East Cobb Cityhood

City of East Cobb group releases ‘favorable’ feasibility study

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City of East Cobb
The map proposed by the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, Inc. would include most of Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott’s District 2.

We’ve just gotten a City of East Cobb feasibility study commissioned by a local group that is claiming a number of “positives” for incorporation, including no additional tax levies above the current Cobb millage rate.

The study, which was conducted by the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State University, was paid for by a group called Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, Inc.

Our previous story here. For a more detailed view of the proposed map above, click here.

The study concludes that not only would a City of East Cobb be financially viable, it would start out with a surplus of nearly $3 million.

Here’s a link to the full report, which was made public on Tuesday.

The research analysis concluded that the City of East Cobb could expect annual revenues of around $48 million and expenses of around $46 million.

The cityhood group is led by Joe Gavalis, a resident of the Atlanta Country Club area, who said the study is just the first step toward having a public dialogue about the possibility of East Cobb becoming a city.

He said “the study’s findings are extremely favorable to East Cobb cityhood.”

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb is claiming the benefits of cityhood would include more local control, enhanced police and fire services, better road maintenance and expansion of the East Cobb Government Service Center.

A two-year process would be required to formally pursue cityhood, including passage of state legislation calling for a referendum that would give citizens the final say about forming a new city.

According to the study’s executive summary, State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican, contacted GSU. Cityhood efforts also require a state representative and a state senator from the possible new city to sponsor referendum legislation.

“This study is not a budget, it is a feasibility study. It develops revenue and expense estimates based on property tax files, a boundary map and estimated business license revenue,” Gavalis said in a statement.

Georgia law also requires that new cities provide at least three public services. GSU was asked to examine the provision of public safety, fire management, parks and recreation and community development in East Cobb. The researchers noted that the latter category is a broad one, and for this study included zoning and code enforcement.

The GSU study estimates that nearly half of the proposed revenues, $23 million, would come from property taxes. The biggest expense would be public safety, around $19 million, with around $12 million of that for police.

The GSU researchers projected a 142-officer police force, as well as the acquisition of five current Cobb fire stations within the proposed East Cobb municipal boundaries (stations 3, 15, 19, 20 and 21, see fire department maps).

The study compared populations, demographics, home values and other data for the East Cobb cityhood proposal with Alpharetta, Dunwoody, Johns Creek, Roswell and Smyrna (see chart below).

The proposed map, which comprises around 40 square miles, doesn’t include all of what’s generally regarded as East Cobb. It includes only unincorporated Cobb east of I-75 that is in Cobb Commission District 2 (in map at top) and outside of the Cumberland Community Improvement District. Click here for a detailed view of that map.

It includes none of the East Cobb area that is in District 3, which generally lies between Sandy Plains Road and Canton Road.

The population in the proposed city map area amounts to 96,858, which would make the city of East Cobb the second-largest in metro Atlanta. Roswell’s estimated population is around 94,000 and Johns Creek, which incorporated in 2006, is around 84,000.

A city of East Cobb would have an elected mayor and six-member city council and an appointed city manager. Neighborhoods in unincorporated areas could petition to join the city if it is chartered.

Startup plans would estimate the hiring of 35 non-public safety city employees. No public works department is being proposed for East Cobb, but such a city would be eligible for Cobb SPLOST and state funding for road maintenance and improvements.

Previous suggestions for East Cobb cityhood haven’t gotten past the talking stage. Most recently former Cobb Commission Chairman Bill Byrne proposed it during his 2012 campaign to regain his seat, but the idea never took off.

That was right before voters in Brookhaven and Tucker began to organize their own successful cityhood efforts. There hasn’t been a new city in Cobb County, which has six municipalities, since the late 1800s.

The Committee for the City of East Cobb, which has not revealed its parties beyond Gavalis and one other person, paid $36,000 for the GSU study.

Gavalis has been a member of the Cobb Neighborhood Safety Commission, a citizen advisory board, and was reappointed Tuesday by District 2 Commissioner Bob Ott.

According to documents filed with the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office corporations division, the committee registered as a non-profit organization in September and stated that it does not intend to have members.

The only other name listed on the filing forms is the group’s incorporator, G. Owen Brown, who is the president and founder of the Retail Planning Corporation based on Johnson Ferry Road in East Cobb.

 

Read the full report here

 

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City of East Cobb proposed by citizens group; study underway

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East Cobb Black Friday traffic
Johnson Ferry Road at Roswell Road in the heart of East Cobb.

This isn’t a new topic, and it’s one that hasn’t gone very far beyond the talking stage in the past: Should there be such a thing as a City of East Cobb?

A group of mostly unidentified people is behind a new push to create what would be the second-largest municipality in metro Atlanta.

The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, Inc., is led by Joe Gavalis, a resident of the Atlanta Country Club area. His group has commissioned a feasibility study being conducted by the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State University. He has not returned calls seeking comment.

However, the suggested City of East Cobb his group is advocating would not include all of East Cobb.

According to a map Gavalis furnished to the MDJ, the proposed map would fall almost entirely within Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott’s District 2.

City of East Cobb
East Cobb has long been a place name, but never a city. 

The area generally regarded as East Cobb includes most of the ZIP codes 30062, 30066, 30067 and 30068, as well as the Cobb portion of 30075, and has an estimated population of 200,000.

The proposed City of East Cobb borders generally fall south of Sandy Plains Road, until it gets closer to the Fulton County line. The southern boundaries would fall roughly along the Powers Ferry Road corridor north of Terrell Mill Road.

The western edges of the city would run along Roswell Road Sewell Road and Holly Springs Road to Post Oak Tritt Road.

Everything east and north of that would become a city in what has long embodied classic suburban Sunbelt sprawl.

Cityhood measures require state legislation to call for a referendum that voters in the proposed municipality would decide. Under Georgia law, cities must provide a minimum of three services.

The cityhood effort in East Cobb comes after the Cobb Board of Commissioners approved a property tax hike for the first time since the recession. There has been some grumbling that East Cobb provides 40 percent of county tax revenue but some citizens don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth in services.

After voting against the tax increase, Ott claimed that all District 2 residents were getting from the tax hike in the fiscal year 2019 budget was “1 DOT work crew.”

According to the East Cobb cityhood group’s contract with Georgia State, it is spending $36,000 for the study, which will develop revenue and expense estimates based on property tax files, a boundary map and estimated business license revenue.

The contract indicates that the feasibility of municipal services to be studied include police, fire management, parks and recreation, community development (libraries) and roads.

Gavalis is the lone signatory from the committee for the contract, which also lists G. Owen Brown, of Retail Planning Corp., a commercial real estate company based on Johnson Ferry Road, as a representative for the cityhood group.

The study is expected to be completed by mid-December. According to the contract, the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State is using a similar methodology as a feasibility study it conducted for Tucker, which became incorporated in 2015.

According to the East Cobb cityhood contract, a team of three CSLF researchers will:

” . . . estimate the total annual cost of government operations, including general administrative services and the discretionary services, based on the experience of several comparison cities in Georgia. The set of comparison cities in Georgia will include between four to six cities with similar demographic and economic conditions to the proposed area.

“In addition, the cost estimates will include the cost associated with purchasing any assets in the proposed incorporation area that are currently owned by Cobb County and any one-time costs associated with the initiation of municipal operations.”

The last time the City of East Cobb issue was raised also came after county commissioners voted to increase taxes, and during the heat of a political campaign. During the 2012 Republican runoff for Cobb Commission Chairman, challenger Bill Byrne proposed the idea but it didn’t gain much traction.

Byrne, a former chairman, was seeking to regain his seat against then-incumbent Tim Lee, who eventually edged him in the runoff.

Byrne would have had an elected mayor and five city council members for the City of East Cobb, which would have had its own police, fire, water and sewer services, purchased from the county for $1 a year. He also wanted the county, in his plan, to spend $1 million to build an East Cobb City Hall.

Byrne had attacked Lee for raising the property tax millage rate in 2011, during the aftermath of the recession.

At the time, Byrne’s idea didn’t resonate in East Cobb as it has elsewhere in metro Atlanta. This was right after citizens of Brookhaven voted to incorporate, and followed other successful cityhood drives in Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek and Milton.

But that sentiment hasn’t seriously spread in Cobb, which has six cities that have been incorporated for more than a century, and in some cases before the Civil War.

In 2009 there was a group called Citizens for the City of East Cobb that launched a website but never identified itself or pressed for action beyond that.

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Some of the most recent cityhood efforts elsewhere in metro Atlanta have failed. Earlier this month, a push to create the city of Eagle’s Landing out of Stockbridge fell short in a referendum.

Earlier this year, voters in a portion of Forsyth County turned down a similar measure that would have created the City of Sharon Springs, with a population of 50,000.

Others that have become cities have ended up providing fewer services than what is being studied for East Cobb.

Tucker, which has population of 35,000, provides zoning and planning, code enforcement and community development, and last year added overseeing the Tucker Recreation Center.

Tucker doesn’t charge a millage rate—city residents still pay the full DeKalb millage rate for county-provided services—but generates revenue from business permits, alcohol and excise taxes and utility franchise fees.

Other cityhood drives are continuing, including the Towne Lake community of Cherokee County, with a goal of having a referendum there in 2020.

The only services being suggested for Towne Lake are zoning and planning, code enforcement and sanitation, which would be optional. Those organizing cityhood there say they’re doing it to preserve property values.

 

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