By CAL BEVERLY
Publisher

Well, the other giant shoe just dropped with a thud in Peachtree City — plans to annex the empty west side of Peachtree City and stuff 5,000 more people into a traffic corridor already groaning with overgrowth.

A group of large-tract property owners has spent some money and come up with a colorful blueprint to put more than 1,600 added housing units on 900 acres now home to pine trees, wetlands and redbirds.

The group — which includes Pathway Communities, the former Peachtree City Development Corp. — is asking the Peachtree City Council to unzip its annexation moratorium so city staff can join in the developing fun.

Mayor Bob Lenox and council member Bob Brooks have already sent big signals they look forward to annexing nearly another 1,000 acres into the city's already developed 15,000-plus acres.

With the council-approved shoehorning of more than 200 tiny-lot houses and 299 apartments into the existing west side of the city, the added population explosion could exceed 6,000 new residents into the city's northwest quadrant.

This column becomes, then, Part 2 of my earlier column on reasons why citizens should be wary of annexation.

Full disclosure: I live in Wynnmeade subdivision, next to the planned apartments and south of the forested unincorporated area being targeted for inclusion into the city.

To recap my earlier column, developers want annexation into a city almost exclusively for one reason: more money.

They want access to at least two things a city automatically provides: Higher density zoning and sewer service to facilitate that higher density housing.

Outside the city, the developer faces the melancholy prospect of septic tanks on larger lots. That cuts back the number of residential lots the development can be carved into, and thus lowers the profit potential of the project.

Is higher density a good thing, a neutral thing or a bad thing?

Depends on your perspective. One thing for sure: higher residential density brings worsened traffic and the sudden need for more government services and added school classrooms.

Remember that cities have no legal obligation whatsoever to annex new land. No obligation even to listen to annexation pleas. They can tell developers to go farm it.

So why would any city even entertain the idea of annexing new territory?

Simple: money and power.

Some city officials salivate at the prospect of added tax revenue, although residential development almost never pays in taxes what it costs in taxes for services. It does, however, build bureaucracy — more government clerks needed to send out more tax bills, more cops and fire fighters needed to serve the added population, and on and on.

That's like steak to a dedicated bureaucrat.

Some politicians like being in charge of bigger populations. Mayor of 50,000 sounds better than mayor of 30,000 — right?

That's just human nature. One particular politician I remember felt that service to his local school board didn't fully tap his talents. He went on to be president.

Nothing wrong with that. But you need to recognize agendas that don't appear in the official records.

One city that grew way beyond its historic circle is Fayetteville. There was a dark side to the sudden growth in the mid-1980s, and that got a whole group of city council members thrown out and replaced by a reform bunch, led by Mike Wheat, later mayor.

That group a few years later undertook its own annexation blizzard, resulting in what is now a new hospital and a major retail center known as the Pavilion.

In most cases, the developers wanted the city sewer and more favorable zoning and the city wanted more taxes.

Tyrone has had its own case of annexation fever, expanding its north borders nearly to the Fulton County line. Unofficial reason: bigger town, more taxes.

Always, the official reason will be something like this: We want to protect our borders.

Well, horsefeathers.

The concept of defensive annexation is ludicrous in today's Fayette County.

In the name of “protecting our borders,” you get way more people, way more traffic and way more need for high-priced, usually duplicated government services, and way more taxes out of your wallet.

Consider the West Village. Currently, the land in the unincorporated county is nearly undevelopable. Much of it lies in the Line Creek watershed area, making it unbuildable.

It has no access to sewer service, thus requiring larger lots with extensive septic drainage fields in soils that are likely to cause septic failures.

Some of it is zoned light industrial along the CSX railroad tracks, but no industry wants that land. The rails are a barrier, probably requiring an expensive bridge. And there's no sewer, remember?

Additionally, without that bridge over the rails, the land is nearly inaccessible — no roads, no connections across Line Creek into Coweta County.

Without city zoning and city sewer, that land will likely sit there, in pine trees and redbirds.

County zoning would require larger lots than Peachtree City's zoning. And the county would have responsibility for policing it, paving the roads, putting out the fires, etc. And there's still no sewer, remember?

What about that ogre to the north — Tyrone? Well, come on. Tyrone has done a pretty good job with its own zoning. So what if the frustrated developers plead for annexation into Tyrone? Still no sewer, remember? Tyrone is mostly unsewered, and probably ought to stay that way.

No sewer means bigger lots, big drainage fields, unusable land, lower density than in Peachtree City.

So much for “protecting our borders.” It's just a hot-air smokescreen to cover the real reasons for annexation: more money, more power.

We city folks ought to be glad there's some county left as undeveloped, low-density land that cities haven't gobbled up yet. And we ought to tell our local elected officials: leave it alone!

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