Creating a Buckhead City would hurt Atlanta on so many levels
By Maria Saporta, Saporta Report
The proposal to carve a City of Buckhead out of the City of Atlanta would be detrimental – financially, politically and psychologically.
In essence, it would create a majority white Buckhead City and majority Black Atlanta – going against everything our city has represented historically as a place where races can come together to work on solutions.
It also would divide our city into two cities – one of the haves and the other of the have-nots.
That’s what Dave Stockert, chairman of the Buckhead Coalition, told the Rotary Club of Atlanta earlier this month.
“According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the median income in a new Buckhead City would be about $140,000; and the median household income in the rest of Atlanta would drop by 17 percent to about $50,000 painting in a very stark light the difference between the regional haves and have nots,” Stockert said.
That is only one of many problems a City of Buckhead would create. The last thing the Atlanta region needs is yet another local government with its own bureaucracy. Already, the City of Atlanta represents only 11 percent of the Atlanta region’s residents. Removing up to 110,000 residents from Atlanta’s population of 520,000 would dilute the city’s relative standing even more – making it even harder to build regional relationships to address the issues most vital to our region.