East Cobb Cityhood Archives

At East Cobb candidates forum, cityhood remains a hot topic

October 20, 2020 4:51 PM by Wendy Parker

Although it’s been nearly a year since East Cobb cityhood proponents put their efforts on hold, candidates seeking local and state office this fall were asked at a forum Tuesday where they stood on the issue.

Among them was the lone co-sponsor of legislation that would have called for a referendum to let voters decide the matter.

State Rep. Matt Dollar reminded an audience at an East Cobb Business Association luncheon that “there was no bill to create a city.”

He was responding to questions from ECBA members, who included people attending in person and others via Zoom.

An East Cobb Republican who’s represented District 45 since 2003, Dollar said his bill—filed near the end of the 2019 legislative session and the day after cityhood proponents first faced the public—was “the start of a two-year process, and it was worthwhile to start a conversation.”

Dollar insisted that he was “not pushing cityhood,” and while at first he supported the idea of a City of East Cobb, he said the supporters of the effort “didn’t do a good job of explaining why it would be beneficial.”

The cityhood group held two other town hall meetings and the ECBA also held a debate, but no other legislators signed on as a co-sponsor, citing negative feedback from constituents.

In Georgia, cityhood bills must have a co-sponsor in the House and the Senate. State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, also an East Cobb Republican, said that “proponents of the bill need to make their case.” She never signed on to the bill and said if there was enough public support she would back a citizens’ committee to further examine the issue but “at this point it’s a moot point.”

In early December 2019 the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb announced it would not pursue the bill, which also included a proposed city charter and outlined maps, a city court structure and mayor and council terms, with elections as early as 2021.

The cityhood group spent tens of thousands of dollars on lobbyists, including a leading a prominent government relations firm in Georgia late last year.

Sarah Tyndall Ghazal — *Sarah Tindall Ghazal, who’s running against Dollar, said his East Cobb cityhood bill “put the cart before the horse.”*

State Rep. Sharon Cooper, a Republican from District 43, also didn’t co-sponsor the bill, although she asked for the required financial feasibility study that was completed in December 18 by Georgia State University researchers.

“I didn’t think there was much support,” said Cooper, who attended some of the early town halls in 2019. She said East Cobb citizens are “fat and sassy,” content with the level and quality of public services they receive, and as far as she is concerned, cityhood “now is a dead issue.”

Their Democratic opponents also stated during the forum that they strongly opposed cityhood. Christine Triebsch, an attorney who is challenging Kirkpatrick in the State Senate race, said the cityhood effort “was a colossal waste of time and energy.”

She said she was upset that as a constituent of Dollar’s she never heard anything from him about the legislation or the cityhood effort.

Sarah Tindall Ghazal, Dollar’s opponent on the Nov. 3 ballot, echoed other candidates saying a new city would create an extra layer of government and that Dollar’s bill “put the cart before the horse.”

Luisa Wakeman, who’s running against Cooper for the second election in a row, said “there’s just no support” for East Cobb cityhood.

At the ECBA forum, the two candidates for District 2 on the Cobb Board of Commissioners also said they opposed East Cobb cityhood.

Republican Fitz Johnson said he has been adamantly opposed to cityhood all along, but noted that it’s the legislature, not county elected officials, who would put a referendum before the public.

Democrat Jerica Richardson said she’s read the financial feasibility study and concluded there’s “no sustainable economic base” for a city that would be heavily residential and questioned the report’s assumptions.

“The community was not behind it,” she said.

The proposed city map was to have included all of District 2 east of Interstate 75, excluding the Cumberland Community Improvement District, and a population of nearly 100,000.

Cityhood leaders said later in 2019 that they were seeking to expand the map, based on what they were hearing from those outside the proposed city limits who wanted in.

But the East Cobb Alliance, a group opposed to cityhood, offered up a best-guess estimate in December, and a majority of county commissioners and the Cobb legislators expressed doubts about the cityhood issue.

A few days later, the cityhood effort was abandoned. David Birdwell, one of the chief spokesmen for Committee for the Cityhood in East Cobb, said at that time that “we wanted to take the time to do it right.”

The group hasn’t made any public statements since then, and its website domain has expired. An interactive map it commissioned showing the initial boundaries that bored down to the neighborhood level remains active.

Related coverage

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!

East Cobb News Cityhood Coverage

By then, other local elected officials, including those serving on the Cobb Board of Commissioners and legislators, said they hadn’t been kept up to date by cityhood leaders, including seeing a revised map of the proposed city.

It was only after the cityhood legislative effort was delayed to 2021 that the cityhood group acknowledged that only an outline of a new map had been produced, and not any revised details.

In explaining the decision to hold off on legislation in the new year, cityhood leader David Birdwell said that “we want to take the time to do this right” and that better efforts to communicate and engage with the community are needed.

“We live in a special place and we’re all passionate about doing the right things for our neighborhoods. Many members of this committee—and all of the members of the Independent Finance Group—started out as skeptics of cityhood. For all of us, an objective look at the facts led to only one conclusion: Cityhood would result in an overwhelming net positive for the people of East Cobb.”

The anti-cityhood East Cobb Alliance said it will continue to maintain opposition and considers the legislation sponsored by State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb active when the General Assembly session begins in January.

After debating Birdwell at the ECBA event, Alliance leader Mindy Seger acknowledged that “there’s kind of been a political awakening” in East Cobb over the cityhood issue.

“It’s gotten people engaged,” Seger said, “and that’s a good thing.”

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!

EDITOR’S NOTE: East Cobb cityhood an idea worth considering

January 1, 2022 1:02 PMDecember 21, 2019 2:55 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb Cityhood idea — *East Cobb Cityhood leader David Birdwell met a skeptical and at times hostile crowd at the group’s first public appearance in March. (ECN file photos)*

The leaders of the East Cobb cityhood effort did the right thing this week by calling off their push for legislation and a referendum in 2020.

They were running out of time to get too many things done—including finalizing a map and a proposed list of services—and had stoked even more opposition, suspicion and confusion for months this spring and summer when they barely connected with the public at all.

County elected officials, including legislators, hadn’t been told what was going on.

State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, East Cobb city map — *State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick said she got a lot of negative feedback about East Cobb cityhood.*

After its first town hall meeting in March, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb had its work cut out, as citizens packed a church parish hall and demanded to know who, what and especially why this was being proposed.

A month later the cityhood group had a town hall meeting at Walton High School. Like that and future events it held, citizens could ask questions only by writing them down on a note card for a moderator to read. Or not.

This is no way to have a meaningful dialogue with the public about a dramatic change in their local government, in an initiative that would ultimately be decided by citizens.

Neither is having a cityhood bill filed in the legislature the day after that first town hall meeting, and on the next-to-last day of the General Assembly session.

At the time, I thought it smacked of another bad-faith effort on the part of the cityhood group, which paid for a financial feasibility study issued last November, but whose members remained anonymous and unwilling to meet with the public.

At one point on its website, the cityhood group explained that it wasn’t identifying its donors or others involved for fear of harassment from their “enemies” and the media.

By dodging such basic questions, and setting up a non-profit 501(c)4 “social welfare” organization to conceal donors, original cityhood leaders likely created more opponents than they ever conjured up in their paranoid imaginations.

Too big to succeed?

As someone who grew up in East Cobb, I’ve seen my community become suburbanized, and now more densely developed in some areas.

This is happening all over the county, which has more than 750,000 people and is projected to have a population of one million by 2050.

Before the cityhood issue was raised, I had been wondering if Cobb County government could continue to operate as it has.

There are serious concerns about public safety staffing, the county’s growing pension obligations and addressing transportation and development concerns.

Is Cobb too big to govern the way it is, with a countywide chairman and four district commissioners serving nearly 200,000 people each? And representing communities that are distinct from one another?

East Cobb cityhood — *Tre Hutchins and Galt Porter of the South Cobb Alliance, a pro-cityhood group in Mableton.*

There are times when commissioners are squabbling during their meetings that I wonder if they can even agree on what to have for lunch.

I’ve thought a citizen-led, grassroots cityhood movement in East Cobb could gain some traction, especially around zoning, development and land use issues.

I could see a City of East Cobb providing those and other community development services, including code enforcement.

I’ve never understood why the cityhood effort centered upon providing expensive police and fire services to supplant excellent, if not fully-staffed county departments? We have the lowest crime and fire rates in Cobb County.

Why not provide something better than what exists now, in say, sanitation, where the increasingly monopolized American Disposal private hauler is the subject of many complaints?

A financial review group studying the East Cobb feasibility study recommended that option, at least to start.

A “city light” form of government could serve East Cobb much better than one worrying about how to pay for new fire trucks and police cars and trained professionals to staff them.

Transparency matters

The “pause and reset” phase for cityhood, to borrow Eble’s phrase to me, is a good time to rethink those matters, as well as to be fully forthcoming with the public before gearing up for 2021.

At the outset, the cityhood group should lay out all of its finances, including how much money has been spent, and who’s been footing the bills.

Identify everybody who’s given money to the cause, and been involved in the effort in a significant way. Everybody.

This isn’t a private business deal, but an entirely public matter that could affect the lives of more than 100,000 people.

Follow the lead of the Mableton cityhood effort, which conducted extensive town halls over a couple of years to really hear what the public thinks, without note card questions and a “here’s what we want to do” mentality.

Like Mableton, have a city map fully detailed, including city council districts that were indicated in the East Cobb bill but never visualized, and provide an online survey.

Better communications include regular use of social media. The East Cobb cityhood group barely updated those platforms and its website, which is absurd heading into the third decade of the 21st century.

Cityhood leaders should have regular discussions with legislators and other local elected officials, since without their support a referendum will likely never happen.

The East Cobb cityhood group certainly has serious intentions. It had the money to buy access and line up the mechanics of getting a bill passed in the legislature.

What it didn’t have was a concept of what it really takes to gather public support, and its efforts to explain its reasons for cityhood were belated and underwhelming.

Something as substantive as creating a new local government shouldn’t be accepted as easily as cityhood leaders may have thought. Nor should it be categorically rejected as the anti-city East Cobb Alliance has maintained.

For those of us who have an open mind about the issue, we’re still receptive to hearing a better case being made.

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

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!

East Cobb cityhood effort delayed: ‘We want to take the time to do it right’

December 19, 2019 3:07 PMDecember 19, 2019 12:37 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb cityhood group — *East Cobb cityhood has been greeted with skepticism since the group’s first public appearance in March. (ECN file photo)*

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb announced Thursday it will not be pursuing legislation next year that would call for a referendum later in 2020.

A bill introduced this year by State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb was to have been considered in the upcoming legislative session.

But after two public events last month, including the announcement of an expanded proposed city map, the cityhood group said it’s opting to go through another two-year legislative cycle.

“We are committed to continuing this process,” cityhood CEO David Birdwell said in a statement. “We want to take the time to do it right because we know that the more educated voters are on this issue, the more they will support it.”

East Cobb News has left messages with Birdwell and Dollar seeking comment.

Rob Eble, another cityhood leader, told East Cobb News the group “got a lot of feedback,” and “people feel like the process was rushed. That was the biggest complaint.

“We really took that to heart. The last thing we want is for this to be divisive and this was becoming divisive.”

Eble said the cityhood group wants to make a renewed effort to engage more with the public.

He acknowledged that while there are those who oppose cityhood, others said they weren’t sure what they thought but felt they didn’t have enough information and felt the process was being rushed.

East Cobb cityhood opponents unveil estimate of revised map

December 17, 2019 6:58 PMDecember 17, 2019 5:12 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb Alliance city map

East Cobb cityhood leaders still haven’t made public details of a revised map of the proposed city, more than a month after announcing new boundaries at a town hall meeting.

A group opposed to cityhood isn’t waiting around. On Monday, it released what it calls a “best-estimate” of what it thinks the new proposed map will look like.

The East Cobb Alliance said its version of the map was done with donated efforts from South Avenue Consulting, a Smyrna-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) firm. The map, according to the Alliance, is 95 percent accurate.

The map was done, the group said, without exact GIS coordinates from the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb and was drawn from the image cityhood leader David Birdwell displayed at a Nov. 11 town hall meeting at Wheeler High School.

At their first town hall meeting in April, cityhood leaders said they would be revising the map, most likely to include the Pope and Lassiter attendance zones.

David Birdwell, new East Cobb map — *Cityhood leader David Birdwell points to a revised map at a November town hall meeting, but that’s all the public has seen of the proposed new boundaries. (ECN file)*

Birdwell indicated at the Wheeler meeting the new boundaries would indeed include most of the Pope and Lassiter areas.

He didn’t offer precise details, saying he had first seen the new map only that day. He wasn’t sure if a financial feasibility study done for the cityhood group based on the original map would have to be revised or redone.

East Cobb News has left messages for Birdwell seeking comment.

He did not respond to a message earlier this month when East Cobb News contacted State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb, the cityhood bill sponsor. He wasn’t at the Wheeler town hall and said he had not seen the map shown at that meeting.

Dollar did say that the map is undergoing revisions and probably will be after the Georgia legislature convenes in January.

His bill must pass the full legislature in order for a cityhood referendum to be held next year. Lawmakers also would approve the final map and proposed city charter.

Dollar: Proposed East Cobb city map revisions still in progress

December 5, 2019 5:36 PMDecember 5, 2019 4:20 PM by Wendy Parker

The sponsor of the East Cobb cityhood bill says changes to the proposed city map are still ongoing, and he doesn’t think anything will be finalized until the Georgia legislature returns in January.

State Rep. Matt Dollar (R-East Cobb) said he hasn’t seen a proposed revision of the map that was presented at a town hall meeting on Nov. 11 by the group pushing for cityhood.

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb wants the map to include the areas around Pope and Lassiter high schools. The initial map included most of unincorporated East Cobb in Cobb Commission District 2.

The new map would venture into Commission District 3, represented by JoAnn Birrell, who’s come out against cityhood.

During the town hall meeting at Wheeler High School, David Birdwell of the cityhood committee flashed a revised map for the audience, which he said he received only that day.

A more detailed map, he said at the time, would not be immediately available from the state apportionment office.

Nearly a month later, there still isn’t a revised map proposal for the public to view. The cityhood committee’s website includes an interactive map for citizens to see whether or not they live in the proposed city, but it’s the original map.

East Cobb city interactive map — *The East Cobb cityhood group’s website still has the original proposed map; **click here** for details.*

When contacted by East Cobb News, Dollar said he was out of town and unable to attend that meeting and “I’m not sure what they were showing.”

“We’re still taking feedback,” Dollar said about the process for drawing a revised map. “We’ll have a better idea what the map will look like once the legislative session begins.

“We’re all working together to see what the map’s going to look like.”

Dollar filed HB 718 (you can read it here) on the next-to-last day of the 2019 legislature and the day after the cityhood group’s first public meeting.

Under state law, cityhood bills have to go through a two-year process. The full legislature must pass the bill in the 2020 session before a referendum would go to voters—most likely in November—living in the proposed City of East Cobb.

The original city map would have a population of nearly 90,000, and if it expands as Birdwell has suggested, it would top more than 110,000.

That would make a City of East Cobb the second-largest municipality in the metro Atlanta area. But a more accurate estimate, along with detailed boundaries of the proposed new map, remain unclear.

East Cobb News has left a message with Birdwell seeking comment.

State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick (R-East Cobb) told East Cobb News earlier this week she hasn’t seen a new map. Cityhood bills must have a local Senate sponsor, but she hasn’t taken a position and may be doing some polling.

Dollar said reaction from his constituents in East Cobb’s District 45 has been mixed. He acknowledges there’s opposition, including the group East Cobb Alliance, but said he’s gotten “a lot of e-mails from people who do like” the cityhood proposal.

He said the objective is to have a formalized map for the proposed City of East Cobb by the time the bill would be considered by the House Governmental Affairs Committee, the first step in the legislative process.

He said he doesn’t anticipate, at least for now, any other significant changes to the rest of the cityhood bill and proposed City of East Cobb charter.

Ultimately, the legislature would draw up a final city map and make other changes if it passes the cityhood bill.

“We’ll have a lot more clarity soon,” Dollar said about the map. “Right now, it’s just not there.”

Former East Cobb cityhood review member explains resignation

November 26, 2019 2:34 PMNovember 26, 2019 1:25 PM by Wendy Parker

A member of a five-man review panel that evaluated the East Cobb cityhood financial feasibility study said he resigned right before the group’s final report was issued in September due to a “math problem,” not ideological differences. Shailesh Bettadapur, East Cobb cityhood review group

Shailesh Bettadapur, an East Cobb resident and vice president for Mohawk Industries, disputed claims by Bill Green, another member of what was called the Independent Financial Group, that he had ideological reasons for stepping down.

Bettadapur’s wife Jackie is the chairwoman of the Cobb County Democratic Party.

Bettadapur told East Cobb News he resigned because he didn’t agree with the other four members of the review group on the financial conclusions in the report. He also alleged that the IFG wasn’t independent because Green “was attempting to reach a specific pro-cityhood conclusion.”

Bettadapur said he wasn’t interested in going public with his concerns until Green, speaking at a cityhood town hall meeting on Nov. 11, attributed the resignation of an unnamed fifth member to that person’s relationship with “a county party official,” who also was not identified.

“As that fifth member, I can say without hesitation that Mr. Green’s assertion is false,” said Bettadapur, who wasn’t at the town hall meeting at Wheeler High School but who said he watched a video replay of the event.

He’s also expressed his concerns to Cobb commissioners and members of the county’s legislative delegation.

Four IFG members concluded that a proposed City of East Cobb is financially feasible without tax increases, but recommended that a new municipality start without a police force until inter-governmental agreements would be hashed out.

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, which spent $36,000 on the feasibility study conducted last year by Georgia State University researchers, is proposing community development, police and fire services.

Math or ideology?

When contacted by East Cobb News, Green said he stands by his belief that Bettadapur had ideological—but not necessarily partisan—reasons for leaving the group.

“It’s because he didn’t do any of the math,” said Green, a retired financial executive with a cloud computing company.

“He never contributed a darn thing to the group’s efforts. He just didn’t do squiddly-diddly. He was there to obstruct.”

Green said Bettadapur may claim he’s impartial on cityhood, but says he observed a clear Democratic presence at a town hall meeting in March at the Catholic Church of St. Ann, with some wearing purple shirts bearing the name of Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

Green said he thinks Democrats eventually “are going to be opposed, but if you split the Republicans you don’t get cityhood.”

As for the IFG’s partisan affiliations, Green said he identifies as Libertarian-Republican, while the other three are Democrats, and two of them are mostly independent: “Our team is not ideological.”

Bettadapur acknowledged his wife’s political activities, “which is something that the Cityhood committee would have known at the time I joined. It obviously did not matter then, but became the scapegoat when I resigned.”

He said the Cobb Democratic Party is not taking a position on East Cobb cityhood and that he still doesn’t have an opinion.

Bettadapur said he doesn’t see how the cityhood group’s claims of providing better services for the same or lower tax millage rates can be accomplished.

He said when he joined the IFG, he told cityhood leaders David Birdwell and Rob Eble that he was neutral on cityhood.

Arguing over numbers

“I viewed, and still view, this primarily as a math problem,” Bettadapur said. “I started with the thesis that you could not add a layer of government and administration and obtain the same or increased quality of services without also raising taxes and fees. Yet, I was open to being persuaded otherwise. Nothing I’ve seen so far has done that.”

Bettadapur said each of Cobb’s existing six cities have higher millage rates than the unincorporated county, so “why would East Cobb be different?”

The IFG stated in its report that Cobb County government is committing double taxation with what it’s charging cities for providing county services. “The notion that a City of East Cobb could negotiate a transfer higher than the other six cities is, in my view, not credible,” Bettadapur said.

*Bill Green of the Independent Financial Group, at right, with East Cobb cityhood leaders at a Wheeler HS town hall. (ECN file)*

In particular, he thinks the IFG’s claim that a city of East Cobb would be able to get $11 million from the county for police services in the inter-government agreement (instead of a $2.5 million estimate in the feasibility study) is unrealistic.

He also questioned cost estimates for new city to purchase firehouses (at around $5K each) and suggested that the county would likely include older equipment in those purchases.

And he disputed Green’s claim at the Wheeler town hall that “there’s a tax cut to be had” should a new city of East Cobb be formed.

“It’s just nonsense,” Bettadapur said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Green defended the IFG’s calculations, “saying the numbers look good,” and took issue with financial claims made by cityhood opponents, including the East Cobb Alliance. “Any numbers we can come up with, we can blow them out of the water.”

He said he wishes Bettadapur well and admitted “he’s a smart guy” whose primary value to the review group was offering a differing point of view to avoid groupthink.

While Green countered that if Bettadapur “ever does the math, let me know,” Bettadapur said that he remains “sympathetic to the idea of local control. But local control doesn’t mean it’s going to be cheaper.”

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!

EDITOR’S NOTE: East Cobb cityhood, a golden goose and boiling frogs

January 1, 2022 1:02 PMNovember 16, 2019 2:42 PM by Wendy Parker

In trying to lay out a case for why a City of East Cobb might be a better value for citizens’ tax money than Cobb County government, those behind a cityhood movement used some animal analogies this week.

They described East Cobb as a “golden goose,” with its middle class and wealthy homeowners comprising a hefty portion of the county’s tax base, and not receiving the public services, especially police and fire protection, to justify their property tax bills.

East Cobb citizens, they argued, may feel like a frog in slowly boiling water, unaware of how much worse the heat can get if they don’t figure out a way to jump out.

“How are we being boiled?” shouted a woman from the back of the auditorium at Wheeler High School, angry not at the message she was hearing, but the messengers.

Like many of the more than 100 or so people in attendance at a town hall meeting Monday night, she was more than skeptical of the cityhood narrative that East Cobb would be better off as a new city, with more responsive local government delivered without a tax increase.

It’s a message that the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb has been trying to make for several months, and that was renewed again this week.

“I was one of the frogs,” said Bill Green, who described himself as a cityhood skeptic, then became part of what was called the Independent Financial Group that concluded that a City of East Cobb is fiscally viable.

Before attending the cityhood’s first town hall meeting in March, he said, “I didn’t know what was going on.”

His comments to many of those in the Wheeler auditorium were unconvincing.

Cityhood leaders were heckled repeatedly by citizens unhappy about what they said is a lack of information, or a lack of transparency, or some of both.

Most of all, they remain deeply skeptical that the cityhood group that formed a little more than a year ago has given them any good reason to support a dramatic change in how their local government operates.

“I think it’s a solution in search of a problem,” said John Morgan, who lives in the nearby Willow Ridge subdivision.

He said he moved to East Cobb from DeKalb County more than 30 years ago, is satisfied with the Cobb County services he gets and doesn’t understand calls for what he said would be “another layer of bureaucracy.” Furthermore, slicing off an affluent part of Cobb would be “devastating” for the county and its AAA bond rating.

“And for what? We have a great life here. Why this?”

Falling on deaf ears

It’s a refrain that’s been heard repeatedly, and increasingly with more vigor, in recent weeks. A newly formed citizens group opposing cityhood, the East Cobb Alliance, was part of a debate with cityhood leader David Birdwell on Tuesday at a luncheon meeting of the East Cobb Business Association.

Mindy Seger, an accountant, went toe-to-toe with Birdwell on several fronts, taking issue with a financial feasibility study, claims of better police and fire services, and individuals on the cityhood committee with real estate ties.

When Birdwell said only three of the 14 cityhood leaders had real estate estate backgrounds, including himself, she asked, “can we get that list?” (It was released on Friday, on the cityhood’s revamped website, and contained several changes from the initial group members announced in March).

When asked to identify those who’ve been funding cityhood expenses, Birdwell would say only that a “large group” of East Cobb residents have been making donations.

In several ways, Seger is the ideal representative for those dead-set against cityhood. She was well-prepared and kept to factual concerns opponents have had in what has been an emotionally fraught issue.

East Cobb city forum — *Mindy Seger of the anti-city East Cobb Alliance debates David Birdwell of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb. (ECN file)*

Like others who’ve come together to fight cityhood, she’s new to this kind of activism. She said after the debate that “there’s kind of been a political awakening” in East Cobb over the issue.

“It’s gotten people engaged,” Seger said, “and that’s a good thing.”

The citizens the cityhood group needs to win over are people like Joe O’Connor, a longtime East Cobb resident who liked the idea of cityhood after Cobb property tax rates went up in 2018.

When the financial feasibility study was released, O’Connor, who worked on East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s first campaign for office in 2008, was among those asked by the cityhood group to offer his thoughts.

When O’Connor asked who funded the study, he said he was told it was none of his business, and he promptly resigned.

Now, O’Connor couldn’t be more opposed to cityhood. At the ECBA luncheon, he said he received a call a couple weeks ago from a pollster asking questions about cityhood that he thought were designed to produce a “yes” vote. He said he told the caller his vote would be no, and in no uncertain terms.

“It’s obvious they’re not going to tell who’s behind this financially,” O’Connor said. “I never invest in a company when I don’t know who’s running it.”

At the Wheeler town hall meeting, resident Patty Hawkins said she’s got an open mind about cityhood, but wanted to get more information about the proposed city boundary line changes (they now include the Pope and Lassiter school clusters).

“I think it’s something to consider,” said Hawkins, who said “I think I’d vote for it,” but there’s still more she wants to learn about the issue.

For the moment, the cityhood opinion that matters the most may belong to State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb. The cityhood bill introduced last session by State Rep. Matt Dollar still needs a local senate sponsor if it’s to pass the legislature and establish a referendum next year.

Kirkpatrick told the crowd at Wheeler she’s getting mostly negative feedback about cityhood, but is keeping an open mind and welcoming feedback from constituents. She’s planning to do some of her own polling on cityhood before the end of the year, which could decide whether the bill will be taken up at all when the legislature returns in January.

After nearly a year since the cityhood effort was revealed, the lack of a genuine public groundswell remains the single biggest challenge for those proposing a City of East Cobb.

While a key lawmaker feels the boiling heat, and as the community watches to see which way she’ll jump, those who think their “golden goose” is being cooked with a cityhood effort are as loud and organized as they’ve ever been, and couldn’t be more distrustful.

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!

East Cobb cityhood committee releases names of group members

November 15, 2019 4:33 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb Cityhood town hall — *East Cobb Cityhood leaders David Birdwell, Karen Hallacy and Rob Eble at a Walton High School town hall meeting in April. (ECN file photo)*

The list of names of those belonging to the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb is a bit different than what the organization originally released earlier this year.

After cityhood leaders were asked at two different cityhood-related events earlier this week to identify all the indivdiuals involved, the following is the group of names included on the committee’s website:

David Birdwell, retired logistics real estate executive
Owen Brown, owner and president of retail real estate company
Rob Eble, technology consultant
Joe Gavalis, retired federal agent
Dee Gay, insurance consultant
Karan Hallacy, Georgia PTA president, Development Authority of Cobb County member
Lisa Hanson, former sales and marketing executive
Nick Johnson, healthcare technology
Chris Mayer, SR VP sales & marketing Flexible Packaging
Chip Patterson, partner, hospitality business
Jerry Quan, retired Cobb County Police Precinct 4 commander, current school resource officer
Carolyn Roddy, attorney
David Womack, technology outsourcing deployment
John Woods, financial consulting

With the exception of Johnson, Mayer and Womack, all of the above were included on the orginal cityhood committee list when it was released in March, or joined soon after.

Original committee members Sharon McGehee, an associate director of advancement at Mt. Bethel Christian Academy and Kevin Taitz, a technology consultant, are no longer listed.

The original list had been on the cityhood website until recently, when the some of the site content was changed.

Birdwell, who led a cityhood town hall meeting Monday and was in a debate with the anti-cityhood East Cobb Alliance on Tuesday, also was asked to identify who is funding the cityhood’s feasibility study and lobbyists.

He wouldn’t name names except to say that “a large group” of East Cobb residents have made donations.

Birdwell also was asked if a revised map of the proposed City of East Cobb boundaries, unveiled at the town hall meeting, would be posted soon.

He said it would be, but the cityhood group had just received it from the state apportionment office and a link wasn’t immediately available.

Birrell on proposed East Cobb city: ‘I don’t support it’

November 12, 2019 9:16 PMNovember 12, 2019 6:04 PM by Wendy Parker

After learning that the proposed City of East Cobb map would include areas she represents, Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell gave an emphatic answer Tuesday about what she thinks about it.

“I don’t support it,” Birrell said after pro- and anti- cityhood representatives debated before the East Cobb Business Association.

‘I don’t see how you’re going to provide better services for the same taxes you’re paying now.”

That’s what anti-cityhood advocates have been saying after the group leading the cityhood push has claimed a new municipality can deliver better services at the same tax rate East Cobb residents are paying now to the county.

For the first time, opposing forces in the cityhood issue faced one another in a forum format that included opening and closing statements and questions from the audience.

Among the crowd of nearly 200 at the Olde Towne Athletic Club was Birrell, whose District 3 includes some of east and northeast Cobb. The original proposed city boundaries included only parts of District 2, represented by commissioner Bob Ott.

But at a town hall meeting Monday, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb announced that the map had expanded to include the Pope and Lassiter school attendance zones.

Birrell said she has not heard anything from the cityhood group about revising the map, and that the only information she learned came from visiting the cityhood committee’s website.

“They’re encroaching in my district,” she said. “So now I’m being outspoken.”

Ott, whose town hall meeting in March was the first public event for the cityhood committee, has not taken a position on the issue.

There’s been speculation he would be interested in running for mayor of East Cobb if a city is created, but he hasn’t responded to that, nor has he indicated if he will be running for re-election or another office in 2020.

More coverage

Visit the East Cobb News cityhood resource page

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!

Expanded East Cobb city map includes Pope, Lassiter districts

November 11, 2019 10:52 PMNovember 11, 2019 10:07 PM by Wendy Parker

Expanded East Cobb city map, David Birdwell — *East Cobb Cityhood committee leader David Birdwell unveils a revised map of the proposed city at a town hall meeting Monday. (ECN photos by Wendy Parker)*

Many of the familiar talking points about East Cobb cityhood were made Monday night at a town hall meeting at Wheeler High School.

So were many of the objections to a City of East Cobb that also have been heard for many months.

What was new at the meeting organized by the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb was the proposed map for a City of East Cobb that would be larger than the original, and would include the Pope and Lassiter high school attendance zones.

Cityhood committee members said they just got the map earlier Monday from the state legislative office that draws up such boundaries.

The revision comes several months after a lobbying effort that also included citizens from the Sprayberry High School community, which for now is being left out.

“It could be added now or through annexation,” cityhood leader David Birdwell said.

The original map included most of unincorporated Cobb in Cobb commission District 2 east of I-75. That covered the Walton and most of the Wheeler attendance zones, but only a sliver of the Pope and Lassiter areas and had a population of nearly 90,000 people.

The new population figure wasn’t immediately available, but it could boost a potential City of East Cobb to the second-largest city in metro Atlanta.

‘Wait and see’

The map is part of legislation sponsored at the end of the 2019 session by State Rep. Matt Dollar (R-East Cobb), and that must pass in 2020 for a referendum to be called next fall.

(Read the bill here.)

Among the more than 100 people in attendance at the Wheeler auditorium was State. Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Republican of East Cobb who is a critical player in the process.

State law requires cityhood bills to have local sponsors in each chamber of the legislature. Kirkpatrick and State Rep. Sharon Cooper, who also was in attendance Monday, have said they have not formed an opinion on East Cobb cityhood.

East Cobb cityhood legislation — *The original proposed East Cobb city map.*

Kirkpatrick told East Cobb News she’s been getting plenty of anti-cityhood sentiment from constituents, and that she wants to give the pro-cityhood forces a chance to “make their case.”

Her perspective, she said for now, remains “wait and see.” During the town hall, she said she would do some polling near the end of the year and said she continues to welcome feedback from citizens, no matter how they feel about the issue.

The cityhood committee also has retained two high-profile lobbyists for the 2020 legislative session.

When a citizen asked Kirkpatrick about Dollar’s whereabouts, she said he had been out of the country and would be returning Tuesday.

The crowd occasionally grew boisterous during a question-and-answer period. Questions were to have been written on note cards, but some shouted out questions or made statements, often in opposition to cityhood.

New EC City Map — The revised map would include the northeastern corner of East Cobb.

Others were concerned about how East Cobb cityhood would affect public schools. When Birdwell repeatedly said there would be no effect on schools—including the Cobb senior tax exemption—some citizens still interrupted.

By Georgia law, new cities cannot create school districts. School districts remain in such cities like Marietta, which have had them for many years.

We’ll have more from Monday’s meeting and other cityhood news after a forum on Tuesday between Birdwell and Bill Simon of the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood.

That forum will take place at a luncheon of the East Cobb Business Association.

And as soon as we get a better map of the revised City of East Cobb proposed boundaries, we’ll post that here too. Birdwell said it may take time for the state legislative office to make that available to the public.

Related coverage

Visit the East Cobb News Cityhood page

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!

East Cobb cityhood group hires two high-profile lobbyists

November 7, 2019 8:06 PMNovember 7, 2019 5:02 PM by Wendy Parker

Don Bolia, East Cobb cityhood lobbyist — *Don Bolia*

The group pressing for cityhood in East Cobb has hired two of the best-known lobbyists in state government, and both have deep connections in Georgia Republican politics.

According to filings with the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb retained Don Bolia and Laura Norton on Oct. 29.

They are being paid more than $10,000 each to lobby on behalf of the East Cobb cityhood committee, according to the filings.

Bolia and Norton are the principal and senior associate, respectively, of Peachtree Government Relations, an Atlanta firm specializing in executive and legislative branch lobbying in Georgia.

Bolia, Norton and the firm have been named among the most influential in the state by JAMES, a magazine published by Phil Kent, CEO of the political consulting firm Insider Advantage and who previously served as a public relations representative for the cityhood group.

Laura Norton, East Cobb cityood lobbyist — *Laura Norton*

The East Cobb cityhood committee is holding a town hall meeting Monday at Wheeler High School and is taking part in a debate Tuesday sponsored by the East Cobb Business Association.

That forum also will include a representative of the East Cobb Alliance, a citizens group that opposes cityhood.

Legislation sponsored by State Rep. Matt Dollar (R-East Cobb) calling for an East Cobb cityhood referendum and proposed city charter is slated to be taken up next year in the Georgia General Assembly.

That bill, introduced on the next-to-last day of the 2019 session, calls for a city of nearly 100,000 people to be created out of unincorporated East Cobb in Cobb commission District 2.

Bolia was an aide to former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and served as political director and executive director of the Georgia Republican Party. He also was chief of staff to the Fulton County Commission.

Norton was a fundraiser for former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (now the U.S. Agriculture Secretary) and the Georgia Republican Party. Her husband is Smyrna City Council member Derek Norton, who is in a Dec. 3 runoff to succeed long-serving mayor Max Bacon.

The East Cobb cityhood group hired three lobbyists before the 2019 legislative session: John and Cynthia Garst, who have extensive experience with cityhood issues, and Jared Thomas, a partner in the Garst Thomas Public Affairs firm of Atlanta.

Thomas is another veteran Georgia GOP operative and was chief of staff and press secretary to current Gov. Brian Kemp when he was Georgia Secretary of State. Thomas also ran former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed’s unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2006.

Although any city of East Cobb government would have non-partisan elections, the cityhood issue has sparked some partisan fire. In February, Kent, a conservative pundit, wrote on his Facebook page that “it will be a sad day when tax-and-spend Democrats take over the Cobb County Commission. East Cobbers need to protect themselves and their neighborhoods.”

Those comments, reported in various media outlets, came as cityhood leaders were planning for their first town hall meeting, and right before Dollar filed the East Cobb bill.

Cityhood leaders distanced themselves from Kent’s remarks, and since then, the cityhood effort has been publicly led by David Birdwell and Rob Eble, who came on board earlier this year.

According to files with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, Birdwell is listed as the CEO and Eble is the secretary of the East Cobb cityhood committee. The chief financial officer is Chip Patterson, who had been identified as a member of the committee earlier this year.

Patterson is a partner in an Atlanta real estate development firm who lives in the Atlanta Country Club area and is a former president of the Walton Touchdown Club.

The names of other members are no longer listed on the cityhood committee’s website, which has a different domain address than the original.

The East Cobb cityhood bill must pass both houses of the Georgia legislature in order for a referendum to be called.

Related coverage

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!

UPDATE: East Cobb cityhood opponents cancel secret meeting

November 6, 2019 12:29 PMNovember 5, 2019 11:58 AM by Wendy Parker

UPDATED, 8:37 P.M.:

Bill Simon of the East Cobb Alliance contacted East Cobb News to report that the meeting on Thursday has been cancelled.

ORIGINAL STORY:

The anti-cityhood group East Cobb Alliance, which has been critical of pro-cityhood efforts conducted in secret, is meeting on Thursday to prepare for cityhood-related events next week.

But the Alliance meeting at a public facility is not open to the public. The meeting is scheduled from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the East Cobb Government Service Center (4400 Lower Roswell Road).

The purpose of the meeting is to help formulate questions and responses before two cityhood-related events next week.

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb is holding a town hall on Monday at Wheeler High School, and next Tuesday, the cityhood group and the East Cobb Alliance will appear at a forum organized by the East Cobb Business Association.

The e-mail urged recipients not to post the meeting notice on Nextdoor or to forward the message, because “we do not want the press or the media or the pro-cityhood people to see what we’re up to. Nothing nefarious, mind you, but we’re trying to serve our members of ECA to help with planning and execution of our team strategy with as little interference as possible.”

When East Cobb News asked Bill Simon, a leader of the East Cobb Alliance, why the meeting isn’t open to the public, he said that it’s “because it’s a private meeting, paid for by private funds.”

(The cost to reserve the meeting room at the East Cobb Government Service Center is $25, the standard fee for any group wishing to meet there. The room has a capacity of 85 people.)

The East Cobb Alliance, which was formed this summer, has been critical of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb for what it calls a lack of transparency. The proposed City of East Cobb, according to the Alliance, “is a concept secretly planned by a small group of people for nearly a year before there was public notice of it. Since this group is being rather secretive about several things regarding the PCEC (including their professional backgrounds & why they might be involved), ECA has a page dedicated to exposing (via public records) who is who, and what does who do.”

(East Cobb News last year published stories along similar lines, including the resignation of a citizen from a cityhood ad hoc committee because he was told “it’s none of anyone’s business” who’s all behind the cityhood effort.

While some private, closed groups on Facebook do appear in search results, Residents Against East Cobb City Task Force is completely hidden.

In the e-mail, the message stated that “if you are on Facebook, there is a Closed FB Group that, upon you answering the two entry questions, you will be allowed to join: Residents Against East Cobb City Task Force Group. If the questions are ignored, you cannot gain entry.”

The East Cobb Alliance does have a public Facebook page that updates with links and financial analysis of proposed city services but does not include information about the group’s innerworkings.

In a followup response to an East Cobb News request to attend the meeting, Simon said he would “politely decline your request. . . . There is a stated maximum room limit of the number of people who can attend, thus the reason why it is specifically NOT a public meeting accessible to the public, regardless of the subject matter we are discussing. . .

“Also, if you feel you have some First Amendment right on your side to crash this event, and you appear there on Thursday, just be aware of the potential consequences to your reputation if you are proven wrong.”

Related coverage

Visit the East Cobb News Cityhood page

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

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!

East Cobb Business Association cityhood forum limited to 250

November 4, 2019 4:40 PMNovember 4, 2019 8:31 AM by Wendy Parker

Some more details on next Tuesday’s East Cobb Business Association forum on the subject of East Cobb cityhood that we first noted a couple weeks ago:

The ECBA says that to ensure you get a seat, you must make a reservation online, ideally by Sunday, when the cost goes up.

The forum featuring representatives from the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb and the anti-cityhood East Cobb Alliance is part of the ECBA’s monthly luncheon event, from 11-1 on Nov. 12 at the Olde Towne Athletic Club (4950 Olde Towne Parkway).

Seating will be limited to the first 250 people (most ECBA luncheons are around 100) who register and pay online. You can pay at the door, but the cost does go up and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get in.

Jen Starks of the ECBA said 78 people have registered thus far.

This is the only time pro- and anti-cityhood groups have appeared together in a forum-style event; the cityhood group is having a town hall meeting on Nov. 11 at Wheeler High School.

The advance registration cost (click here to sign up) is $20 for ECBA members and $25 for guests. After midnight Sunday and up to the door, the respective costs are $25 and $30.

The same event will honor the ECBA’s 2019 business person of the year, which was started last year. The finalists are:

Cindy Trow, health coach, Wellness Now
Tom Gonter, development officer, MUST Ministries
Butch Carter, owner, Honest-1 Auto Care East Cobb
Ann Lafferty, owner, Rakers Junk Removal

NCBA Events

The Northeast Cobb Business Association is holding two events this month, a Nov. 14 Alive After Five networking event from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the Governor’s Gun Club (1005 Cobb Place Blvd., Kennesaw) that’s free to attend with registration.

The NCBA monthly luncheon is Nov. 20 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Piedmont Church (570 Piedmont Road), and the guest speaker is Sharon Mason, CEO of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce. For details and to sign up, click here.

East Cobb Citizen of the Year breakfast

On Dec. 3 the East Cobb Area Council of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce will have its annual East Cobb Citizen of the Year breakfast.

Last year’s winner was Brenda Rhodes of Simple Needs GA, and the award goes to individuals who demonstrate exceptional leadership and community service.

The breakfast is from 7:30-9 a.m. at Indian Hills Country Club (4001 Clubland Drive). The cost is $25 for Chamber members and $25 for guests. To sign up, 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!

East Cobb cityhood foes blast financial review as ‘baloney’

October 23, 2019 8:34 AM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb cityhood financial review — *A City of East Cobb fire department “will not have the resources to operate” at a top certified level of protection, according to a group opposing cityhood. (ECN file)*

A group opposed to East Cobb cityhood is criticizing an independent financial review that concluded that a proposed city would be fiscally viable.

The five-member Independent Financial Group, consisting of East Cobb residents who are finance and legal experts, volunteered to examine a Georgia State University feasibility study and issued its report in September.

The East Cobb Alliance, which formed over the summer to oppose cityhood, said in a posting on its Facebook page over the weekend that “in the beginning, there were 5 people on the IFG, but the 5th guy resigned when he couldn’t stomach the baloney the other 4 were proposing…and, ‘baloney’ is putting it nicely.”

(Shailesh Bettadapur, a member of the IFG group, resigned two days before the report was released, according to Bill Green, another member of the review group.)

The ECA post further stated that “several members of ECA who have choked their way through reading this document consider it nothing but a bunch of mumbo-jumbo malarkey.”

The East Cobb Alliance took issue with the report above all over fire services. The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb had state legislation introduced in March that would create a city of East Cobb with police, fire and community development services.

The ECA noted in its posting that in the IFG report, members of the review group and the cityhood group “are concerned the [GSU feasibility] Study may not have included all necessary fire protection expenditures.”

The ECA post continued:

“This is a group of 4 people, NONE of whom have ANY experience in the fire protection services world. No one on the GSU research team had ANY experience in fire protection services. No one on the Pro-Cityhood Committee has ANY clue as to what it takes to operate an effective fire department.

“Our County Fire Department, and our personal lives and property, should NOT be subjected to the whims of fools who have NO IDEA of what it takes to assemble, hire, train, OR operate a world-class Fire Department like we have right now.

“Tell your friends and neighbors about this IDIOCY being pushed upon us.”

The GSU feasibility study estimated an annual fire budget of $5.9 million. According to the IFG report (read it here), a city finance director in a nearby municipality said a City of East Cobb may have relatively lower costs for fire because it “has a low proportion of multi-unit residential housing and fewer tall buildings.”

The IFG, in its report, added $4 million for fire expenses estimates “as a placeholder” pending further budgeting information becoming available.

The East Cobb cityhood bill includes a proposed municipality of around 96,000 people, and five fire stations currently part of the Cobb County Fire and Emergency Services Department.

The ECA in recent days has examined other aspects of the cityhood proposal, including the possible purchase and use of the East Cobb Government Services Center on Lower Roswell Road, and the proposed cost of buying those five fire stations for the new city from the county.

The ECA also claims that a new City of East Cobb fire department “will not have the resources” to provide the top certified level of protection, also known as ISO-1. Cobb is one of around 240 fire departments nationwide to have that status, which is given by the Insurance Services Office, a non-profit that provides insurance information, including for fire and building codes.

“Should we kill a great Fire Department to build a new police department? Seems like kind of a weird trade-off,” the ECA asks.

Another topic covers police and jail services that have been proposed by the cityhood group. The GSU feasibility study suggested a 140-officer East Cobb police force, nearly double the number of officers on patrol in Cobb Police Precinct 4, which covers an area well beyond the proposed city lines. Currently Precinct 4 has a staffing of around 50 response officers, a shortage of less than 20 for what it’s been allocated.

“That just seems very bizarre to us when the land area will be half of their current coverage,” concluded the ECA. “Why should we vote to form a new city to correct a deficiency of 16 people . . . when the coverage territory of a new city will be 50% of the original precinct territory? For all we know, 71 people may be the ideal force for a PCEC.”

The East Cobb Alliance and the East Cobb cityhood group have been invited to a Nov. 12 forum hosted by the East Cobb Business Association.

The day before, on Nov. 11, the cityhood group will hold a town hall meeting at Wheeler High School.

The cityhood group’s public events, which follow town halls in the spring, also tentatively will include more meetings after the first of the year, when the Georgia legislature would take up the East Cobb cityhood bill.

That bill would have to pass the entire General Assembly for a cityhood referendum to take place in 2020.

East Cobb cityhood group schedules town hall for Wheeler HS

October 21, 2019 3:16 PMOctober 21, 2019 12:26 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb Cityhood town hall

Wheeler High School will be the venue for a Nov. 11 town hall meeting held by the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb.

Group spokesman Rob Eble told East Cobb News the event begins at 6:30 p.m. in the B.B. Williams Auditorium at Wheeler (375 Holt Road).

It’s the second town hall the pro-cityhood organization has conducted, following a similar event at Walton High School (above) in May.

Cityhood leaders also spoke at Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s town hall meeting in March, and at a Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance meeting in May.

The day after the Wheeler town hall, the East Cobb Business Association is having a forum with representatives of groups supporting and opposing cityhood.

The Wheeler town hall comes a couple of months after an independent financial review of the East Cobb cityhood feasibility study concluded such a city is financially viable without raising property taxes above current levels.

A group that opposes cityhood, the East Cobb Alliance, says a new city would add an extra layer of government and disputes the financial analysis of the feasibility study.

State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb has sponsored a cityhood bill that, if passed next year, would call for a cityhood referendum later in 2020.

Related coverage

Visit the East Cobb News Cityhood page

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

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!

Business group to hold East Cobb cityhood forum in November

October 15, 2019 5:08 PMOctober 15, 2019 4:20 PM by Wendy Parker

The East Cobb Business Association announced Tuesday it’s holding a forum in mid-November on the East Cobb cityhood issue.

The forum will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 12, during the ECBA’s monthly luncheon from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Olde Towne Athletic Club (4950 Olde Towne Parkway).

According to Rosann Hall, who heads the ECBA’s speakers and program committee, the forum will include representatives of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, which supports incorporation, and the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood.

“Whether we become a city or whether we don’t, this is going to impact us a lot as business owners and as citizens,” ECBA president Jim Harris said at Tuesday’s luncheon.

Related coverage

Visit the East Cobb News Cityhood page

The pro-cityhood group held two town hall meetings and spoke at another civic meeting in the spring, after State Rep. Matt Dollar (R-East Cobb) sponsored legislation (read HB 718 here) that, if passed next year, would call for a cityhood referendum, also in 2020.

The cityhood group wants to carve out a portion of unincorporated Cobb, mostly below Sandy Plains Road, and create a city of around 100,000, citing public safety and development reasons.

The proposal has been controversial from the beginning and has generated plenty of skepticism in the community. East Cobb cityhood forum

The East Cobb Alliance was formed recently to launch organized opposition, questioning a financial feasibility study conducted for the pro-cityhood forces and what it calls a lack of transparency by those pushing for a city.

In September, an independent group of finance and legal experts reviewed the feasibility study and concluded it was fiscally sound, but recommended any City of East Cobb not start with police services.

(The review group’s summary and full report).

David Birdwell, a leader of the cityhood committee, said the review confirmed that cityhood is financially viable, and that a new city can provide better services without raising property taxes.

The East Cobb Alliance hasn’t formally responded to the independent review report, but it has examined various portions of the feasibility study, including public safety, franchise fees and inter-governmental agreements.

Most recently, the group posted a graphic on its Facebook page of a hungry-looking raptor with the message that “while the Raptor is fictional….the ‘City of East Cobb’ is a government horror that will slowly eat you alive for years.”

The cityhood group has redirected its original website to one with the domain of communityofeastcobb.com that includes much of the same information it has been discussing in recent months:

East Cobb’s Precinct 4 police staffing of 53 patrol officers that is 24 fewer than has been allocated;
Claiming property tax rates wouldn’t be higher than they are now in unincorporated Cobb;
Promising more prompt road repairs;
And “passing zonings without interference of votes from outside the city.”

Rob Eble, another leader of the cityhood group, said it’s looking to have a town hall tentatively on Nov. 11, but a venue has not been confirmed.

East Cobb cityhood forum

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!

East Cobb cityhood leader: Finance review ‘confirms’ viability

September 25, 2019 9:18 PMSeptember 21, 2019 12:01 PM by Wendy Parker

One of the leaders of a committee exploring cityhood in East Cobb said an independent review of a financial feasibility study released this week “confirms” that the resources exist to deliver what the group has long maintained a proposed city can do:

Lower taxes and expand services.

David Birdwell, East Cobb Cityhood leader — *David Birdwell*

David Birdwell of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb told East Cobb News that “there’s a lot more” he needs to absorb about the independent review, but “it confirms to me that a city is financially viable.”

What’s being called the Independent Finance Group issued its findings on Wednesday (summary, full report).

The IFG, made up of five members with finance and legal expertise, said while a Georgia State University study commissioned by the cityhood group (read it here) had some flaws, a tax base exists in East Cobb for most of what the cityhood forces have in mind.

“The advocates for cityhood have always encouraged the residents of East Cobb to dig into the facts and draw their own conclusions,” Birdwell said. “That’s what the Independent Finance Group did.”

“Cityhood would certainly give East Cobb more local control over issues such as zoning, but this study is one more strong argument that cityhood will also bring lower taxes and more police protection.”

The IFG did recommend, however, that a City of East Cobb not start with a police department—every city must provide at least three services—until it would work out a revenue-shifting agreement with Cobb County.

Instead, the financial review group suggested the city provide waste disposal services, a low-cost, revenue-neutral option. The other services proposed by the cityhood group are fire and community development, which includes planning and zoning.

Ultimately, the services a City of East Cobb would provide would be determined by an elected mayor and city council.

Legislation filed by State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb that calls for a referendum and includes a proposed city charter (read it here) must pass next year, or it would go have to go through another two-year legislative period.

Cityhood leaders are eyeing a possible May 2020 referendum, and if that passes, elections in November of next year. A two-year transition period for a new city would also take place.

About not starting with police, Birdwell says while he doesn’t agree or disagree about the IFG’s conclusion, “I get that.” But “as I talk to a lot of people in East Cobb, public safety is very important.”

Birdwell said the IFG’s position is “an intriguing angle,” and appreciates the group’s highly detailed approach to its work.

“We’re inviting anyone in East Cobb to study [the finance review group’s report] and look at the facts,” Birdwell said. “There has been so much emotion over this.”

East Cobb News Cityhood page

Stories, maps, legislation, feasibility study and more

Birdwell said the cityhood group is tentatively looking at an early October date for a town hall meeting, and another in mid-November.

A newly formed group opposing cityhood is the East Cobb Alliance. Bill Simon, one of the group’s organizers, told East Cobb News he’s just beginning to read through the IFG’s report, and has a few questions.

The report refers to the provision of solid waste services instead of police. “Do they mean for the Proposed City of East Cobb to contract with one provider of household garbage and waste services for all property owners? What if the citizens are happy with the competitive availability of multiple garbage companies now?”

As for a new fire department for a city, Simon asked what can the IFG “guarantee in terms of the ISO classification for a new PCEC Fire Department?”

The report refers new franchise-fee revenue of $6.1 million a year, but the GSU study’s figure is $7.3 million. “Please explain this discrepancy,” Simon said.

(Bill Green of the financial review group told East Cobb News previously that the $6.1 million figure represents new franchise fees only, and that the group does not recommend adding new franchise fees. Currently cable franchise fees totaling $1.2 million a year are collected in East Cobb.)

Simon said that “isn’t it true that nearly every other large city in Georgia is assessing and collecting franchise fees from their tax base? And, if cityhood is granted, then wouldn’t that mean East Cobb residents would be implicitly granting power to a city council and mayor that they become the sole deciders of whether to assess franchise fees any time they wanted in the future?”

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!

East Cobb city financial review group: No police services to start

September 20, 2019 6:17 PMSeptember 18, 2019 6:13 PM by Wendy Parker

East Cobb city financial review

An independent group of finance and legal professionals reviewing a feasibility study for the proposed City of East Cobb has concluded that it’s not only financially viable, but also could offer enhanced services and reduce property tax rates.

But the five-member Independent Financial Group, which was formed in May, also is recommending a future East Cobb city government not provide police services from the beginning, should a city be created.

That’s because the review group says determining the actual revenues for an East Cobb city police force wouldn’t be known until a city government would work out a revenue-shifting agreement with Cobb County.

The feasibility study, commissioned last fall by the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb and conducted by the Georgia State University Center for State and Local Finance (read it here), “lacks sufficient funding for police protection and does not assume an equitable agreement,” according to the IFG, which is releasing its findings to the public.

A summary of the key findings of the financial review group can be found here; the full 15-page report can be found here.

The GSU study estimated a City of East Cobb annual budget of around $49 million, with police expenses costing $13.2 million. It based those figures on a property tax rate of 2.96 mills, and cityhood leaders have said a city can operate without higher taxes than what East Cobb taxpayers are currently paying.

Police is one of the three services the East Cobb cityhood group is proposing to provide (cities must provide at least three), along with fire and community development, which includes zoning.

The cityhood group is proposing to carve out most of unincorporated Cobb Commission District 2 for a City of East Cobb, with nearly 96,000 residents, for what advocates maintain would be “more local control” of government services.

Legislation introduced by State Rep. Matt Dollar, an East Cobb Republican, must pass next year calling for a referendum in November 2020. If a city is approved, elections for mayor and city council would take place at the start of a transition period from 2021-22. That would include the transfer of county-provided services before the City of East Cobb’s first full budget in 2023.

To budget for police, or not

The review group hasn’t yet put together what Green calls a “strawman” budget proposal because it’s still seeking financial data from the county, in particular for public safety services.

In what it calls its “near-term most likely” scenario, the review group has outlined a $40.3 million annual budget without police. Property taxes would provide $24.9 million in revenues. The biggest expenses would be administrative ($12.2 million) and fire ($9.9 million).

First-year expenditures under this scenario would be $28.6 million, with a surplus of $11.6 million. Recurring expenditures would cost $27.9 million and the recurring surplus would be $12.4 million.

Those revenues do not include new franchise fees, which were factored into the GSU feasibility study at $6.1 million a year. Franchise fees are imposed by cities for such services as utilities, so current East Cobb residents don’t pay them. But they do pay franchise fees assessed on cable television bills.

“We’re tossing them out because we don’t think they’re needed,” Green said.

In addition, “many citizens of East Cobb are unlikely to accept any new taxes or fees, unless the property tax millage rate were reduced to offset the new franchise fees,” the review group wrote in its report.

The IFG’s “intended scenario” budget with police, fire and community development would have $50.8 million in revenues and $46.8 million in expenses. The police line-item is the same $13.2 million that’s in the GSU study. It also would have $11.4 million in intergovernmental revenues, including an agreement with Cobb over shifting police services to a new city.

The state Service Delivery Strategy Act of 1997 (also known as SDS and HB 489) spells out intergovernmental agreements between cities and counties. The Cobb Six Cities Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, has existed since 1999.

The East Cobb city review group is recommending that before providing police services, a new city government should push to renegotiate the current 10-year MOU (which ends in 2024) for what it sees as double taxation. The MOU allows for cities to draw a share of funds from counties for services, based on a city’s share of the combined municipal tax digest.

The Cobb MOU allocated $4.85 million total among the six cities in 2017, and $5.45 million is expected by 2023, according to the GSU study.

An East Cobb city would get around $2.5 million, or 50 percent of that amount, since half the tax digest value of what would be seven cities would be in East Cobb.

But the bigger issue is what the East Cobb review group has found to be double taxation by the county for police services in cities not patrolled by Cobb Police.

Every property owner in Cobb was levied a county general fund tax rate of 6.76 mills in 2017. The review group found that in spite of provisions of HB 489, taxpayers in Cobb’s cities are actually paying 8.46 mills, the current general fund millage rate, under the MOU, the same as unincorporated Cobb.

Green called that “a red flag,” and the review group report goes deeper on the subject by saying that “in return, these cities appear to have accepted insufficient intergovernmental transfers from the County.”

Furthermore, the East Cobb cityhood’s lawyer “has commented that the cities should be prepared to litigate aggressively, if necessary, to force County compliance with the SDS Act’s spirit and letter.”

The IFG calculated that East Cobb taxpayers generate $10.5 million a year in general fund revenues for county police operations alone, a figure that “is expected to grow.”

The GSU feasibility study also has determined that $7.8 million of a projected $8.6 million in start-up costs would be for equipping and training a 142-officer police force.

The IFG is suggesting instead a 90-officer force “until further detailed budgeting is complete.”

Surplus, taxes, services and more

Without police costs to start, the review group believes a City of East Cobb would be able to keep a healthy surplus to improve services, if it chooses to spend some of that money, or possibly reduce the current millage rate.

The Cobb Fire Department, Green said, is “world-class. Our opinion is that we would want to replicate what we’re getting now and enhance it.”

According to the proposed city map, the City of East Cobb would have five fire stations. If those boundaries expand, as some with the cityhood committee have been suggesting, another fire station could be added.

The review group says “a meaningful tax cut is possible because county taxes currently generated from East Cobb taxpayers . . . far exceed the expenditures made by the County for services benefitting East Cobb,” the review report states.

“The opportunity to mitigate this current imbalance is what makes a future City of East Cobb compelling from a purely financial standpoint.”

At the end of it all, Green said, “we [the review group] don’t make that decision. It’s a political decision, the voters who elect a city council, will make that decision.”

East Cobb News will follow up this post with reaction from pro- and anti-cityhood forces and will examine more details of the review group’s report.

Cityhood committee member Rob Eble told East Cobb News recently there are plans for a town hall meeting in October, but a date hasn’t been scheduled.

East Cobb News Cityhood page

Stories, maps, legislation, feasibility study and more

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!

East Cobb cityhood opponents emerge with new citizens group

August 11, 2019 1:27 PMAugust 11, 2019 11:39 AM by Wendy Parker

The East Cobb cityhood effort is gaining more visible opponents with a new citizens group called the East Cobb Alliance, which launched a website and a public Facebook group last week.

According to the group’s About page, the East Cobb Alliance is:

“A non-partisan coalition of East Cobb residents, businesses, and stakeholders who share the common vision that there is no need to incorporate any part of Unincorporated East Cobb into an additional layer of city-government, and want to work together to educate and inform the voters who will be responsible for casting a “Yes” or “No” vote to incorporate.”

Bill Simon is one of three people listed among the group’s organizers. He’s got a consulting and finance background and runs a small business marketing agency in East Cobb.

The others are Emmanuel Kipreos, an accountant with children attending Timber Ridge Elementary School and Mindy Seger, also an accountant raising her family in East Cobb.

When asked by East Cobb News how many people are involved in or who have expressed interest in the East Cobb Alliance, Simon referred to an invitation-only Facebook group of cityhood opponents he said has 300-plus members.

As for next steps, Simon said “what we are now working on is building the coalition up to be able to get the word out that 1) there is an effort to incorporate parts of East Cobb into a new city, and 2) why it is a bad idea that will cost more money.”

The East Cobb Alliance has posted financial breakdowns of the costs and services proposed by the cityhood group, especially those pertaining to police and fire services, as well as franchise fees, intergovernmental revenues and the East Cobb city financial feasibility study.

That study by Georgia State University declared the proposed city—with around 96,000 residents—is not only financially feasible but would start with a surplus of more than $3 million. The cityhood group claims a City of East Cobb could operate without levying a higher property tax rate than what citizens currently pay in unincorporated Cobb.

The cityhood committee this spring appointed an independent financial group to examine the study and develop a working budget proposal.

Contacted late last week by East Cobb News, cityhood leader Rob Eble said he understands that the finance group’s work is done, and that it is “validating findings.”

The cityhood group had tentatively eyed August for another town hall meeting on the subject, but one has not been scheduled.

The cityhood bill introduced by State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb near the end of the 2019 legislative session is slated to be taken up in the Georgia General Assembly next year.

If passed, the legislation would set up a cityhood referendum, which also would be held next year.

The East Cobb Alliance site also has a section entitled “cityhood charades,” examining those behind the cityhood group, especially those with real estate backgrounds and connections.

Simon said the East Cobb Alliance is asking for contributions from interested citizens, “as we have come out of personal pocket for Open Records, web domain, web hosting, and we will be wanting to print material to distribute as well.”

‘They’re stealing our stuff!’

An anonymously written blog has surfaced called Stop East Cobb Cityhood, calling the effort “a solution in search of a problem.” It expresses similar concerns as the East Cobb Alliance over taxes and real estate interests, but drips with sarcasm and colorful language more than financial analysis.

The eight blog posts that have been published aren’t dated, and some refer to committee president Joe Gavalis as “grifter-in-chief” or “charlatan-in-chief.” The pro-cityhood forces also are described alternately as “fraudsters,” “hucksters” and “tricksters.”

Some of the posts include photos of Barney Fife, Austin Powers and the McDonald’s Hamburglar to make acid points about what the blogger argues is a lack of specifics about a proposed City of East Cobb, and what’s driving it:

“The cityhood hustle is a naked land grab by a secretive bunch of connivers licking their chops at the prospect of turning our community into their personal ATM.”

The only identifying information about the Stop East Cobb Cityhood blog says that:

“We are homeowners in East Cobb who value our property rights and low taxes. We invite each and every one of you to compare the facts presented here with the shifting narrative and hide-the-ball tactics of the promoters. East Cobb is a special place with just the right balance of homes, businesses and open spaces. Let’s not hand over control of our homes and businesses to a group of insiders who want to cash in at our expense.”

Simon said he wasn’t aware of the Stop East Cobb Cityhood blog or who may be behind it and that the East Cobb Alliance is not associated with it.

A link to the Stop East Cobb Cityhood site is being promoted in Google search engine rankings as a paid advertisement with the headline: “Say No To Higher Taxes | Stop East Cobb Cityhood Today.”

More East Cobb Cityhood Coverage

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!

Related coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

East Cobb News Cityhood Coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Too big to succeed?

Transparency matters

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Math or ideology?

Arguing over numbers

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Falling on deaf ears

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

More coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

‘Wait and see’

Related coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related coverage

Share this post:

Like this:

NCBA Events

East Cobb Citizen of the Year breakfast

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

Share this post:

Like this:

Related coverage

Share this post:

Like this:

Related coverage

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

East Cobb News Cityhood page

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!

Share this post:

Like this:

Related stories

To budget for police, or not

Surplus, taxes, services and more

East Cobb News Cityhood page

Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!