Buckhead Movement Announces $1M Fundraising, New HQ While Opponents Call For Atlanta Unity

ATLANTA — The Buckhead City Committee has raised $1 million in support of efforts to divorce the City of Atlanta and plans to open a headquarters.

The ribbon-cutting on Halloween will be accompanied by plenty of fanfare — music, food, costumes, and candy — as the movement to cleave a new city from Atlanta launches into overdrive to gin up another $500,000 toward the goal by year’s end.

Bill White, the face of the Buckhead movement and the CEO of the committee, assures that none of the money being raised is going into the pockets of the BCC’s inner circle.

“I am a volunteer,” he told Patch. “The entire BCC are all volunteers.”

Those dollars, White said, pay for strategic communications, the committee’s fundraising arm, marketing and campaign expenses including polling, the feasibility study which said a Buckhead City could survive, and lobbying.

The lobbying, it seems, has garnered support from nearly a dozen influential Republican state legislators from across Georgia. Next week during a special legislative session called by the governor, those lawmakers will take advantage of that time under the Gold Dome to hash out plans to formalize a referendum ahead of next year’s general session kickoff.

Democratic lawmakers representing Buckhead say that despite what the feasibility study spells out, legally separating the affluent community from Atlanta could be disastrous for the region.

“It’s not in the best interest of Atlanta, the people I represent or the state of Georgia,” said Sen. Jen Jordan, whose 6th District includes Buckhead. “A vote to de-annex Buckhead from the City of Atlanta is going to have a negative impact on the folks that live not only in the City of Atlanta but on the people who will live in the new city.”

Those impacts include snatching Atlanta Public Schools from underneath thousands of students and severing bonding agreements with creditors who entered into loan terms based upon an Atlanta that is whole.

Sen. Sonya Halpern, whose Senate District 39 also includes portions of Buckhead shares Jordan’s concerns.

“It would do incalculable damage to both the Buckhead area and the rest of Atlanta,” Halpern said. “It would damage our credit, create chaos for K-12 students, and literally divide us at a time when we need to come together to solve our shared challenges.”

Halpern and Jordan both acknowledged concerns that spurred the cityhood movement, primary among them increased crime. But they both say leadership has to come from within the City, not from lawmakers who don’t have a vested interest in Atlanta.

“The people of Atlanta did not elect them to make decisions for us - they elected me and my fellow officials representing the region,” Halpern said. “We know the path forward for our communities because we're a part of them.”

Jordan said this was a time for Atlanta to come together.

“You bring in the real leadership in our community ... law enforcement, the business community, our schools,” she said “It is not that you put up this artificial boundary and all of a sudden things are going to be different.”

Buckhead City Committee’s headquarters grand opening celebration will be Sunday, Oct. 31 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 3022 Peachtree Road, Atlanta.