Buckhead City Stopping Bills Await Votes In General Assembly

ATLANTA, GA — When the bill to de-annex Buckhead from Atlanta emerges from its current placement in the Georgia Senate Urban Affairs Committee, amid a majority who want it dead, the cityhood legislation faces a new obstacle.

Democrats representing Buckhead from both chambers of the General Assembly have co-sponsored bills that mandate a five-year waiting period after any area is de-annexed from a chartered Georgia city before becoming its own municipality.

But the two pieces of legislation borrow a particularly pervasive clause from a cityhood bill in the failed effort attempt to carve Eagles Landing out of an affluent swath of Stockbridge four years ago.

Everyone in Atlanta gets to vote. Not just voters living in Buckhead.

House Bill 901 sponsored by Shea Roberts of the 52nd District and Senate Bill 348 presented by Jen Jordan from the 6th District drafted their legislation to call for 57.5 percent of the votes to affirm a cityhood measure. That’s what killed Eagles Landing.

After a grassroots movement of residents and business owners concerned about tax allocation and rising crime aimed to cleve Buckhead from Atlanta and form a new city, opposition efforts like Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s aforementioned committee banishment have grown in efficacy.

Buckhead leaders from local politicians like Jordan and former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell to area organizations like the Buckhead Coalition’s Jim Durrett have spoken out against secession efforts. The Atlanta School Board voted to oppose the move that would impact its schools in the proposed city limits, and Atlanta’s City Council created a $192 million “poison pill” bond sale repayment option to levy against the new city.

A recent poll paid for by the Committee for a United Atlanta found that 51 percent of those surveyed preferred staying in Atlanta to creating a new city.

Meanwhile, the Buckhead City Committee has raised millions of dollars to further the goal of leaving Atlanta and CEO Bill White has formed a so-called “anti-voter suppression team” to lobby for more support to “give Buckhead voters a say.”

If Jordan’s and Roberts’ bills are successful, everyone in Atlanta will get to have their say on a Buckhead City.