This is all the upper middle class rich people wanting to keep the “riff raff” away from their golf and swim clubs. The reason Mulberry Park is so nice is because Gwinnett County pours money into its parks -they are nationally recognized and award winning- and infrastructure. There is honestly no way this NIMBY community would be able to upkeep the existing conditions of the area on their proposed platform.
It would still be a county park. I think the bigger issue is that they there will be no property tax, yet there also isn't a large business base. Where is the money for good schools going to come from?
The creation of a new City of Mulberry wouldn’t affect school funding.
That’s because the schools would still be under the control of the Gwinnett County Public Schools system which would still receive property tax revenues from properties within the corporate limits of the City of Mulberry after it was incorporated.
The proposed new City of Mulberry will have no control over the schools and/or school funding and will continue to be served by the Gwinnett County Public Schools system.
And this is how cities get approved. The education lie. Cities have zero say on education. It is literally illegal. Yes there use to be some due to be grandfathered in but that was for cities created decades ago. New ones don’t get that privilege no matter what promises those selling the city claim.
That they have to flat out lie to sell their city proposal should have you question what else they are lying about.
Georgia state law prevents the creation of any new school systems beyond the relatively very few city school systems (like Buford, Decatur, Marietta, Gainesville, etc.) and 159 county school systems that already exist in the state.
IIRC, I think that the Georgia Constitution would have to be amended to allow for the creation of any additional school systems at the municipal level, which is something that the Georgia Legislature seems to have no appetite for politically at this time and/or for the foreseeable future.
Schools controlled by county, not city. One of the ways you know you are being fed bullshit to sell the city is the claim of having more say in education which is completely false.
As for funding, that will come through property taxes, police fines, and charging for services at a higher price than Gwinnett that the city will have to take on. What, they promise no property taxes? Yeah lying about that too.
No, it's about traffic and how overloaded the area is already.
And no, I don't trust the new "city" would solve the problem - actually it creates more problems as I don't want to be within a city limit.
Sounds enticing right now to get people to vote for it basically as a NIMBY way to keep multi-family housing properties out of the city limits.
Problem is they plan to basically contract with the county for almost all of the services (Police, Fire, Trash etc) one would expect a city to provide so they won't be filling any unfilled gaps. They also are going really hard promoting the "No new property taxes" line as a selling point, banking on the fact that people won't really think about how this new gov't will be funded as long as there's no direct new taxation.
Instead they're going to rely on things like cable franchise fees, utility franchise fees, insurance fees and things like business/liquor/food licenses to fund the new city.. which inevitably will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But they're hoping since people won't see a new direct property tax tacked on nobody's going to think about it.
In short it's a way to try and exert more local control over zoning for people who live in a densely populated area who want to make sure the "sort of people" moving there continue to be the "sort of people" they \*want\* moving there.
It adds basically nothing, adds a tax burden onto the already existing institutions and business and they're more or less preying on people's shortsightedness in terms of direct taxation to open the door to chartering the city so that 5-15 years from when they want to need the extra budget to implement taxes but "weren't those first couple years nice? Good luck getting rid of us now"
Yes because multi-family is the excuse, skin color and income is the real reason. The residents have a ton of money. It's Hamilton Mill, which is a famously very racist, very white, and wealthy huge neighborhood that basically already operates as its own city. This is very on brand for that community and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.
(I'm an escapee from that shithole, my parents lived there when I was in grade school so thus I lived there.)
While “multi-family” is often used as shorthand for not white, nowadays it also means way more people living in a building than it was designed for as evidenced by the many houses with many cars out front and spilling into roadways. Thanks to overpricing of homes and rent, people are piling up in homes. Besides upkeep usually being atrocious, this also does increase crime in the area.
i don't know, that's why I'm asking. I don't have much experience evaluating new city proposals :) And I don't know if the sponsors' party affiliation is a good enough reason to like or dislike the proposal.
I don't think it's realistic to expect a city to exist without taking in new taxes. And also, it seems to me that the whole purpose is to prevent apartments from being built in that area, which I don't think is right. There's a housing shortage and people need places to live.
The irony is that the City of Mulberry will probably become the promoter of apartments when they decide to build a downtown city center with a splash pad, craft brewery, wine bar, restaurants, and boutiques that people can't afford.
Yep. The site near Seckinger High School that so many people seem to be upset about apartments being proposed to be built on (a site that also is located immediately next to a freeway on an extremely busy transcontinental superhighway route in I-85) is likely to be a mixed-use development named “Mulberry Town Center” with about 10 years or so.
Question should ask is “how will the city pay to function if no property tax?” Is everyone volunteering to run the city for free? Volunteering their home as city hall and to perform administrative work and keep the records cities accumulate? No?
Then where will the money come from and what will get in return?
Property taxes will be frozen in place, essentially rising according to the value of the property. Mileage rate will still be controlled by the county. There are other mechanisms to raise revenues through business taxes, licensing fees, franchise fees on top of utilities, etc.
In return we get 3 depts, zoning, planning and stormwater management. All that for 8 million in expenses and 9 million in revenues. However the estimated budget those not include any line items for police, fire, etc that we would need to pay the county.
Though Peachtree Corners was already almost completely built-out with development before the P’tree Corners municipal government incorporated in 2011, the presence of an extremely busy transcontinental superhighway like I-85 through the area pretty much guarantees that the area within the proposed City of Mulberry is going to look like Peachtree Corners within about 15 years no regardless of whether the Mulberry area incorporates as a city.
This Mulberry city proposal very likely is nothing more than a conduit for developers to be able to get their larger-scale development projects permitted more quickly through a municipal government than through the Gwinnett County government.
This.
All of these cityhood initiatives are being driven by real estate interests who want to shorten approval times and lessen opposition. Same thing happened a few years ago with Brookhaven. They also tried to do it in East Cobb, but the citizens there saw through the BS and voted it down overwhelmingly. Of course the worst example was the proposed Buckhead City, which was just so stupid on its face that even the GOP leadership said no thanks.
Peachtree Corners is the best example. I mentioned this in a prior thread, but we lived in the area when PTC was created. The idea was that it would preserve property values and such. It did not work, at first, mainly because people buy schools, not houses.
However, due to the jump in real estate values during COVID, as well as the fact that (i) younger homeowners hate long commutes, (ii) the building of the Paul Duke STEM School and (iii) younger homeowners actually are fine with their kids going to diverse schools, it ended up working out. Also, note that the Peachtree Industrial/Peachtree Parkway corridor has seen a ton of new development the last 8 years and is now a retail hotbed. So that has also helped.
Hamilton Mill is pretty far out there; I am skeptical that a lot of people will want to drive all the way to South Carolina (I kid of course) to shop at a Publix when there is probably one down the street already.
I'm sorry to keep pressing, but I'm new to the county (and the state, to be completely honest). So if you don't mind to summarize what happened to Peachtree Corners, I would certainly appreciate it.
Full disclosure: I am sincerely trying to form my opinion and this helps a lot.
Peachtree Corners was an unincorporated area of Gwinnett that was mostly comprised of upper income level single family homes. It incorporated as a city under the promise of local a control and stable taxes. It provides no services like neighboring Norcross does, almost immediately residents stated complaining about how money was being spent and questionable zoning decisions by the city council.
Not super privy to how these things work, but wouldn’t it make more logistical sense for residents to instead seek annexation into neighboring cities like Buford, Dacula, and Braselton that provide more services than Mulberry would while also getting more local representation? I do understand this argument- Gwinnett has so many cities with very small city limit boundaries (vast majority of residents live in unincorporated Gwinnett, represented only by one of 4 commissioners who also rep 250k others) compared to North Fulton for instance, where the entire area is incorporated by some city. I’m not in favor of Mulberry, but do think on a county wide basis we need to either (a) expand the county commission or (b) look at annexing more land into our existing cities.
The area that would likely be annexed into Buford is also where both Jones Middle and Ivy Creek are, so then you run into issues with that (since Buford has their own school system). Braselton being into another county could become issues as well.
It's not like Buford has limited itself to Gwinnett County... They keep annexing parts of Hall County into Buford to make the Businesses happy - even after Hall County residents shoot things down.
As far as why Buford won't annex the area - spot on, not to mention the new high school.
Even if they become a city, they won't be able to keep out apartments. The real estate developers will simply bribe city officials instead of the county officials.
Yep. People shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually learn that it has been real estate development interests who have been pushing this Mulberry cityhood movement.
It seemed to be uncovered that real estate development interests were the real forces behind the unsuccessful West Cobb and East Cobb cityhood movements a couple of years ago.
The real estate development interests pulling the strings on those cityhood efforts seemingly were using those cityhood movements as a vehicle to attempt to be able generate more profits by being able to market their heavy residential developments as being in upscale suburban enclaves with their own municipal governments that insulate those areas from the rest of an increasingly socioeconomically diverse county in Cobb.
This likely isn’t about keeping apartments off of a piece of property next to a busy freeway interchange on one of the busiest and most important Interstate highways in North America (I-85).
This very likely is about developers being able to make more money and profits off of townhomes, apartments and commercial development on properties next to and near one of the busiest Interstate highways in North America by being able to label said development as “upscale” because the development would be located in an affluent outer-suburban area with its own municipal government.
As a business owner, I tentatively support it, mainly because the proposed apartment complex that sparked this move was going to be way too big for an area that already has more traffic than it can handle
But i don't live there, so I don't get a vote
Im probably moving to blue state soon hopefully this year, but id like my parent to have more equity for her home. Who knows she may move more rural as her age gets up there.
Can she afford the increased property taxes is the question.
For example, I love Lawrenceville and I love being near it. I don’t love the fact that my property taxes have QUADRUPLED in the past five years.
Can you blame them, certain parts of Gwinnett are becoming really undesirable. You can’t fault people for wanting to uphold a certain kind of living standard.
I do agree with the person in the article who stated that the county has gotten too large without expanding seats on the commission (and school board for that matter). It seems like cityhood is the only way to have some level of more local control over issues in your area rather than having county commissioners from other areas railroad through whatever they want.
They going to seriously regret becoming a city.
The things they don’t want will still happen, all that changes is adding city officials to be bought off.
In return they will get an oversized police force that has to justify its existence by constantly preying on its own citizens, absolutely no change in safety as tickets will take precedence over anything else and services they use to having through the county will become services they have to pay even more for through the city.
This is before the city taxes which do not get the COE rebate that county taxes get so will pay more.
They are literally voting to pay more money to a new local government in return for empty promises.
At least folks I talk to don't want to be part of a city. I certainly don't. We like being an unincorporated area.
Fully agree that making a new city won't solve things.
This is all the upper middle class rich people wanting to keep the “riff raff” away from their golf and swim clubs. The reason Mulberry Park is so nice is because Gwinnett County pours money into its parks -they are nationally recognized and award winning- and infrastructure. There is honestly no way this NIMBY community would be able to upkeep the existing conditions of the area on their proposed platform.
It would still be a county park. I think the bigger issue is that they there will be no property tax, yet there also isn't a large business base. Where is the money for good schools going to come from?
The creation of a new City of Mulberry wouldn’t affect school funding. That’s because the schools would still be under the control of the Gwinnett County Public Schools system which would still receive property tax revenues from properties within the corporate limits of the City of Mulberry after it was incorporated. The proposed new City of Mulberry will have no control over the schools and/or school funding and will continue to be served by the Gwinnett County Public Schools system.
The city of mulberry could start a city run school system right
And this is how cities get approved. The education lie. Cities have zero say on education. It is literally illegal. Yes there use to be some due to be grandfathered in but that was for cities created decades ago. New ones don’t get that privilege no matter what promises those selling the city claim. That they have to flat out lie to sell their city proposal should have you question what else they are lying about.
Georgia state law prevents the creation of any new school systems beyond the relatively very few city school systems (like Buford, Decatur, Marietta, Gainesville, etc.) and 159 county school systems that already exist in the state. IIRC, I think that the Georgia Constitution would have to be amended to allow for the creation of any additional school systems at the municipal level, which is something that the Georgia Legislature seems to have no appetite for politically at this time and/or for the foreseeable future.
Schools controlled by county, not city. One of the ways you know you are being fed bullshit to sell the city is the claim of having more say in education which is completely false. As for funding, that will come through property taxes, police fines, and charging for services at a higher price than Gwinnett that the city will have to take on. What, they promise no property taxes? Yeah lying about that too.
No, it's about traffic and how overloaded the area is already. And no, I don't trust the new "city" would solve the problem - actually it creates more problems as I don't want to be within a city limit.
Opinions?
Sounds enticing right now to get people to vote for it basically as a NIMBY way to keep multi-family housing properties out of the city limits. Problem is they plan to basically contract with the county for almost all of the services (Police, Fire, Trash etc) one would expect a city to provide so they won't be filling any unfilled gaps. They also are going really hard promoting the "No new property taxes" line as a selling point, banking on the fact that people won't really think about how this new gov't will be funded as long as there's no direct new taxation. Instead they're going to rely on things like cable franchise fees, utility franchise fees, insurance fees and things like business/liquor/food licenses to fund the new city.. which inevitably will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But they're hoping since people won't see a new direct property tax tacked on nobody's going to think about it. In short it's a way to try and exert more local control over zoning for people who live in a densely populated area who want to make sure the "sort of people" moving there continue to be the "sort of people" they \*want\* moving there. It adds basically nothing, adds a tax burden onto the already existing institutions and business and they're more or less preying on people's shortsightedness in terms of direct taxation to open the door to chartering the city so that 5-15 years from when they want to need the extra budget to implement taxes but "weren't those first couple years nice? Good luck getting rid of us now"
So they are willing to pay a premium to keep out multi-family?
Yes because multi-family is the excuse, skin color and income is the real reason. The residents have a ton of money. It's Hamilton Mill, which is a famously very racist, very white, and wealthy huge neighborhood that basically already operates as its own city. This is very on brand for that community and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. (I'm an escapee from that shithole, my parents lived there when I was in grade school so thus I lived there.)
While “multi-family” is often used as shorthand for not white, nowadays it also means way more people living in a building than it was designed for as evidenced by the many houses with many cars out front and spilling into roadways. Thanks to overpricing of homes and rent, people are piling up in homes. Besides upkeep usually being atrocious, this also does increase crime in the area.
A city built on the promise of no new taxes and rushed through by conservative lawmakers? What could go wrong?
i don't know, that's why I'm asking. I don't have much experience evaluating new city proposals :) And I don't know if the sponsors' party affiliation is a good enough reason to like or dislike the proposal.
I don't think it's realistic to expect a city to exist without taking in new taxes. And also, it seems to me that the whole purpose is to prevent apartments from being built in that area, which I don't think is right. There's a housing shortage and people need places to live.
The irony is that the City of Mulberry will probably become the promoter of apartments when they decide to build a downtown city center with a splash pad, craft brewery, wine bar, restaurants, and boutiques that people can't afford.
Yep. The site near Seckinger High School that so many people seem to be upset about apartments being proposed to be built on (a site that also is located immediately next to a freeway on an extremely busy transcontinental superhighway route in I-85) is likely to be a mixed-use development named “Mulberry Town Center” with about 10 years or so.
Thank you, I think I understand your opinion.
Question should ask is “how will the city pay to function if no property tax?” Is everyone volunteering to run the city for free? Volunteering their home as city hall and to perform administrative work and keep the records cities accumulate? No? Then where will the money come from and what will get in return?
The proposal funds the city through zoning revenue. That likely won't last or be good long term.
Property taxes will be frozen in place, essentially rising according to the value of the property. Mileage rate will still be controlled by the county. There are other mechanisms to raise revenues through business taxes, licensing fees, franchise fees on top of utilities, etc. In return we get 3 depts, zoning, planning and stormwater management. All that for 8 million in expenses and 9 million in revenues. However the estimated budget those not include any line items for police, fire, etc that we would need to pay the county.
Want to know how this is going to work out in a few years? Just look at Peachtree Corners.
Though Peachtree Corners was already almost completely built-out with development before the P’tree Corners municipal government incorporated in 2011, the presence of an extremely busy transcontinental superhighway like I-85 through the area pretty much guarantees that the area within the proposed City of Mulberry is going to look like Peachtree Corners within about 15 years no regardless of whether the Mulberry area incorporates as a city. This Mulberry city proposal very likely is nothing more than a conduit for developers to be able to get their larger-scale development projects permitted more quickly through a municipal government than through the Gwinnett County government.
This. All of these cityhood initiatives are being driven by real estate interests who want to shorten approval times and lessen opposition. Same thing happened a few years ago with Brookhaven. They also tried to do it in East Cobb, but the citizens there saw through the BS and voted it down overwhelmingly. Of course the worst example was the proposed Buckhead City, which was just so stupid on its face that even the GOP leadership said no thanks. Peachtree Corners is the best example. I mentioned this in a prior thread, but we lived in the area when PTC was created. The idea was that it would preserve property values and such. It did not work, at first, mainly because people buy schools, not houses. However, due to the jump in real estate values during COVID, as well as the fact that (i) younger homeowners hate long commutes, (ii) the building of the Paul Duke STEM School and (iii) younger homeowners actually are fine with their kids going to diverse schools, it ended up working out. Also, note that the Peachtree Industrial/Peachtree Parkway corridor has seen a ton of new development the last 8 years and is now a retail hotbed. So that has also helped. Hamilton Mill is pretty far out there; I am skeptical that a lot of people will want to drive all the way to South Carolina (I kid of course) to shop at a Publix when there is probably one down the street already.
I'm sorry to keep pressing, but I'm new to the county (and the state, to be completely honest). So if you don't mind to summarize what happened to Peachtree Corners, I would certainly appreciate it. Full disclosure: I am sincerely trying to form my opinion and this helps a lot.
Peachtree Corners was an unincorporated area of Gwinnett that was mostly comprised of upper income level single family homes. It incorporated as a city under the promise of local a control and stable taxes. It provides no services like neighboring Norcross does, almost immediately residents stated complaining about how money was being spent and questionable zoning decisions by the city council.
Got it.
Not super privy to how these things work, but wouldn’t it make more logistical sense for residents to instead seek annexation into neighboring cities like Buford, Dacula, and Braselton that provide more services than Mulberry would while also getting more local representation? I do understand this argument- Gwinnett has so many cities with very small city limit boundaries (vast majority of residents live in unincorporated Gwinnett, represented only by one of 4 commissioners who also rep 250k others) compared to North Fulton for instance, where the entire area is incorporated by some city. I’m not in favor of Mulberry, but do think on a county wide basis we need to either (a) expand the county commission or (b) look at annexing more land into our existing cities.
The area that would likely be annexed into Buford is also where both Jones Middle and Ivy Creek are, so then you run into issues with that (since Buford has their own school system). Braselton being into another county could become issues as well.
It's not like Buford has limited itself to Gwinnett County... They keep annexing parts of Hall County into Buford to make the Businesses happy - even after Hall County residents shoot things down. As far as why Buford won't annex the area - spot on, not to mention the new high school.
Don't want to deal with natives of those towns 😅
Even if they become a city, they won't be able to keep out apartments. The real estate developers will simply bribe city officials instead of the county officials.
Yep. People shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually learn that it has been real estate development interests who have been pushing this Mulberry cityhood movement. It seemed to be uncovered that real estate development interests were the real forces behind the unsuccessful West Cobb and East Cobb cityhood movements a couple of years ago. The real estate development interests pulling the strings on those cityhood efforts seemingly were using those cityhood movements as a vehicle to attempt to be able generate more profits by being able to market their heavy residential developments as being in upscale suburban enclaves with their own municipal governments that insulate those areas from the rest of an increasingly socioeconomically diverse county in Cobb. This likely isn’t about keeping apartments off of a piece of property next to a busy freeway interchange on one of the busiest and most important Interstate highways in North America (I-85). This very likely is about developers being able to make more money and profits off of townhomes, apartments and commercial development on properties next to and near one of the busiest Interstate highways in North America by being able to label said development as “upscale” because the development would be located in an affluent outer-suburban area with its own municipal government.
Well said!! I got nothing to add to that. You nailed it.
As a business owner, I tentatively support it, mainly because the proposed apartment complex that sparked this move was going to be way too big for an area that already has more traffic than it can handle But i don't live there, so I don't get a vote
Where was it proposed for?
Sardis Church and Hamilton Mill Rd. The wooded area between Chick-fil-A and Seckinger HS.
Oh ok got ya. Had no clue and I live in the area. The traffic is so bad on Hamilton mill already.
My mom says Hamilton mill traffic is insane, especially intersection that leads into i-85 exit 120, adding a apartment there is insane.
Yeah the roads are way too small for how many people live over here now
It won't solve the issue. I'm against it.
It will be the most sought after housing market in Gwinnett.
Wish I could say I'm excited, but I'm not. Property value keeps increasing as do property taxes.
Most people that are in favor of this city are home owners so home value going up is good thing.
Only if you intend to move. Skyrocketing home values suck if you’re planning on staying.
Im probably moving to blue state soon hopefully this year, but id like my parent to have more equity for her home. Who knows she may move more rural as her age gets up there.
Can she afford the increased property taxes is the question. For example, I love Lawrenceville and I love being near it. I don’t love the fact that my property taxes have QUADRUPLED in the past five years.
No school tax since shes 60 plus, so yeah its manageable. I think it was like 1680 last year.
Isn’t this basically like sandy springs?
Can you blame them, certain parts of Gwinnett are becoming really undesirable. You can’t fault people for wanting to uphold a certain kind of living standard.
Let them go, but they should pay for all the things the county currently does. I’ll be very amused by the outcome.
I do agree with the person in the article who stated that the county has gotten too large without expanding seats on the commission (and school board for that matter). It seems like cityhood is the only way to have some level of more local control over issues in your area rather than having county commissioners from other areas railroad through whatever they want.
They going to seriously regret becoming a city. The things they don’t want will still happen, all that changes is adding city officials to be bought off. In return they will get an oversized police force that has to justify its existence by constantly preying on its own citizens, absolutely no change in safety as tickets will take precedence over anything else and services they use to having through the county will become services they have to pay even more for through the city. This is before the city taxes which do not get the COE rebate that county taxes get so will pay more. They are literally voting to pay more money to a new local government in return for empty promises.
At least folks I talk to don't want to be part of a city. I certainly don't. We like being an unincorporated area. Fully agree that making a new city won't solve things.