A proposed raised median would prevent left-turn traffic coming out of Parkaire Landing to Lower Roswell Road in a high-accident area.
Back in October we reported on Cobb DOT’s plans to have parts of the Lower Roswell Road project redesigned after a good deal of community feedback, including at a robust town hall meeting.
At that town hall, organized by Commissioner Jerica Richarsdon, Cobb DOT director Drew Raessler said the bike lanes would be taken out in favor of a wider multi-use trail, among other things.
On Tuesday, he’ll be asking the Cobb Board of Commissioners for $192,810 for new engineering design work to reflect those changes.
The additional redesign work is expected to take 6-8 months. A major transportation program that has been nearly a decade in the works will be delayed yet again, with a tentative completion timeframe—barring any other setbacks—for 2026.
The agenda item can be found by clicking here; some of the other suggestions and complaints expressed at that town hall at the East Cobb Library aren’t included, including continuing concerns over a proposed median along Lower Roswell between Johnson Ferry Road and Davidson Road.
The commission meeting will take place in the second floor board room of the Cobb Government Building, 100 Cherokee St., in downtown Marietta.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb Police are asking motorists to find an alternate route along a busy portion of Lower Roswell Road Tuesday afternoon.
A crash on Lower Roswell eastbound near Fairfield Drive has blocked two lanes of traffic in a congested area at the East Cobb Government Service Center and Mt. Bethel Church.
Police said in a social media posting that traffic is getting by, but there are delays and “please use an alternate route.”
Early voting continues at the East Cobb government center until 7 p.m., and the parking lot was nearly full when we went by earlier Tuesday afternoon. There was a backup of traffic trying to access the entrance at Lower Roswell and Fairfield.
UPDATED, 5:15 P.M.: Cobb Police are reporting that all lanes of traffic are open.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The long-delayed start to the Lower Roswell Road traffic project could be pushed back further after Cobb DOT officials said Thursday they’ll be proposing a redesign for part of the project.
During a community meeting at the East Cobb Library organized by Commissioner Jerica Richardson, Cobb DOT director Drew Raessler said budget issues and public feedback have prompted a number of possible changes.
The $9 million project, first proposed more than a decade ago, would add turn lanes and enhance traffic flow along Lower Roswell between Woodlawn Drive and Davidson Road, and in particular at the intersection with Johnson Ferry Road.
The objective has been to improve safety in an area with a high number of crashes.
But Raessler said at a meeting attended by a few dozen citizens that all of the construction bidders came in over budget—the lowest bidder was $1.9 million over.
Lingering issues over access along a portion of the project also are being considered.
“We’re going to go back and do a small redesign to bring the scope to budget,” said Raessler, adding that he is planning to ask commissioners for funding for a redesign in November.
Drew Raessler, Cobb DOT director
The main redesign changes would include removing a planned bike path and expanding a multi-use trail to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists.
The multi-use trail would be eight feet wide, but Raessler said the expansion could be “as wide as we can get it.”
Those changes have come about only in the last couple of weeks and are not yet reflected on the project’s fact sheet.
But Raessler and Karyn Matthews, a DOT transportation engineer who covers the East Cobb area, said the redesign work is expected to take 6-8 months. He estimated that the work could start in the first quarter of 2024 and be completed by early 2026.
Until recent months, little public opposition had been expressed. Most of the concerns came from business owners worried about traffic access that would be limited with a raised median on Lower Roswell between Davidson and Johnson Ferry.
Cobb DOT has proposed one left-turn lane in either direction, but that didn’t quell some of the citizens in attendance.
Some worried that traffic that now comes out of Parkaire Landing to turn left on Lower Roswell westbound would cause backlogs on Davidson Road with a median installed.
A proposed raised median would prevent left-turn traffic coming out of Parkaire Landing to Lower Roswell Road in a high-accident area.
One citizen wondered if a roundabout could be built there, saying that “you’re trying to retrofit something and a lot of it is unsolvable.”
When he suggested that that portion of the project be put on hold, Raessler said safety concerns have to be addressed.
Between 2016-2018, Cobb DOT said 61 crashes were recorded along the project route, 49 of them between Johnson Ferry and Davidson, primarily due to more than a dozen curb cuts.
That doesn’t include crashes in the Johnson Ferry-Lower Roswell intersection.
“There is a safety problem there,” he said.
Raessler said the median would be landscaped to add to a “sense of place,” providing some greenery and reducing the amount of impervious surface.
Some have asked the county to ditch the project altogether, wondering about trail access for a project deemed necessary for safety reasons.
“We’re not a pedestrian culture, we’re not a biking culture,” a resident said. “This is laden with so many hangups.”
Another component of the project is a passive green space area at the southeast corner of Lower Roswell and Woodlawn, where the Frasier house once stood.
Matthews said Cobb Parks and Recreation will soon be requesting funding to begin design work.
Larry Savage, a former Cobb Commission Chairman candidate has been a critic of the project’s trails component, said after the meeting that doing a redesign is a good step.
“But there are still a lot of conflicting goals,” he said. “They want to make it safer but then they’re going to reduce the speed limit for pedestrians and cyclists and that’s going to affect traffic flow.”
For a larger version of the project route, click here.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb DOT has revised a proposed raised median on Lower Roswell Road between Johnson Ferry Road and Davidson Road to include left-turn lanes in either direction.
Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson said Friday she’s holding a public meeting next week to discuss the planned Lower Roswell Road improvement project.
The meeting is Thursday from 6-7 in the community meeting room at the East Cobb Library (4880 Lower Roswell Road, Suite 510-B), in the Parkaire Landing Shopping Center.
The meeting is a follow-up to a virtual meeting held in June following comments from some East Cobb residents questioning the need for the project.
Cobb DOT initially proposed a variety of improvements along Lower Roswell between Woodlawn Drive and Davidson Road that cost $9 million and have been earmarked in Cobb government’s 2011 Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax (SPLOST).
But the project has been delayed for years due to acquiring right-of-way and concerns from business owners about a raised median along Lower Roswell between Johnson Ferry Road and Davidson Road.
During the June virtual meeting, Cobb DOT director Drew Raessler said the raised median has been revised to include left-turn lanes in either direction, to the McDonald’s heading eastbound and into Parkaire Landing from westbound lanes.
Cobb DOT markings where crashes commonly occur on Lower Roswell Road near the Parkaire Landing entrance.
Raessler said the raised median is necessary to reduce the number of crashes along that strip of Lower Roswell. He said data collected between 2015-2017 showed the number of crashes was four and a half times the statewide average and that a raised median would reduce crashes by. more than 50 percent.
He said the crash totals have been so high because there are 14 separate access points along Lower Roswell in that area.
Raessler said Cobb DOT continues to work with local business owners to purchase final parcels of right-of-way and to improve their access and visibility.
He noted that his office is negotiating with Tijuana Joe’s, a popular restaurant on the southeast corner of Johnson Ferry and Lower Roswell, to keep its “iconic” sign that can be seen in all directions.
Right-of-way considerations may require having the sign to be relocated on a small property with “a driveway that’s difficult to get into even now.”
If you’re interested in attending Thursday’s meeting, please RSVP with Richardson’s office by clicking here.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A float and participants at Walton’s 2021 homecoming parade. Photo courtesy of Amanda Brown
Two high schools in East Cobb are having homecoming parades this week that will affect traffic in some areas.
On Wednesday, a portion of Holt Road will be closed from 6-7 p.m. for the Wheeler homecoming parade.
The route starts at Grace Marietta Church (675 Holt Road) and heads south to the school (375 Holt Road) and the student parking lot behind the football stadium.
That’s where a festival will be taking place until 8 p.m. There will be food, games and other activities that are open to the public.
On Friday, the Walton homecoming parade takes place, starting at the Target store at Merchants Festival at 2:15 p.m. The route continues westbound on Providence Road, then to Pine Road and Bill Murdock Road before arriving at the school (1590 Bill Murdock Road).
The class councils for each grade will compete for best float, and the Walton band will lead the athletic floats and homecoming court in the parade.
Both football teams are battling for playoff berths in the Georgia High School Association’s Class 7A Region 5.
Wheeler is 4-3 and will be playing Osborne, which is 5-2. Walton is 5-2 and will be playing host to Cherokee.
Kickoff times for both games are 7:30 p.m. Friday.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Starting Friday morning, commuters can begin using the Windy Hill-Terrell Mill connector.
It’s less than a mile, but is expected to alleviate traffic in a busy corridor of East Cobb along Interstate 75 and the Northwest Express Lanes.
Local dignitaries, including elected officials, county transportation and development leaders and civic participants took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday afternoon.
The four-lane connector costs $45.8 million, with nearly $30 million coming from the 2016 Cobb SPLOST (special local-option sales tax) and the rest from Georgia Department of Transportation and the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority.
The connector is accessible on Windy Hill Road by the Spectrum Circle/Interstate North Parkway and moves northbound to Terrell Mill, ending at the intersection of Bentley Road.
The road also features a multi-use trail on the west shoulder that connects to the Bob Callan Trail system, which ultimately hooks up with the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area trails.
Among those on hand for the ribbon cutting were Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, former Commissioner Bob Ott, Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris, Cobb DOT director Drew Raessler, Cumberland Community Improvement District executive director Kim Menefee and Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance president Patti Rice.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The Cobb Department of Transportation will be holding a ribbon-cutting event next Thursday, Oct. 13 for the newly completed Windy Hill-Terrell Mill Connector.
The event takes place at 11 a.m., and you’re asked to do two things—park at1950 Spectrum Circle and take a shuttle to the venue, and wear comfortable shoes.
Construction has been underway for the last three years on the $45.7 million, 0.7-mile project, which was built with 2016 Cobb SPLOST funds as an alternate route from Windy Hill Road to access the I-75 Northwest Corridor Express Lanes.
The four-lane connector stretches from the intersection of Windy Hill Road and Spectrum Circle, and continues north to the intersection of Terrell Mill Road and Bentley Road. The connector also has a raised center median that includes a sidewalk and multi-use trail.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A handful of public electric vehicle charging stations in East Cobb are primarily centered along Johnson Ferry Road.
The latest are at Parkaire Landing Shopping Center, where two free Volta charging stations have been installed in the corner of the parking lot closest to the East Cobb Library.
They provide a Level 2 charge, delivering 6.2 to 19.2 kilowatts, requiring a 208-240 Volt, 40 Amp circuit.
According to Evocharge, an EV charging station manufacturer, a Level 2 charge typically provides 32 miles of driving range per hour of charge, and takes an estimated 6-8 hours to fully charge.
Most electric vehicles are equipped with a Level 1 charge that provides a 1.2 kilowatt charge using a common household 120-volt circuit and provides typically four hours of driving range per hour of charge. The estimated time for a full charge is 11-20 hours.
Based in San Francisco, Volta has nearly 3,000 free EV charging stations across the country, including nearly 200 in metro Atlanta. Volta also has installed six chargers at Six Flags Whitewater and four at Town Center at Cobb.
Other EV charging stations in East Cobb charge customers to use their stations.
SemaConnect has installed two Level 2 stations at Woodlawn Point Shopping Center (1100 Johnson Ferry Road) that costs $1.50 an hour.
The same cost applies for two Level 2 chargers at the Koala Express Shell Station (1280 Johnson Ferry Road).
At Merchants Walk (1311 Johnson Ferry Road), there are two ChargePoint Level 2 chargers at the front entrance to the Kohl’s department store. The cost is $1.25 an hour.
The AAA Car Care Plus at 1197 Johnson Ferry Road has two EVGo Level 3 chargers. Those are considered the fastest chargers. An EVGo membership is required, and there are various levels of charging rates available.
Charge Hub, which helps EV drivers find charging stations, has created an interactive map. Other East Cobb-area EV stations include the Walgreens at 2975 Delk Road, the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex and GE Complex at Wildwood Office Park.
EV owners are encouraged to check with each charging station provider for availability, pricing and reservations before heading to the pumps.
Rivian, which received more than $1.5 billion in state tax incentives in the largest industrial project in Georgia, has drawn opposition for environmental reasons, and from locals who don’t want their rural way of life to be affected.
California recently became the first state in the country to ban the production of gasoline-fueled vehicles, by 2035, and other states could follow suit.
Georgia is not among those states that have tied state laws to federal vehicle emissions standards.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A portion of Gordy Parkway near a busy traffic area of Northeast Cobb was closed Monday afternoon for drainage repairs.
Cobb County government said Monday afternoon that Gordy Parkway is closed between Shallowford Road and Edenbourgh Place, right behind the Home Depot store at the Highland Plaza Shopping Center.
The closures are in both directions and there is no through-traffic on Gordy Parkway, but streets surrounding the closure are open via a temporary detour.
The Cobb government message said work crews were repairing an 84-foot drainage pipe and was unsure how long the closures would last.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb DOT is repaving a 3.4-mile stretch of Johnson Ferry Road in East Cobb and will have evening and overnight lane closures.
Cobb government sent out a message Wednesday saying that the closures will take place between Roswell Road and Post Oak Tritt Road from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m., Sunday—Friday.
Johnson Ferry is a four-lane road with a median, and one lane will stay open when the repaving work is underway.
The project is expected to be completed in September, but there might be delays due to weather.
You can view an interactive map of all Cobb DOT repaving projects by clicking here; more alerts, road projects and travel advisories are updated here.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb DOT will remove the “S” curve intersection and place it nearer to the new Walton sports complex.
Design work for a planned realignment of the intersection of Bill Murdock Road and Pine Road at Walton High School will be the subject of a public hearing Tuesday by the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
It’s one of several Cobb 2022 SPLOST projects by Cobb DOT that requires public hearings because the engineering and design costs exceed $100,000.
Design and engineering work for other road projects in the East Cobb area on Tuesday’s agenda include the following:
Holly Springs corridor improvements
Shallowford at Gordy Parkway West
Canton Road corridor improvements
Barnes Mill Road sidewalk
Those are specified as line items in the Cobb 2022 SPLOST notebook. The Bill Murdock-Pine Road project is not, as it’s lumped into a category for improvements in a school zone.
The realignment is part of ongoing construction at Walton of a new sports complex, which will house a varsity baseball field and tennis courts.
We asked the county for more details about the realignment, and Cobb DOT said that “S” curve will be removed, and pedestrian movements between the school and Pine Road will be improved in coordination with the Cobb County School District.
There’s not a cost estimate for the design or construction work included in Tuesday’s agenda item. A total of $4.1 million has been designated for SPLOST collections for school-zone DOT projects countywide through the end of 2027.
Construction on the Walton athletic complex is just getting underway with groundclearing of the nearly 25-acre tract. That project, which costs $6.7 million and is funded through the Cobb Education IV SPLOST, is expected to be completed by December.
Access points will be on Pine Road for the baseball field and Providence Road for the tennis courts. There will be parking for 80 vehicles.
The Holly Springs Road project is estimated to cost $3.9 million and includes improving the intersection at Post Oak Tritt Road.
The Canton Road corridor improvements have a project cost of $2.4 million and will stretch along much of that route.
Improvements at Shallowford Road and Gordy Parkway West are estimated to cost $700,000.
Those are all “Tier 1” projects in the Cobb 2022 SPLOST, which began collecting sales-tax revenues in January after being approved by voters in 2020. It is expected to generate $750 million in revenues both for county projects and those in Cobb’s six cities.
The Cobb DOT public hearings Tuesday will take place at the start of the meeting, which begins at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building (100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta).
The full agenda can be found by clicking here; also on the agenda is a final draft of the 2040 Cobb County Comprehensive Plan 5-Year Update to be submitted tothe Atlanta Regional Commission. Agenda item here; final draft here.
The hearing also will be live-streamed on the county’s website, cable TV channel (Channel 24 on Comcast) and Youtube page. Visit cobbcounty.org/CobbTV for other streaming options.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A Cobb government spokesman said a repaving project along East Piedmont Road is scheduled to resume next week.
A reader checked in this week to ask about the East Piedmont Road repaving project, which we noted when it began in June that full completion was expected to take until August.
The reader said the top level of the road has been stripped off for some time along the stretch to be repaved—between Allgood Road and at the intersections of Pinkney Drive and Mainsail Road just below Sandy Plains Road—and wondered when work would resume.
“Aside from skipping a portion of the road that needed repaving a few years back, the local politicians are all blaming each other as to why it is taking three weeks to pave less than a mile of road between Allgood and Sandy Plains,” the reader said. “The road has been torn up since mid June and it is now mid July. Work is simply not occurring.”
We drove along that same route Friday morning heading to a previously scheduled appointment, and there are construction signs and cones all along the median and sides of East Piedmont. It is indeed a rough ride.
Later, we checked with Cobb County government, which passed along this information late Friday afternoon:
“The Contractor is scheduled to be back on East Piedmont Road early next week after the completion of Sandy Plains Road. Weather permitting Sandy Plains will be completed tomorrow night—crews are scheduled to work tonight and tomorrow night. The next activity on East Piedmont Road will be deep patching to repair soft areas. This will take a few weeks to complete, and then the final surface course will be placed. Completion by the end of August is still a valid date as long as the contractor remains on the project.”
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has extended a suspension of the gasoline sales tax a second time, through the middle of August.
Kemp made the announcement this week, ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend, as gas prices in the state and metro Atlanta are in something of a holding pattern.
He cited continuing issues with “the federal government’s gross mishandling of inflation and to renew efforts to address supply chain issues” for extending the tax suspension, which was authorized by the Georgia legislature in April.
The latest extension lasts until Aug. 13, after most schools in Georgia have resumed. Georgia motorists pay a 29-cent excise tax on every gallon of gasoline.
According to AAA-The Auto Club Group, the average gas prices in Georgia have fallen to $4.40 a gallon, down seven cents from last week.
That average is a little higher in metro Atlanta and in East Cobb.
The group estimates that it costs $66 to fill a 15-gallon tank of regular gasoline, around $22.35 more than this time last year.
The national average, according to AAA, is around $4.80 a gallon.
For more Georgia gas price data from AAA-The Auto Club Group, click here.
AAA is estimating that more than 1.5 million Georgians will be traveling more than 50 miles this weekend, more than 3 percent higher than 2021 and more than 4 percent since 2019.
Most of that travel, around 1.4 million, will be via automobile, estimated to be the highest since 2001.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb Police said Saturday morning that a portion of Paper Mill Road will be closed “for several hours” due to downed power lines.
Police said in a social media posting around 10 a.m. that the closure is along Paper Mill between Thunderbird Drive and River Ridge Chase, near Sope Creek.
Police said a vehicle crashed into a utility pole, and crews are on the scene to make repairs.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
New turn lanes would be created at Lower Roswell Road and Woodlawn Drive.
As the long-delayed Lower Roswell Road transportation project gets closer to getting underway, some East Cobb residents are speaking out against it.
Land acquisitions are continuing for the $9 million Cobb DOT project, which would stretch from Davidson Road and Woodlawn Drive, and include the construction of a median and turn lanes.
The project (fact sheet; location map) also would provide a connection for bicycle lanes in the community and provide sidewalks.
But it’s been more than a decade since first being proposed, and is being funded with money from Cobb government’s 2011 Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax (SPLOST).
The county held open houses in 2012 and 2013 and accepted virtual comments in early 2022 before commissioners approved the project’s conceptual plan last year.
“You should declare it infeasible,” East Cobb resident Craig Harfoot told members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners Tuesday during a public comment session. “You haven’t done anything [with the money].”
Engineering work began in 2012 and right-of-way proceedings began in 2019. Cobb DOT is hoping to start construction early next year, and anticipates taking two years to completion.
But some residents said Tuesday that the project should be scuttled because they claim it’s unwanted and a waste of money.
“It’s so unpopular that two former commissioners chose not to do it in 15 years,” said Jan Barton, referencing Joe Lee Thompson and Bob Ott.
Her remarks included other complaints about county spending—including outside consultants and a proposed new position for a diversity and equity officer—as well as recent zoning decisions in East Cobb.
Others who live in the vicinity echoed her comments.
“It hasn’t gotten off the ground because nobody really wants this,” said Larry Savage, a former candidate for Cobb Commission Chairman. “Nobody’s defending this.”
Savage said the Lower Roswell Road project really isn’t about safety and operational improvements but accommodating a bike and trail plan policy.
For a larger view of the Lower Roswell Road traffic project concept map, click here.
He said that since commissioners approved the Complete Streets Concept in 2009, it’s been lucrative for project developers to incorporate multi-use trails in what are billed as transportation improvements.
“Bike trails are a recreational amenity, a good amenity,” Savage said. “But this project is not a safety and operational improvements project.”
Some of the delays were prompted by concerns from business owners along Lower Roswell between Johnson Ferry Road and Davidson Road.
That stretch of the project calls for the construction of a median, with some businesses fearing access would be cut off.
Referring to the Tijuana Joe’s restaurant on the southeast corner of Johnson Ferry and Lower Roswell, Savage it could lose its business.
Harfoot referenced the Papa John’s restaurant and the new Bagel 101 Café on the northeast corner, saying “they won’t have any parking.”
Rob Miller, owner of the Bagel 101 Café, told East Cobb News he hasn’t heard of any complaints thus far, but “I hear the project will make parking in our center even less then it already is and it’s tough to get in and out on the weekends.”
Commissioners didn’t respond to the public commenters, who said there was a community meeting recently with commissioners Jerica Richardson and JoAnn Birrell.
Cobb DOT has said that traffic volume and safety precipitated the project and proposed the median because the crash history in that area is above average (42 on Lower Roswell between Johnson Ferry and Davidson from 2016-18).
The agency estimated daily average traffic volumes along Lower Roswell to be nearly 37,000 on either side of Johnson Ferry in 2015, and projects that number to grow to 37,000 in 2025 and more than 45,000 by 2035.
“For Cobb DOT, this is a long one,” Cobb DOT engineer Karyn Matthews told East Cobb News last summer, referncing the delays, “but we wanted to get the right concept for the community.”
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb DOT crews doing maintenance on Johnson Ferry Road at Olde Towne Parkway last winter. (ECN file photo)
The Cobb Department of Transportation will ask county commissioners Tuesday for funding for outside firms to help perform routine road maintenance projects because of what it says are “critical level” staffing shortages.
According to an agenda item for Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, Cobb DOT director Drew Rensler and other county department leaders will request funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
The agenda item (you can read it here) says 41 of the 94 maintenance positions in Cobb DOT are vacant, and the maintenance division has been operating with at least 40 percent vacancies for the past year.
“At this time, the Division has extended regular mowing frequencies by two weeks, and work order completion dates by one month due to shortages in current staffing levels,” the agenda item states.
“The utilization of contracted services will allow the Division to respond more efficiently in providing required maintenance operations countywide, and will prevent the back log of work orders.”
Another agenda item (you can read that here) from Rensler, Cobb Water Authority director Judy Jones and Cobb Parks and Recreation Director Michael Brantley further details staff shortages.
They include 27 percent vacancies in “critical” positions maintaining 90 Cobb parks facilities, 30 percent vacancies in the county’s fleet department, 32 percent vacancies in “critical” positions in property management and 31 percent in the water system.
“The volume of vacancies has strained the respective agencies’ abilities to maintain and operate critical infrastructure which is vital for the residents and visitors of Cobb County,” the said in their request.
The funding requests include $636,000 in outsourced salary expenses in all, with $288,000 for water, $132,000 for DOT, $123,000 for Parks, $58,500 for property management and $34,500 for fleet management.
The department heads also will be asking for “a one-time payment of $1,500 for each frontline field staff member responsible for the maintenance and operation of critical public infrastructure throughout the County.”
The bonuses would apply to employees hired before April 1, and they must stay with the county for 12 months after receiving it.
While the agenda items were posted with the full agenda (you can read that here), the Cobb DOT and other department infrastructure items were sent to news media outlets Thursday night by Cobb government spokesman Ross Cavitt.
He noted that Cobb has begun taking applications for $147 million in ARPA funds and received the second installment of $73,824,239 on Thursday.
Government agencies are among those eligible for the funding, as commissioners previously approved criteria that included county infrastructure.
Tuesday’s meeting also will include an update on the county’s agreement with the Atlanta Braves over Truist Park and The Battery and a recognition of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.
Commissioners also will be asked to issue a proclamation on behalf of state senators Kay Kirkpatrick and Doc Rhett to Judy Boyce, the widow of former Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce, in recognition of his public service.
The meeting starts at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building (100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta).
The hearing also will be live-streamed on the county’s website, cable TV channel (Channel 24 on Comcast) and Youtube page. Visit cobbcounty.org/CobbTV for other streaming options.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
“Crews worked overnight to repair damage caused by a sinkhole on Sandy Plains Road at Wood Creek Drive. Some northbound lanes remain closed today as workers replace the curb and gutters for that stretch of the road.
“All lane closures will be removed before 5:00 pm.”
ORIGINAL REPORT:
This just in from Cobb County government:
“The discovery of a sinkhole during routine resurfacing work on Sandy Plains has forced crews to close a northbound lane at Wood Creek Drive to make repairs. This is on Sandy Plains between Wigley and Wesley Chapel. The closure will remain in effect through the rush hour tonight and into Wednesday.”
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
