The 2016 Cobb SPLOST (Special Local-Option Sales Tax) expired at the end of 2021.
But county officials say the five-year revenue collection period generated nearly $114 million more than projected revenues.
So on Tuesday, they went before the Cobb Board of Commissioners to identity eligible projects on the 2016 list that needed additional funding.
Commissioners adopted a recommended list to fund projects in transportation, fire, parks, property management and the Cobb Sheriff’s Office to the tune of $31.8 million.
(You can read a line-item list of the projects by clicking here.)
The biggest chunk ($15.1 million) will go to Cobb DOT, including $8.5 million in local matching funds for state and federal projects; $3 million for drainage system improvements; $2 million to repair a sinkhole on Leland Drive and $1 million for the Silver Comet Trail Connector.
Another $5.7 million will be used for a firing range facility and equipment to be shared by the Cobb Police Department and the Cobb Sheriff’s Office, as part of $6.8 million dedicated for property management projects.
Parks facilities will receive $4.1 million, and an additional $2 million for the Cobb Sheriff’s Office will go for replacing vehicles and maintaining jail facilities.
The Cobb Fire training facility will get $3.7 million for renovations.
Cobb voters approved a new six-year SPLOST for county government projects in November.
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East Cobb cityhood group member Sarah Haas explains how a mayor and city council members would be elected in November if the May 24 referendum passes.
In their first face-to-face meeting with the public, leaders of the East Cobb Cityhood effort on Monday addressed claims that development interests are driving their campaign.
It’s a charge that’s been made since the cityhood movement first began in 2019, and was renewed over the weekend by a group opposed to the May 24 East Cobb referendum.
At a town hall meeting Monday at Olde Towne Athletic Club, the Committee for East Cobb Cityhoodonce again stressed that their main objective is fostering local control of basic services and preserving the suburban nature of the community.
On Saturday, a citizens group opposed to the new city pointed out that the pro-cityhood group’s behind-the-scenes leader is a longtime retail real estate executive and expressed concern that high-density development wouldn’t be far behind.
The tax base of the proposed City of East Cobb is 91 percent residential and nine percent commercial, according to a financial feasibility study prepared for the cityhood group.
Chapin’s remark drew considerable applause, and followed emphatic remarks by former State Rep. Matt Dollar that having elected officials who live in the East Cobb area, and not other parts of the county, is vital to shaping the future of the community.
“They care. They give a damn about what goes here because they live here,” said Dollar, the bill’s main sponsor who resigned from the legislature last month. “It’s local control. It’s people you know making the decisions.”
That’s been the thrust of the cityhood group’s messaging since it was revived in 2021. Unlike the abandoned 2019 effort, this one has been centered around planning and zoning, especially in light of the East Cobb Church rezoning case last year that galvanized residents on either side in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford corridor.
In noting the future of two major retail centers—Parkaire Landing and The Avenue, the latter of which is slated for a major overhaul—committee spokeswoman Cindy Cooperman said an East Cobb city government would be better-suited to work as a partner in redevelopment than a county government that’s serving nearly 800,000 with five commissioners.
“That brings more seats to the table, especially when it comes to zoning,” she said. “It really is a question of scale.” For a number of years, she said, the Cobb commission “worked fine.”
The East Cobb Cityhood group said citizens of a new city will pay the same taxes as they do now.
Fellow committee member Sarah Haas said that “it is our desire to tailor [certain services now provided by the county] to the community.”
The cityhood group also was pressed to back up its pledge that property taxes wouldn’t be raised beyond the millage rates that would be transferred from county government.
The proposed city would provide five of the 17 current services provided by the county—planning and zoning, code enforcement, police, fire and parks and recreation.
Residents of the city of East Cobb would still pay a tax bill of 30.35 mills (with 18.9 mills going to the Cobb County School District) as residents in unincorporated Cobb.
The city’s main funding source would be transferring the 2.86 mills of the current Cobb Fire Fund.
“Cities manage better—it’s a smaller footprint,” Chapin said, noting that state law does not permit duplication of services between cities and counties. “It’s not another layer of government.”
But the addition of police and fire services to the mix, and a financial feasibility study, has raised more questions.
While audience members on Monday did not directly ask questions—they were read from index cards by a moderator—cityhood group leaders were asked to explain how public safety facilities would be acquired.
The proposed city would house its police station at the current Cobb Precinct 4 headquarters along with current Cobb fire station 21 at the East Cobb Government Service Center, and also include current Cobb fire station 15 on Oak Lane.
Cooperman cited state law calling for a $5,000 transfer fee for those facilities and “their fixtures,” which she said included equipment (which the East Cobb Alliance disputes).
How a City of East Cobb might purchase the county-owned former Tritt property next to East Cobb Park is “unknown,” according to the cityhood group.
Should a city be created, she said, mutual aid agreements would be crafted during a two-year transition period.
That transition, should it come to pass, also might include negotiations with the county over parks and recreation services.
Parks and recreation services were examined in the feasibility study, but questions remain on how a City of East Cobb would acquire land adjacent to East Cobb Park.
In 2018 Cobb purchased 22 acres of the Tritt property with SPLOST funds, and the 2022 SPLOST referendum, if passed, includes the purchase of the remaining 24 acres of that land.
The Tritt property has been envisioned as being an extension of East Cobb Park, featuring pedestrian trails.
Cityhood group member Scott Sweeney said the process for obtaining that land (at $100 an acre), should a City of East Cobb come to fruition, would be an “unknown,” and Dollar said “it will just get worked out.”
Citizens also asked about the impact of an East Cobb city on schools, which are operated separately by the Cobb County School District.
Sweeney, a former Cobb school board member, stressed that a new city wouldn’t change the current senior exemption from school taxes for homeowners 62 and older.
With cityhood referendums on the May 24 ballot in Lost Mountain and Vinings as well as East Cobb, Cobb County government is holding a cityhood town hall Wednesday at 6 p.m. (more information here).
At least two other East Cobb referendum forums have been scheduled for now: April 19 by the East Cobb Business Association, and on May 4 at Pope High School by the Rotary Club of East Cobb.
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“Is this really about local control or special interest control?” said Mindy Seger, president of the East Cobb Alliance, questioning the claims of cityhood forces.
In a little less than three months, voters in the proposed City of East Cobb will be asked whether they want to form a new city.
A grassroots citizens group that formed in 2019 to fight an initial cityhood campaign is accelerating its efforts to defeat a May 24 referendum that could create a city of around 60,000 people.
But just as in the first cityhood quest, the East Cobb Alliance said a new city would also create needless levels of government, increase taxes, cause confusion among citizens about service provision and delay public safety response time.
The East Cobb Alliance has printed flyers detailing its arguments against cityhood.
“You don’t need another layer of government to change what doesn’t need changing,” said Mindy Seger, the group’s president, during an information session Saturday at the Chimney Springs subdivision clubhouse.
The East Cobb Alliance—which has more than 1,300 followers on its Facebook page—also has sharpened its talking points as public meetings are being scheduled on both sides of the issue.
The pro-cityhood forces have said the area isn’t getting effective representation on the Cobb Board of Commissioners, whose four district members represent nearly 200,000 people each.
As the cityhood bill worked its way through the Georgia legislature, they testified that local control—East Cobb would have a mayor and six city council members—would be more responsive.
But Seger, who debated pro-cityhood leaders in 2019 before that effort was abandoned—took issue with that claim.
In a talking point called “Follow the Money,” she noted that while the current cityhood group has new members who are making public rounds, some individuals behind the scenes remain from the original effort.
They include Owen Brown, the founder of the Retail Planning Corp., which manages Paper Mill Village, Woodlawn Square, Woodlawn Commons and other shopping centers in the area.
He’s a voter in Florida, Seger said, and therefore can’t vote in the referendum. Neither can Matt Dollar, the former legislator who sponsored the East Cobb bill, then resigned the day after it passed the House.
He’s moved to a new home in what would remain unincorporated East Cobb. Lawmakers who carried the legislation after that are in Acworth and North Fulton.
The only other East Cobb co-sponsor of the bill—State Rep. Sharon Cooper—didn’t speak on its behalf in the legislative sessions.
A number of homes in Chimney Springs, which has more than 700 homes, are sporting anti-cityhood yard signs.
“If this was such a good idea, why didn’t he buy a house inside the city borders?” Seger said, referring to Dollar. “Is this really about local control or special interest control?
“What are they looking to get out of this?”
Seger also delved into the proposed police and fire services for the City of East Cobb, which were not in the initial bill and were added in November (the other services would be planning and zoning and code enforcement).
The East Cobb financial feasibility study estimated that fire services would cost $5.7 million a year. But Cobb fire officials, in a recent commissioners work session, placed that figure at more than $12 million a year.
There would be two fire stations in East Cobb, No. 21 at the East Cobb Government Service Center and No. 15 on Oak Drive.
“That’s a big difference, and I think the county’s estimate is more accurate,” she said, adding that such expenses as the cost of fire engines and training firefighters (as well as police officers) have not been factored into the financial study.
As for police, the study estimated a staff of 71 officers (79 staffers are currently working out of Cobb Police Precinct 4).
“The challenge and cost of recruiting and training officers is difficult everywhere,” Seger said. “How is a new city going to compete with that?”
That point was echoed by former Cobb Chamber of Commerce CEO David Connell, who attended one of the East Cobb Alliance sessions.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said during the presentation, saying that Cobb’s public safety services are highly rated. “Taxes will go up and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Also in the audience was engineering consultant Geoff Seguin, who lives in a nearby neighborhood. He said he was initially open to the subject of cityhood, but said after getting information from both sides, he’s “strongly opposed to it.
“I’ve not met anybody who said they’re for” cityhood, said East Cobb resident Geoff Seguin, at right.
“There are too many unknowns,” said Seguin, who’s lived in East Cobb resident since 1989 and whose children graduated from local schools.
Life in the community, he said, “is pretty darn good” and said he doesn’t see any reason to change the form of local government.
After months of discussions and numerous delays, Cobb commissioners approved a rezoning request at Johnson Ferry and Shallowford Road in October.
While the community was split on the issue, Seguin said he was impressed by the effort by Northpoint and county officials, especially regarding stormwater and legal concessions his group asked for.
He also found Commissioner Jerica Richardson (who attended an earlier East Cobb Alliance session Saturday) and former planning commissioner Tony Waybright responsive during the process.
“It made me a believer in local government,” Seguin said, referring to county government. He said when citizens get involved at that level, “it works.”
Monday’s town hall organized by the cityhood group is sold out, but is being livestreamed on its Facebook page starting at 6 p.m.
On Wednesday, Cobb County government will hold an information session, and with similar referendums in Lost Mountain, Vinings and possibly Mableton, it has launched a cityhood information page.
The East Cobb Business Association will hold an East Cobb Cityhood forum on April 19, and the Rotary Club of East Cobb will be holding a similar session for Pope High School in early May.
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!
With COVID-19 case rates continuing to fall and new CDC guidance easing risk levels and other recommended restrictions, Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris has lifted the mask mandate for indoor county facilities.
In addition to government office buildings, that means that masks are also optional again at libraries, senior centers and indoor recreation buildings.
The mandate has been in place since the Omicron variant surge began in December.
Masks are still required inside Cobb courthouses, which are operating under a separate order from the Georgia Supreme Court.
An emergency declaration continues in Cobb, but the county issued a release Monday saying that too “is expected to be terminated this week based on the continuing trend of lower transmission rates in the county.”
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!
Democrats Charisse Davis of the Cobb school board and Jerica Richardson of the Cobb commission have had the East Cobb portions of their districts removed.
Two first-term Democrats who represent part of East Cobb on the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb Board of Education will have different electoral boundaries soon.
The Georgia Senate finalized redistricting bills for both bodies on Wednesday, clearing the way for Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature into law.
The bills were sponsored by Cobb Republicans over the objections of the county’s Democratic-led legislative delegation, and easily passed in the legislature, which has strong GOP majorities.
For a larger view of the new Cobb commissioners map, click here.
Jerica Richardson, who was elected to commission District 2 in 2020, was drawn out of her district in a map that for the next decade will place most of East Cobb in District 3 (in gold on the map at right).
District 2 has included the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area and part of East Cobb. Richardson moved into a new home off Post Oak Tritt Road last year, but will have to move again by the end of the year if she seeks a second term in 2024.
The new District 2 (in pink) will include Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings, some of Marietta and other areas along the I-75 corridor.
The bill’s main sponsor, Republican John Carson of Northeast Cobb, has said that his map will likely keep the commission’s current 3-2 Democratic majority.
But Richardson and other Cobb Democrats have been vocal at Georgia Capitol press conferences in opposing the GOP maps.
“This bill essentially overwrites the vote you made 2 years ago and creates a new map that doesn’t take the community’s input into consideration,” Richardson said on her Facebook page Thursday.
“This is a dangerous precedent, and I plan to continue making my voice heard in order to support this community and its needs.”
District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell, a Republican, is nearing the end of her third term this year.
Charisse Davis, who has represented the Walton and Wheeler clusters on the Cobb school board since 2019, also was drawn into a new post that no longer includes East Cobb.
She lives in the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area, which forms the heart of the new Post 6. Davis is up for re-election but has not announced whether she’s seeking re-election.
For a larger view of the new Cobb school board post map, click here.
East Cobb News has left a message with Davis seeking comment.
She noted on her Facebook page recently that the Cobb GOP maps affecting her, Richardson and current 6th District U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath are “ensuring that the east Cobb area will no longer have representation from any of the Black women whose districts currently include east Cobb.”
While East Cobb has been solid terrain for Republicans, Democrats have been making gains in recent elections as the once-conservative county undergoes significant demographic and political change.
Only on the Cobb school board do Republicans have a local majority.
For the last three years, the school board has held a 4-3 GOP edge (after Republicans previously enjoyed a 6-1 advantage), and has been roiled controversies that generally have fallen along partisan lines.
The shifting lines for the school board also reduce East Cobb representation to two members. They are current chairman David Chastain, a Republican who has said he will be seeking another term in 2022 for Post 4, and David Banks, the GOP vice chairman whose Post 5 will now cover most of the Walton and Wheeler areas.
Davis and fellow first-term Democrat Jaha Howard, also of the Smyrna area, have been in the middle of disputes over the senior tax exemption, equity issues, student discipline matters and the Cobb County School District’s COVID-19 response.
The new maps put Davis and Howard, currently of Post 2, together. But he has announced he is running for Georgia School Superintendent this year.
(PLEASE NOTE: The process of redistricting elected school board posts has nothing to do with the boundaries of school attendance zones, which are drawn by school district administrative staff and are done mainly to balance out school capacity.)
McBath, completing her second term, has switched to the 7th district, which includes most of Democratic-leaning Gwinnett County after the legislature redrew the 6th to create a GOP-friendly seat that includes East Cobb, North Fulton, part of Forsyth County and Dawson County.
Part of East Cobb also is included in newly redrawn 11th District, which is represented by Republican Barry Lowdermilk.
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George Hitchcock, who lives near East Cobb Park, showed commissioners this week photos of flood damage to his property from the Sept. 7, 2021 storms.
Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson will be holding a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday to evaluate options to address continuing stormwater problems stemming from heavy flooding last fall.
Richardson said the meeting is a “follow up” to a previous meeting she held for homeowners who sustained heavy damage from those storms, and who have been critical of the county’s response.
The town hall via Zoom takes place from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, and the public can sign up by clicking here.
A number of homeowners in Richardson’s East Cobb district have expressed frustration at being told they’re responsible for making repairs ranging from $25,000-$250,000 for what they said was flooding caused by poor stormwater infrastructure.
Several East Cobb residents sounded off to commissioners again on Tuesday about their continuing plight.
Hill Wright, who lives in the Spring Creek neighborhood off Holt Road, has been coordinating an effort to press the county for a stronger response, and said he talks to previously affected residents every time it rains.
“What I hear is that the damage is worse or it’s happening again,” he said during a public comment session. “They tell me they don’t know how long they can hang on, or if the next storm will push them over the edge.”
Dan Larkin, a resident of the Meadow Brook neighborhood off Powers Ferry Road, said one of his neighbors had four feet of water flood their home during the September storm.
Stormwater is collecting in two vacant lots on Oriole Drive, and the amount has been escalating due to runoff from new homes in areas “that should never have been built on.
“This is not looking out for the public at all,” Larkin said. “What will be done to keep this from happening again?”
Rebecca Klein bought a home in 2020 near a creek that feeds into Sope Creek, close to the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center.
She said on the night of Sept. 7, “I looked in horror as that peaceful little creek raged to eight feet deep in our back yard.”
There was muddy water in the basement that rose to more than three feet.
The cleanup, Klein said, wasn’t the problem. The floods destroyed her neighbor’s driveway and crushed the culvert in her yard, creating a sinkhole near the foundation of her home.
She said she was told by the Cobb stormwater office that it had no record of the culvert and the homeowners may have installed it.
“This is not possible,” Klein said, her voice breaking with emotion. The culvert “was far too large for us to install with the house in the way. There’s no possible way of the county not knowing as this crosses three properties.”
She said she was told she would be responsible for what she said are six-figure repairs.
“How in the world can a homeowner afford these repairs?” she said. “How can the county pick and choose what to maintain?
“We are facing financial ruin on a home we haven’t even lived in for two years. Every time it rains, I cringe in fear that that hole is going to get bigger.”
George Hitchcock, who lives off Robinson Road near East Cobb Park, said on Sept. 7 his neighborhood received 6-7 feet of stormwater runoff from Robinson Creek. His driveway and those belonging to two neighbors were washed out.
“We recognize that this was a unique event, but in the last two months we’ve had two more flash floods,” Hitchcock said. “Even an inch of rain now is enough to put the creek up and out of its bounds.”
He said while he has FEMA flood insurance, it wouldn’t cover the repair costs from the Sept. 7 flooding, resulting in a “significant out-of-pocket expense.”
At the end of the meeting, Richardson announced the town hall, saying that her presentation will detail a “comprehensive list . . . . of options that we can take as a community to curb this issue holistically.”
She said some items can be addressed immediately, while others will require more time, but the objective is to address the problem systemically.
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The rate of COVID-19 transmission in Cobb County is nearing a benchmark figure.
But Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said it’s not enough to end an emergency declaration she extended last week into March.
At the end of Tuesday’s Cobb Board of Commissioners meeting, Cupid said that the 14-day average of COVID cases per 100,000 people in the county is now 246.
That’s a steep drop from more than 2,500 in January, at the peak of the Omicron surge.
But public health officials consider anything more than 100 cases per 100K a “high” rate of community spread.
“Shall we have rates that that fall below the rates of high transmission, I will be glad to end the order,” she said, adding that she’s also considering the burden on local hospitals.
Cupid didn’t have any specifics on that, but said that she understands public frustration over the order.
“I am no glutton for the punishment that I receive in the e-mails and calls that I get,” said Cupid, who in recent months has been publicly masked, and also tested positive for COVID earlier this month.
“I look forward to the day where I don’t have to wear this mask and we can see all of our county facilities full again.”
The order continues the use of the county’s emergency operations plan and requires citizens attending commission meetings in person to wear masks and observe social-distancing protocols.
A separate mask mandate for indoor county facilities issued by Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris is set to expire Feb. 28. That mandate includes libraries and indoor recreation facilities.
Cupid said among the metrics she watches is the COVID test positivity rate—five percent is considered high—and indicated that the current rate in Cobb is around eight percent, also down from 22 percent at the start of February.
She said the emergency order could end before the renewed 30-day window, and that “the numbers are dropping, and I am very hopeful that day will be with us soon.”
Cupid did not say if she might issue another order if the case rates in Cobb go over 100.
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The focus will be on District 2, which includes a part of East Cobb, and is scheduled for 6-8 p.m.
You can view the meeting by clicking here; the meeting number is 2308 013 1067. Participants can also call in toll free at 415-655-0003, with the same access code. 2308 013 1067
Four meetings have been scheduled, and will culminate with an in-person open house on April 14, at a location and time to be announced.
Every five years the state requires local governments to update their long-term planning priorities. The last update in Cobb was in 2017 (you can read it here).
The update covers a wide range of planning topics, including land use, transportation, housing, economic development, community facilities, human services, public health, education, natural and historic resources, public safety, intergovernment coordination, disaster resilience, military compatibility and place-making.
For more information on the Comprehensive Plan update, click here.
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The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood interactive map outlines the proposed boundaries down to the neighborhood level. For more detail, click here.
The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood will be holding an in-person town hall meeting on March 7 to discuss the upcoming May 24 referendum.
The town hall starts at 6 p.m. at the Olde Towne Athletic Club (4950 Olde Towne Parkway), but it’s open only for citizens who live in the proposed city boundaries.
The cityhood group announced that the event sold out quickly and no more reservations are being accepted for those wishing to attend in person.
Group spokeswoman Cindy Cooperman said the event room at Olde Towne has a capacity of 300 and she’s received at least that many RSVP requests.
She said the group is working to live-stream the town hall and that likely will be available on its Facebook page.
This will be the first in-person event the group has had since East Cobb cityhood was revived in 2021.
The current cityhood group includes some of the original members, and has not indicated if there will be other in-person meetings before the referendum, other than with specific community and neighborhood associations.
The referendum will ask registered voters in the proposed city whether or not they wish to incorporate. The East Cobb legislation included a map of around 60,000 people, centered along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.
The law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp last year (you can read it here) includes a charter setting up a governance structure, proposed services and city operating procedures, and election boundaries.
If the referendum is approved, then elections for the mayor and six city council members would take place in November.
The cityhood group also has revised an interactive map produced for the original campaign that allows residents to search by address to see if their neighborhood is in the proposed city.
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Judy Boyce speaking at her husband’s memorial service Friday at Mt. Bethel UMC.
Former Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce was remembered by family members, friends and his fellow church members in East Cobb on Friday.
At a memorial service at Mt. Bethel United Church, where he was a member, Boyce was remembered as a faithful member of the U.S. Marine Corps, actively involved in church and community activities, and someone who liked to inspire and motivate others.
Boyce was 72 when he died in January, after suffering two strokes while attending a leadership seminar at the University of Notre Dame, his alma mater.
He served as chairman from 2017-2020, after ousting incumbent chairman Tim Lee in the Republican primary. Boyce lost his re-election bid in 2020 to Democrat Lisa Cupid.
His four years at the head of county government turned out to be culmination of his many local activities in Cobb after he married Judy Boyce, a longtime Marietta resident, 22 years ago.
Other remembrances came from his son Kevin, retired Mt. Bethel senior pastor Rev. Randy Mickler and his successor, Dr. Rev. Jody Ray.
Bob Babcock, a Mt. Bethel member and former U.S. Army officer, talked about Boyce’s efforts to help his fellow veterans to sign up for their benefits. One of them went to a VA doctor as a result and after getting an early diagnosis of cancer, has been a survivor for 10 years.
“Mike’s legacy will never die,” Babcock said. “If you want to look for a legacy, don’t look for a monument, look at the person to the left or the right or in front of you, and ask, ‘How did Mike help you?’
“Most of us,” Babcock said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Most of us. . . Thank God for Mike Boyce.”
Rob Lee, Boyce’s political adviser for both his 2016 and 2020 races for chairman, said one of Boyce’s greatest attributes was his ability to inspire confidence in those around him.
Lee said whenever he felt he wasn’t up to a task, Boyce would say, “I trust you. I’m here because I trust you to help me get to where I want to be. . . . He just makes you want to work harder, to relish the relationship I had with him.”
That relationship, Lee said, transcended politics.
Boyce served 30 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, stationed around the world in his many capacities (Mt. Bethel choir members sang the Marines’ Hymn at the end of the service).
Mickler, who was the senior pastor at Mt. Bethel for 29 years, said “the real Mike Boyce had a streak. I won’t say it was mean, but I wouldn’t want to cross him.”
He said while he was driving Boyce around the campaign trail, Mickler asked him if he was fearful of knocking on doors in a “rough neighborhood.”
“Randy,” Mickler recalls Boyce telling him, “I can kill anybody. . . . 22 times . . . with my hands,” prompting the Mt. Bethel audience to erupt in laughter.
“I said, ‘OK, I got it, I got it,’ ” Mickler said.
At the end of his remarks, and after quoting from 1st Corinthians, Mickler said summing up Boyce’s life, “well done, good and faithful servant. Well done.”
Judy Boyce, a retired flight attendant, has attended Mt. Bethel for more than 40 years. When her husband retired from the Marines, they moved to East Cobb and he plunged right into church and community activities.
In her remarks at the service, she fought back tears talking about his easy-going nature around the house and his simple tastes.
“Mike never had a home,” she said. “He traveled, and when he came to Marietta, he said this was home.”
He liked to entertain people at home for dinner more than meet them at a restaurant, but on Saturdays the Boyces liked to have breakfast at Waffle House.
Boyce’s favorite restaurant was Panda Express and he also liked McDonald’s Happy Meals, she said, “but only the toy.”
“They’re low standards, but they’re mine,” she recalled him telling her, prompting more chuckling from the audience.
“I’m very grateful to God for the 22 years he gave me with Mike,” Judy Boyce said. “Rest in peace my Marine.”
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Gov. Brian Kemp signs the East Cobb cityhood bill with sponsor former Rep. Matt Dollar to his left and Committee for East Cobb Cityhood members (L-R) Scott Sweeney, Cindy Cooperman, Sarah Haas and Craig Chapin.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has signed legislation calling for a May 24 referendum on East Cobb Cityhood.
Final passage of HB 841 took place on Tuesday in the Georgia House, and the bill was sent to the governor’s office to be signed into law.
Eligible voters inside the proposed East Cobb city limits will decide on incorporation on the same day as the Georgia general primary.
The ballot language included in the bill will ask voters the following question:
“Shall the Act incorporating the City of East Cobb in Cobb County according to the charter contained in the Act be approved?”
If the referendum is approved by a majority of the voters, elections for a mayor and six city council members will take place on the Nov. 8 general election, with the beginning of city operations and a two-year transition to start in January 2023.
The East Cobb legislation is the first of four cityhood bills in Cobb County to be considered in the current legislative session.
The proposed City of East Cobb would have roughly 60,000 people in a 25-square-mile area centered along Johnson Ferry Road, from Shallowford Road south to the Chattahoochee River and from the Fulton County line west to a line roughly along Murdock Road and Old Canton Road. Click here for a larger version of the map.
On Thursday, the Georgia Senate passed similar legislation for Lost Mountain in west Cobb, and is set to vote on a bill for a referendum for Vinings.
A Mableton cityhood bill is still in the House.
All four Cobb cityhood bills call for May referendums, instead of November.
That sparked protests by Cobb government officials, who said they haven’t had time to assess the financial and service impacts.
On Tuesday, they addressed Cobb commissioners as part of a county “cityhood awareness campaign.” The major claim is that more than $45 million would be lost in county revenues if all four cities are created.
More than 200,000 people—nearly a quarter of Cobb’s population—live inside the proposed new cities.
Cobb has had its current existing cities—Marietta, Smyrna, Acworth, Kennesaw, Austell and Powder Springs—for more than a century, after Mableton briefly became a city and then went unincorporated.
Lost Mountain, Mableton and Vinings are proposing “city light” services that are focused on planning and zoning.
East Cobb is proposing planning and zoning, code enforcement and public safety services, and possibly parks and recreation.
At Tuesday’s commission work session, the heads of Cobb’s public safety agencies questioned the East Cobb financial feasibility study conclusions and expressed concerns about staffing, equipment, response time and training for the proposed East Cobb police, fire and 911 services.
The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood said it is planning an in-person town hall meeting for the general public soon, but has not set a date.
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Cobb Fire officials said areas in red would be in the new City of East Cobb (otherwise in blue) but are serviced by county stations. The area in yellow would remain in Cobb but is serviced by what would be a city station.
The leaders of Cobb County government’s public safety agencies said Tuesday that police and fire services for the proposed City of East Cobb are lacking many financial and service details.
During a special called work session of the Cobb Board of Commissioners, the heads of the county’s police, fire and 911 services showed slides highlighting what they’re providing, but said a financial feasibility study for East Cobb raises more questions than answers about what a new city may be able to deliver.
“We’re not here to advocate, but to educate,” Cobb public safety director Randy Crider said during the virtual work session, which included no discussion among commissioners. “But I’ve been asked a lot of questions I don’t have answers for.”
Legislation calling for a May 24 referendum to determine East Cobb Cityhood is awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature into law. Three other cityhood bills—for Lost Mountain, Mableton and Vinings—also are expected to receive passage, with referendums also in May.
Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid told legislators in January that cityhood votes in all four proposed areas were being rushed, and that the county hadn’t had time to examine the financial and service impacts.
Those presentations were made Tuesday at the work session by Cobb public safety, parks and community development officials.
The county has created a cityhood page that claims an estimated $45 million will be lost annually of all four new Cobb cities are created.
Nearly half of that—around $23 million—would come out of East Cobb, and most of the work session was devoted to East Cobb services, specifically police and fire. The other three cities are proposing “city light” services centered on controlling growth and development.
That was also the centerpiece of the original East Cobb legislation filed in March 2021 by former State Rep. Matt Dollar. Public safety was added last fall, as researchers from Georgia State University were conducting a financial feasibility study.
That study, released in November, concluded a City of East Cobb of around 60,000 people was financially feasible, even with public safety services estimated at costing $14 million a year.
The East Cobb bill also calls for planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation services.
More than half of the proposed city’s estimated $27 million in annual revenues would come from the 2.86 mills transferred from the Cobb Fire Fund.
At Tuesday’s work session, Crider repeated concerns he expressed to legislators that the East Cobb study is “just general” about public safety issues, including staffing, equipment, response time and training.
“We need to know what’s expected of us,” he said, referring to what may be included in intergovernmental and mutual aid agreements, similar to what the county provides in backup roles with Cobb’s six existing cities.
Crider said there aren’t enough details in the East Cobb study about exactly what specialty units a new city’s police department may have, such as SWAT units.
The East Cobb study also calls for a city fire department to consist of two stations—21 on Lower Roswell Road, at the East Cobb Government Service Center, and 15 on Oak Lane.
In showing commissioners a map of the proposed city, Cobb Fire Chief Bill Johnson said he has concerns about response time.
That’s because some parts of the proposed city (in red on the map) are served by stations that would remain in unincorporated Cobb. An area that would be located just outside of the city (in yellow) is now serviced by Station 15, which would be in the new city.
He also said he didn’t know how the East Cobb fire department would be staffed. The City of Roswell, for example, has many firefighters who work part-time shifts when off-duty from full-time jobs in other fire departments.
Stuart VanHoozer, the interim Cobb Fire Chief, and Cobb 911 Director Melissa Altiero also said they were unclear how their departments may be asked to provide support to a proposed City of East Cobb.
But Cindy Cooperman, a spokeswoman for the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood, called the county’s response “disappointing,” saying the county “has not properly briefed their staff on the well-established process in Georgia to form a city.”
Should a City of East Cobb referendum be approved, elections for a mayor and six city council members would take place in November, with a two-year transition period starting in January 2023.
She said the newly elected officials would work with a transition committee appointed by the governor to formalize processes and details for transferring services to be provided by the new city.
“This is not something new,” she said, referring to similar processes that have taken place in recent years in Milton, Johns Creek and Peachtree Corners. “These cities are thriving and have happy residents as a result.”
Cooperman also said that the “internal analysis of county staff is not credible when it suggests that the cost offset to $45M in revenue will only be approximately $450K.
“The county’s rushed attempt at an analysis was not thorough enough because many vital details on actual costs still need to be disclosed by the county.
“They had a year to analyze this properly and failed to do so,” Cooperman said.
The only direct meeting between East Cobb Cityhood forces and the county was in April of 2021 between Dollar and Cupid.
Cooperman said the cityhood group reached out to Cupid for a meeting in November with the addition of police and fire services, but has not yet heard back.
He provided a statement from Cupid referencing the Dollar meeting and saying that “I met other proponents about the effort approximately 2-3 weeks ago during a legislative meeting. They said they wanted to meet again and we will work on making that happen.”
Cooperman said the cityhood group is planning an in-person town hall after the Cobb County School District winter break next week, but a specific date has not been set.
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For a larger view of the proposed East Cobb city council districts, click here.
The Georgia House on Monday adopted Senate substitute legislation to call for a referendum for a proposed City of East Cobb.
HB 841 (you can read it here) was approved by a 96-62 vote in the lower chamber without debate, and will be sent to Gov. Brian Kemp to be signed into law.
It would establish a May 24 referendum for voters in the proposed city to decide whether or not to incorporate.
The county is spending more than $40,000 for lobbyists to oppose the cityhood bills.
Cobb officials estimate the impact to the county budget would be more than $45 million a year if all four proposed cities—East Cobb, Vinings, Lost Mountain and Mableton—would come into being.
The financial estimates contend that nearly half of those revenues would come from a City of East Cobb of around 60,000 residents along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.
The county also has protested moving up the referendums in each of the four Cobb cities from November to May, saying it would put an additional burden on Cobb Elections for the general primary.
But the East Cobb Cityhood group questions the county’s financials and objected to taxpayer money being spent to fight the bills.
The Vinings and Lost Mountain bills have passed the House and are headed for the Senate; the Mableton bill is being heard by a House committee.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners is holding a special work session Tuesday at 6 p.m. to cover cityhood issues, including potential impact on county finances and services.
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The proposed Cobb Board of Education map passed by the House would remove Post 6 from East Cobb. For a larger version click here.
Mostly along party lines, the Georgia House on Monday approved Republican-sponsored bills redistricting seats on the Cobb Board of Education and the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
They now will be considered by the Senate.
The bills drew opposition from members of the Democratic majority in the Cobb legislative delegation, who accused their GOP colleagues of skirting local courtesies during reapportionment.
The House also voted 95-64 to approve a commission map drawn by GOP State Rep. John Carson of Northeast Cobb that he said would likely still maintain the current 3-2 Democratic majority.
But Democratic lawmakers objected to redrawing current Democratic District 2 Commissioner Jerica Richardson and District 3 Republican Commissioner JoAnn Birrell into the same East Cobb-based district.
Birrell and Keli Gambrill, the other GOP commissioner from District 1 in North Cobb, are both up for re-election this year.
If the commission map is approved, Richardson would have to move inside the boundaries of the new District 2 if she runs for a second term in 2024.
Although redistricting bills must be passed by the entire legislature, local delegations typically move maps forward for full House and Senate votes.
Most of East Cobb would be drawn into District 3 on the Cobb Board of Commissioners in a map approved by the Georgia House.
But in the last election cycle, Democrats became the majority on the Cobb commission, which previously had a 4-1 Republican majority.
Republicans hold a 4-3 edge on an increasingly fractious Cobb school board, with a mostly partisan split on a number of issues.
The GOP map would move Post 6—the Walton and Wheeler clusters currently represented by Democrat Charisse Davis—into the Smyrna-Vinings area.
The Walton, Wheeler and Pope clusters would be included in a new Post 5, where four-term Republican David Banks is the incumbent.
The Sprayberry, Lassiter and Kell clusters would be reformed into Post 4, whose current member is Republican David Chastain.
Chastain has indicated he will be seeking a fourth term this year. Davis, in her first term, has not said whether she’s running again in 2022.
(PLEASE NOTE: The process of redistricting elected school board posts has nothing to do with the boundaries of school attendance zones, which are drawn by school district administrative staff.)
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The East Cobb cityhood group has released a map of proposed city council districts. To see a larger view, click here.
With one cityhood bill—in East Cobb—nearing passage in the Georgia legislature and three others likely to follow, Cobb County government has accelerated efforts to counter what’s been a rapid effort to put referendums before voters in those four localities in May.
The county government has published a special page it calls its Cityhood Resource Center to provide information to citizens about the potential impacts of cityhood.
Like the East Cobb legislation, bills are being considered to allow voters in proposed cities of Lost Mountain (West Cobb), Vinings and Mableton to vote in referendums on May 24, the date of the 2022 primary election.
The East Cobb bill passed the Senate Thursday but must go back to the House since a slightly different version was adopted.
But that bill could be finalized and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp into law by early next week.
County officials have protested that moving up the referendums from November to May won’t give them enough time to assess the financial and service impact, should any or all those proposed cities be formed.
A “summary impact” page prepared by the county claims an annual figure of $45.4 million would be lost in revenues if all four cities are created, with the lion’s share of that sum—$23.5 million—coming out of the area of the proposed city of East Cobb.
That’s nearly 25 square miles centered along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor, with nearly 60,000 people.
The populations of the proposed cities of Lost Mountain and Mableton would be larger than East Cobb.
But East Cobb is the only one of the four cityhood bills that would include police and fire services.
The East Cobb legislation calls for transferring the 2.86 mills in the current fire fund as the main source of city revenues.
On its cityhood page, the county said that while there will be some reduction in expenses if new cities are created, “any savings are not expected to be more than the loss of revenue to the county. This will in all likelihood not reduce the county’s general fund millage.”
In a message sent out Thursday in her official e-mail newsletter, Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said that “I am not here to thwart efforts towards determining the future of one’s community. As chairwoman of the county, I am here to ensure some sense of transparency and to better educate Cobb Citizens, more broadly, about how cityhood can impact all here.”
The county also is spending money for lobbyists, including former Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens. He’s a partner with Dentons, a large law firm, and he and another lawyer there, Daniel Baskerville, are being paid in excess of $10,000 each, according to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.
Other Cobb lobbyists are deputy county manager Jimmy Gisi and former State Rep. Ed Lindsey, who also is being paid more than $10,000 to oppose the cityhood bills.
But those efforts may be too late.
The Lost Mountain and Vinings bills passed the House and are being considered in the Senate. The Mableton bill is being heard by a House committee.
On Wednesday, the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood blasted the county’s lobbying efforts, saying that “we condemn the use of county taxpayer funds to mobilize paid lobbyists at the Georgia Capitol to work against passage of the cityhood bills.”
The group claimed that the lobbying decisions were made “without the consent of the Commission as a whole, and can only be interpreted as an attempt to deny citizens the right to vote for or against cityhood through a referendum.”
During a virtual information session Thursday night (you can watch a replay here), the East Cobb cityhood group reiterated its main thrust during the last year, that the citizens of the proposed city should have the right to self-determination.
During the call, cityhood leaders took issue with the county’s financial conclusions, and pointed out that the wrong map of the proposed East Cobb city was being used.
They emphasized the main reason for a revival of East Cobb cityhood—first introduced in 2019—was to preserve its suburban nature and stave off high-density development.
In addition to public safety, the other proposed services in the bill are planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.
“Redevelopment is coming to East Cobb, one way or another,” committee member Sarah Haas said, adding that “we believe that local government is the best course to chart the future of the community.”
While Cupid said that “there is marginal voter turnout in May primaries,” Craig Chapin, the East Cobb group chairman, said this year’s primaries should be high given interest in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, among others.
The county also included a memo from Cobb Elections director Janine Eveler to Gisi saying that including as many as four cityhood referendums on an already-crowded primary ballot reflecting newly reapportioned seats would create “additional complications to our workload” and increases “the risk level for error and failure to meet deadlines. If you have any influence with legislators, I would respectfully ask that the cityhood referendums be held until the November election, rather than conducting them in May.”
The East Cobb bill has been sponsored by Matt Dollar, who resigned his seat in the legislature on Feb. 1. On Thursday’s virtual meeting, he said that he was told by the Cobb Elections office that Feb. 15—this coming Tuesday—would be the deadline that would be needed to run a required local notice in order for the referendum to be on the May ballot.
He didn’t address Eveler’s concerns about staffing and time compression. Her office also has to oversee a special election to fill Dollar’s term for the rest of the year and that has been called for April 5.
The desire to have a referendum in May, Dollar said, would be that if it passes, mayoral and city council elections could be held in November, and a city could be better prepared to be operational at the start of 2023.
“We get to have the city leadership onboarded when the city takes effect,” he said, adding that the transition to full cityhood is expected to take two years.
The East Cobb Cityhood group said it would be holding another virtual session and an in-person town hall, but didn’t give any dates.
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The Georgia Senate on Thursday adopted a bill that would establish a cityhood referendum for East Cobb, but the legislation needs further action by the House.
By a 31-18 vote, the Senate approved HB 841, which would call for a May 24 referendum.
The bill that passed the Senate was a substitute from a Senate committee that included clarifying language on residency requirements for city council candidates.
That’s why the bill has to go back to the House, since a different version was passed there.
A motion by Sen. John Albers, the Senate sponsor of the East Cobb bill, to transfer the bill to the full House passed 30-16, but it didn’t get the required two-thirds of a majority vote.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan referred the bill back to the lower chamber in “normal order,” meaning it has to go through the committee process.
Albers, a Republican from North Fulton whose district will include the proposed East Cobb city boundaries next year, said that voters in East Cobb deserve the right to self-determination through a referendum.
He noted that in the last 17 years, 11 cityhood bills in Georgia have been voted in, and 10 of them have passed.
“We do not create cities,” he said from the Senate well. “We only create opportunities for citizens in those areas to create them.”
Two Democratic senators spoke against the bill, mainly for the timing of the referendum.
The original East Cobb bill was to have been in November, but was moved up to May in a change made during the House committee process by former State Rep. Matt Dollar.
He was the bill’s chief sponsor before resigning after it was sent to the Senate.
Sen. Michelle Au of Johns Creek, a member of the Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee, said that while “I don’t have an objection to cityhood movements,” the May referendum is an “arbitrary deadline.
“There’s no reason that I can see that we need to rush.”
Three other Cobb cityhood bills—Lost Mountain, Vinings and Mableton—also have May referendums.
Au said more time is needed for the financial impact of those new cities, if they come to pass, on Cobb County government.
State Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, a Democrat from South Cobb, made the same point, and also said the May referendums would be hard for Cobb Elections to include on an already full primary ballot.
“I understand the need for autonomy,” Rhett said. “Let’s slow down.”
Voting for the East Cobb bill was Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Republican from East Cobb. She did not speak from the Senate floor on behalf of the bill.
Her district currently includes the proposed East Cobb area but is not under new boundaries redrawn in reapportionment.
She was opposed to the East Cobb cityhood bill when it first came up in three years ago but said recently she was supportive of letting voters decide on whether to have a city.
The East Cobb Cityhood group is having a virtual information session Thursday at 6 p.m.; you can register by clicking here.
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The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood is holding what it’s calling a virtual information session Thursday, with a bill calling for a referendum nearing passage in the Georgia legislature.
The town hall starts at 6 p.m.; you can register by clicking here.
The group said the webinar will cover 45 minutes and will “present the 5 reasons why East Cobb should become a city.”
Attendees are asked to answer three optional questions at sign-up: selecting the municipal service they believe is most important for East Cobb; whether residents living in the proposed city should be able to vote in a referendum to establish a municipality; and if they’re in favor of a city of East Cobb “with local representation and local control.”
Participants can also leave questions and comments in a separate field.
The group said in an e-mail that an in-person public town hall is being planned but a date has not been set.
Cityhood group members have been visible at legislative committee meetings in recent weeks as HB 841 awaits action in the full Senate.
The legislation has been changed several times since being introduced in 2021 by former State Rep. Matt Dollar, who resigned last week after the bill was passed out of the House.
Among them are moving up a referendum from November to May, and changing the way a mayor is chosen, from having six city council members pick from among themselves to being directly elected by voters.
Those two additions to a substitute bill by Dollar required a second vote by the House Governmental Affairs Committee.
The cityhood group held several virtual town halls last year, but none since a financial feasibility study was released in November that added police and fire services.
A charter in the East Cobb bill also provides for planning and zoning and code enforcement services for a city of around 60,000 people, centered along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.
The cityhood group said it would have information sessions in January, but it has not done so since the 2022 legislative session began.
Last week, the East Cobb bill was favorably reported out of a Senate committee by a 4-3 vote.
The East Cobb bill is scheduled to be debated and voted on the Senate floor Thursday at 10 a.m. If it is approved there, the bill would become law after being signed by Gov. Brian Kemp.
Three other Cobb cityhood bills are being considered in the legislature. Lost Mountain and Vinings bills are slated for House floor action, and a bill for Mableton cityhood is also pending in the House.
Like the East Cobb bill, they would have referendums in May instead of the original November dates.
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With the resignation of State Rep. Matt Dollar this week, his East Cobb cityhood bill is being carried by lawmakers from Acworth and North Fulton.
By this time next week, a bill calling for a referendum to create a City of East Cobb may have passed the Georgia legislature and would await with the signature of Gov. Brian Kemp.
After only 10 days of legislative action, HB 841 easily has flown through the House and a seven-member Senate committee, and likely will be acted on by the full Senate this week.
Although the East Cobb bill was submitted nearly a year ago, that the legislation has taken on dramatic and confusing new dimensions since November, and especially in the last three weeks.
After filing an initial bill with a “city light” set of proposed services—planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation—then-State Rep. Matt Dollar brought a substitute bill with him to the State Capitol when the 2022 session began.
Instead, it included police and fire services—a controversial part of the initial East Cobb cityhood bill that was abandoned in 2019—along with planning and zoning and code enforcement.
Those were services that were evaluated in a financial feasibility study conducted by Georgia State University researchers and released in November.
That was the first surprise. Cityhood leaders said at the time that there was “unilateral” support for police and fire services from citizens they surveyed over several months, but they never bothered to tell the public about it until the study was done.
So would the three other cityhood bills in Cobb County—Vinings, Lost Mountain and Mableton—that are currently before the legislature.
After the initial committee meeting, Dollar also was questioned extensively about a governance structure that would have six city council members, who would choose a mayor from among themselves every two years.
So Dollar amended his substitute bill yet again, to still have six council members—with two each living in one of three districts—and a mayor elected directly, citywide.
The House Governmental Affairs Committee also heard from Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, who said the county was still assessing the financial impact of cityhood and that she wanted voters to have more complete information.
While the county has had more than a year to prepare for this moment, the significant change in services in East Cobb, plus additional changes since the bill has been considered in the legislature, should prompt a pause.
What’s the rush to having a referendum in May? Not just in East Cobb, but in the other three proposed cities?
They comprise more than 200,000 people, or roughly a quarter of Cobb’s population, and voters are being asked to consider significant changes to their local governance. These shouldn’t be rammed through the legislature and then onto the May 24 primary ballot.
Dollar—who abruptly resigned his seat in the legislature this week after the House transferred his bill to the Senate—said it was to avoid having a special election in early 2023 for city council elections, should an East Cobb referendum pass in November.
But Cobb taxpayers will soon be footing the bill for a special election to fill the rest of Dollar’s unexpired term, with his successor likely serving only in a caretaking role after the legislative session is over.
At a Senate committee hearing on Thursday, State Rep. Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who’s sponsoring the East Cobb and Lost Mountain bills, was asked if he would delay the East Cobb referendum to November.
“The consensus among the community was to get moving,” Setzler said, not bothering to explain who those community members may be.
Another committee member who wanted to see the proposed city council districts that haven’t been released in map form asked to table a motion to favorably report the bill, but that failed.
Most of those doing the questioning on Cobb cityhood bills in the legislature have been Democrats. But Republicans easily control the Georgia legislature, and since Democrats took control of the Cobb Board of Commissioners last year, GOP members of the Cobb delegation have been busy with cityhood bills (the Mableton bill has two Democratic co-sponsors, one of whom voted for the East Cobb bill).
Concerns over controlling development and growth are the focal points of those bills. When the East Cobb bill was filed last year, I thought it was a vast improvement over the 2019 effort, which never made sense with its focus on police and fire services.
The GSU feasibility study for the current bill is scant on details about how an East Cobb city of about 60,000 people could afford and fund full-service public safety services. There would be one police precinct and two fire stations, but the financials are basically line items about annual revenues and expenditures.
The main revenue source would be the 2.86 mills in the current Cobb Fire Fund.
There’s not much in the study about the true cost for salaries and benefits (including pensions) for 71 police officers and an unspecified number of firefighters. Nothing is in the study about expenses needed to train and equip them.
Those aren’t the only areas where the feasibility study conclusions just don’t add up. That’s why the East Cobb bill should be amended to push back the referendum to November.
Voters deserve the time to educate themselves about the issues and to be able to question the lawmakers and cityhood supporters who are putting this before them.
That hasn’t happened since late last summer, before public safety services were added to the financial study, and before the fast-moving event taking place now at the Gold Dome.
There should be public, in-person or hybrid town halls—not the virtual-only meetings that have taken place over the last year—for those purposes. They could be done this spring and fall, as the previous cityhood group did in 2019.
But those pushing the East Cobb bill in the legislature don’t seem to be interested in that.
(None of whom, by the way, actually live in East Cobb with Dollar departed. State Rep. Sharon Cooper is a co-sponsor of the bill and voted for it in the House, but didn’t speak during floor debate. State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick is more supportive than two years ago but she is running for re-election in a district that doesn’t have the proposed city of East Cobb and is not a sponsor of the bill.)
I agree that they do, but the feasibility study they commissioned is flawed and the legislation that is built around it has changed a lot in such a short amount of time.
It needs to be improved before those voters go to the polls.
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State Rep. Ed Setzler also is a co-sponsor of the Lost Mountain Cityhood bill.
The East Cobb Cityhood bill was approved by a Georgia Senate committee on Thursday, clearing the way for possible final passage next week.
By a vote of 4-3, the Senate Local Government Operations Committee favorably reported the bill, despite concerns from some panel members and a member of a citizens group against East Cobb cityhood.
One of those concerns—a district residency requirement for city council candidates—was addressed when State Rep. Ed Setzler, a West Cobb Republican and a bill co-sponsor—added clarifying language.
The other issue—pushing back a referendum to November instead of May, as was adopted in a substitute bill in the House—Setzler was not willing to entertain.
The bill now goes to the Senate Rules Committee, which could schedule the bill for a floor debate and full passage next week (the legislature doesn’t meet on Friday).
The East Cobb Cityhood legislation is the first of four such bills in Cobb to reach the Senate during the current session.
Bills calling for referendums in Lost Mountain and Vinings were favorably reported out of a House committee on Wednesday. A Mableton cityhood bill also is pending.
Also on Wednesday, Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said the county will be pushing an “awareness campaign” about cityhood as it relates not only to county government finances, but also explaining its current delivery of services.
Setzler and State Sen. John Albers, a North Fulton Republican who is sponsoring the East Cobb bill in the upper chamber, appeared before the Senate committee Thursday.
So did several members of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood.
Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood, pointed out that the bill passed by the House does not include language about city council residency requirements.
Under the bill, all six city council members would be elected at-large. However, there are three council districts, with each of them having two members who must reside in those districts.
The bill passed by the House requires anyone running for the city council to have been a resident of the city for at least a year (line 201 of the bill linked to above).
It doesn’t mention the district requirement, so Setzler asked for an amendment—noted in bold type—saying that “no person shall be eligible to serve as councilmember unless that person shall have been a resident of the city and the district from which he/she is elected for 12 months prior to the date of the election of members of the city council.”
Seger also said the May referendum date should be pushed back, a suggestion that some committee members also made.
Setzler said it would be ideal for a referendum in May, and if passed, with mayor and city council elections in November as preparations begin to start up a city in early 2023.
After the amendment passed, State Sen. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, asked if that’s “a real deadline.”
If it’s on the November ballot, Au asked, couldn’t a startup date be decided in the future.
Setzler said that a “consensus” of community feedback during virtual town halls conducted over the last year was “to get moving” early in the next year.
Another Democratic committee member, Sen. Emanuel Jones of Decatur, moved to table the bill because no demographic or district boundaries were provided, among other information he said was incomplete.
That motion failed before the committee voted to favorably report the bill.
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Lisa Cupid speaking to the House Governmental Affairs Committee in January.
Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid spoke out Wednesday against fast-moving cityhood efforts in the Georgia legislature and bills by Republican lawmakers that would override local redistricting efforts by the county’s legislative delegation.
Cobb spokesman Ross Cavitt sent a statement late Wednesday afternoon from Cupid, who said county officials have hired a consultant to evaluate the financial impact of legislation that could create four new cities, including one in East Cobb.
Those bills would also call for referendums in Vinings, Mableton and Lost Mountain in West Cobb. According to initial filings of those bills, those votes would have taken place in November.
But like the East Cobb bill that just passed the House, the other bills have been revised to move up the referendums in May instead.
She also said then she wasn’t opposed to new cities but “I’m opposed to persons having to vote and not having clear and accurate information beforehand.”
In her Wednesday statement, Cupid said that “the county understood that some of these initiatives could appear on the ballot in November.
“The impact analyses cannot be completed by the May primary, so I and staff will be much more active in assessing our impact internally and in educating citizens, both in city limits and outside, about the financial impact in Cobb.”
She said while she’s “not here to thwart efforts towards determining the future of one’s community,” she wants to “ensure some sense of transparency and to better educate Cobb Citizens, more broadly, about how cityhood can impact all here.”
At a committee hearing Wednesday to consider the Lost Mountain and Vinings bills, Cobb Deputy County Manager Jimmy Gisi said the county government will be creating an “awareness campaign” detailing current county services, especially those that the proposed cities would be providing.
Of the four, only East Cobb would provide police and fire services, after the initial bill called for planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.
Public safety services were included in a financial feasibility study issued in November, but did not detail specific costs for personnel salaries, staff training and equipment.
At the East Cobb bill’s House committee hearing, Cobb Public Safety Director Randy Crider said that given that the proposed East Cobb fire department would have only two stations serving a city with 25 square miles, “how much are we going to be relied on to provide support?”
The East Cobb bill was given its first reading in the Senate on Wednesday and was referred to the State and Local Governmental Operations Committee.
The committee is scheduled to meet at 12 p.m. Thursday to consider that bill. You can watch it live by clicking here.
The Vinings and Lost Mountain bills were reported favorably out of committee and will likely be scheduled for a House floor vote next week. The Mableton bill was filed Jan. 10 and has had a second reading but has not been scheduled for committee action.
On Tuesday, State Rep. John Carson, a Northeast Cobb Republican, filed a bill to redistrict the four district seats on the Cobb Board of Commissioners in dramatically different fashion than Smyrna Democrat Erick Allen, the Cobb delegation chairwoman who would keep those lines similar to what they are now.
Carson’s bill would put the two commissioners representing East Cobb—Republican JoAnn Birrell and Democrat Jerica Richardson—in the same district.
The commission’s three Democrats, including Cupid, supported Allen’s map, but Birrell and Republican commissioner Keli Gambrill were opposed.
In her statement late Wednedsay, Cupid said that while Carson’s map would likely keep a 3-2 Democratic majority, “his iteration of the map occurred without communication to the full Board of Commissioners. It is unclear to me if he consulted with the local state delegation regarding his proposed map.”
Cupid further said that “no pothole is seeking an R or D for resolution. His map certainly undermines the respectfulness of elected leadership of this county when it fully draws someone out of an area that they have been elected to represent. It also furthers political polarization when districts must be drawn that are either Republican or Democrat and not a combination of both which can result in balanced thought within the leaders that represent them.”
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