIBLE people of California, NY, etc for understanding that just because theyre prosperous doesn't mean they should just pull out and go home. They understand that their tax money goes to helping people in other states and regions they will never meet, yet they do it anyway because we are all citizens of one country and should be helping each other instead of being selfish as*holes.

Why would I be gleeful? I don't live in DeKalb. California? They aren't even sustainable and it is only getting worse. They are in horrible financial shape. Why even bring them up?

[bu2]

Originally Posted by demonta4

Is Fulton the only non-consolidated fully incorporated county in Georgia?

It isn't now. Fulton Industrial is still not in a city.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by Hokiehaven

It's unfortunately a really silly idea.

Its not a city. Its a metro area. Even Texas cities don't include so much undeveloped land. And its too late to bring in logical areas like Sandy Springs and Brookhaven.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Doesn't make it any more well founded.

We're living in a society. The entire point of a society is to pool resources to accomplish more than any any of us could on our own. By hyper-segmenting the metro, we're throwing up roadblocks, sometimes literally, to improving the metro in a way that serves all of us.


I can't blame people for wanting their own town to 'save on taxes' or 'keep money local' or whatever other dog-whistle way of saying they don't want to pay for poor people there is, but I'll call them what they are: selfish, and short-sighted.

So Atlanta should just give Buckhead to DeKalb County to help them out while annexing Candler-McAfee?

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

So Atlanta should just give Buckhead to DeKalb County to help them out while annexing Candler-McAfee?

Well, considering Buckhead isn't in DeKalb county, probably not. I'd imagine the state would have some issues with a city trying to redraw county lines.

Besides, I would argue that, rather than 'giving away' Buckhead, we should, perhaps, take up Candler-McAfee, especially if we can use money from Buckhead's taxes to grow real wealth and improve the area. The answer is not more Balkanization, especially not more that ensures that the support system as a whole is unable to function. That's the problem I have with all these separate towns. If we were all in a single city, we could do so much more than any hyperlocalized entity can on its own.