Members of the Georgia General Assembly are scheduled to convene a three-week long special session starting November 3 where they will hold hearings and discuss whether Buckhead should incorporate as a municipality separate from Atlanta.
This, according to a press release that members of the Buckhead City Committee emailed this week.
Governor Brian Kemp called for the special session.
“Such hearings are a prerequisite to action by the Georgia legislature to present the matter of cityhood to Buckhead voters in a referendum,” the press release said.
“The hearings were announced at a press conference by Sen. Brandon Beach (R-Alpharetta), author of a bill that would put Buckhead City on the November 2022 ballot. A July poll by Rosetta Stone Communications revealed that a vast majority of Buckhead voters (60.7 percent) would like to vote on the issue.”
A press conference this week at Buckhead’s Loudermilk Park publicly identified several co-sponsors to the Buckhead City bill. They include:
• State Senator Burt Jones (R-Jackson)
• State Senator Greg Dolezal (R-Cumming)
• State Senator Randy Robertson (R-Cataula)
Other legislators who pledged to sign the bill include the following:
• State Senator Lee Anderson (R-Grovetown)
• State Senator Steve Gooch (R-Dahlonega)
• State Senator Carden Summers (R-Cordele)
• State Senator Chuck Payne (R-Dalton)
• State Senator Matt Brass (R-Newnan)
• State Senator Marty Harbin (R-Tyrone)
• State Senator Tyler Harper (R-Ocilla)
Buckhead residents want to formally secede from crime-plagued Atlanta. If those same frustrated residents were to leave then their new city would run a budget surplus, according to a study that Valdosta State University published last month.
Atlanta made national headlines this year after FOX News host Tucker Carlson described, in sometimes graphic terms, how crime rates in Buckhead have soared. Carlson also said certain of Atlanta’s politicians incited that violence.
Carlson said Atlanta leaders have made too many inflammatory remarks about Buckhead, which is wealthy. He said district residents have endured that abuse in silence. Buckhead residents account for a fifth of Atlanta’s entire budget, he said. Carlson said Buckhead residents shouldn’t have to “send huge sums of money to a city that hates them.” He blamed Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for motivating hundreds of Atlanta Police Department officers to exit the force.
Buckhead City Committee Chair Bill White told The Georgia Star News in August that Buckhead residents, once they divorce themselves from the City of Atlanta, will address crime their own way, “from the top down.”
“We are going to have a mayor that will allow our police to do their job,” White said at the time.
“We will have a massive police force in Buckhead City that we most certainly can afford. We are going to let them arrest shoplifters, chase carjackers, and remove these homeless encampments throughout Buckhead. That’s the way you reduce crime.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Buckhead Skyline” by Mike Gonzalez CC BY-SA 3.0.
