Buckhead secession movement gains steam - and gets heated

With a belly full of grouper and anger, a Buckhead resident stood before his neighbors at 103 West in the affluent north Atlanta community and unleashed his frustration.

“When is someone going to have them indicted and taken to trial?!?” he barked, eliciting head nods from fellow disgruntled taxpayers picking at their three-course lunches.

The “them” he refers to is the Atlanta municipal government — namely, the public school system, mayor, city council and bean counters who helped dig the $140 million hole in which the city finds itself. The angry man’s audience consists of more than 200  Buckhead residents, a well-to-do group of citizens in the city’s most well-to-do community.

The occasion? The Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation’s luncheon to discuss the controversial — and extremely complex — notion of Buckhead severing ties with Atlanta, a city full of confusion that Glenn Delk, an attorney and 20-year resident of the community, said is subsidized by he and his neighbors’ largesse.

Delk, whose study about Buckhead’s possible cityhood has kickstarted a serious look into the matter, informed the audience right away that he neither intended to run for political office nor owned commercial property in Buckhead. He appears to simply be a person who doesn’t like paying high taxes for what he considers to be subpar services. Plus, he doesn’t trust the money management skills of City Hall. To him, and to many in this room, the time has come to break free.