Buckhead City Committee Wants 'Divorce' From Atlanta: CEO

Buckhead GA

13 July, 2021

6:27 PM

Description

ATLANTA — The Buckhead cityhood movement has picked up new steam with a new drive for cash and a name change that more directly represents the intention of the group leading the charge. The Buckhead Exploratory Committee is now the more intentionally named Buckhead City Committee. "We have filed for divorce," Buckhead City Committee CEO Bill White told Fox Business last week. "We feel like the people of Buckhead have been exploited way too long." Pointing to recent crimes in the tony Atlanta community — including a string of home invasions over the weekend, a crime spree reported by the AJC that left one victim shot and another with his legs severed, and reporting of a familiar carjacking tactic targeting Atlanta — the committee has launched a summer fundraising campaign with a goal of $250,000. According to an email sent to supporters Tuesday morning, one concerned Buckhead couple spurred the new financial benchmark. "We had a very generous couple donate $25,000 last week along with a challenge to use their donation as a kick-off step toward raising another $250,000 by summer's end," the email read. The cityhood group got its humble start last summer amid the pandemic, a racial reckoning that resulted in civil unrest, and a spike in crime. By the new year, the group was hosting virtual public meetings and asking for donations upward of $15,000 to fund polling. Soon, that goal jumped to $1.5 million, and the committee was touting $500,000 in its coffers. And as money continued to come in, a pair of state legislators from outside Buckhead — Sen. Brandon Beach (R-Alpharetta) and Rep. Todd Jones (R-Cumming) — penned bills on the last day of the 2021 legislative session to make Buckhead City an agenda item for the General Assembly in 2022. White believes he has a mandate. "We had an accidental vote in the Assembly on the last day … and there was no joke there, where we had 105 Assembly members vote to support a Buckhead City," he told the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods in the organization's May 13 board meeting. In an interview with the Daily Mail, White estimated that the city movement was nearly halfway to its $1.5 million goal. "I think the leadership of the City of Atlanta is causing Buckhead to spiral out of control in a very bad direction that, if we don't correct immediately, some people are saying we may never get back," he said.