By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

The Peachtree City Council’s sudden decision not to annex the proposed West Village area ended any chances of the city growing in land area in the near future.

The ending of the West Village discussion put the council’s annexation moratorium back into effect, said city spokesman Betsy Tyler. When council voted to lift the moratorium in March, the motion indicated it was lifted only for the discussion of the West Village property, Tyler added.

Councilman Robert Brooks made the motion to lift the moratorium earlier this year, and ironically he played a role in stopping the annexation bid at last week’s council meeting. Brooks announced at the meeting that he had changed his mind about supporting annexation. Moments later, councilwomen Annie McMenamin and Carol Fritz said they, too, had decided that annexing the land wouldn’t be a good idea.

The task force had studied the pros and cons of annexing the West Village property for several months. Just recently, the task force voted to continue the process, allowing Mayor Bob Lenox to begin negotiations with the land owners and developers of the West Village parcels.

Council’s vote to end the annexation talks came as a shock to many, especially considering the task force’s recent decision to forge ahead. But the council members were quick to thank the task force for its diligent work on studying the issue.

The motion to deny annexation included a stipulation that the task force members would be honored for their efforts at a public meeting in the near future.

The city’s most recent land use plan, adopted in 1995, addresses how annexation should be approached:
“As a general rule, the city should not undertake an aggressive annexation program. Annexation should not cause the build-out population to exceed the target population of between 45,000 and 50,000.

An earlier land use plan, adopted in 1985, specifically suggests that the land “in Fayette County ‘land-locked’ by Peachtree City and Tyrone should be examined for possible annexation by Peachtree City.”

That older plan, however, states the land would give the city more potential industrial land and more control over the development of adjacent land that’s already inside the city limits. The recent West Village study focused on making the property residential in nature.