Reviews & Comments
Covington, GA
Covington, GA - Crime, Traffic, Over-rapid Growth, -
7/30/2007WE have lived in the Covington, GA area for 20 years. When we moved out here, Covington (45 miles east of Atlanta) was an "undiscovered" city, too far from Atlanta to generally be considered a driving-to-work town. Schools were okay, there were plenty of good roads for limited traffic, and not much was going on in the way of growth. We commuted to Atlanta for several years, before we both retired, and no longer have to face jobs or commutes. You would think we'd be quite happy to be retirees in such a low-profile, forgotten community? Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
Fast forwarding 20 years to 2007 brings us to a city that that MEtro Atlanta has discovered, and is moving out to in droves. The "concentric rings" theory applies here, in spades. Growth jumps out from a large metro area in circles and rings, often leaping over currently established zones to areas farther beyond, due to cheaper land and home values, less crowded schools, less crime, more "home town" government, and a generally quieter lifestyle.
We now have daily, multiple mugshots of all the caught criminals on the front page of the local rag, have the bigbox stores growing like mushrooms, developers on the "in" with local government throwing up subidivisions every day without regard to the infrastructure, service facilities limits, traffic, schools, roads, and the like. Local government had promised reasonable, controlled growth in past years, anticipating the horror stories of other nearby cities and counties in the general Metro Atlanta area, assuring citizens living here that "it wont happen here". Guess what? The lure of the tax dollar proved too strong - take the trees down, 'doze the rural farmlands, lay concrete and asphalt, build strip malls, junk food shacks, big national name franchise restaurants and auto repair stores, and generally convert a quite community into a hustle and bustle of traffic congestion, construction, raised property taxes, schools in trailers, and now we're just like all the other ramshackle growth areas around Atlanta. Developers have no concerns except "put 'em up, sell 'em, and move on to the next spot of woods, repeat process. Government doesnt have the brains or the integrity to say "Whoa Nellie, Let's slow down".
Bottom line - Covington is a lousy place to live now. We wouldnt recommend it to anyone, unless all they wanted was a house close to an interstate to allow them a brutal 2-hours commute to downtown Atlanta every weekday. Crime's up, tension