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Form the City of South Fulton Residents of the only remaining area of unincorporated Fulton County will decide Sept. 18 whether to become the city of South Fulton or remain unincorporated. Either way, the vote will have an unprecedented bearing on their future, their families, their neighborhoods and communities. Like voters in Chattahoochee Hill Country who in June overwhelmingly approved their new city, voters in the new City of South Fulton area will hopefully do the same. I’ve heard a million reasons pro and con when it comes to forming new cities, but as I see it, the residents in unincorporated south Fulton have no real choice but to form the City of South Fulton. I came to that conclusion some time ago and, today, I am more convinced of this than ever. So below you will find a few simple but important reasons why the new city should be voted in. The overriding reason to form the City of South Fulton, the biggest bottom line, is local control! As a new city, South Fulton will have its own locally elected mayor and city council that will appoint local planning and zoning commissioners made up of their own neighbors. At first glance this might not seem particularly important, but it is. You may certainly run into Commissioner Bill Edwards at any time in south Fulton, and maybe at-large Commissioner Rob Pitts. But with a locally elected mayor and council and a locally appointed planning and zoning board, you are much more likely to bump into a host of them on the produce aisle in the grocery store or in the church parking lot or coming out of a local restaurant. Think about that for a minute. Think about what it means. It means that developers wanting ever higher density will have to deal directly with the elected and appointed citizens put in office by their own neighbors. And if I’ve learned anything about the residents of South Fulton, it is that they will not sit by and watch their local officials screw up the works by allowing anything less than quality development inside their city limits. After all, unincorporated south Fulton already has experience with questionable residential development. Another bottom line is money. The latest, freshly-crunched figures show that the City of South Fulton is financially in the black. It is in the black even after all of last year’s annexations. These numbers came from Georgia State’s Prof. Robert Eger, of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Some locally are pooh-poohing his numbers, mainly those opposed to the city. But the ones who are not questioining them are the other credentialed “experts” at UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute. A further bottom line is power. Beyond the power to control their own destiny through local control, there is another kind of power available only to cities. That power was crystal clear during the annexation period of 2006/2007. Where issues such as annexation are concerned, Georgia law gives complete, total and preferential advantage to cities. Hence, county residents simply do not have the legal power to stop annexations by cities. This becomes blatantly evident when a few large landowners with industrial or other property ripe for development can make Swiss cheese of an area through the 100 percent method of annexation. This happened in some cases, especially along the South Fulton Parkway, with some developers lining up to get into Union City. And in its wake, residents were powerless to do anything about it. Fulton County was also powerless. Even if it had wanted to do so, the county could not have prevented the annexations. In my mind, and given current state law, that makes county residents little more than second-class citizens who are still required to pay taxes but who are not allowed to control their own destiny. The only recourse for unincorporated residents is to acquire equal power by forming the city of South Fulton. Finally, some in south Fulton County say a new city will have too many obstacles, too many problems. They cite Milton, Sandy Springs and John’s Creek as examples. Their contention raises two points. First, most of those saying the new city won’t work are officials of existing cities, some developers or others who stand to lose power. Their position is no surprise. Second, show me one city in south Fulton County, or anywhere for that matter, that doesn’t have its own set of problems and concerns, including cities more than 100 years old. Being a new city does not forestall problems and being an existing city does not eliminate them. The Atlanta megalopolis will likely continue to grow as fast as any metro area in the country. South Fulton County, the Diamond of metro Atlanta, will do the same and is positioned pivotally in the crosshairs of those that would have the rolling hills of south Fulton County for their own corporate gain. The only clear choice for voters on Sept. 18 is to form the City of South Fulton. login to post comments | Ben Nelms's blog
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