The Wealthy Atlanta Suburb Fighting to Secede From Its City.

The metro area has been divided into ever smaller pieces segregated by race and class. If Stockbridge splits up, the poorer parts will be left with $15.5 million of debt.

As Vikki Consiglio tells it, a new Georgia law that has alarmed Wall Street had its genesis two years ago, with a birthday dinner for her husband in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, at a steakhouse in a graceful, brick-paved complex of high-end furniture stores and designer boutiques. “A light just went off,” she says.

Her own neighborhood in the suburbs—a cluster of gated communities surrounding a country club—lacked the same exclusive feel along its main drag. “I want those things, those amenities,” Consiglio says. “I wanted to be part of a gated community in a high-end area. Instead, when I come out of the gate, I see a Waffle House and dollar stores.”

Consiglio’s home is part of Stockbridge, a predominantly black city in Henry County, some 20 miles south of Atlanta. She says her section can’t attract businesses like Buckhead’s because of the lower income of the rest of Stockbridge. Her idea: The whole neighborhood could break away. Consiglio is the spokeswoman for the movement that pushed for and won a state law to allow a “de-annexation.”

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Bloomberg Businessweek

By Margaret Newkirk

June 21, 2018



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