Thanks, but no thanks.
Garden City mayor Tennyson Holder sent a letter to state Rep. Bob Bryant Friday formally requesting that he not introduce legislation that would allow voters to decide whether the upscale Southbridge development should be annexed into Garden City.
Bryant, who had promised to bring the legislation during the 2011 session, agreed not to pursue it.
“It’s not something that I personally wanted to do,” he said. “... It makes no sense for me to pursue it.”
Matter of money, time
City leaders say they don't see how they could afford to annex the subdivision, located off Dean Forest Road across the street from the new City Hall.
“Imagine if you had a house guest who lived with you for six months and didn't pay any utilities,” Deputy City Manager Ron Feldner said.
Garden City doesn't charge property taxes, and City Manager Brian Johnson said the vote would come too late for the roughly 3,000 residents the city would've gotten by annexing the subdivision to be counted in once-a-decade sales tax negotiations.
If the municipality had been able to annex Southbridge in 2011, a larger population likely would have helped Garden City get a bigger share of Chatham County’s sales tax dollars — another $500,000 a year by City Manager Brian Johnson’s estimates. Those tax negotiations typically are based in large part on census data and are expected to begin sometime after the Nov. 8 municipal elections.
“Right now, Garden City is focused on some other things that are more pressing, more critical,” Johnson said, such as several industrial and commercial properties along Bourne Avenue near Ga. 21, formerly part of a state industrial zone, that the city is in the process of annexing.
Forums
On Tuesday, Garden City’s potential annexation of Southbridge was brought up in two separate candidate forums: one in Garden City and another in Savannah. At the Garden City forum, held by the Garden City Homestead Association, several candidates said they opposed annexation. In Savannah, candidates at a Jaycees forum agreed they should pursue annexation to expand the city’s tax base.
“What we’re not wanting to do is to let (annexation) be a distraction,” from city leaders’ current objectives, Johnson said. But he left the door open to future annexation efforts, so long as Southbridge residents, not Garden City officials, initiate them.
City of Savannah spokesman Bret Bell said that despite news that Garden City’s Southbridge push has ended, the position of the current mayor and City Council still is “if you're interested in coming to us, we’ll talk.”
“If the people of Southbridge are interested in coming into the city of Savannah, then we’re willing to listen to them,” he said. “But our position is we’re not going to take the first step.”
But Southbridge residents vocal on both sides of the Garden City annexation issue said Friday they have no interest in becoming part of Savannah.
“Not in a million years,” said Michael Shortt, a former Southbridge Homeowners Association board member who campaigned to have the neighborhood become part of Garden City.
Ann Holtzclaw, who opposed Garden City annexation said, “... when we purchased our homes here it was in the unincorporated part of Chatham County, and we were quite satisfied with that.”
The push
Garden City officials tried late last year to bring Southbridge into their city limits by having residents sign petitions supporting annexation. But on Jan. 5, Johnson said city officials were considering the petition drive dead. They turned instead to Bryant, asking him to introduce legislation that would put the matter on a ballot and let voters in both Southbridge and Garden City decide if the subdivision should be annexed.
It was the city’s second push to have citizens vote on the matter. The first effort failed during the 2010 legislative session, when State Sen. Lester Jackson refused to support it.
On Jan. 28, Bryant announced that he would introduce legislation that would put the annexation to a vote, but not until 2011, saying the issue “requires more time for open discussion and deliberation.”
Shortt said that, without any hope of getting Southbridge counted in sales tax negotations, he’s not surprised Garden City officials are dropping the issue.
“It’s not worth it for Garden City any more, and I don’t blame them,” Shortt said. “Maybe people will wise up by 2020.”
Holtzclaw, on the other hand, is looking forward to a calm decade.
“I think we’ll be all happy to know that we’ll be left alone now and maybe have some peace and quiet out here,” she said.