Destiny waits, time doesn’t

Unincorporated South Fulton County is edging closer and closer to the threshold of its future. The question is, what will that future be?

The Fulton County Commission gave the idea of incorporation more validity earlier this week by deciding to add three mills to the tax rate. Now approaching eight mills to area residents, the increase provides the impetus for the fence-sitters in unincorporated South Fulton to strongly consider creating their own cities. Next up is the promise by Sen. Kasim Reed to drop bills that will give the residents of the Chattahoochee Hills and Campbell areas the opportunity to explore the important idea of incorporating.

So the question remains, in whose domain should the residents of South Fulton reside? Should it be in the problematic domain of the Fulton County Commission. Should it be in the domain of the annexation-prone cities that surround it, cities that will, piece by piece, absorb unincorporated South Fulton into themselves? Or should that domain be one that answers to itself, one where the residents of Cliftondale, Rico, Cedar Grove and the vast areas of unincorporated South Fulton be free to determine their own destiny? If this were 1950 or 1970 or 1990 the answer might not be so clear. But this is 2006. The past is an ocean of yesterdays. The future is here today.

Gone are the days where the rural landscape of South Fulton can exist untouched except by those who wisely chose to make these rolling hills their home. Gone are the sleepy days of years past where the once little towns existing in the shadow of Atlanta thought little of expanding their own domain. The reality is that the future is outside your doors, today. And the reality is that, for the residents of unincorporated South Fulton, either you will manage the future or the future will manage you!

But, of course, there are issues that must be resolved. Once Reed drops the necessary bills the General Assembly will have to act responsively and responsibly to give South Fulton residents the opportunity to decide their fate. Legislators failure to provide this opportunity would be blatant, for a host of reasons. And residents will have to carefully and conscientiously scrutinize the results of the studies now being compiled in order to determine the correct path to take. Yet once reported, the studies may well show that current and future hikes in the millage rate by the commission for residents in the unincorporated areas will make the idea of forming their own cities and managing their own destiny the logical option.

It would be helpful, even desirable, if South Fulton had all the time in the world to sit and watch and wait for events to unfold to their benefit. But life and politics don’t work that way. Time is a luxury that does not exist in the current climate bound up inside the rapidly expanding Atlanta megalopolis. For the residents of South Fulton, and whether they like it or not, destiny waits, time doesn’t.