Tuesday, September 07, 2021

Buckhead City - Part Three


The 2008 attempt by the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation to have Buckhead secede from the City of Atlanta faded in the face of the larger financial crisis and recession of that year, which hit the Buckhead commercial real estate market particularly hard. Suddenly, Buckhead was looking to merely survive and not necessarily to thrive, on its own or with the rest of Atlanta.

Now fast forward a dozen or so years, and we have have Atlanta, including Buckhead, facing a seemingly unprecedented crime wave. "Seemingly" because as difficult as it is to believe, overall crime is actually down although the number of murders and rapes is dismayingly up.  "Seemingly" because the crime wave of the covid-plagued years of 2020 and 2021 is nothing compared to the crack cocaine epidemic of the '80s and '90s, which affected parts of Atlanta other than Buckhead much more than the crime wave of 2020/2021.  

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about the details of the current crime wave, and how it shook uptown, white Atlanta to its core.  While street crime and civil unrest once seemed to Buckhead to be a "downtown" problem, the George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks protests and associated looting went uptown into Buckhead, followed by rampant illegal street racing and a rash of shootings, murders, and rapes.

It's not inappropriate to be upset about the crime - I'm worried and concerned myself about the shootings, murders, and rapes, and annoyed by the drag racing and stunt driving.  As for the protests, marches, and civil unrest, I'm more upset about the overuse of force and brutality by the police against American citizen of color than I am about a weekend or two of mayhem, although I for one found little to enjoy in those chaotic weekends. 

But the current crime wave has resurrected old complaints in Buckhead about civic services, such as trash collection and repair of potholes in the streets.  In their defense, the City of Atlanta has been as affected by the covid pandemic as much as any other work force, and some services have been slowed down or delayed all across the City as a result. But Atlanta can and should do a better job of dealing with these challenges, and at times it does feel like some portions of City government have just given up.

But by far, the No. 1 complaint of people calling for a separate Buckhead City is crime.  Some people on social media talk as if merely creating a separate jurisdiction alone will cause crime to diminish in Buckhead, as if criminals will say, "Well, I have to stop here.  It's a separate City over there across that street."  I'm sure criminals in St. Paul have no problem at all with committing crimes in Minneapolis. Political boundaries and municipal borders alone don't deter crime. Ask people in Grosse Pointe if any of the crimes there are committed by people who happen to live in Detroit.

In fact, one question I haven't heard asked of the Buckhead City folks is "Where has this worked before?"  Is there any case study or precedent where a new city broke away from an existing city and saw reduced crime and better services?  Several new cities have formed over the past few years near and around Atlanta - Sandy Springs, and Brookhaven, and John's Creek - but they all formed from unincorporated parts of their host counties.  I know that these new cites are not exempt from the current crime wave.  But when and where has an existing city in effect Balkanized itself and saw significant improvements to those other than its new elected officials? 

Wouldn't coordination between yet another separate jurisdiction further complicate emergency services and civil defense?  And isn't two complete sets of municipal government, from mayor to councilpersons to department heads, less efficient and twice as expense overall than one?

There are those who argue that a separate Buckhead City would provide more robust police services than those currently offered by the APD, a force that would somehow be immune to the covids and be better able to know when and where crime will occur.  That's unlikely to happen.  Both common sense and numerous studies have shown that the most prescient and most efficient policing occurs when beat cops are on the street and live in the communities they patrol.  Buckhead is highly automobile-centric - nobody walks from Tower Place to Lenox Square - and there are few "beats" for the police to walk. Also, with some of the most expensive real estate and housing costs in the Southeast, even Buckhead police won't be able to afford to live in the "Beverly Hills of the South."  No, Buckhead will instead be patrolled by commuter police who live in Atlanta or in Outside-the-Perimeter suburbs.  

No police force can be present at all times at all locations where a crime might occur.  Almost by definition, crime occurs at whatever location the police aren't currently looking.  To significantly reduce the rate of crime would require a police force three, four, or more times higher than the current APD presence in Buckhead.  It would be a police state, under the watchful eye of an officer wherever you are at any time of day.  Some might claim that they wouldn't mind that ("I don't do anything I need to hide from the police"), but history and current events both demonstrate that no populace seems to enjoy living under intense police scrutiny.  I haven't been to China myself, but I've not heard anyone say that the surveillance there was something that they found likable.

Worse, if Buckhead were to secede from Atlanta and take it's tax revenue with it, that would have devastating effects on the economy of Atlanta.  Buckhead City supporters are correct when they point out that Buckhead accounts for only about 15% of Atlanta's population but contributes nearly 50% of its revenue.  Between its multi-million dollar mansions and $1M/square-foot retail spaces, Buckhead represents a majority share of the City's wealth.  One can draw a straight line from complaints about the City using taxes levied on the rich, white property owners to pay for services to underdeveloped and impoverished parts of the City back to Reconstruction Era grievances about African American citizens voting to "redistribute the wealth."

I've seen on-line supporters of Buckhead City say that a bankrupt Atlanta "isn't my problem." Outside of the callousness of such statements, it's short-sighted, because a bankrupt or underfunded Atlanta would quickly become very much their problem.   Without the revenue, secession of Buckhead would essentially mean "defunding the police" for Atlanta.  I'm actually a fan of reallocating some funds away from the police to provide other services (treatment for drug addiction, homeless shelters, etc.) that would reduce crime and the need for a robust police force.  But those other funds would also be gone from Atlanta were Buckhead to secede, and crime would increase in Atlanta.  Just like Willie Sutton  once said that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is," criminals in Atlanta would turn to Buckhead for their robberies and car-jackings, because "that's where the Porsches are."

Buckhead City proponents claim that not only will crime go down and civic services improve, but property values will go up.  As previously mentioned, Buckhead already has the highest property values in Georgia, if not the entire Southeast, and I don't think the One-Percenters living in those multi-million dollar mansions are worried about property values.  If anything, they want property values lower to reduce their tax burden (rich people don't like to pay taxes like everyone else). Kelly Loeffler and her husband bought their mansion, called "Descante," for $10.5 million in 2009 and paid $200,000 in property taxes until 2016.  Then the home's value mysteriously slipped to $4.15 million, although they had made significant improvements and no one can explain the reason for the reduction.  Their tax bill went from $200,000 to $90,000, until a slight increase in 2020 meant that they will have to pay about $112,000 in property taxes this year.

I don't think Kelly Loeffler wants a separate Buckhead City just to make her property values go back up.

In fact, higher property values don't benefit people while they're living in their homes.  You don't see the benefit until you sell your home, or your heirs see it when you die (if they decide to sell the family home). While you're living in your home, higher property values only means higher property taxes. It benefits house flippers and real-estate speculators, but it doesn't benefit stable families trying to keep their kids in the same schools, and it doesn't benefit retirees or people who otherwise just want to stay in their home. 

And that's my personal problem with Buckhead City, if it were to include my home on the southern edge of the generally perceived greater Buckhead area.  I'm not sure I can afford to keep up with the Kelly Loefflers and other Buckhead multi-millionaires and pay skyrocketing property taxes to fund their ever-more-militant and ever-larger police force.  And knowing the tax avoidance skills of the very wealthy (and my lack of any such skills), I'm sure a disproportionate share of that tax burden will fall on middle-class schmucks like myself. It would force me to have to move out, and oh my god, the light bulb just went off and I finally fully understand the problem with gentrification.

And that's my case against Buckhead City.  I'm sure there are other arguments against it as well, and I'll probably have to update this post at some point.  Part 1 of this series described the nature of the current crime wave, and Part 2 discussed the history of Buckhead and previous secession attempts. Part 3 was this wonkish policy argument against secession.  But I'm still going to need a Part 4 to close this out with a discussion of the Trumpian forces behind the current secession effort.

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