Bow down, Edmund Park, to your self-imposed bureaucratic overlords! At the tail end of October, residents of a neighborhood near Emory University that was formerly part of unincorporated DeKalb County quietly pushed through a petition for annexation into the City of Atlanta. Days later, the neighborhood switched over to Atlanta city services at the beginning of November. School enrollment will start at the end of the year, so kids can start their first day in Atlanta Public Schools by January 2016. The wheels of annexation-based change can more rather quickly.
The push for annexation went through at the same time thousands of DeKalb residents were deciding on municipalization. Unlike the referendum on two new cities of LaVista Hills and Tucker, which were extremely contentious (and remain so as a result of a bungled election in the case of LaVista Hills), the Edmund Park legislation moved quickly through city council with no public comment. A few South Fulton neighborhoods, including Sandtown, Loch Lomond and South Oaks also petitioned the city for annexation, but residents were split on the decision due to concerns regarding Atlanta Public Schools.
Since Edmund Park kids will soon feed into desirable Morningside Elementary, there were no such concerns there. As Joy Myrick of Beacham and Company Realtors pointed out in an email to Curbed, recent Edmund Park sales in the $500,000s represent a relatively cheap entree into Morningside's school.
In Edmund Park, the annexation process required residents to draw the boundaries they wanted and get approval from 60 percent of registered voters plus residents that collectively owned 60 percent of the property in the area. According to the Saporta Report, the annexed area included over 100 houses.
· More People Want to Latch Like Remoras to Atlanta [Curbed]
· City of Atlanta Welcomed Edmund Park [Atl311]
· One DeKalb County neighborhood quietly winning annexation into Atlanta [Saporta]
· Annexation Information[City of Atlanta]
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