The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday dismissed city of Atlanta efforts to annex a prized piece of Fulton County property.
In a unanimous decision, the court denied efforts to bring the Fulton County Industrial District into city boundaries, ruling that Atlanta never passed a local ordinance to annex the property and therefore there was nothing legally to resolve.
“We remand for the trial court to dismiss this nonjusticiable lawsuit,” Justice Keith Blackwell wrote in the decision.
Atlanta has had the land, located in the west central portion of Fulton, in its sights for decades. It’s an area of high-value industrial development that brings with it lucrative taxable income.
It’s been in dispute since 1979 when a local constitutional amendment protected it from annexation or incorporation by the city of Atlanta.
“Nearly four decades later, the City now challenges the 1979 local constitutional amendment in an effort to get the camel’s nose into the tent: to pave the way for City annexation of property within the Fulton Industrial District into the City’s taxing jurisdiction,” Fulton County attorneys wrote in briefs.
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