Advocates for several would-be cities made their pitch for existence to DeKalb County’s legislative delegation Thursday, even while acknowledging their future is at best uncertain.
The proposed cities of Briarcliff, Lakeside and Tucker have overlapping boundaries in the north and central parts of the county, with no easy agreement in sight. But representatives still argued for a chance to vote on their own creation.
“We feel that it’s time to start reinvesting in our community, to make it stronger, to make it better and to keep what we have,” said Mary Kay Woodworth, the chairwoman of the Lakeside City Alliance. “We do not want to wait.”
A fourth proposed city, Stonecrest, may prove the challenges of moving forward and the reasoning behind a growing pressure for a moratorium on new cities.
For the first time since the cityhood effort began with Sandy Springs in 2005, a feasibility study showed that a proposed municipality would not make financial sense.
Stonecrest, which would encompass 83,000 people across most of southeast DeKalb, was too heavily residential to work, Stonecrest City Alliance Chairman Jason Lary said. It would generate just $29 million in taxes but need $45 million to pay for services.
“We just can’t take everybody in,” Lary said, adding that he still opposes a moratorium and is developing a new map that roughly halves that proposed city. “But there ought to be a right to self-govern.”
Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May has stated that he supports the right for cities to begin but still plans to ask for a three-year moratorium on them. The lag, he said, will give county leaders time to carve all of DeKalb into cities, either through new municipalities or annexations.
It also could allow for the creation of townships or new jurisdictions for areas that would want control over some local government services, such as parks, without needing to launch expensive police forces or the like.
That discussion was missing in the creation of previous cities, but the deadlock over the boundaries for Briarcliff, Lakeside and Tucker has given it new life.
Tucker pursued cityhood only after early maps showed Lakeside taking retail and industrial areas such as Northlake Mall that it considers its own.
The fight over borders has cooled interest in the broader, Republican-dominated Legislature — which previously had allowed referendums for two new DeKalb cities over objections of the Democratic-controlled delegation.
“I don’t know that the state needs to be telling DeKalb County what they can and can’t do,” Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said Thursday. “That’s a local decision.”
During Thursday’s hearing, representatives from the three viable cities voiced support for a last-ditch effort to compromise on borders. If successful, some said a deal could pave the way for an unprecedented launch of several new cities at once.
A meeting to try to hash out that plan has yet to be scheduled. State Rep. Howard Mosby, who heads the county’s House delegation, said he also plans to hold a community meeting in the county in the coming weeks to gauge general interest in the effort.
“I would love for the delegation to adjudicate this issue because I think we will do a better job on compromising,” said Mosby, a Democrat from Atlanta. “Or, we’ll see there is a need for a moratorium. Right now it’s all on the table, a very crowded table.”
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