Government

The Deal That Might Just Break Georgia Into Pieces

This would be the de-gentrification of the city of Stockbridge, with its wealthy areas carved away for a new city while remaining residents pick up the substantial tab left behind.
City of Stockbridge/Facebook, enhanced by CityLab

Last week, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed two bills that invite a future where the state’s cities can be shattered into pieces, along hyper-segregated lines. The bills allow the state of Georgia to take land away from the city of Stockbridge to form a new adjacent city called Eagle’s Landing. But Stockbridge, which sits in the Henry County suburbs just south of Atlanta, does not want to give up any of its land for Eagle’s Landing and for good reason—the neighborhoods slated for secession are some of Stockbridge’s wealthiest communities and include one of its major commercial corridors.

There has never been a situation in Georgia where land and property have been swiped—de-annexed is the term of art here—from one city to produce a new city. But these are the new normals of metro Atlanta as its controversial cityhood movement continues to bend and cross all kinds of municipal, racial, and financial lines.

This is why Moody’s Investors Service is flagging the Eagle’s Landing play, saying that this would cause “a potential blow” to cities across the state. A credit forecast analysis released by Moody’s this week said the Eagle’s Landing legislation that Gov. Deal signed would likely negatively impact all local governments across Georgia, “because they establish a precedent that the state can act to divide local tax bases, potentially lowering the credit quality of one city for the benefit of another.”

One of the major problems with this deal is that Stockbridge currently holds millions of dollars in bond debt. Eagle’s Landing stands to take more than half of the city’s industrial and commercial properties, including all of its hotels. Much of Stockbridge’s economic output comes from a stream of retail outlets, restaurants, and grocery stores along Eagle’s Landing Parkway—all of which the city would lose to Eagle’s Landing, along with a third of its population.

“What it amounts to is that this particular de-annexation is looking to take that primary economic corridor out of our city limits and put it in this other city, and that would be revenue we no longer have to pay off our debts that we owe,” said Stockbridge Mayor Anthony Ford. “If it goes through, we would have to impose a property tax on the remaining folks, and we don't have a property tax right now. Our budget is roughly just over $9 million and $5 million of that comes out of this primary economic corridor.”