“Bring One for the Chipper,” Keep Cobb Beautiful’s effort to encourage Christmas tree recycling, will be held from Christmas Day, Dec. 25, through Jan. 8, 2022.
They include Home Depot stores in East Cobb at Providence Square (4101 Roswell Road) and Highland Plaza (3605 Sandy Plains Road).
Trees also can be dropped off at Fullers Park (3499 Robinson Road).
A few instructions apply: Please remove all decorations, mesh, lights, stands and strings from trees. Flocked trees will not be permitted, as they are considered hazards to wildlife.
There’s no limit to the number of trees that may be dropped off; discarded trees are turned into mulch for various local public beautification projects and individual yards.
Volunteers also are needed to help on the final day, Jan. 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to collect trees from the dropoff spots. Groups and individuals should contact keepcobbbeautiful@cobbcounty.org to help out.
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The following East Cobb food scores for the week of Dec. 13 have been compiled by the Cobb & Douglas Department of Public Health. Click the link under each listing for inspection details:
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Several book discussion and other groups are fully resuming their meetings at the East Cobb Library.
The East Cobb Book Discussion groups meet the third Thursday of every month, at 11 a.m. and at 2 p.m., after participants read a pre-selected book—fiction, non-fiction, classics and new releases.
On Thursday, Dec. 16, the morning group discussion will be about “The Vanishing Half,” a historical novel by Brit Bennett. The afternoon group discussion will cover “Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family” by Robert Kolker.
In addition to those groups, East Cobb Library also offers “book tasting” meetings for adults every other month, in which participants sample five books, then discuss their favorites.
The next meeting is Dec. 28 at 5:30 p.m., and the books are under the “Cozy Mysteries to Die” theme. Registration is required at cobbcat.org.
There’s also an East Cobb Cookbook Club that meets the second Tuesday of the month, in which members review a variety of cookbooks to explore techniques, chefs, cooking styles, dishes and more.
Members choose a themed recipe each month and prepare a dish to share. The next meeting is Jan. 11 at 4 p.m., and the session is entitled “Soups and Salads.” Registration is required at cobbcat.org.
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The buildings have been torn down; what remains now is to haul off the rubble, twisted metal and other debris to make room for the relocated campus of Eastvalley Elementary School.
Concrete, brick and other debris where the cafeteria once stood.
East Cobb Junior High School opened in 1963, two years before Wheeler High School across the street, then was renamed East Cobb Middle School in the 1970s.
The aging facilities continued to serve students until 2018, when ECMS moved to Terrell Mill Road, next to a relocated Brumby Elementary School.
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Juneteenth—a celebration of the emancipation of slaves first made at the end of the Civil War—was made a county holiday Tuesday by the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
That date will be marked on Monday, June 20, 2022, the day after Juneteenth, which became a federal holiday this year.
But the vote wasn’t unanimous, as Commissioner Keli Gambrill of North Cobb opposed the measure.
Saying while she has nothing against the commemoration, she said that “it’s also a cost to the taxpayers. . . . It’s almost being done as a way to retain county employees.”
The cost for giving county employees the day off will come to around $300,000.
Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said officially observing Juneteenth is “an opportunity to recognize the freedoms that we all have that were not contemplated in our original Constitution.”
Not to make Juneteenth a county holiday, she added, “would send a dispiriting message to people who had a nuanced road to freedom.”
The Cobb NAACP has been organizing Juneteenth celebrations at the Marietta Square for a number of years.
Gambrill said that this will be 12th official county holiday, and cited a report saying that the typical private sector holidays in the county are only a little more than seven.
Also on Tuesday, commissioners approved spending $105,000 in county reserves for additional overtime for the 2021 World Series games at Truist Park, and for a celebratory parade and event at the stadium for the Atlanta Braves. That vote was 5-0.
That funding is in addition to $350,000 commissioners approved before the games. After the vote, Commissioner JoAnn Birrell of East Cobb asked Cobb Finance Director William Volckmann about the economic impact estimates of the World Series.
He said a report is forthcoming in the first quarter of 2022 by the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and the Cobb Travel and Tourism agency.
Commissioners also recognized several retiring county department heads, including Cobb Police Chief Tim Cox.
He’s been a 30-year veteran of the department, including a stint as commander of Precinct 4 in East Cobb, and has been police chief since 2019.
The commissioners will meet next Tuesday for their final zoning hearing of the year; a second regular business meeting slated for next week has been cancelled.
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Terrell Mill Estates resident Denise Canteli showed Cobb commissioners photos of flood damage in her yard during the September storms.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners has directed the county’s water department to craft proposals in the coming weeks for the possible creation of a stormwater fee.
By a 3-2 vote, commissioners set in motion a process to address stormwater management issues that have existed for years, but that most recently have angered citizens in East Cobb after heavy flooding in September.
The possible creation of a stormwater fee was first raised following a consultant’s report in 2005, but no action has been taken along those lines, Cobb Water System director Judy Jones told commissioners.
“These aren’t new initiatives,” she said. “They’re ongoing.”
A revised agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting requested consulting assistance to prepare code amendment proposals that would be voted on later by commissioners.
Since 1994, stormwater management has been handled by the Cobb water system, and is funded by water and sewer revenues.
The current fiscal year 2022 Cobb stormwater budget is $2.26 million and its current capital improvements budget is $4.5 million.
Of the 1,800 miles of drain pipes in county right-of-way areas, 70 miles need replacing. In addition, the agenda item notes, “there is a significant backlog of stormwater projects, including 93 pipe failures that have resulted in sinkholes. The Water System does not have sufficient staffing or funding to complete these projects in a timely manner.”
Jones told commissioners that her office had been crafting stormwater proposals for several months, before the September floods, and has been pulling away employees from her short-staffed department to do so.
Meanwhile, East Cobb residents who were impacted by the September floods are still dealing with the devastating aftermath.
East Cobb resident Hill Wright, who leads a citizens group pressing the county for action, said during a public comment period at Tuesday’s meeting that stormwater services are “playing second fiddle in the water department” and urged the creation of a separate stormwater department.
He’s been especially critical of what he says has been a poor response by the county, and suggested that Cobb use federal funds under the American Rescue Plan Act to develop “a long-term plan.”
Jones said the county could use ARPA funds for purposes as outlined in state water quality guidelines, but “they can’t just be used to repair a pipe.”
The expanded services she’s recommending are related only to maintaining existing stormwater facilities, and “do not include upsizing pipes or flood recovery assistance.”
That last issue was noted by Commissioner JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb, who also said that she couldn’t “support another utility fee” with Cobb water rates going up by 11 percent in January.
Also starting in 2022, residential customers in unincorporated Cobb who use less than 5,000 gallons a year will pay $1.99 a month more than those in Cobb cities who are charged for the same amount of water and sewer.
Birrell, who’s long been vocal about curtailing the amount of water system revenues transferred to the county’s general fund, voted against the measures, along with Keli Gambrill of North Cobb.
Among other objections, Gambrill said that municipal customers “don’t know what they’re getting for that fee” and was concerned about adding more stormwater duties to an overworked water system staff.
Jones recommended that if a stormwater fee is created (and included on a customer’s water bill), it could be charged according to the amount of impervious surfaces on a property, instead of water and sewer usage.
Birrell suggested that such a fee might be issued to a developer, and for that to be part of the county’s upcoming consideration of a Unified Development Code.
There’s not a timetable that was mentioned for bringing action items back before the commissioners.
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The Cobb County Public Library has announced special hours for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
All library branches will be closed from Thursday, Dec. 23 through Sat. Dec. 25, and they will be closed from Friday, Dec. 31 through Saturday, Jan. 1.
Regular hours will resume on Monday, Jan. 3.
For specific hours and services at each Cobb library branch, click here.
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Unleaded gas at some East Cobb locations cost a little less than the Georgia and metro Atlanta average of $3.14 a gallon.
As the Christmas and New Year’s holidays approach, motorists in metro Atlanta and Georgia are seeing gasoline prices start to fall.
AAA-The Auto Club Group reports that the average price across the state last week was $3.14 a gallon, 4 cents down from the previous week and 12 cents below the November average.
But the sharp rise in gas prices in recent months, which came with a peak of nearly $3.25 a gallon in some areas of metro Atlanta, means that the current average is still $1.14 more than this time in 2020.
AAA estimates that a 15-gallon tank costs $47.10 to fill up, $10.20 more than January 2020, when the cost at the pump was $2.46 per gallon in Georgia.
“Lower oil prices continue to bring down prices at the pump,” said Montrae Waiters, AAA-The Auto Club Group spokeswoman. “As well as, when the Omicron variant emerged in late November, health experts concluded the variant did not seem to produce more severe cases than other variants. Markets have taken that to mean global energy demand will likely not be diminished. Unfortunately, we still can’t predict if the Omicron variant will continue to push oil and gas prices lower for the remainder of the month.”
The metro Atlanta average is $3.18 a gallon, and around East Cobb many stations are at or below that price for unleaded fuel.
The current national average is $3.32. You can check gas prices near you by clicking here.
The Auto Club Group also is projecting a healthy rebound in the number of Georgians traveling for the holidays, between Dec. 23-Jan. 2.
The estimate is 3.4 million travelers in the state, which is down from 2019 but represents an increase of 857,949, or 34 percent more, than 2020, the first holiday season of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those projections reflect nationwide surges in holiday travel, according to an AAA report you can read by clicking here.
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Last week Cobb County officials broke ground for the replacement building for the Gritters Library in Northeast Cobb (renderings and a previous post here).
On Monday, they were back in the area to shovel some turf for another new facility, the forthcoming Cobb Police Precinct 6.
That’s located next to the Mountain View Aquatic Center on Gordy Parkway, and the county provided the first renderings (seen above) of what it will look like when finished.
At Monday’s event were Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, District 3 Commissioner JoAnn Birrell, Police Chief Tim Cox, Director of Public Safety Randy Crider, County Manager Dr. Jackie McMorris, and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick.
In November commissioners approved spending the first part of $5 million in 2016 SPLOST funds for the new precinct, which will initially house police special units but will not have a patrol zone.
The area will continue to be covered by Cobb Police patrols out of Precinct 4, located off Lower Roswell Road, and that stretches to the east side of Canton Road.
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Cobb DOT is reporting that drive-through traffic on Old Sewell Road between Holt Road and Lower Roswell Road will be unavailable for the time being.
That’s due to emergency drainage repairs that began Monday near the Holt Road intersection.
Local access on Old Sewell Road to Ashton Woods Drive and Weatherstone Parkway remains open.
Cobb government spokesman Ross Cavitt said the pipe below the Old Sewell-Holt intersection had separated “and other components had rusted out, resulting to damage to the sidewalks and roadway. They are replacing the failed pipe and structure.”
An alert listed on the Cobb DOT Facebook page indiates a Feb. 4 reopening, but Cavitt said “they do not expect it to last much past 2-3 weeks” and possibly a little while after that due to the holidays.
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The Cobb Board of Commissioners will be asked on Tuesday to approve $105,574 in additional funding to help pay for expenses related to the 2021 World Series.
Commissioners had approved $350,000 for traffic, security and overtime for public safety personnel for the three World Series games played at Truist Park in late October.
But according to an agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting, additional security was needed for a fan watch party at Truist Park for Game 6 on Oct. 31, as Braves clinched the World Series in Houston.
More overtime also was needed for the Braves’ festivities on Nov. 5 that included a parade along Cobb Parkway and a celebration and concert at the ball park featuring recording artists Big Boi and Ludacris.
The agenda item states that nearly $303,000 was spent for police overtime, $51,000 for Fire Department overtime, $47,503 for Cobb Sheriff’s Office overtime, $22,735 for E911 overtime and $21,911 for road maintenance overtime.
The requested funding would come from the county government’s fund balance, just as the original $305,000 approved right before the start of the World Series.
The meeting starts at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building (100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta), and the full agenda can be found 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.
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For a larger view of the map to be submitted to the state reapportionment office, click here.
After having three representatives on the Cobb Board of Education in recent decades, the East Cobb area may be down to two for the next decade, starting with the 2022 elections.
A proposed map that’s being recommended by the board’s four-Republican majority would take Post 6 completely out of East Cobb.
That seat is held by Democrat Charisse Davis, who lives in the Cumberland-Vinings area, which would form the new heart of Post 6.
The current Post 6 includes the Walton and Wheeler clusters.
The school board voted 4-3 Thursday along partisan lines to submit a map proposed by GOP chairman Randy Scamihorn (see inset of East Cobb area above) to the state reapportionment office.
Cobb school board member Charisse Davis
In that map, Walton and Wheeler clusters would be included in Post 5, currently represented by Republican David Banks, whose new post also would maintain Pope High School.
Republican David Chastain represents Post 4, which would have the Kell, Lassiter and Sprayberry clusters. He’s up for re-election next year.
The Cobb legislative delegation will be drawing lines for Cobb school board, Cobb commission and municipal elected bodies in January; the school board’s proposal is only advisory.
The map was drawn by attorneys at Taylor English, a Cumberland-area firm that was paid $200,000 by the Cobb County School District.
Scamihorn said the map he proposed met all the criteria, including adjusting to shifts in population.
Davis, who said the map is not “fair and competitive,” made a motion to keep the current post boundaries. But that vote failed along partisan lines.
She and fellow Democrat Tre’ Hutchins had proposed their own maps, which they later withdrew.
“I will be losing two of the three high schools that I currently represent,” Davis said. “It is not a fair map.”
A declared candidate for the Post 6 seat also wants to keep the post maps the way they are.
Amy Henry, Cobb Board of Education candidate, Post 6
Amy Henry, a Republican who has four children in the Walton High School cluster, said she understands the need to shift lines to accommodate population changes, but Post 6 should remain largely as-is,” according to a statement issued by her campaign.
“She is prepared to run and win in a competitive post,” the statement said. “Early support for her campaign since the announcement has been strong and she looks forward to seeing how the Cobb legislative delegation weighs in on the final maps.”
Davis and fellow first-term Democrat Jaha Howard, who are both up for re-election in 2022, would be drawn together in Post 6; he’s declared his intent to run for Georgia School Superintendent.
Scamihorn noted that Davis and Howard—who have battled the Republican majority repeatedly on a variety of topics—live so close together.
Scamihorn said he’s losing 40 percent of his Post 1 seat in northwest Cobb, and reminded his colleagues that he didn’t draw the map.
“The dice rolled where it rolled,” he said.
But Democrats weren’t buying any of that.
Jackie Bettadapur, an East Cobb resident whose two sons graduated from Walton, said during a public comment session at Thursday’s work session that “by stonewalling and shutting down the three minority members” the Republican majority has “cancelled the voices of nearly half of Cobb’s constituents.”
Bettadapur is the chairwoman of the Cobb Democratic Party, but did not identify herself as such during her comments, which accused the GOP of pushing “a political agenda and not the best interests of our county.”
Should the board’s recommended map be adopted, current Post 6 voters living in the Walton and Wheeler clusters would not have a school board election on their ballot for six years.
Banks, a Republican and current board vice chairman, was re-elected last year to serve a fourth term.
Bettadapur warned the board not to assign “Wheeler and Walton high school representation to a board member that trafficks in quack science, conspiracy theories and the old Southern Lost Cause politics of segregation and racism.”
Critics of the Republican-approved map also complained about the process for making them public and the short time for citizens to offer comment.
The proposed maps were added to the agenda late Wednesday and were voted on at the work session Thursday afternoon.
The state reapportionment office will review the recommended map and could request technical changes that may require more action by the school board before Cobb legislators draw the final lines.
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State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Republican from East Cobb, has announced her 2022 campaign for re-election to the Georgia State Senate in District 32.
Kirkpatrick, a retired orthopedic surgeon, has held the seat since 2017. Her campaign website can be found by clicking here.
She is the Chairwoman of the Senate Veterans and Military committee and also serves on the Health and Human Services, Insurance, Judiciary and Appropriations committees and represents Dobbins Air Reserve Base on the Georgia Joint Defense Commission.
In her announcement, Kirkpatrick said that “I am proud of my track record of service since 2017″ and that “I will continue to work tirelessly to support lower taxes, election integrity, public safety, life, families and businesses.”
District 32 has mostly covered East Cobb and a portion of Sandy Springs, but last month the Georgia legislature redrew the lines to include some of northeast Cobb and parts of Cherokee County, including a part of Woodstock (see map below).
In a social media posting after reapportionment ended Kirkpatrick said that “I am looking forward to representing Cherokee County and Marietta City in addition to East Cobb. I will work hard to get to know my new constituents.”
Last weekend she participated in the Woodstock Christmas parade with the Young Republicans of Cherokee.
Kirkpatrick, who was a President of Resurgens Orthopaedics, included in her legislative accomplishments her work for free-market solutions to health care in Georgia.
“I fight for patients as they navigate our very complex healthcare system. As a conservative, I believe in a limited role for government, increased involvement by parents in their kids’ education, and lower taxes,” she said. “I look forward to working hard to represent the citizens in Cherokee and Cobb counties in the Senate and continuing to pass good legislation.”
Qualifying for the 2022 elections begins in March; primaries are scheduled for May.
For a more detailed view, click here. Source: Georgia Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Office.
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A group of students and others advocating to change the name of Wheeler High School in East Cobb will take part in a panel discussion on the Confederate Symbols movement sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The forum, entitled “Public Art and the Politics of Remembering Georgia’s Confederate Past,” will take place next Thursday, Dec. 16, starting at 7 p.m.
The event, whose sponsors include the City of Atlanta and local artist Lisa Tuttle, is free and open to the public and you can RSVP by clicking here.
Starting Monday, members of the public can submit questions in advance at the registration link. The SPLC said a complete agenda will be announced before the forum.
The Wheeler Name Change Group organized in 2020, following the death of Georgie Floyd that sparked nationwide protests about racial and social justice.
Wheeler, which opened in 1965, is named after Confederate Civil War general Joseph Wheeler, who later was readmitted to the U.S. Army and served in Congress. He’s one of a handful of Confederate veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery and has a statue in his honor at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
An online petition was started to push for the Wheeler name change, and received several thousand signatures, including Democratic Cobb Board of Education member Charisse Davis, whose Post 6 includes the Wheeler cluster.
The name change group said that their research has shown that the Cobb school board purposely named the high school located on Holt Road after Wheeler, who wasn’t from the area, in defiance of integration.
Wheeler is the only school in the Cobb County School District named after a Confederate figure. Name-change advocates said it’s not a fitting name for one of the most diverse schools in the district.
They have held online town hall meetings and spoken during public comment periods at Cobb school board meetings, but the board has not formally considered the name change proposal.
Group members have complained that a board policy limiting how agenda items may be added has prevented that from happening, and that their e-mails to board members have gone largely unanswered.
In late 2020 the board’s Republican majority voted to dissolve a newly formed committee to consider school name changes, prompting cries from board Democrats that it was an act of “systemic racism.”
On Thursday the Cobb school board voted along party lines to recommend new elected boundaries that would take the Walton and Wheeler clusters out of Post 6 and place them into Post 5, represented by Republican David Banks.
The SPLC forum topics next Thursday include “Correcting history is not the same as erasing it,” data on Confederate symbols remaining in public spaces in Georgia and legislation aimed at helping the state “break up” with the Confederacy.
Other panelists include the following:
Lisa Tuttle, artist, Postcolonial Karma exhibition at Gallery 72
Kevin Sipp, City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
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Cobb County government said Friday that Pete Shaw Road is closed between Wieuca Court and Indian Town Road in Northeast Cobb due to downed power lines.
That’s located off Steinhauer Road near Lassiter High School, and the county alert said the cause stems from a car crash.
“It may take several hours for crews to repair and reopen the roadway,” said the county message, which went out shortly after 2 p.m. Friday.
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The map proposed by board chairman Randy Scamihorn. For a more detailed view, click here.
UPDATED:
The school board voted 4-3 along party lines Thursday to submit the map proposed by Scamihorn to the state legislative reapportionment office.
The four Republicans voted in favor and the three Democratic members voted against.
A motion by Davis to keep the current lines failed 3-4, along the same party divide.
Original Report:
A reapportionment map to be proposed by the outgoing Cobb Board of Education chairman on Thursday is designed to maintain the board’s slender Republican majority.
Two others proposed by Democratic members attempt to prevent the GOP from building on that advantage.
The maps are included in the school board’s agenda for its December work session starting at 2 p.m. Thursday (previous ECN post here).
The GOP holds a 4-3 edge on a Cobb school board that has been deeply divided along partisan lines for the last two years, after Republicans held a comfortable 6-1 margin before that.
The proposal by Republican chairman Randy Scamihorn of Post 1 of northwest Cobb (see map at top) was added late Wednesday, and was crafted by Taylor English Duma LLP, a law firm based in the Cumberland area and which was hired to draw a new map for the Cobb legislative delegation to consider in January.
Democrats hold a one-member majority in the Cobb delegation, which also will decide new district lines for the Cobb Board of Commissioners, the six Cobb municipal council districts and Marietta school board boundaries.
The proposed Cobb school board maps are purely advisory.
In Scamihorn’s map, the East Cobb area of Post 6 that includes the Walton and Wheeler clusters would be shifted entirely to Post 5, represented by Post 5 Republican member David Banks, the board’s current vice chairman, who was re-elected in 2020.
That new post would also include the campus of Pope High School and some of the Lassiter High School attendance zone that Banks has represented since 2009.
He won a third term in November by fewer than 3,000 votes.
The new Post 6 that Democrat Charisse Davis has represented since 2019 would move to the Smyrna-Cumberland-Vinings area under the chairman’s proposal.
She lives near Teasley Elementary School, and that post would also include the residence of current board member Jaha Howard, another first-term Democrat who was elected to serve in Post 2, which includes the Campbell and Osborne clusters.
Davis has not made public whether she’s seeking re-election. Amy Henry, a parent of four children in the Walton cluster, has announced her candidacy as a Republican.
But Davis also has proposed a map that would keep some of East Cobb in Post 6 (see below).
That includes most of the Wheeler cluster and some of the Walton cluster; Davis and Howard also would both be drawn into Post 6 and a new board member would come from Post 2.
Howard has declared his intention to run for Georgia school superintendent.
Under Scamihorn’s proposal, the clockwise shift in the new lines would push Post 3 into the McEachern High School cluster. That’s currently in Post 7, where GOP incumbent Brad Wheeler barely won re-election last year.
The realigned Post 7 would include the Hillgrove, Harrison and Kennesaw Mountain high school clusters.
Scamihorn, who was was re-elected last year, would just barely fit into the new Post 1, made up of the Allatoona and North Cobb high school clusters.
Scamihorn’s proposed Post 4 would continue to include the Kell and Sprayberry clusters, and well as part of the Lassiter cluster.
Republican David Chastain, who has held that seat since 2014, has said he will be seeking a third term.
The only other candidate who has announced for Post 4 is Democrat Austin Heller, a Kennesaw State University student.
Davis’ map would keep most of the Kell and Sprayberry clusters in Post 4, and Post 5 would include the Lassiter, Pope and Walton campuses.
Her map would place Chastain and Scamihorn in Post 1, prompting a new board member to come from Post 4.
Post 3 board member Tre’ Hutchins, a Democrat in his first year in office, also has a map proposal that will be discussed Thursday afternoon (see below).
His Post 6 would retain some of the Wheeler and Walton clusters, but it would call for a new board member.
That’s because he’s proposing a Post 2 with Davis and Howard drawn together.
The South Cobb-area post Hutchins represents would include the Pebblebook, South Cobb and McEachern high school clusters.
For a detailed view of the Hutchins map, click here.
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The following East Cobb food scores for the week of Dec. 6 have been compiled by the Cobb & Douglas Department of Public Health. Click the link under each listing for inspection details:
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!
Charlice Byrd, a Republican who represents Cherokee County in the Georgia House of Representatives, announced her candidacy for the Georgia Senate District 32 seat.
That’s a newly drawn seat that has contained most of East Cobb but will include Woodstock and part of Cherokee County following reapportionment.
Kay Kirkpatrick, an East Cobb Republican, has held that office since 2017.
Byrd was in the legislature from 2005-2013, and was a paid staffer for the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016. She won her old seat District 20 back in the 2020 elections.
She said she’s running for the state senate because “if the Democrats win in 2022, they will have control of both our State and our Nation. Our local communities are next in line. We cannot afford to let the Stacey Abrams Liberals and Joe Biden RINOs control our destiny, drain our bank accounts and trample our freedoms.”
Byrd is a former president of the Cherokee Republican Women’s Club and served on the Executive Committee for the Georgia Republican Party.
As a lawmaker, she worked on reforms in the Georgia foster care system and on election security issues. She and her husband live in Woodstock and they attend the First Baptist Church of Woodstock.
For a more detailed view, click here. Source: Georgia Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Office.
Georgia Senate reapportionment sliced up East Cobb into four districts. District 32 stretches up to southern and western Cherokee County.
District 56, currently represented by Republican John Albers of North Fulton, will include northeast Cobb.
District 6, which will cut into southern areas of East Cobb, will have a new senator, as incumbent Sen. Jen Jordan is running for Georgia Attorney General.
Some areas of East Marietta will remain in District 33, represented by Democratic Sen. Michael Rhett.
In her announcement, Byrd did not reference Kirkpatrick, who has indicated she will be running for re-election in 2022. Last weekend she participated in the Woodstock Christmas parade with the Young Republicans of Cherokee.
In a social media posting after reapportionment ended Kirkpatrick said that “I am looking forward to representing Cherokee County and Marietta City in addition to East Cobb. I will work hard to get to know my new constituents.”
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A reader recently asked us about the delayed reopening of the Willeo Creek Bridge, which we reported in September was being pushed back to Dec. 20.
We checked with Cobb County government, which told us this morning that there’s another, equally substantial delay, and that the contractor wasn’t going to be able to meet the new deadline.
Instead, the estimated reopening timetable is in March 2022. Here’s what county spokesman Ross Cavitt passed along in response to our inquiry:
“Baldwin Paving Company, Inc., the contractor for the Willeo Road over Willeo Creek project, will be unable to reopen the bridge to traffic on December 20, 2021 as the county previously expected. The county is pursuing every option to expedite this project, including leveraging fines for the delays. The contractor provided a revised date of March 2022 to reopen the bridge to traffic.”
No reasons for the latest delay were elaborated; previously the contractor cited weather and “unexpected conditions” under the bridge for needing additional time.
As we’ve noted previously, the best detour option if you need to get to that area of Roswell is the same—head east on Roswell Road, then south on Willeo Road.
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Current Cobb Board of Education posts have been in effect since 2012; for a larger view click here.
The Cobb Board of Education is expected to be presented with proposed reapportionment maps at its December work session on Thursday afternoon.
The board is meeting in public at a 2 p.m. work session and a 7 p.m. business session Thursday at the Cobb County School District Central Office (514 Glover St., Marietta).
There will be public comment periods at the start of both meetings, but speakers must sign up in advance by clicking here.
Each public comment session is limited to 30 minutes, and individual speakers have a maximum of two minutes.
The agendas for both meetings can be found here; the work session technically begins at 1 p.m., but members will convene, go into an executive session and return for a public work session at 2 p.m.
Another executive session will take place between the public meetings.
The three board business items listed on the work session agenda are all related to reapportionment but don’t have much detailed information.
In August, the board voted along partisan lines to hire Taylor English Duma LLP, a law firm based in the Cumberland area, to redraw the seven school board districts, or posts, following the release of the 2020 census.
(PLEASE NOTE: These boundaries have no bearing on specific school attendance zones, which are drawn administratively by the Cobb County School District staff.)
Reapportionment for elected political subdivisions is required every 10 years. The Cobb legislative delegation will be redrawing the Cobb and Marietta school boards and Cobb Board of Commissioners districts in January, as well as city council wards in the county’s six cities.
Cobb school board chairman Randy Scamihorn, part of the four-member Republican majority, brought the measure to present the legislative delegation with a map proposal. His board business item for Thursday says only that it will be for “Redistricting/Reapportionment Presentation (for potential action).”
Before that, board member Tre’ Hutchins will present a reapportionment item. He is a first-term Democrat from Post 3 in South Cobb.
Charisse Davis, a Democrat from Post 6, which includes the Walton and Wheeler clusters, also will present a board business item labeled “Redistricting/Reapportionment Update.”
Her seat is one of three school board posts that will be up for the 2022 elections.
She’s completing her first term, and currently her post includes part of the Smyrna-Vinings area, where she lives.
Davis has not indicated if she will be seeking re-election. In October, Amy Henry, a parent in the Walton High School cluster, declared her intent to run for Post 6 as a Republican.
Also up for re-election in 2022 is Post 4 Republican David Chastain (Kell and Sprayberry clusters) who has indicated he will be seeking another term.
The board also will be presented with a request to take out $100 million in short-term loans to finance construction projects.
The money would be repaid at the end of 2022 with collections from the school district’s Special Local Option Sales Tax, and the board wouldn’t adopt a formal resolution until January.
Among the major projects slated to begin construction next year is the rebuild of Eastvalley Elementary School on the former campus of East Cobb Middle School on Holt Road.
At the work session, the board will receive a presentation about the Cobb Teaching and Learning System online portal.
At the Thursday evening meeting, two state champion sports teams from East Cobb high schools—Walton volleyball and Lassiter softball—will be recognized by the board.
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