STOCKBRIDGE — The Henry County NAACP hosted a forum Thursday to allow those for and against the creation of the city of Eagle’s Landing to explain their positions and answer audience questions.
However, with no one in support of the proposal in attendance, representatives for the city of Stockbridge and Ga. Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, used the forum to their advantage, arguing that the cityhood proposal would be unprecedented and have devastating financial effects on the city of Stockbridge.
The Eagle’s Landing Educational Research Committee, the group proposing the new city, said during a pro-cityhood meeting Feb. 23 that there are several reasons for self-governance, including community identity, local control over land use and development and local accountability of elected officials.
Stockbridge officials are against the proposal, largely because the proposal would encompass half of the city of Stockbridge’s properties.
“The city of Stockbridge believes in any community having the right to self govern. We believe the citizens should have the right to have local control,” said Stockbridge Community Development Director Camilla Moore on Thursday. “What we don’t believe is that the law did not intend that any community can be created off the back of an existing city. That was not the design or intent of the law.”
The city of Stockbridge has no city property tax; however, city representatives argue that it is likely that the city of Eagle’s Landing residents will have a property tax, based on prior city incorporations. And because the proposed city of Eagle’s Landing map consists of about 50 percent of the Stockbridge properties, and would take away much of Stockbridge’s commercial and franchise fee revenues, it’s likely Stockbridge’s remaining residents would also be hit with a property tax to sustain the city.
The proposal has made its way to the Georgia General Assembly, though no action was taken during this year’s legislative session, which ended March 31. Sen. Rick Jeffares, R-McDonough, sponsored that bill, Senate Bill 263, as well as another intended to pave the way for the city’s charter. SB 262, if approved by majority of the General Assembly, would de-annex several properties from the city of Stockbridge.
Though Jones represents a majority of the properties in the cityhood proposal, he said he believes Jeffares filed the bills as a “general” bill as opposed to a “local” bill, so that the bill would have a higher likelihood of approval by a majority vote of all officials in the House and Senate. As a local bill, it would have required all local legislators representing the subject area to sign off on the bill, which Jones and Rep. Demetrius Douglas, D-Stockbridge, indicated they would not sign.
Jones encouraged the mayors of the each of the surrounding cities to approve a resolution to send to Henry County’s legislative delegation in opposition to the city formation, as such formation could set a precedent for other cities to be affected by future cities.
“We will host a series of public neighborhood meetings to discuss the viability of the proposed city as well as the impact to surrounding areas at a later date,” stated Consiglio. “At that time, we will consider invitations to make presentations to community groups. We thank the NAACP for their invitation and we will reach out to them at the appropriate time when we have more information from the feasibility study.”
When asked about the status of the feasibility study, Consiglio responded: “The mapping of the business tax was not by GIS census block area mapping, so it is taking a little longer to get that put together. We would rather them take their time than to rush it through. We are in no hurry because it is not needed until this fall by the Legislature anyway. It is nice to have it early, but we want it to be correct first and foremost.”
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