Buckhead Reporter - June 2021

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JUNE 2021 • VOL. 13 — NO. 6

Buckhead Reporter WORTH KNOWING

The saviors of senior pets

1 TOP STUDENTS OF THE CLASS OF 2021 P13

HEAD FOR THE HILLS 20- 28

Cityhood debate heats up as opposition group debuts

Art in the Park

P18

BY JOHN RUCH

FOOD & DRINK

A seafood market comes to Brookhaven P8

COMMENTARY

A local school advocates for affordable housing P16

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

A reporter recalls KKK’s downfall P7

PHIL MOSIER

Painter Aziz Kadmiri stands outside his booth as customers admire his works at the Chastain Park Arts Festival May 15. A large crowd turned out for the festival, which was the first arts event in the park since last year’s pandemic shutdowns.

Mayor makes an early political farewell at local meeting BY JOHN RUCH Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms made her first Buckhead appearance as a lame duck, and one of the few during a term that has seen local political tensions with her administration erupt into a separate cityhood movement, at a May 13 Buckhead Business Association virtual meeting.

Bottoms, who announced May 6 that she will not run for reelection this fall, largely repeated her themes of crime-fighting, housing affordability and opposition to the cityhood movement, while still tweaking some of those positions in response to political pressures, many of which come from BuckSee MAYOR on page 29

When Atlanta gets hot, hot, hot, how do you cool off?

Is Buckhead cityhood a necessary “divorce” from a city that has “exploited the beautiful people of Buckhead”? Or is it “the most expensive, slowest and least efficient solution” to crime concerns? Such are the positions under debate as the pro-cityhood Buckhead Exploratory Committee now faces a new anti-cityhood group called the Committee for a United Atlanta. The CUA was announced in a May 20 press release that said the group “intends to reach out directly to neighborhoods in Buckhead and create a dialogue on how best to address issues like crime, zoning and infrastructure while educating residents on the realities of tearing our city apart.” The announcement came a week after CUA co-chair Linda Klein debated cityhood with Bill White, the BEC’s chair and CEO, at a community meeting. Klein is a shareholder at the legal and lobbying firm Baker Donelson and former American Bar Association president. The other co-chair is Edward Lindsey, an attorney at another power-house law and lobbying firm, Dentons, who formerly served as a Republican, Buckheadarea state representative during previous cityhood discussions, where he similarly See CITYHOOD on page 15

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