Milton County, Georgia

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Milton County was a county of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1857 to 1931. It was created on 18 December 1857 from parts of northeastern Cobb, southeastern Cherokee, and southwestern Forsyth counties. Alpharetta was the county seat until the end of 1931, when Milton was merged with Fulton County to save it from bankruptcy during the Great Depression [1]. At that time, Campbell County, which had already gone bankrupt, was also ceded to Fulton, giving it its 70-mile (110 km) long irregular shape along the Chattahoochee River.

Following the 1932 merger, the Cobb County town of Roswell was also ceded to Fulton four months later on 9 May 1932. The cession of Roswell (including everything east of Willeo Creek) made the new county more contiguous, though a very narrow strip (through what is now the Sandy Springs panhandle, ceded to Milton from DeKalb) actually already connected the two sections.

[edit] Re-creation proposals

See Secession section of Fulton County, Georgia for more in depth information

In recent years, some residents of north Fulton County have sought to recreate Milton County. The proposed plan would include Alpharetta, Mountain Park, Johns Creek, Roswell, Milton, & Sandy Springs, the 13th, 10th, 8th, 23rd, & 7th largest cities in the state respectively, in a new Milton County. Proponents of the plan complain of a disproportionate distribution of Fulton County's municipal services between unincorporated Fulton County's lower-income south and higher-income north. Yet, some controversy exists as opponents criticize the recreation proposal, claiming that the plan is racially motivated; proponents counter that Fulton County with 10% of the state's population, being larger than 8 states and the District of Columbia, is too large to effectively service all residents. A major complaint by north and south Fulton residents is that the Fulton County School district is the only non-contiguous school district in the state, having a 17 mile separation (Atlanta) between the north and south. It is noteworthy that local news treats Fulton as two counties when reporting weather related closings.^{[citation needed]}

A bill before the Georgia General Assembly in 2005 that proposed the inclusion of Sandy Springs would rename the remainder of Fulton County as "Atlanta County". The state's constitution, however, now prohibits any more than 159 counties, the number it has had since the merger in 1932. Any change would require a constitutional amendment, supported by two-thirds of each house in the General Assembly, and by over half of all voters statewide in a referendum. On 9 January 2007, State Representative Jan Jones, who represents the house district that includes Roswell, and representatives of adjacent districts introduced HR 12. Without mentioning Milton County by name, HR 12 proposes to amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to recreate merged counties regardless of the 159-county limit, if such an action is ratified by voters in the areas of the proposed recreated county. This amendment would disallow voters in the remaining parts of Fulton County from voting on the issue. [2]

Another possibility would be a merger of two or more of Georgia's other smaller rural counties into somewhat larger ones, thereby reducing the number of counties in the state.^{[citation needed]}

However, these methods may be irrelevant, because the study concluded that a new Milton County would not initially be cost-effective^{[citation needed]} and instead supported municipalization of the two remaining areas. These are Milton (north), Johns Creek (east) as well as Sandy Springs. This was decided by voters in Milton and Johns Creek in the 18 July 2006 election. The two officially became cities under Georgia constitutional law on 1 December 2006.

[edit] Geography

The map at right depicts the original Milton County in 1883, with (counterclockwise from lower right) Gwinnett County to the southeast, Forsyth County to the northeast, Cherokee County to the northwest, Cobb County to the southwest, and Fulton County (Hammond, now Sandy Springs) and DeKalb County (Chamblee and Dunwoody) to the south. Note that the northern edge of DeKalb County also now no longer touches the river, as it did then.