Annexation failure won’t alter school plans

Though Decatur’s annexation master plan thoroughly unraveled Thursday, it doesn’t affect City Schools Decatur’ s urgent need for more classrooms and lots of them. Projections call for CSD’s enrollment, currently at an all-time high of 4,334, to reach 7,398 by 2019-20 even without annexation.

The failure of annexation (at least for now), however, may eventually create tax hikes. Back in December CSD projected that annexation would bring significant net financial gain: The estimated general fund balance for Fiscal Year 2015 of $11.4 million would increase to an estimated $18.3 million by FY 2020 with the millage remaining at its current 20.5 mills. It was also thought annexation would give CSD more possibilities for sites to build one or two new schools, though Superintendent Phyllis Edwards isn’t so sure now.

“When you start driving around,” she said Friday “there isn’t as much land as we thought, and what land there is seems [to have been claimed] by developers.”