Enthusiastic grassroots efforts combined with fresh state leadership in Georgia could lead to the wealthy residential district of Buckhead deannexing from Atlanta, Georgia, and becoming its own city within the next two years, Chairman of the Buckhead City Committee Bill White said during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.
The push to make Buckhead its own city with its own police department has been going on for several years, but as crime continues to skyrocket in Atlanta under left-wing leadership and spills over into Buckhead, deannexation is becoming an increasingly popular idea among residents. Previous state leadership ultimately shelved deannexation efforts before the 2022 midterms, but the newly elected Lt. Governor Burt Jones (R) and state House Majority Leader Rep. Jon Burns (R), and the recently reelected Gov. Brian Kemp (R) could help place Buckhead on the ballot in 2023, White contended.
“I think the sun, the moon, and the stars have finally aligned for us with the new speaker, a new lieutenant governor, and a handily reelected governor who believe in law enforcement and also who believe in people’s right to vote,” White said.
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“We have a great new lieutenant governor, he’ll be sworn in this week coming up. Unfortunately, very sad thing, we lost [House] Speaker [Rep. David] Ralston (R), who was the very powerful long-serving speaker of the House of the Georgia Legislature. He passed away from a long illness while in office last month. And the new speaker, John Burns, in previous meetings with us, was very supportive of simply allowing Buckhead the right to vote — that’s all we’re asking for,” White explained.
White noted that state leadership allowed five other cities to vote for cityhood last year and laid out a potential timeline for how Buckhead deannexation could get on the ballot in 2023.
“If this passes in the next few weeks, you’ll start to see this move, I believe, through the Senate. It will then head over to the House. And we are very hopeful that Governor Kemp will sign this once it’s passed out of the legislature, which would put us on the ballot on November 7, 2023,” he said. “So this year in November, we would vote on this — only the 89,000 legally registered voters of Buckhead would vote. We need a simple majority right now. We’re polling in the high sixties. All we need is 50 plus one.”
If Buckhead residents vote to become a city, Gov. Kemp would then establish a gubernatorial commission, and a mayor and a six-member city council would be operating “sometime in March of 2024,” White estimated.
White pointed to Atlanta’s murder rate as one of the main reasons to deannex, stating that it is “up for the third time under Andre Dickens, the new mayor.”
“You know, they said, ‘Hey, let’s give the new mayor, uh, a year, which is why I think we were stalled last year to see what he can do, right? So he voted to defund the police. He’s not been able to hire any amount of new cops that we require in Buckhead to keep us safe. And the murder rate is higher than when Keisha Bottoms was mayor,” White said. “…He said he was going to hire 250 cops. He hired 112, and so he can’t hire cops. We’re down 700 police in Atlanta, and no cop with his right mind and his family wants to come work for a city that prosecutes cops that doesn’t pay them well, doesn’t back them, doesn’t love them, doesn’t fund them. And that’s gonna be the complete opposite in Buckhead City.”
White also bemoaned the increasing police and EMS response times, stating “the average response time…is now over 28 minutes. So things have actually gotten worse.”
“Although Andre Dickens is a good salesman, he’s a nice guy, he is a deacon in his church. He’s not getting the job done. And I think people realize that, right? I think that’s where we are as of this moment — on top of which our taxes just went up. My tax bill just went up $7,500 to over $30,000 for a relatively small piece of property in Buckhead, and I can’t get my 911 calls answered. It’s ridiculous,” he said.
If residents do get the opportunity to make Buckhead its own city, White said within the first three days, the city would have a police commissioner, a budget, and a community plan based on transparency and limited bureaucracy. Buckhead is looking to other deannexed cities around the country in the hopes of “learning from [them] so that we don’t make any mistakes that they made,” he said.
“Buckhead City will be the greatest new innovator, bringing jobs and growth into the state of Georgia, which is going be fantastic,” he said. “Put public safety [first], [then] investment comes, right? If you feel safe, your property values are going to go up, and you’re not going move. And people will invest in the future of Buckhead City. That’ll be great for Atlanta.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.