Scam artists are always looking to take advantage of a situation to steal from you. They’ve been using the COVID-19 pandemic and federal relief monies as tools to gain personal information from unsuspecting victims.
If you receive an email about pandemic relief, no matter how “official-looking,” REMEMBER:
Cobb County will not reach out to you directly about receiving federal assistance money.
Do NOT give out personal ID information to any of these sites.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The group advocating for East Cobb Cityhood held another virtual town hall meeting last Thursday with Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood as the featured guest.
During the hour-long session, which included pre-screened questions from the public, Lockwood emphasized the “local control” message that East Cobb Cityhood proponents have been pressing.
Milton became a city in North Fulton in 2006 and has 39,000 residents. Lockwood said that like some of the sentiment in East Cobb, there was vocal opposition to cityhood at the time.
“A lot of people just didn’t want [a new] government,” he said. “It was ‘leave us alone.’ But once we started making improvements, it was interesting to see people starting to expect more.”
Lockwood is serving his third consecutive term as mayor and is in his final term in that capacity due to term limits.
He said what he’s most proud of in Milton is “a sense of belonging and community” that has developed since cityhood.
“There’s a sense of pride, of more people getting involved” in civic affairs and community life,” Lockwood said.
Milton provides more services than the proposed city of East Cobb, including police and fire that were part of the initial East Cobb cityhood effort in 2019.
Lockwood said when it comes to zoning and planning, “people want things to be the same.” He said Milton has effectively limited density to maintain a suburban and in some cases rural feel to an affluent community that’s similar to East Cobb.
Density and urban-style development are growing issues in Cobb County, especially with East Cobb redevelopment projects at Sprayberry Crossing and in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford area that have drawn community support and opposition.
The JOSH redevelopment involving East Cobb Church would fall within the city limits of East Cobb, which includes less than half of the 2019 map and would have a population around 55,000.
The revived East Cobb Cityhood effort is focused on planning and zoning [along with code enforcement and parks and recreation] in the wake those and other development issues in the county.
Craig Chapin, the cityhood group’s head, said during the town hall that some of the pushback agains denser development “isn’t about how things were in Cobb County. You’re looking at a community and wondering what the future will look like.”
During the town hall, the cityhood group showed results of recent polling on cityhood issues reflected in the slides below. More details can be found on the cityhood website.
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!
At the end of the Cobb Board of Commissioners meeting on May 11 the elder stateswoman of the all-female body got a surprise recognition.
JoAnn Birrell, who is in her third term representing District 3 that includes most of northeast Cobb, was recognized in remarks by board chairwoman Lisa Cupid.
Cupid said she could “no longer keep the cat out of the bag” when Birrell’s husband David was spotted in attendance in the socially-distanced audience, and he later joined her at the front of the board meeting room.
This year Birrell is marking her 10th anniversary as a member of the board, and in showing a photo montage Cupid said she is “a tireless advocate in representing her constituents in District 3.
“She’s just been a friend and advocate to so many of us here.”
Birrell (full bio here) was first elected in 2010 to succeed then-chairman Tim Lee, and was re-elected in 2014 and 2018.
She moved to the top of the board’s seniority list when former commissioner Bob Ott of East Cobb retired in December, after serving three terms.
Among Birrell’s key priorities as commissioner includes advocating for public safety, Keep Cobb Beautiful, the Keep It In Cobb program for doing business with the county.
She also supports Superior Pets for Patriotic Vets, in which military veterans adopt animals at the Cobb Animal Services Shelter, with the fees paid by Superior Plumbing.
“I can’t thank you enough for surprising me,” Birrell said.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The East Cobb Cityhood Committee is holding its second virtual town hall meeting next week, with Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood as the featured guest.
The town hall is next Thursday, May 20, starting at 6 p.m., and you can register by clicking here. You can read more about Lockwood by clicking here.
The event will focus on the proposed services for the proposed city of East Cobb—planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.
There will be a Q and A session and participants can submit questions when they sign up.
The City of Milton was formed out of part of unincorporated North Fulton in 2006 and has 39,000 residents.
During 2019, East Cobb Cityhood leaders often referred to Milton as a model for what it was proposing at the time—primarily police and fire services—in a community with similar levels of affluence and demographics.
Milton also provides public works, community development (zoning and code enforcement), and parks and recreation.
The previous East Cobb Cityhood effort also pointed to Milton for its steady millage rate, which has been slightly lowered in each of the last two years.
The revived East Cobb group this week posted a “case study” about Milton’s tax surplus and financial status, as well as its provision of services (and another for Peachtree Corners, which became a city in Gwinnett County in 2017 and has a zero millage rate).
Lockwood was re-elected in 2020 to his fourth and final two-year term as Mayor of Milton.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The reconstituted East Cobb Cityhood effort includes some holdover members from the 2019 campaign and new members who have joined in since a new cityhood bill was filed near the end of the 2021 Georgia legislative session.
On Friday Cityhood group released further details about those individuals—some of whom have previously been identified.
The chairman is Craig Chapin, a technology entrepreneur who was raised in the Walton High School cluster. He took part in an April virtual town hall meeting held by the Cityhood group that featured the bills two co-sponsors, State Reps. Matt Dollar and Sharon Cooper.
Other newcomers include former Cobb school board member Scott Sweeney, who is currently chairman of the Georgia Board of Education, and who’s been front and center since the renewed Cityhood pushed was announced in late March.
Mitch Rhoden is the CEO of Futren Hospitality, which oversees Indian Hills, and is a former chairman of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce. He was named the 2020 East Cobb Citizen of the Year.
Amy Henry moved to East Cobb two years ago and is a sales professional, fitness instructor, nutritionist, and mother of four children in the Walton cluster. Henry was involved in an effort to get Cobb schools to go to in-person instruction last fall, and more recently, she urged the school district to end its mask mandate.
Two people involved in the 2019 effort remain, including Jerry Quan, a former captain in the Cobb Police Department who was in charge of Precinct 4 in East Cobb. He’s currently a resource officer for the Cobb County School District Police Department, assigned to Lassiter High School.
Joe Gavalis is a a retired federal agent and the original Cityhood group president. He’s a longtime resident of the Chattahoochee Plantation area and a member of the Cobb Neighborhood Safety Commission and the Cobb Elder Abuse Task Force.
Gavalis was reluctant to make public appearances during that 2019 Cityhood effort, which began in late 2018. He stayed in the background during several town hall meetings, and it was nearly a year before that Cityhood committee voluntarily revealed its full listing of those involved.
He asked several prominent East Cobb citizens to serve on an advisory board to examine a financial feasibility study. When one of them asked who else was involved in the Cityhood effort, Gavalis declined to reveal them and that individual quit, citing a lack of transparency.
In its release on Friday, the Citybood group included a photo of Gavalis receiving an award from State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb upon being named the “Distinguished Older Georgian 2021” by the legislature.
The Cityhood bill filed by Dollar (read our Q and A with him here) and to be taken up in 2022 needs a local sponsor in the State Senate. Kirkpatrick, who represents the proposed East Cobb city, did not co-sponsor the initial bill, saying she received plenty of negative feedback.
The current Cityhood group sought public feedback in the form of an online survey. The April town hall took selected public questions on Cityhood topics, but didn’t provide for direct interaction with citizens.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb County last completed a Comprehensive Transportation Plan in 2015 — and much has changed since then. Our population has increased and transportation needs and opinions have shifted within the county and region. New technologies and transportation solutions are also available that can enhance and transform Cobb’s future transportation system. To leverage these new tools and strategies, Cobb County and our cities are embarking on CobbForward, the county’s Comprehensive Transportation Plan for 2050. Your feedback and participation in CobbForward will help shape the future of transportation investments in Cobb for the next 30 years.
CobbForward is gathering public input on a series of surface transportation (pedestrian, bicycling and trail) and transit projects. Cobb Department of Transportation staff has many ways for you to be involved:
ATTEND TOWN HALL MEETING Each district commissioner is also hosting an in-person town hall with Cobb DOT to discuss the CTP:
District Three Commissioner JoAnn K. Birrell 6-7:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 12 Cobb County Civic Center, 548 South Marietta Parkway SE, Marietta
District Four Commissioner Monique Sheffield 6:30-8 p.m., Wednesday, May 19 Cobb Public Safety Police Training Academy, 2435 East West Connector, Austell
District One Commissioner Keli Gambrill 6-8 p.m., Thursday, May 20 Lost Mountain Park, 4845 Dallas Highway, Powder Springs
District Two Commissioner Jerica Richardson 5:30-7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 27 East Cobb Park, 3322 Roswell Road, Marietta
STOP BY INFORMATION STATION POP-UP Materials and information will be made available prior to the Board of Commissioners meeting. There will be no formal presentation.5-6:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 25 100 Cherokee St., Marietta
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Submitted information by the Cobb County Public Library System:
Beginning Monday, three more Cobb County libraries will re-open for Limited Service as the library system continues to expand operations throughout the community, officials say
The three facilities reopening May 3 – each known as neighborhood public libraries – are Gritters in northern Cobb at Shaw Park; Kemp Memorial in western Cobb; and Sweetwater Valley in the City of Austell’s Threadmill Complex in southwest Cobb.
This round of re-openings for limited services follows the return of in-person library hours for nine Cobb libraries in March and mid-April. Public libraries across the globe have implemented safeguards like closing the facilities to the public and limiting hours to prevent community spread of Covid-19 over the past 15 months.
The in-person limited service hours and locations of the three libraries are:
Gritters Library, 880 Shaw Park Road, Marietta 30066. Monday, 10 am – 8 pm; Tuesday – Friday, 10 am – 6 pm; and Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm. 770-528-2524.
Kemp Memorial Library, 4029 Due West Road, Marietta 30064. Monday, 10 am – 8 pm; Tuesday-Friday, 10 am – 6 pm; and Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm. 770-528-2527
Sweetwater Valley Library, 5000 Austell-Powder Springs Road, Suite 100, Austell 30106. Monday, 10 am – 7 pm; Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am – 6 pm; Thursday and Friday, 1 – 6 pm; and Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm. 770-819-3290.
For information on Cobb library hours, programs and services, visit cobbcounty.org/library.
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!
State Reps. Sharon Cooper and Matt Dollar have co-sponsored a new East Cobb Cityhood bill.
In their first interaction with the public, leaders of the revived East Cobb Cityhood movement on Wednesday stressed the importance of local control, especially when it comes to zoning and development matters.
During a virtual town hall meeting, cityhood legislation sponsors and members of the East Cobb Cityhood Committee took pre-screened questions from the public and sent out a survey for further feedback.
The committee also released biographical details about the cityhood committee members.
“It’s really about self-determination,” said State Rep. Matt Dollar, who introduced a cityhood bill before the end of the 2021 session. “If people in the cities of Marietta and Smyrna have that right, then the citizens of East Cobb should have that right as well.”
Much of the conversation revolved around the pro-cityhood theme of “preservation” of what’s been established in East Cobb—single family homes, limited density and quality-of-life amenities—as other areas of the county are becoming more urbanized and feature mixed-use developments.
“If people want density, they can go to the Cumberland area or Smyrna,” Dollar said. “People in East Cobb live here because they want the suburban lifestyle. They don’t want density.”
Former Cobb school board member Scott Sweeney, a member of the cityhood committee, added that it’s important for East Cobbers to protect “what’s in our back yard.”
The legislation sponsored by Dollar and State Rep. Sharon Cooper—both East Cobb Republicans—is vastly different from a 2019 bill he introduced and that she was lukewarm to support.
Cooper, who said last October she thought the cityhood issue was dead, said that some other Cobb cityhood bills introduced this year—in Lost Mountain and Vinings—also have been spurred by concerns over density.
The five-member Cobb Board of Commissioners, which represents nearly 800,000 people, is currently grasping with major redevelopment cases in East Cobb, including the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford and Sprayberry Crossing areas, that have drawn community opposition.
A city of East Cobb, Cooper argued, “would be people from our neighborhoods, people we live with, making those zoning decisions.”
The new effort scales down the size of the proposed city of East Cobb from more than 100,000 to about 55,000, mainly along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.
Dollar said feeback he received from 2019 indicated that the initial boundaries were too big, and didn’t lend themselves for a clear community identity.
The new bill calls for a six-member city council, with a mayor and vice mayor to be chosen every other year by the council.
While the 2019 East Cobb cityhood bill would have called for police and fire services, the new legislation is what’s called “city light” and includes planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.
Dollar said the “hope here is to be revenue neutral,” meaning no millage rate would need to be established.
“It’s a very stable tax base with light services,” he said. “It is not an expensive endeavor.”
Still, some of the questions addressed at the town hall were over whether a new city would create another layer of government.
Dollar disagreed, saying it was a “shift” in selected services.
The other proposed services, code enforcement and parks and recreation, weren’t discussed much.
There was a mention of the former in reference to the Tokyo Valentino adult retail store that opened on Johnson Ferry Road last summer, and that now tied up in the courts as Cobb County is trying to shut it down.
Dollar said adding parks and recreation “seemed like a good fit,” noting that they’re services offered in the newer cities of Milton and Brookhaven.
The cityhood leaders also said Wednesday that a new financial feasibility study conducted by researchers at Georgia State University will cost an estimated $22,000 and will be ready by July.
Dollar said that what’s happening now is just the beginning of a process, that there’s plenty of time before the 2022 legislative session. The Georgia General Assembly would have to pass the cityhood bill before it would come up for a local referendum next November.
“What I ask people, whether you’re for [cityhood] or against it, is just to keep an open mind,” Dollar said.
Anyone interested in completing the cityhood survey can do so by clicking here.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Commissioner Jerica Richardson held her first town hall in virtual format and with a selected audience at the Sewell Mill Library on April 6.
During a town hall address last week, Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson laid out her priorities for the rest of 2021 and provided constituents with a review of her first three months in office.
Richardson is a Democrat elected in November to succeed Bob Ott in representing District 2, which includes some of East Cobb, as well as parts of Smyrna and the Cumberland-Vinings area.
She conducted a “priorities tour” since taking office, and came up with nine priorities. The details can be found here, and they include the following:
Continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic;
Improving salary, benefits and other conditions for public safety personnel;
fiscal responsibility in the upcoming budget process;
an environmental agenda with an “environmental justice agreement” and expansion of Keep Cobb Beautiful programs;
expanding mobility options, including sidewalk improvements and repaving projects;
planning and housing affordability, especially workforce housing;
a youth, diversity and inclusion program that includes the creation of a youth board of commissioners and the establishment of a “Little Brazil” community initiative;
revitalizing libraries to position them as economic development centers.
She also said that a number of community chats will be scheduled this year to focus on other issues mentioned by constituents, including major zoning decisions, short-term rentals, an increase in violent crime, stormwater management, gun safety and code enforcement.
The topic of East Cobb Cityhood did not come up during the town hall meeting. A renewed effort to incorporate a portion of East Cobb includes legislation that will be considered in 2022, after a previous effort fizzled in 2019.
During her campaign, Richardson said she was opposed to East Cobb Cityhood (as was Fitz Johnson, her Republican opponent).
She recently told East Cobb News that during her priorities tour, she has continued to hear a lot of opposition.
“There’s just not a lot of support for this,” she said.
You can watch a replay of Richardson’s town hall meeting by clicking here.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go
Still chastened by Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game away from nearby Truist Park, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told a Cobb Chamber of Commerce audience Monday that the Atlanta Braves were also robbed on the field Sunday night.
“The refs screwed us at the Braves game Sunday night,” Kemp said, a reference to a controversial ninth-inning run by the Philadelphia Phillies that was upheld on a video review, and turned out to be the game-winner.
Kemp quickly moved on to assessing the state of the state, and especially its economic recovery and COVID-19 response, during the Cobb Chamber’s annual meeting at the Cobb Galleria.
During an appearance Saturday at AJ’s Famous Seafood and Poboys in East Cobb, Kemp blamed Democrats for MLB’s relocation of the All-Star Game due to Georgia’s disputed new election law.
On Monday, he defended the law and said the All-Star Game decision was “misguided.”
But “despite the actions by some to torpedo economic growth in the Peach State,” Kemp said, he’ll be eager to sign a new law providing tax incentives for Georgia companies that manufacture personal protective equipment.
The benefits of such measures, he insisted during a luncheon speech, “will expand opportunities for citizens across our state . . . . despite measures to try to divide us.”
(You can watch Kemp’s full address by clicking here; his remarks begin at the 37-minute mark.)
He said Georgians have “overcome a lot together and our future is bright.” While challenges remain, “I have never been more optimistic because we on our way to defeating the virus and returning to normal in the Peach State.
“Our resilience as Georgians has carried us this far,” Kemp said.
As of Monday afternoon, there have been more than 862,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Georgia since March 2020, and more than 17,000 deaths.
In Cobb County, there have been more than 59,000 cases and 932 deaths, the second-highest total in the state.
He said while some states wouldn’t take their own citizens for quarantine at the time, “this community stepped up. This is who we are as a state.”
Georgia was one of the first states to begin lifting COVID restrictions last April, and Kemp said the state is on the road to a strong economic recovery as a result.
The state has maintained its AAA bond rating, and in the recent legislative session major budget cuts were avoided and some funding was restored to areas such as education, public safety and health care.
A tax cut with a reduction in the standard deduction was also enacted this year, and Kemp said he also was proud of reforms to the state’s citizens arrest law.
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!
Submitted information about the Cobb County Government COVID-19 vaccine call center, which opens on Monday:
Cobb County’s call center will help residents get information about COVID-19 and the vaccines and assist them in making vaccination appointments.
“Our call center will enable us to better serve Cobb residents by helping people who have had questions about or issues with scheduling vaccines,” Cobb Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said. “Hopefully this effort will help more people get vaccinated and help Cobb County get back to pre-pandemic life as fast as possible.”
To speak with an operator, residents can call 833-974-3366 on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. The call center will answer general questions about COVID-19 and the vaccines and connect people with sites and facilities offering vaccinations. Agents can help callers schedule appointments through Cobb and Douglas Public Health sites and walk them through the process of scheduling appointments at GEMA mass vaccination sites, as well as private locations offering the shots. English and Spanish-speaking agents are available, with language line services available for those who speak other languages.
Residents can also use a chat feature to speak with an agent on their computers, tablets or smartphones. The chat feature is available weekdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. through both cobbcounty.org/COVID19 and at cobbanddouglaspublichealth.com.
“Cobb and Douglas Public Health is so thankful to Cobb County Government for launching this call center during the pandemic,” District Health Director Dr. Janet Memark said. “We appreciate the partnership and will continue to provide the support needed for its success. It gives our residents an expanded local resource for COVID-related questions and allows public health staff to stay focused on providing vaccinations and resolving outbreaks.”
Funding for the call center comes from the federal CARES allocation sent to Cobb County in 2020.
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!
Newly elected Cobb commissioner Jerica Richardson had plenty of reasons to be pumped for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game coming to Truist Park in July.
The midsummer event was set to be staged in the heart of her District 2, which stretches from East Cobb to parts of Smyrna.
County leaders—government, business and community—had been eyeing the extravaganza as a vehicle for economic development in the aftermath of COVID-19 as well as civic pride four years after the Atlanta Braves moved to Cobb.
And as part of an historic black female Democratic majority on the Cobb Board of Commissioners, Richardson was eager to demonstrate the political and cultural evolution taking place in a county long known for deeply conservative, mostly white elected officials.
“We’re obviously not happy at all, Richardson said in an interview with East Cobb News. “I wanted to use this as an opportunity to show leadership.”
Instead, she said, “it’s an opportunity that’s lost.”
On Friday, she stood by Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, the county’s first black and first female head of government, who had tried to keep the game in Cobb.
Opponents of the law, passed by a Republican-majority legislature, said it amounts to voter suppression, and on Wednesday President Joe Biden called for the game to be moved. He said the new law in Georgia, a state he barely won in November, is “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Richardson said that while there some parts of the law she likes and others she does not, trouble arises “when you choose division.”
She said that “the people who were most impacted by that bill were not listened to. You can’t solve anything when people aren’t talking to each other.”
The pitched rhetoric over the new law, she said, reminded her of previous political battles in Georgia, including the state flag, and of an anti-gay resolution by Cobb commissioners in the early 1990s that resulted in the county losing Olympic events.
During a transformational time in the county, to be deprived of what Richardson said would have been Cobb’s biggest event ever “is a lost chance to elevate the kind of conversations we need to have.”
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson is having a virtual town hall next week to announce her priorities and to introduce what she’s calling a “quarterly report” for her District 2 constituents.
The meeting takes place next Tuesday, April 6, starting at 6 p.m., and you can sign up by clicking here.
Up to 20 people who express a desire to attend in-person will be chosen from a drawing, as indicated on the sign-up form.
During her first three months in office, Richardson has undertaken what she calls a “priorities tour” around the district to hear from citizens about their priorities.
That’s part of what will be unveiled in the quarterly report.
Next Thursday, she’s holding another virtual town hall meeting about the North Point Ministries/East Cobb Church rezoning case that’s coming up in April.
She and Tony Waybright, the District 2 representative to the Cobb Planning Commission, held a town hall in February, but several changes have been made since then.
Waybright, of Vinings, is among the holdover appointees Richardson has kept who were initially named by her successor, Bob Ott, to various board and commissions.
Among the others staying on are Abby Shiffman of East Cobb, the chairwoman of the Cobb Library Board of Trustees, and Roger Phelps, also of East Cobb, to the Cobb Board of Tax Assessors.
Richardson also has appointed a “community cabinet” on various topics and to reflect the geography of District 2. Her East Cobb liaison is Cellie Cohen-Smith, a resident of Princeton Corners who was part of Richardson’s campaign.
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!
At a candidates forum last fall, State Rep. Matt Dollar said East Cobb Cityhood proponents initially “didn’t do a good job of explaining why it would be beneficial.”
Here’s the first look at the new East Cobb Cityhood bill filed Monday by State Rep. Matt Dollar (you can read through it here).
As we reported on Thursday, this had to be done before the Georgia legislative session ends on Wednesday because cityhood bills must follow a two-year process.
Should the legislature pass the cityhood bill next year, there will be a Nov. 2022 referendum by eligible voters in the proposed City of East Cobb, which has been scaled down from the 2019 boundaries.
Here are the main components of how a City of East Cobb, with a proposed population of around 55,000, would work:
It would provide zoning and planning, code enforcement and parks and recreation services in what proponents are calling a preservation effort;
The East Cobb City Council would have six elected members from three posts, which would have two members each. One member from each post must be elected city-wide;
A special election would be held in March 2023 to elect council members;
A mayor would then be chosen by a council majority to serve a two-year term and could serve up to two consecutive terms;
There would be a city manager and a city clerk, an outsourced city attorney and a municipal court;
Property taxes would be capped at 1 mill, but the city would collect other revenues such as franchise fees, occupation and business taxes, licensing, permits, assessments and other fees;
Starting Dec. 1, 2023, the city would begin collecting taxes, fees and other revenues at the start of a transition period from county government that ends on Dec. 31, 2025.
What’s not in the bill are council district maps.
State Rep. Sharon Cooper said cityhood was a “dead issue” but is co-sponsoring a new bill.
The new city boundaries (you can view the map here) include areas south of Shallowford Road and east of Murdock Road and Old Canton Road, in much of the Walton High School attendance zone.
The 2019 proposed map included areas in the Wheeler High School cluster and was being expanded to include more of the Pope and Lassiter clusters when the cityhood group abandoned its effort.
Those areas have been removed; the 2019 bill called for police and fire services that are not part of the new legislation.
Three other cityhood bills have been filed by Cobb legislators in the 2021 session, including two new ones, for a City of Lost Mountain in West Cobb and a City of Vinings.
In 2019 a bill was filed for a City of Mableton and that was also re-introduced this year.
Dollar has a co-sponsor this time, something he didn’t have in 2019, in fellow East Cobb Republican State Rep. Sharon Cooper. She said at the time she was collecting information like other citizens; during a campaign forum late last year she said as far as she was concerned the cityhood matter is “a dead issue.”
The bill still needs a Senate sponsor, and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, an East Cobb Republican, has been reluctant to add her name because of what she says has been a lot of negative response from constituents.
The bill is expected to be assigned to the House Governmental Affairs Committee, just like the 2019 legislation, where it will be taken up at the start of the 2022 legislative session.
The revamped East Cobb Cityhood group has said it will be conducting a new feasibility study, another requirement for a cityhood bill, but that process has not yet begun.
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!
Saturday hours will return April 10 for Cobb County Public Library locations as a first step in renewing six days a week library hours throughout the county, library officials announced Tuesday.
Libraries will be open Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm. Weekday hours continue to be Mondays from 10 am to 8 pm and Tuesdays-Fridays from 10 am to 6 pm.
The first phase of this round of re-openings will add Saturday in-person hours for the seven libraries now offering limited services – East Cobb, Mountain View, North Cobb, Sewell Mill, South Cobb, Vinings and West Cobb. Libraries currently offering only curbside service – Gritters, Kemp and Sibley – will expand the service to include Saturdays starting April 10.
The Stratton and Powder Springs libraries will offer curbside service only on Saturday, April 10, before expanding public access to in-person limited services Monday-Saturday on Monday, April 12.
Limited services enable the public to browse, check-out items, and use a limited number of public computers and other services.
The schedule for expansion to curbside services at the Switzer Library will be announced at a later date as the facility in downtown Marietta is under renovation, officials said.
Cobb County officials put in place coronavirus safety and health protocols throughout the year of the pandemic, including phased closures and reopening of libraries and grab-and-go curbside library services.
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!
To help explain Cobb’s latest $22.8 million COVID-19 rent/utility assistance effort and the end of the eviction moratorium, we held a virtual town hall this week. Guest speakers included Chief Magistrate Judge Brendan Murphy explaining the eviction process, Sheriff Craig Owens sharing his office’s response and representatives from five nonprofits explaining the new rent/utility assistance program. Residents also had their submitted questions answered.
These emergency federal rental assistance grants are designed to help those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic stay in their homes while struggling to recover. Assistance can be provided for rent, rental arrears, utilities and home energy costs, utilities and home energy costs arrears and other expenses related to housing.
Applications will open on April 1. Please do not contact providers to apply until then. We are compiling and updating information on the Emergency Rental Assistance program at cobbcounty.org/era.
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!
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To read the latest Cobb and Douglas Public Health COVID briefing, click here.
Starting on Thursday all Georgians ages 16 years and older will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines through the state Department of Public Health.
Gov. Brian Kemp made the announcement Wednesday.
More than 3.2 million vaccines have been distributed in Georgia since January, including more than 182,000 in Cobb County.
Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, said Tuesday that some vaccine appointments will be opened on Wednesday at her agency’s website for those in the current eligible groups, including people 55 and over, health care workers and first responders.
In a briefing to the Cobb Board of Commissioners, Memark said vaccine supplies would be coming to the state by the end of the week, and urged adults to get vaccinated.
“If we had flu vaccines that are this good, that would be awesome,” she said, mentioning the hesitancy of some people to get the vaccine.
She said even if people aren’t feeling symptoms, getting vaccinated can help slow the spread of asymptomatic transmission.
“This is what’s getting us to herd immunity,” Memark said. “We all have to do this together as a community to make this work.
Citizens do not have to get vaccinated in their county of residents. Memark said Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta has become an increasingly popular place to get vaccinated (you can book an appointment online here), and has been administering more than 6,000 tests daily.
While Cobb’s COVID-19 metrics continue to fall, she said the rate of community spread remains high. The current 14-day average of 244 cases per 100,000 people is the lowest it’s been since the fall, but 100 cases per 100,000 is considered high community spread.
Cobb has had more than 72,000 cases since March 2021 and 891 confirmed deaths.
Cobb and Douglas Public Health is continuing to provide free COVID testing at various locations in the county, including Eastwood Baptist Church (1150 Allgood Road). More dates, times, location and sign-up information can be found here.
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Chief Magistrate Judge Brendan F. Murphy has appointed Winter Wheeler, Esq. to the Cobb County Board of Ethics. The vacancy was created by the appointment of Alyssa Blanchard, Esq. to the Magistrate Court bench. “With her deep knowledge, extensive experience, and ethical reputation beyond reproach, I know Ms. Wheeler will serve with distinction,” said Judge Murphy. Wheeler is a talented attorney and mediator and active member of the legal community. After graduating from Georgetown University and Tulane Law School, she built a career as a top civil litigator at prominent midtown Atlanta law firm. Finding her niche as a problem solver, Wheeler currently serves as a Mediator and Arbitrator at a highly-regarded Atlanta firm. She is passionately engaged in the legal community. She provides leadership on the boards of the Women Lawyer Division of the National Bar Association, the Women in Dispute Resolution Committee of the American Bar Association, and the Georgetown Club of Metro Atlanta. A member of the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, Ms. Wheeler serves as the Co-Chair of its Membership Committee and as a member of the Long Term Planning Committee. She is also a member of the National Bar Association, American Bar Association, Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, Gate City Bar Association, and Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association. Wheeler has been previously recognized by the National Black Lawyers as a Top 40/Under 40 and as a Top 100 for 2020. She resides in east Cobb with her family.
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Dr. Janet Memark of Cobb and Douglas Public Health said that while COVID transmission rates are falling, they’re “still extremely high.”
The Cobb Board of Commissioners Tuesday voted to spend $2M in federal CARES Act funding to create a COVID-19 vaccination call center.
The center will provide updated information to the public about COVID-19 guidance and will allow citizens to schedule vaccine appointments.
The only commissioner to vote against in a 4-1 vote was Keli Gambrill of North Cobb, who said she hasn’t seen sufficient data showing that the call center software is effective.
JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb, who recently received her second dose of the vaccine, said “we’re still getting a lot of calls and e-mails” about how to get vaccines from the public that are being left with a variety of county agencies.
Chairwoman Lisa Cupid noted that the most vulnerable to COVID-19 are older people who are “less likely to be familiar with technology and most frustrated” at having to go online for information and to book appointments.
“We have some responsibility to make sure our vaccinations are accessible in Cobb,” Cupid said. “There are some things we need to get in front of.”
Cobb and Douglas Public Health launched a website in January as the vaccine rollout began, but it crashed initially and citizens expressed frustrations booking online or not having technology access to do so.
Dr. Janet Memark, the director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, told commissioners that having a call center is an important step as vaccine eligibility expands, and as variants of the virus are still in the community.
During an earlier briefing, she said that more than 143,000 doses of the vaccines have been administered in Cobb. There have been more then 170 cases of a British variant, the B.1.1.7, but said that’s likely a “huge undercount” due to limited testing.
Another COVID-19 variant that originated in South Africa also has been detected in Georgia, and she said there are three confirmed cases in the state.
Cobb’s COVID transmission rate continues a major decline, with a 14-day average of 356 cases per 100,000 for PCR and Antigen tests combined.
The PCR community spread metric is 197, the lowest it’s been since the fall. But since 100 cases per 100,000 is considered “high community spread,” the current numbers are “still extremely high.”
Memark and Lisa Crossman, the deputy director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, said they were encouraged by CDC guidelines issued Monday for fully vaccinated people visiting safely with others.
They include relaxing mask-wearing and social-distancing habits in some instances.
“We see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Crossman said, adding that when she read through the guidelines it “almost brought tears of joys to my eyes.
“This gives a lot of hope to our seniors who’ve been isolated for the last year.”
Cobb has 873 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 56,276 cases since last March. The 7-day moving average is 152 new cases as of Tuesday (compared to 526 on Jan. 13, a single-day high).
Crossman still urged citizens to continue to wear masks and socially-distance in public, and when people become eligible for the vaccine, to sign up.
“Whatever brand of vaccine you have access to, please get it,” Crossman said.
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Last week [March 2], the Cobb Board of Commissioners approved emergency funding to provide additional rent relief for qualified Cobb residents who have been adversely affected by COVID-19 and fees related to that process. To watch a short video from the BOC meeting, click here.
This funding in the amount of $22,880,880 is available through federal Emergency Rental Assistance grants approved by the U.S. Congress and signed into law on Dec. 27. The grants are designed to help those impacted by the pandemic, and struggling to recover, stay in their homes.
As part of the additional federal emergency COVID-19 relief bill, state and local governments with more than 200,000 residents were allocated funds to provide assistance with rent, rental arrears, utilities and home energy costs, utilities and home energy costs arrears and other expenses related to housing.
This program is separate from the CARES rental and mortgage assistance approved by the Cobb BOC in 2020.
Who is eligible to seek assistance? An “eligible household” is defined as a renter household in which at least one or more individuals meets the following criteria:
Qualifies for unemployment or has experienced a reduction in household income, incurred significant costs or experienced a financial hardship due to COVID-19
Demonstrates a risk of experiencing homelessness or housing instability
Has a household income at or below 80 percent of the area median
Service providers will prioritize applications received from eligible households if one of the following conditions exist:
The household income is at or below 50 percent of the area median
One or more individuals within the household have been unemployed for the 90-day period preceding the application date
For what can these funds be used? Assistance can be provided for rent, rental arrears, utilities and home energy costs, utilities and home energy costs arrears and other expenses related to housing.
Who will handle applications for the funds? The same groups who worked with the county on the CARES assistance will also handle this new grant program. Those groups are:
HomeFree-USA
Star-C Corporation
MUST Ministries
The Center for Family Resources
Sweetwater Mission
When can I apply? Those groups are sorting through the new program requirements and developing applications and we hope to have them available soon. We will post the latest when that information is available and keep updates on our COVID Assistance Center page at cobbcounty.org/communications/news/cobb-covid-assistance-center.
Cobb Magistrate Court Judge Brendan Murphy also provided the following update about how eviction cases will be proceeding:
(1) The Cobb County Board of Commissioners appropriated approximately $22.8 million in federal rental assistance funding to five (5) total providers: The Center for Family Resources, HomeFree-USA’s Cobb County HomeSaver for Renters, MUST Ministries, Star-C, and Sweetwater Mission. Tenants and/or Landlords may apply for the program through any provider as the terms and eligibility requirements are identical. A provider will also be available at the courthouse each Friday when dispossessory proceedings are scheduled to ensure that everyone that qualifies has an opportunity to apply. (2) In a Feb. 23 Order Amending Courthouse Safety Guidelines for all Classes of Courts and Reinstating the Plan to Resume Jury Trials in the Cobb Judicial Circuit, Chief Superior Court Judge Robert D. Leonard, II vacated his Dec. 22 order limiting in-person proceedings and allowed courts to “resume in-person proceedings…in strict compliance with public health guidelines and guidance issued by the Supreme Court.” (3) The CDC’s limited, temporary halt in certain residential evictions remains in place until “at least March 31, 2021.” (4) The Magistrate Court is returning to the Fall 2020 dispossessory hearing scheduling procedures. Residential, non-payment cases will not be automatically set but may be heard by written request. All other dispossessory cases with an Answer filed will be automatically set for a hearing.
Please click here for updated FAQs re: eviction cases in the Magistrate Court of Cobb County. If anyone has a question about the status or scheduling of a particular case, please call the Magistrate Court Clerk’s Office Civil Division at (770) 528-8900.
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