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Tucker Township? A Vision or a Pipe Dream?

This was the vision for a "Tucker Township" as visioned by a beta version of a new school review website. 
The website is:  https://k12.niche.com/t/tucker-township-dekalb-ga/
Who drew this map?  We are not really sure.  We stumbled upon it recently while looking for Tucker election results. We do, however, think this map, called "Tucker Township" actually shows a good compromise between Tucker and Lavista Hills that could have worked well for everyone.   It offers a great way to share the Northlake area commercial tax revenue.  So, why didn't anyone suggest something like this  prior to putting forth competing bills in the 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions?  And, why is Tucker's city still being allowed to move forward when it has been called "unconstitutional" by even the legislators who supported it?

Limited services government in the form of a new city is something that the Georgia constitution does not allow, apparently.  But, unless citizens decide to fight the creation of Tucker or Peachtree Corners, two of such limited cities are going to continue operating until someone tells them that they cannot.  

Save Tucker!  (This group) asked legislators to please consider township legislation because we did not believe that a new city was going to be something Tucker residents wanted or could afford.  We emailed and called legislators and met with many of them at the Gold Dome, but our efforts were largely overlooked as the bills  brought before the House and the Senate were moved along in unison with the bill for a Lakeside City, City of Briarcliff and others.  

The Brookhaven Post has reported that many of the problems that were identified in the battle over Northlake between the community of Tucker and the would-be city of Lakside (or Lavista Hills) have now been "fixed" in new legislation this session.  From the Post:

"The Post Reports – Senate Bill 375, a bi-partisan Bill designed to clarify and codify the process of creating new cities in Georgia, has passed the State Senate. The Bill provides for a two-year legislative process, meaning, legislation to create a new city can be introduced in either the first or second year of a legislator’s term, but it can only be voted on the year after it is introduced.

A financial viability, fiscal impact and service delivery study must be prepared by a public academic research institution, such as the Carl Vinson Institute, based on the proposed boundaries. This study must be prepared between the first and the second legislative session."

And, in case you want to see a better picture of how the various areas voted to form cities in Lavista Hills and Tucker, here is a map we made based on the elections data.  We approximated the area that was proposed for annexation into Chamblee with the  black line down Briarlake Road.  But, we have now read that the annexation is off the table for now.  Good decisions by Chamblee officials to wait for more data.  

Let's just hope that Tucker's new government isn't in the business of helping Lavista Hills TOO much. If city taxes on top of CID taxes create an environment  prohibitive to new business development, we could very easily be forcing a lot of business over to the Oak Grove and surrounding Toco Hills commercial areas, while we watch Tucker's great commercial areas lose even more business than we have already since all this in-fighting first started. 



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