Signs from a pandemic: Black Lives Matter rally on Johnson Ferry Road; an expression of hope on Holly Springs Road.
As the year 2020 approached, I sent out what was the first reader survey for East Cobb News, eagerly anticipating a breakthrough year for this community news site after a couple of years of laying the groundwork.
As I began to look through the responses, a breakthrough event was in progress, and it changed everything for so many of us.
As COVID-19 and the responses to it dramatically altered our world, I set the survey aside. While many of my best-laid plans for this site also were put on hold, readers turned to East Cobb News like never before.
We thoroughly covered the COVID response and its effects on the community, schools and so much more. Along the way, we broke stories about the opening—and closure—of an adult retail store and a bitter controversy embroiling one of East Cobb’s biggest faith communities.
More than two years later, we’re hopeful the worst of the pandemic is behind us. We’ve grown our traffic and newsletter audiences with a sizable daily reach that is unmatched in this community.
Community life, and festivities, are springing back into action, and we’re eager to gauge your thoughts about East Cobb News as we get back to what is feeling like normal again.
All you have to do is click the link above, and respond to 10 questions about this site, and the news and information we provide. The survey takes just a few minutes, and once you’re finished, hit the “submit” button.
What’s happening in East Cobb is why you come here, and we want to better serve your interests and understand what you value about this community resource.
Unlike corporate-owned media, East Cobb News answers above all to our readers, with the objective of meeting the news and information needs in our community. Your answers will help us tailor our product to make it really appeal to what’s important to you.
Don’t be bashful—tell us what we’re doing well, what we could do better or different. We appreciate your readership and look forward to delivering more community news and information that’s relevant to you as we continue in 2022.
I’m always accessible to field your questions, hear complaints and try to explain why we do what we do at East Cobb News. E-mail me: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
We’ll be collecting responses through the end of July, so please feel free to complete the survey as you can. We’ll share the responses as the school year begins.
Thanks so much for your readership of East Cobb News! Have a great summer!
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 Taste of East Cobb festival earlier this month, Craig Chapin, the chairman of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood, was approached by an irate citizen.
Less than three weeks before the East Cobb Cityhood referendum, tempers and allegations were flaring over what has been a contentious issue ever since it first arose in 2018.
With a vote looming over carving out a slice of a vast East Cobb community into a city of around 60,000 people, emotions were going into overdrive.
(Monitoring just a sliver of the cityhood chatter on NextDoor, a social media platform for people for whom Facebook apparently isn’t unhinged enough, is a vivid reminder for Internet oldies of the Wild West days of early Web message boards.)
Mindy Seger, Chapin’s counterpart with the anti-Cityhood group East Cobb Alliance, said she was called over “to help defuse the situation.”
She said they “discussed how heated things were getting and wanted to show our ability to share space.”
In between debates the two groups had agreed to—and before a forum at Pope High School that turned a little nasty— there was good-natured conversation, and the above photo-op.
“Craig and I agreed Top Gun Maverick is going to be a great movie, we both love BBQ and Righteous Q is one of the best, and that it is possible to be kind to people you disagree with,” Seger said Thursday, two days after the cityhood referendum was soundly defeated.
Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance, who also debated Cityhood leaders in 2019, became a visible figure of the opposition.
She and what the Alliance claimed was a grassroots collection of citizens across political and social lines were gratified not just by the victory, but by the margin.
All but one of the 17 precincts voted handily against the referendum. It was a thumpin’, as President George W. Bush memorably described a midterm election that torpedoed his fellow Republicans.
More than 73 percent of those casting votes in the East Cobb referendum rejected it, a 46-point gap and by far a larger spread than defeated cityhood votes in Lost Mountain (58 percent voted no) and Vinings (55 percent opposed).
All three votes were, among other things, the victims of sloppy, poorly managed legislation that further riled up the citizenry and a chastened Cobb County government alike.
Instead of November referendums, they were pushed up to May. The East Cobb bill changed several more times, including how the mayor would be chosen and residency requirements for city council candidates.
Republican lawmakers responding to the new Democratic majority of the Cobb Board of Commissioners made a coordinated, and at times ham-handed, attempt to create the chance for more local control in the county’s most conservative areas.
Minutes after the Georgia House passed the East Cobb Cityhood bill, State Rep. Matt Dollar, its main sponsor, abruptly resigned, and non-locals were left to carry the bill.
State Rep. Sharon Cooper, a co-sponsor of the bill, and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, whose seat was redrawn out of the proposed city, voted for allowing citizens to have a referendum, but neither spoke to the legislation during floor debate.
The East Cobb bill, predicated on the notion that our neighbors are best-suited to decide things like density and quality of life issues, was tellingly deflected by our neighbor-lawmakers.
Craig Chapin of the Cityhood committee talked up his longstanding ties to East Cobb, but opponents questioned the motives of leaders behind the scenes.
Cobb County government set up a web portal on cityhood and held town hall meetings, in particular honing in on what they said would likely be slower response times for public safety calls in East Cobb.
In the final week of the campaign, Cobb public safety agency heads appeared on a Zoom call organized by the East Cobb Alliance, rehashing previous concerns.
Most of all, Cobb’s cityhood referendums were swamped by everyday citizens of communities who never bought the argument that there was a need to change their form of local government, and in the case of East Cobb, to create expensive police, fire and 911 agencies.
When East Cobb cityhood was revived in March 2021, the new focus was to be on planning and zoning and controlling growth and development.
Those were issues I thought could make for a stronger cityhood campaign, as I wrote when the first effort was abandoned in 2019.
But when a required financial feasibility study was released in November, it included public safety services. That study left a lot easy financial holes for opponents to poke at, and even shred.
Cityhood leaders said police and fire “kept coming up” when they met with citizens, but they never offered specifics.
The Cityhood group decried comments by Cobb public safety heads about what they said would likely be longer response times in a City of East Cobb.
Just as in the initial East Cobb cityhood campaign, however, there never was much of a groundswell for cityhood. It was a secretive initiative that blindsided the community when it first arose nearly four years ago and lacked any kind of grassroots appeal.
That some behind-the-scenes leaders had development interests fanned the flames of suspicion.
An East Cobb resident I spoke to in late March who supported cityhood felt even then it was ill-fated.
“Too much emotionalism,” he said, adding that as a small-government advocate, he’s leery of a Democratic-led county commission and thinks a City of East Cobb would be preferable on a number of fronts, not just development.
While that’s a novel way to make the case for smaller government, those against cityhood turned up their calls that a new city would add another layer instead.
This citizen also questioned the county’s financial estimates of the cost of losing cities, and the numbers and claims being peddled by the Alliance.
But East Cobb Cityhood was always a hard sell, and its public-facing proponents, while well-meaning, were fighting a multi-front war on multiple issues. All three of the failed referendums in Cobb (another comes in November, in Mableton) also were the subjects of lawsuits that were ordered to be set aside until after the elections.
In trying to press for the need to better control zoning and development, East Cobb cityhood advocates spent too much time and energy defending why police and fire services were necessary.
After receiving documents via an open records request, the Alliance contended that transferring the county fire fund millage rate was the only way to make a City of East Cobb financially viable.
The Cityhood group disputed that charge without elaborating, and resorted to some dog-whistle rhetoric that Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid and federal Democrats in Washington, notably the Biden Administration, were pushing policies “to incentivize states and localities to buck market forces to increase housing density.”
It smacked of desperation, and was meant to appeal to voters who’ve been concerned about zoning density and a proposed Unified Development Code in Cobb County.
Near the end of the campaign, the Cityhood group insisted it wasn’t obligated to file a financial disclosure report revealing who was funding its efforts.
The Cityhood group parked an electronic sign in front of the former Tokyo Valentino sex shop, but refused to divulge how it was paid for.
That harkened back to the early days of Cityhood, when the group explained that it wasn’t identifying its donors or others involved for fear of harassment from their “enemies” and the media.
To repeat such an arrogant, even paranoid refusal to be modestly transparent reflects disdain for the citizens of a community whose blessing they needed to realize their vision for local control.
This was a case study in how to rub a community the wrong way while seeking its vote.
The East Cobb Cityhood group may eventually be right about the development and housing concerns it raised.
“East Cobb will be under increasing growth and tax pressure from Cobb County to urbanize our community,” the Cityhood group said in a post-referendum statement, as it scrubbed its website.
Their issues may, like Sandy Springs and other North Fulton communities that are now cities, resonate over time and gain adherents to a new effort to create a city.
Cupid’s handling of zoning matters—especially the Dobbins case that prompted a rare protest from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce—has sounded some understandable alarm bells.
The theme of the East Cobb Alliance has been that it likes East Cobb “just the way it is,” but this community isn’t static.
It’s not merely a bedroom community any more, just as a once-rural area became an affluent, in-demand suburban hotspot for great home values, schools and quality of life several decades ago, when I was growing up here.
If you remember the Parkaire airfield, and farmland where retail centers and million-dollar homes stand, you understand how different East Cobb looks and feels now, and how it can change again.
From the outset, the masterminds of the East Cobb Cityhood effort never understood or seemed to care about what it takes to create a winning grassroots campaign.
They had money and political influence to get a referendum bill passed in the legislature, but that’s about it. During the second campaign, a more concerted attempt was made to garner community support, and did they did make some headway.
Broader public support was essential, but ultimately they didn’t trust the public enough to come clean about who they are, or to build authentic community connections.
If there’s to be another attempt, there’s got to be the kind of ground-up impetus that prompted successful cityhood efforts elsewhere.
A revived East Cobb Cityhood effort also would need to be rid of its original parties, who while sowing visceral skepticism, inadvertently gave rise to a new brand of community activism they could learn from.
“Many in this community stepped out of their comfort zones by attending meetings, wearing buttons, knocking doors, and waving signs on street corners,” Seger said. “Not only did we find a way to work together sharing various skills, we made some unexpected friendships along the way.”
Seger said there’s an interest in trying to “raise the bar for Georgia’s Cityhood process. The community has the mic, we hope those in authority are listening.”
She said while she doesn’t have contact information for Chapin, with whom she momentarily tried to demonstrate some local goodwill, “I hope we can connect in the spirit of community.”
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Mike Boyce took plenty of heat at a budget town hall at the East Cobb Senior Center from citizens angry about his proposed tax increase in 2018 (ECN file).
On a chilly, but sunny Saturday in early November 2019, Mike Boyce was visiting with veterans on Old Canton Road at United Military Care, a non-profit that helps veterans in need.
The occasion was a barbecue luncheon to observe Veterans Day, and a few dozen people turned out for hamburgers, hot dogs and the sounds of a local band playing 1960s pop songs that resonated with memories of the Vietnam War.
The group was the Tunnel Rats, and as Boyce took a seat next to mine in the sun, he told me over the music, “I’ve got their CDs.”
A retired Marine colonel, Boyce was too young to suit up for that conflict, but his 30 years in the Corps shaped what became for him a life of service in uniform and beyond.
On this occasion, he wasn’t glad-handing or politicking as Mike Boyce, Cobb Commission Chairman, but as a veteran himself, and a private citizen appreciative of the service and sacrifices of others.
He was as approachable and interested in hearing from his fellow veterans as he was during the many town hall and other public meetings he conducted during his four years in office, even from citizens furious when he proposed a property tax increase.
For Boyce, serving in public office was no different than the military. After he lost his re-election bid in 2020, he participated in a leadership program at his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.
That’s where he was two weeks ago when he suffered two strokes. In announcing his death on Tuesday at the age of 72, his wife Judy Boyce said he was “having the time of his life,” mentoring students, riding his bicycle around the inviting Notre Dame campus (I’ve been there, and it’s fantastic) and starting a new chapter in his life.
Like many in Cobb County, I was shocked to hear the news. Judy Boyce said in a message that her husband’s strokes were “unrecoverable.”
A funeral Mass for Boyce will take place next Thursday, Feb. 3, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in South Bend, Ind., starting at 9:30 a.m. It may be live-streamed and updates will be posted here.
A memorial service also is scheduled for Feb. 18 at 10 a.m. at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church (4385 Lower Roswell Road), where Boyce was a member.
When he left office, Boyce remained high-energy, vigorous and spirited.
That’s how he approached the job he inherited from Tim Lee, whom he defeated as chairman in 2016, campaigning against his predecessor’s handling of the Atlanta Braves stadium deal.
Boyce ran a true grassroots campaign, dutifully knocking on doors and spending plenty of time around the county, and not just his base in East Cobb. He was vastly outspent and didn’t have the county’s business and political leadership behind him, but he prevailed.
It was a slog, as were many of the budget town halls and other public meetings he conducted during an eventful four years in public office. But his Marine persona was unmistakeable.
As he liked to say about some of those political conflicts, “I’ve been through a lot worse.”
After taking plenty of flack at the East Cobb Senior Center at a budget town hall meeting, Boyce didn’t pack up his presentation materials and quickly scuttle away. Instead, he stuck around to hear citizens agitated about their taxes going up.
As much as he let them sound off, Boyce never backed away from what he said was the necessity of passing a “restoration budget,” one that provided additional funding for parks and libraries, among other things, for Cobb to remain “a five-star county.”
There also was the Mike Boyce who had some gruff Great Santini moments.
During a budget retreat, weary that commissioners weren’t signing on to the tax hike, he blurted out “I get it. You don’t want to stick your neck out. But this isn’t hard. It’s $30 million in an economy of billions. You would think we’re living in Albania! I just don’t understand.”
In the end, he got the third vote he needed. Commissioner Bob Weatherford, a Republican who provided it, was promptly voted out of office.
The Cobb Republican Party, which never warmed up to Boyce, spoke out against the increase.
So did former Commissioner Thea Powell, an East Cobb Republican whom Boyce had appointed to the Cobb Planning Commission.
Not long after calling the proposed tax increase “a dog’s breakfast,” she was summarily replaced.
The “Tax Hike Mike” moniker was born as the political winds in Cobb County were changing.
In 2018, Democrats even made headway in Republican East Cobb, snaring a Congressional and a school board seat.
Boyce often mentioned how the job of chairman was much more than he ever imagined, but as he decided on running for re-election, I asked him: “Are you up for this?”
Without hesitation, he said “Yes.”
I saw him at other community events, including occasionally slipping in at an East Cobb Business Association luncheon when a zoning meeting ended early.
Boyce wasn’t always there to make a public speech, but was hobnobbing with the locals.
At heart, I think Mike Boyce was a citizen-servant who never saw himself as a professional politician.
One of Boyce’s finest moments in public office came in November 2020, shortly after he had been defeated by commissioner Lisa Cupid.
Amid the partisan bickering over Georgia’s voting in the presidential election, Boyce offered “a transition in grace,” saying that “we acknowledge the voice of the people, we hear them and we move on.”
That was the guiding spirit that prompted Boyce to get into public office, and that’s how he left it.
While his family grieves and our community mourns, we should consider ourselves grateful for his commitment to service, and the example he set.
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I took the photo above at East Cobb Park back in November, on my birthday.
It was a nice treat to take a little time away from work and enjoy a warm-enough day that glistened with sunshine as the autumn colors emerged.
I’ve always felt fortunate to be able to celebrate the renewal of my birth (I turned 29 again!) as the season of hibernation approaches.
I enjoy immersing myself in what passes for the four seasons here in Georgia, although this fall took later than usual to arrive.
They’re timeless opportunities to reflect on what they signify for a particular moment in time, and for the last two years we have undoubtedly been living in momentous times.
As I write this, on New Year’s Day 2022, the temperatures are in the low 70s, and the sun is breaking through after a wet New Year’s Eve that included a tornado warning.
Luckily, the East Cobb area dodged that bullet, but the year that was 2021 clearly was determined to leave on a bizarre note.
This time a year ago, I was like so many others, glad to see the backside of 2020, which visited upon us a pandemic, closures, chaos and uncertainty.
Far too many people in our community experienced illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, as well as the destruction of work, schooling, civic, religious and social life caused by the shutdowns and restrictions.
The year 2021 had to be better, I thought, knowing that the changing of a calendar year was mostly symbolic.
But after the champagne toasts were made and the final chords of Auld Lang Syne faded away, 2021 roared on like it was still 2020.
Three educators in the Cobb County School District had died over the holidays, and in January the Cobb school board heard an earful from the public—teachers, students and parents—afraid and wondering what would be done during a massive surge in infections.
At the same time, the first COVID-19 vaccines became available, but the local health department website designed to book appointments crashed, and vaccine supplies were limited.
Older people called and left messages with me, mistaking this publication for the health department. Their voices were desperate and frantic; some just wanted to talk to a human on the telephone in an age of being forced to do so many things online.
It was absolutely harrowing to hear, as I felt utterly helpless.
A month later, people close to me were getting infected, one seriously enough to be hospitalized for several weeks.
It was touch and go for a while, and while I’m not terribly religious, I prayed for him to recover, and he thankfully has done that.
Throughout these last 20 months or so, I’ve tried to find silver linings, both personally and as the publisher of East Cobb News.
Warnings to avoid large gatherings indoors prompted many people to get outside.
I’ve spent many outings at East Cobb Park and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, but they took on a new importance in the pandemic.
People offer a smile, faces uncovered, as they walk their dogs, and on occasion stop to chat. A woman who brings her feisty Pomeranian to East Cobb Park on Sunday afternoons has become a new acquaintance.
There’s a friendliness that’s not only refreshing, but restorative to one’s well-being.
When I’ve felt the depths of posting continuously grim stories about the virus—we’re now on our third surge in the last year—readers have helped pull me through.
It’s been gratifying to get messages of appreciation for the information—related to COVID-19 or otherwise—that’s important to the community.
Our traffic figures reflect some of that, but the calls, text messages and e-mails you send me are like a shot in the arm—no pun intended.
I can’t tell you how much your kind words, support and encouragement have meant to me.
And I want to keep hearing from you as 2022 is here.
Perhaps I’m more hopeful than I should be, but I really am starting to see more than just a few silver linings as we approach two years of the COVID-19 era.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but when I hear from friends and family members who live in other parts of the country where crippling government shutdowns and mandates are still in effect, I feel grateful to live where I do, and to have the opportunity to serve the citizens of this community.
Before the pandemic began, I surveyed readers on what they would like to see from East Cobb News in 2020.
Little did any of us know what was to transpire, and for how long. Shortly I will be sending out a new survey to solicit public feedback on how this publication can better serve you, in these very altered times.
Please look for that in the next couple of weeks, and as always, feel free to reach out: wendy@eastcobbnews.com and 404-219-4278.
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The Atlanta Braves had not one, but two, parades on Friday, plus a special concert at Truist Park with rap luminaries Ludacris and Big Boi to celebrate their improbable World Series championship.
Tens of thousands of fans lined up in downtown Atlanta and along Cobb Parkway as the Braves’ caravan made its way to the ballpark.
For a moment, the exuberance almost got the best of Cobb County’s finest, as police surrounded a man whom they thought had wandered out from the crowd, but who was actually Braves’ relief pitcher Tyler Matzek.
It was hard not to get caught up in cheering on a team that was devastated by injuries, didn’t have a winning record until late in the season, then knocked off teams predicted to beat them, including last year’s champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in the playoffs.
As someone who grew up in metro Atlanta and whose family’s ties to the Braves go back to their days in Milwaukee, this last week truly has been special for me.
My first game as a fan was as an eight-year-old in 1969, when the Braves won their first pennant in town.
In 1995, when the Braves won the World Series at the same venue, I was a sportswriter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I don’t remember much about that decisive Game 6 on a Saturday night at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, as I was coming back from somewhere after covering a college football game.
So it was a real treat to savor the first sports team I had ever followed beat back all the obstacles. This year’s Braves are a testament to determination, resilience, teamwork and optimism, qualities that take on special significance during these abnormal times of a pandemic.
The euphoria was bound to go overboard, of course, as these occasions sometimes do.
On Thursday, in a commentary published in our local daily newspaper, the headline referred to the late Tim Lee, the former county commission chairman who brokered the stadium deal that brought the Braves to Cobb, as the “angel in the outfield.”
Even more tellingly, the narrative glossed over the dubious process by which Lee, the Braves and local business insiders worked in secret for months, until they could keep their secret no more.
The above commentary asserted several times that “Tim did the right thing.” But the glaring lack of transparency, a bevy of investigations and ethics complaints and a rushed timeline without much of a chance to get meaningful feedback from the public are still gnawing.
This coming Thursday will mark the eighth anniversary that Lee announced a proposed 30-year memorandum of understanding with the Atlanta Braves to help construct a stadium in the Cumberland area.
In that agreement, Cobb would commit to a $300 million subsidy—taxpayer money—to help finance the ballpark, as well as to regular capital maintenance, public safety and other costs.
The four district members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners had exactly two weeks to digest a complicated long-term deal. The public had an even smaller window to ask questions of their elected officials at hastily arranged town hall meetings.
I covered these proceedings during my time at Patch, a hyperlocal network founded by AOL a little more than a decade ago.
Bob Ott, the former Cobb commissioner whose District 2 included the area along Windy Ridge Parkway and I-75 where the stadium would be built, was thrust into a sudden, and very glaring, spotlight.
Always accessible, Ott prided himself on holding informative town halls all over his Cumberland-East Cobb district.
But he made himself scarce for most of those two weeks, inundated with messages and calls from constituents and the media like no other issue in his then-two terms in office.
On the night before the vote, Ott held a town hall meeting not in his district, but in the commissioners’ meeting room off the Square in Marietta.
I found that odd, and asked him after it was over if he had made up his mind. He said he would do so when he pushed the button to vote.
Like the other town hall meetings I attended during that intense fortnight, I realized that the Braves stadium deal was a done deal.
Like many people who raised questions about the deal, Cupid wasn’t opposed to the Braves coming to Cobb County, or even having a partially publicly financed stadium built.
Like many of those same people, I also wondered about the rushed, secretive proceedings. Citizens groups as disparate as the Tea Party and Common Cause tried to get some answers, but community scrutiny wasn’t well organized.
Lee defended the timeline and process by asserting that if Cobb didn’t act, then the Braves would go elsewhere.
But as longtime Braves executive John Schuerholz admitted not long after the Cobb vote, the team didn’t have another venue in mind after wanting to leave the city of Atlanta after nearly 50 years.
In other words, the Braves played Cobb like Max Fried toyed with the Astros’ lineup on Tuesday, setting down the commissioners in almost perfect order.
The timing of all this is important to remember, as Cobb and much of the nation were starting to come out of the recession.
Commissioners JoAnn Birrell and Helen Goreham were doing verbal cartwheels from the moment the proposed stadium deal was announced, smitten by the catnip of economic development that has tempted elected officials everywhere.
You can love the Braves, as I have for most of my life, and still hate the way that stadium deal came down.
You can be excited about the dining and entertainment options at The Battery Atlanta, which the Braves have financed to the tune of nearly $400 million, and wonder why the franchise still needed the public’s “help” to build a ball park.
The process stunk to high heaven, lacked even a modicum of transparency, gave no thought to a referendum, and was followed by lame excuse-making.
Lee paid the ultimate political price when he was ousted in the 2016 Republican primary by Mike Boyce, and didn’t get to enjoy the ultimate payoff of his stadium efforts. He died two years ago of cancer at the age of 62.
After the stadium opened in 2017, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic impact study proclaiming a nearly $19 million annual benefit to the county.
One of the more vocal critics of such claims, Kennesaw State University economics professor J.C. Bradbury, noted in an op-ed during the World Series that one can cheer for the Braves and not get caught up in such runaway economic development fever.
Not wanting to rain on a parade, but I feel the same way. The economic “home run” that was promised Cobb citizens still hasn’t been realized, and shouldn’t be conflated with success on the baseball field.
When a public official is hailed for doing something “right” without that individual being examined for how he/she conducted public business, that’s more than blind cheerleading.
The ends never justify the means, especially public officials spending tax dollars and not giving the citizens much of a say.
Holding elected officials—or the legacies of those who are no longer with us or who are out office—to account isn’t just about determining if what they did was the right (or wrong) thing to do.
It’s also scrutinizing how they do it that should matter.
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On the darkest day in the Cobb County School District since the COVID-19 pandemic began, neither the superintendent nor the school board had much to say about it.
As the board was in session twice Thursday for their monthly meetings, two teachers in the school district died of COVID-19.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale did mention them by name during the meetings: Dana Johnson, a first-grade teacher at Kemp Elementary School and Cynthia Lindsey, a paraprofessional at Sedalia Park Elementary School here in East Cobb.
The perfunctory “thoughts and prayers” from Ragsdale were all that were even referenced about their deaths and the district’s ongoing pandemic response.
With classes being all-virtual this week, I figured Ragsdale would provide an update. Are case numbers easing off? Is there ample staffing available for in-person learning? What about the schools that closed early last week?
It was his decision to shut down in-person learning this week due to increasing COVID cases in the schools and teachers absent due to quarantine. It has been his decision to offer parents a choice of face-to-face or remote instruction.
During these months of uncertainty, he’s explained his thinking about these matters in some detail. While not everyone has been happy with the decisions, he’s been above-board in laying out the difficult task of reopening, establishing safety protocols and providing dual learning environments.
This week, with concerns about the safety of students and staff rising along with a case count that’s higher than ever, there was nothing on the board agenda to discuss the COVID response.
Even though Dr. Janet Memark, the director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health who’s advised Ragsdale, continues to urge students and adults to stay home as much as possible.
At both school board meetings, teachers and their advocates urged that all-remote learning continue. They were mourning the loss of their colleagues, and emotions were also rising high.
Face-to-face learning resumes on Monday, and with tensions and case numbers growing, Ragsdale had nothing to say about it.
At a Thursday afternoon work session, school board member Jaha Howard wanted Ragsdale to comment on the COVID-19 situation in the schools, but board chairman Randy Scamihorn put a halt to the inquiry.
“Would you be open to a dialogue?” Howard asked Ragsdale. “There are a lot of concerns out there [from the public] and we’re about to move on.”
“That’s it,” Scamihorn said.
Scamihorn had more than the power of the gavel at his disposal. The Cobb Board of Education, at least at its public meetings, has chosen to censor itself.
It was a contentious time marked by the additions of Howard and Charisse Davis, first-term Democrats whose elections in 2018 trimmed a 6-1 GOP advantage on the school board to 4-3.
Howard in particular has ruffled feathers, sometimes eagerly so, making regular accusations about racial disparities in the district, and he has used his comment time at board meetings to denounce Republican elected officials elsewhere.
His grandstanding can be over the top, but the attempt to silence him and Davis was absurd. Partisan bickering since then has grown even worse, and members of both parties are to blame. There’s no spirit of compromise at all, even with the serious business of navigating a pandemic.
So on Thursday, we saw one board member cutting off another who wanted ask the superintendent about the most important subject in the second-largest school district in Georgia.
Board members can put items on the agenda, but a policy change pushed through last month by Scamihorn on a party-line vote now requires the approval of a board majority.
Given the deep partisan divide, anything that Howard, Davis and newly elected Democratic board member Tre’ Hutchins want to bring up needs at least one Republican vote. There’s no budging going on in the slightest.
With anxiety heightening and parents wondering how their children might be learning in the coming weeks, the public was owed much more than petty parliamentary maneuvers.
The policy to muzzle unwanted speakers and topics also stifled any comments from elected representatives to the Cobb school district about a very sad, grim day.
At the end of the public comment period Thursday night, Scamihorn thanked the speakers for being “informative and succinct,” but to paraphrase him, that was it.
On Friday, Davis offered some school-related public health guidance on her Facebook page “in the absence of ANY COVID-related discussions or presentations from the superintendent at our board meeting. . . . These are difficult times, but like many of our teachers tell their students: we can do hard things.”
While Cobb County government and public health leaders carved out dedicated time this week to help frazzled citizens navigate the COVID-19 vaccine process, the Cobb school board and superintendent offered nothing of reassurance on the one day of the month they have to come before the public.
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Since 1979, the Giannes family has been serving up Greek and Mediterranean specialties at their restaurant in the Terrell Mill-Powers Ferry area.
What’s been Kouzina Christos since 2012 at the revitalized Terrell Mill Village Shopping Center first opened next door, at Terrell Mill Junction, at a time when that East Cobb community was undergoing a transition.
Christos Restaurant, as it was first called, later moved up the road a bit, at the Delk Spectrum Shopping Center at the corner of Powers Ferry, and continued to persist and thrive.
As other independent, mom-and-pop and chain restaurants came and left the area, Christos became a fixture. It seemed able to adapt to changing demographics and tastes in a busy commercial area with more competition from the national casual restaurant brands.
In three different locations, the Christos menu, and the familiar faces, have stayed essentially the same. In my many visits there, I thought of it as comfort food with a little extra spice.
But on Saturday, the long-standing eatery will be serving its final gyros, salads, sandwiches, pizzas and spanakopitas.
Owner Christos Giannes announced the restaurant’s closing on Monday, as first reported by ToNeTo.
The calamitous impact of COVID-19 closures was just too much, and Giannes said in a social media message he’s no longer working with his landlord “over options to remain operational.”
As far as restaurants go, anything over even 10 years can seem like an eternity, even in the pre-COVID-19 world.
But more than four decades? It’s stunning, really, a testament to a determined Greek immigrant family that loved serving up affordable, family-style meals to a loyal East Cobb community of customers.
Among them was my mother, who came to the original Christos in the early 1980s for lunch with co-workers from a nearby office park.
I was in college during those years, and after I returned she and I would go there often. I don’t remember what she liked in particular, but I know what I did: A very generous and tasty Italian grinder.
Over the years, I have gone there on occasion, typically for that Italian grinder at lunch.
On Wednesday, I did so again, for the last time, and the familiar flavors of Genoa salami, pepperoni, capicola, tomatoes, lettuce and Duke’s mayonnaise on toasted bread brought back fond memories.
It was a bittersweet dining experience all the same, as I looked around and saw the beginnings of a packing-up.
Christos Giannes wasn’t there when I stopped in, but he’s been frank about the fate not only of his own restaurant but others like his during the long months of closures, partial reopening and government action over COVID-19.
He said on the restaurant’s Facebook page that Kouzina Christos was doing well before March, after some years of experimenting with an expanded menu to include Greek dinner delicacies, as well as the addition of an outdoor patio.
A proud champion of independent restaurants, he was critical of what he said is a “flaccid and shortsighted response from local, state and national sources for support to buttress businesses who’s loss will negatively affect business viability, employees, their families, the community, the schools is laughable. The losses to the foundation, the fabric that buttress our communities will be felt for many years.”
This is one of the greatest fears of business closures due to COVID-19, especially in the restaurant and retail sectors, and the horrible reality is unfolding before us everywhere.
Within eyeshot of Kouzina Christos is a brand new Panera Bread in the MarketPlace Terrell Mill development underway, and around the corner on Powers Ferry is a Jimmy John’s.
They’re known for their sandwiches, but they don’t have anything like my Italian grinder, much less the gyros and falafels of Christos.
I’m not knocking the chains; they’ve been oh-so-convenient with drive-through service and I’m as guilty as anyone of pulling in when the sit-down places were closed.
And that’s been just the problem.
“Chains are happy to see the mass failure of independents, expanding the labor pool, increasing competition and increasing downward pressure on hourly wages,” Christos Giannes wrote. “Corporate greed and avarice…supporting the Chinese economy.”
He shares company with so many venerable dining and watering hole institutions, including Atlanta’s Manuel’s Tavern, where I had many a meal and adult beverage during my years at the AJC. Owner Brian Maloof, son of the famous barkeep and politico Manuel Maloof, doesn’t see how he can keep his doors open in Poncey-Highland beyond the end of the year.
That would end a 64-year run on land that is now owned by corporate real estate interests and is surrounded by pricey regentrification. Maloof has spurned acquisitions in the past from the likes of Hooter’s, and completely overhauled his freestanding building a few years ago.
Christos Giannes was becoming gradually pessimistic in the weeks and months over summer when he began discussing reduced rents for Kouzina Christos with his landlord.
In late August, he said “it’s quite probable this will be the final year of business in our present location. The continuing pandemic has made it almost impossible to maintain profitability.”
Another crippling factor is the surrounding office market, where many employees who can work from home have been doing so. That’s gutted the lunch business of places like Kouzina Christos that have always depended on it.
With the Terrell-Mill Powers Ferry area going through another transformation—with several mixed-use developments in the works yielding many new residential dwellings—the timing of Kouzina Christos’ closure is even more unfortunate.
For those of us who ate there somewhat regularly, it seemed like we’d be able to eat there forever.
The old-world feel of Kouzina Christos held up well over four decades, and it took something as devastating as a pandemic to close the doors.
I get many messages from readers asking about new restaurants that are opening—especially the new chain casual spots that are dotting East Cobb like never before.
What I’d like to ask my readers is to think of their favorite truly local restaurants these days and patronize them like never before. These are community gems that are teetering on the edge of extinction.
At the very least, many are trying to stave off a gradual death like Kouzina Christos, barely holding on amid continuing uncertainty and with no end in sight to health restrictions.
Kouzina Christos (1453 Terrell Mill Road) will be open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. through Saturday.
After that, Christos Giannes said “we will all take a long rest and start looking at other possible locations to build on our 40 years of history” including “options to re-imagine the next chapter of Kouzina Christos.”
I hope that chapter comes soon, and that the Italian grinder is on the menu.
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A Cobb GIS Map of COVID-19 deaths by ZIP code, with icons showing the locations of long-term care homes. For more details click here.
Since we began breaking down COVID-19 cases, deaths and other data in Cobb County and specifically East Cobb, we’ve been getting queries from readers imploring us to dig further into the numbers.
Some think the seriousness of the virus is overstated considering the high number of people who test negative and the very high percentage of those who recover.
They worry that a slide back into lockdowns would not only devastate the local economy, but some wonder if there isn’t an intent to close things down until after the November elections.
Others think we’re not doing enough to illustrate the spread of a virus that’s killed and sickened far too many people, and that we should hunker down until the case numbers decline, or a vaccine is developed.
Most just want to know how to better understand numbers that are floating around in incredible quantities, and from an increasing variety of sources.
The biggest problem is the limited range of the data that is community-specific, and especially pertaining to East Cobb.
On Friday a total of 339 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Cobb County, a weekday single-day high since the Georgia Department of Public Health began issuing daily updates in March.
(A total of 556 new cases were reported in Cobb on Monday, July 6, reflecting a lag due to the Independence Day holiday weekend.)
As of Friday in Cobb County, there were 6,708 confirmed cases of COVID-19, fourth-highest in Georgia, and 250 deaths, second only to Fulton County.
On Saturday, Cobb’s case count rose by 232, to 6,950 cases, and three more deaths were added, for 253 overall.
Those are staggering numbers, and some readers have been asking us what exactly do they mean? It’s easy to see graphs and charts showing big jumps in cases alone and get very jittery. How concerned should we be?
What’s the larger context we should be thinking about? Who’s getting the most sick and dying the most, and who’s experiencing only mild symptoms or none at all?
Cobb and Douglas Public Health figures showing higher case rates for younger age groups. For more local data click here.
This more recent crest of cases—which is disproportionately affecting younger age groups—is not bringing with it the death rates we saw in the spring, when many elderly and at-risk people were the primary casualties.
The Cobb and Douglas Public Health website, like the state’s, has a lot of valuable information, but quite often it’s hard to parse data that readers say they want us to examine.
CDPH breaks down cases by age group, but not deaths. It also tracks the test positivity rate (how many people test positive against all those it tests), which is at 6.76 percent in Cobb, up from around five percent just a few weeks ago.
Those are figures noted by Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, who issued a public health alert last week as a result.
CDPH has tested 18,571 people in Cobb County. If you factor in those 253 deaths, that’s 1.36 percent of people in Cobb who’ve been tested for the virus—at least by our public health agency—who’ve died.
If you measure deaths against what as of Saturday is now 6,940 positive cases (what’s called a case fatality rate), that figure is 3.6 percent.
Cobb government’s Geographic Information Systems department also has been tracking COVID numbers, focusing mostly on data stemming from case and death counts.
How many of those who are testing positive these days are seriously ill? Beyond hospitalization numbers, which have been going up in Cobb and elsewhere in Georgia but are still considered manageable, that’s unclear.
How many people have mild or no symptoms at all also isn’t known. Since anyone is being encouraged to get tested, it would be helpful to know how many asymptomatic cases there are. But that’s data that isn’t readily available.
In East Cobb, we’ve had 1,271 confirmed cases of the virus, and 44 deaths. That’s up from 1,034 and 41 a week ago. But that’s about all that we know, for now.
As we noted in that last report, 16 of those deaths were in ZIP Code 30068, in East Cobb, which has a number of long-term care homes.
While that information has been helpful, it’s become public only in recent weeks. There’s nothing more in the ZIP Code data to indicate the infection rate (those who test positive against those tested) and the case fatality rate.
We don’t even know the age, gender or racial breakdowns by ZIP Code, or how many of those cases involved people with other underlying health issues.
This is information that might calm the fears of many citizens, fears that have been skyrocketing in recent weeks.
Right before Friday’s numbers came out, Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he wouldn’t issue a mask mandate, as some mayors have done in Georgia, because he thinks it’s unenforceable.
After Friday’s numbers were reported, the Cobb County School District issued revised reopening plans that do not require staff or students to wear masks.
That’s set off a firestorm of emotion and anxiety that figures to get even more heated before classes start next month.
How masks became such a fraught issue is a topic for another column, but it does show the continuing uncertainty, not just over data, but how to interpret it and how to develop strategies to combat the virus.
We are drowning in data without having a better understanding of it. Other data that might better explain how many people seriously become sick, or not, is harder to come by.
Yet politicians and public health officials keep peddling the same pedestrian messages they have since March—wash your hands, practice social distancing, and wear a mask in public.
Gee, thanks Mom.
After four months, this is all they can still say? This isn’t reassuring the public any more than continuing to extend emergency orders, as the governor and judges have done, at least until August, and possibly into the fall.
How much longer will business owners, employees, students and parents, religious worshippers, sports fans and everyday citizens be told to continue placing their lives and well-being on indefinite hold?
How much longer will there be public demands to mask up, and lock down, healthy people? Especially school children, who are in an age group with the fewest virus cases of all? Is this even a good thing for our society to expect?
The numbers are all over the place, begging to be better organized, and so are the reactions to a crisis that seems to have no end.
Cobb County appears to be in good shape, based on data that goes beyond raw case and death counts.
However, those are the metrics that dominate government response, media coverage and good bit of public opinion.
They’re also feeding a social contagion that’s sweeping through our country faster than COVID-19, and that might be the most difficult outbreak of all to contain.
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If you were eager to break the tedium of waiting out a public health emergency, it would have been hard to top the rumors of a sex shop possibly lining Johnson Ferry Road—our main thoroughfare here in fair East Cobb—that swirled about over the Memorial Day holiday.
My phone lines, inbox and text and social media messaging apps were on fire just as the exact people you’d need to contact to check out the story were disappearing for the long weekend.
I got what I could from publicly available sources, heard from plenty of East Cobbers who were hopping mad and even got an exasperated “what?” from the individual supposedly in the middle of all this.
On Memorial Day, Commissioner Bob Ott, hounded by what he said were more than 500 messages about the subject, cloaked his response to the Tokyo Valentinto rumors in a “Memorial Day Message” subject line.
He said that as long as the business opened as what it indicated—a clothing store—and met code requirements, there was nothing the county could do.
Nor could it do much if it later opened as an adult store, as happened last December in Sandy Springs. Local governments, he added, can’t come back retroactively and change their zoning codes to stop something like this.
When we broke the story on that holiday, it wasn’t all that I wanted that story to be, but it was more than enough to stoke an even bigger fury from some East Cobb citizens.
But do they speak for the entire community? While many of us come here for safe neighborhoods, good schools and a family-oriented way of life, who’s to say there’s not a market for an adult store?
When I started checking reader comments to this story—always a good idea when you’re running a family community news site—I found some intriguing views. Including this little exchange on the East Cobb NewsFacebook page:
“Perhaps if customers of the store had photos of their cars or their photo taken as they exited the store and the photos were posted on social media it might embarrass them and discourage them from shopping there.”
Rebuffed, in a flash:
“Sure—let’s get Amazon to release what they send to your house, mmmkay?”
“Clutch those pearls, ladies! How many of you read 50 Shades of Grey?”
I checked out some other local social media channels, which certainly are dens of trolling. There’s Nextdoor, which is even more unhinged than Facebook, even though users are required to identify their neighborhood.
An opponent of an adult store asked a simple, age-old question that goes to the classic argument over how to determine community standards:
“What would it add to the community?”
A sampling of the replies:
“Everything!!”
“A great sex life.”
“Bow-chika-bow-wow.”
“Live and let live.”
“Find something better to do with your time.”
“I’m all for it. Why drive all the way down to Fulton and DeKalb county to get your gear? Keep the sales taxes here in Cobb.”
“I might just have to go to the grand opening of this place solely because everyone is acting like this is a 1620s Puritan village whose morals would undoubtedly be destroyed by a store that sells porn and adult toys to adults.”
“It’s a date. I’ll wear my scarlet letter.”
What some East Cobbers may not know is that we’ve had a sex shop in our area for quite a few years now, and seemingly without incident.
No, not the Tokyo Valentino store pictured at the top that opened on Cobb Parkway two years ago, not far from the Big Chicken.
But even closer than that. It’s called Elations, and it’s on Powers Ferry Road near Roswell Road, facing the shopping center where Harry’s Farmers Market once was. It’s also in the city of Marietta and has been there for years. Before that, another adult store was in the same location for a number of years.
Judging by the car traffic when I passed by on Saturday, Elations does a pretty good business. It makes no bones about the adult erotica items it sells, but also prominently promotes CBD items and “smoking accessories,” which as one of my readers pointed out to me, probably keeps it in business.
An East Cobb resident I talked to this week says if something like that comes to Johnson Ferry, it will “spread like the Coronavirus.”
While Elations is in a commercial area that’s been run-down, it’s actually closer to a nearby residential community than 1290 Johnson Ferry Road.
Those homes may not be in the same price range as Princeton Walk, but it’s where people live and are raising families.
Nothing else like Elations has spread in the vicinity. It sits across a parking lot from the Marietta Burger Bar, and Williamson Bros. BBQ and Hoyle’s Kitchen & Bar are nearby.
Another reader who mentioned Elations chimed in thusly:
“If they don’t shop there; it’ll go OUT of business. Pretty straightforward. Maybe stop making up imaginary crises and focus on real things that need to be dealt with.”
To which he got this response:
“I’m not against these stores, I just don’t like them in my neighborhood. It’s a fair opinion.”
Fair enough.
Tokyo Valentino also sells “smoking accessories” at its Marietta store and five others owned by Atlanta adult retail impresario Michael Morrison. Since 1995 he’s had an adult store on Cheshire Bridge Road and Piedmont Road, and he’s battled the city of Atlanta almost as long.
It’s where video rooms and private bedrooms and massage suites can be rented out—on top of an admission charge of $20 minimum (all of his other stores are strictly retail).
When I reached Morrison last week—as he was hiking in Arizona—about an East Cobb store, he said he had no idea what I was referring to. When I asked him about the 1290 Clothing Store application, he said he knew nothing about it.
He’s said elsewhere that business associates may have been working on a “sub project” without his knowledge, and he doesn’t know what may go in the old Mattress Firm space.
That story clearly doesn’t sit well with a lot of East Cobbers. Morrison’s name is on the business incorporation documents. The new owner of the old mattress store building is a Miami entrepreneur who has adult retail business interests. Morrison’s past includes prison time for tax evasion.
His Sandy Springs store also was originally going to be for dancers’ clothing, but now is a Tokyo Valentino store.
Cobb commissioners got an earful about this during the public comment session at their regular meeting Tuesday, but none of them responded. Even to allegations that 1290 Clothing may have gotten its business license in dubious fashion.
When I asked Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce this week if it’s possible the county could invalidate the business license, he said “We’re looking into it.”
A factor for the county also would be whether it would want to get entangled with Morrison, who has a continuing lawsuit against the city of Atlanta and disputes with other local governments.
That might be the biggest headache associated with having an adult store in East Cobb. It would be a new jurisdiction for him to test in the courts, as well as a new retail market.
At the East Cobb SNOBs Facebook page, some were trying to put this into perspective, and just have a little social media fun:
“In a world where men are murdered for their skin color, I’m not going to lose any sleep for having to lie to my kid about what ‘adult toys’ are.”
“Hey at least it will be considered an essential business for the next lockdown.”
“Isn’t Johnson Ferry tacky enough?”
At the EAST COBBER, which was kind enough to link to our story that broke this all out into the open:
“This can’t happen in East Cobb!! They should put in a cute little bakery/coffee shop. That is what we need!!”
“Sounds like some of y’all need a sex shop in the area so you can loosen up a little bit.”
“I smell a rat. Funny how this shop wants to move in (in the middle of a pandemic) *just* as there is a push for East Cobb cityhood. Could this be a ploy to get people to support cityhood, ergo stricter zoning?”
“Sex is healthy. I feel for your partners.”
“Not all of us need a sex shop to be happy with our partners. I feel sad for your partner that you need more.”
You get the drift. As I said, social media invites this sort of thing, although I do think it shows that there’s not unanimous condemnation of an adult store.
Morrison has bigger issues, as he was ordered to jail last week by a DeKalb County judge for contempt of court, in a long-running dispute over his store in Brookhaven.
He’s appealing, as East Cobbers promise to keep an eye out for what goes up at 1290 Johnson Ferry—perhaps chattering about it at their favorite cute little bakery and coffee shop.
This week had far too much excitement for some citizens in East Cobb, but it did jolt us out of what has been a dispiriting lockdown.
We return you now to your regularly scheduled pandemic programming.
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Late Friday afternoon, I turned into The Avenue East Cobb and couldn’t believe my eyes.
A practically empty parking lot, save for a handful of cars.
And two pedestrians taking advantage of the surroundings to enjoy a late afternoon walk on a glorious spring day.
On a typical day, the place would be packed, and the roads leading to it would be groaning with vehicles at one of East Cobb’s busiest bottlenecks.
Instead, like many busy places in the community, The Avenue East Cobb felt like Sunday morning, before church traffic and those seeking a late breakfast or brunch started hitting the roads.
Just a few stores remained open at that retail center, and it wasn’t alone in looking abandoned.
My drive through East Cobb on Friday felt the same way: From the Lower Roswell-Johnson Ferry interchange, and along Sewell Mill Road, Roswell Road, Robinson Road.
Bereft of cars, and lined by more individual human beings walking than I can ever recall seeing.
One of them was a young father, pushing his twin infants in a double-stroller along Johnson Ferry Road near Mt. Zion United Methodist Church.
Many others were making their way up and down the rolling hills of Shadowlawn Drive.
Those who were getting out for something other than exercise were having to take the precautionary measures that have become iconic for our new extraordinary time.
A dozen or so shoppers were lined up outside Trader Joe’s, standing six feet apart, waiting for their cue to move ahead by an employee who was sternly enforcing foot traffic at the door.
The supply of Two Buck Chuck I had in mind for the weekend will have to wait, I thought as I drove by.
I am not comfortable with this. Nor with the sight of masks, which are becoming more commonplace as the days go by.
Or the eerie, dystopian phrases that are now part of our everyday language. To hear, or write, “social distancing” gives me the chills.
Human beings were not designed to do the things we are now having to undertake to combat a deadly virus that has taken the world by storm, and claimed many thousands of lives.
Sometimes I think I’m in a state of denial, although for the past month I’ve written about little but COVID-19 and our community’s response to it.
For weeks now, the days have bled into the nights. At times I forget what day of the week it is. With a few moments to spare, I’ve broken down to consider the monstrous losses that have piled up thus far, and that are sure to continue.
The number of people getting sick and dying.
The businesses closing and workers losing their jobs.
The school kids having their academic work cut short and high school graduations nixed.
The civic and social groups that can only meet virtually.
What all of this is going to do to us in the long run.
It is a scourge seemingly without end.
But nothing hit me like driving Friday to the entrance at East Cobb Park, locked up with barriers and yellow tape.
The parks were closed along with everything else, and have been for a few weeks.
I was stunned, and sat there for a few minutes. Total silence, and stillness, at one of the hubs of our community, on a day in which there would have been a bevy of activity.
I consider myself blessed, however. There is a walking trail near where I live, and I’m an old pro at working remotely. Getting community updates to you in the way I’d like hasn’t been hampered by technology as much as a matter of time.
There’s a staggering amount of news to provide when the basics of daily life have been so disrupted.
I miss getting out and covering stories in public, and connecting with citizens in person.
I miss the human connections that make doing community news so rewarding and valuable. While it’s true that we have tremendous ways to connect—e-mail, social media, text messages and video streaming—nothing truly replaces the real thing.
We’re doing the best we can with what we have. I’m buoyed by the spirit of cooperation from many in East Cobb to observe public health guidelines, and to help those in need and on the frontlines of battling the virus.
I admire the resilience of small business owners who are fighting to survive, and parents and teachers providing educational instruction in a very different classroom environment.
Most of all, I miss the tactile greetings of Sunday mornings. Not long ago, an older woman at the church I’ve been attending gave me a lovely scarf as a friendly gesture. I’m not a member, but have been worshipping there regularly.
I sit near her and some other elderly parishioners, and I wonder about them constantly now. Will we ever be able to say the peace together anytime soon?
It’s been wonderful to say hello and follow the liturgy on Facebook Live for these last few weeks.
But more than anything, I just want to hug someone the way we used to do, before our world was turned completely upside down a month ago.
I want to sit in a restaurant and dine in. I want to take a nap under the trees at East Cobb Park. I want to shop without seeing lines of demarcation taped to the floor, spots not to cross.
I have faith those things will happen, but we’re in for a very long haul for the time being. The statewide shelter-in-place will continue at least through the end of April, and it will be months before any sliver of normalcy will return to our lives.
On this Easter and Passover weekend, I wish all of you a peaceful and restive interlude, and pray we’ll find the strength and courage to navigate this anxiety and uncertainty.
Thanks for your readership, stay safe and be in touch.
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As the final notes of “Silent Night” wafted through the sanctuary, I kept looking at the light.
The candlelight that we all held in one hand as we sang, kneeling, at the end of a lovely Christmas Eve service.
I didn’t want the light to go out, and kept the candle burning during the processional, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
After that, the overhead lights had come on and as I exited the building, I looked back at a beautiful sight. The soft lights that radiated from the building, and the Christmas tree in front, left me in a comfortable glow.
I was filled by the warmth of a festive event, the embrace of new friends and the promise of new birth.
For the second year in a row, I attended the Christmas Eve candlelight service at St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church on Holt Road.
What was different this year is that I’ve been going there for the last few months, after many years of not being religious in any way.
Bit by bit, week by week, a little more of a light that had dimmed for me began to brighten up again.
Earlier this year I lost my mother, and finding my way out of that darkness has been rough. My first Christmas without her was going to be especially difficult.
On Monday, as I scratched off the last few items on my grocery shopping list, that sense of loss overwhelmed me, and I barely made my way out of the store without breaking down.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, that melancholy reappeared, and I wondered if I had the strength to go to church.
It was on Christmas Eve a year ago I learned my mother’s lung cancer had become so advanced, and she had gotten so weak, that she decided to forego any chemotherapy. She lived two more months, and for me that favorite of her holidays has become a bittersweet memory.
After the candlelight service Tuesday night, I drove past our old house, and noticed that the current residents had decorated a Christmas tree in the front yard, with beaming green and red lights. I smiled, knowing my mother would be delighted.
The lights of the holidays always made her happy, but she always knew how to look for the light every day of the year.
She found it, in her faith and her family and her sense of fidelity to friends and strangers, and really lived it.
It’s a lesson she taught me long ago, and that I’m trying to learn anew. The light is not always visible, and often is buried amid darkness and despair.
But it’s there, if we’re willing to let it shine.
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East Cobb Cityhood leader David Birdwell met a skeptical and at times hostile crowd at the group’s first public appearance in March. (ECN file photos)
The leaders of the East Cobb cityhood effort did the right thing this week by calling off their push for legislation and a referendum in 2020.
They were running out of time to get too many things done—including finalizing a map and a proposed list of services—and had stoked even more opposition, suspicion and confusion for months this spring and summer when they barely connected with the public at all.
County elected officials, including legislators, hadn’t been told what was going on.
State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick said she got a lot of negative feedback about East Cobb cityhood.
After its first town hall meeting in March, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb had its work cut out, as citizens packed a church parish hall and demanded to know who, what and especially why this was being proposed.
A month later the cityhood group had a town hall meeting at Walton High School. Like that and future events it held, citizens could ask questions only by writing them down on a note card for a moderator to read. Or not.
This is no way to have a meaningful dialogue with the public about a dramatic change in their local government, in an initiative that would ultimately be decided by citizens.
Neither is having a cityhood bill filed in the legislature the day after that first town hall meeting, and on the next-to-last day of the General Assembly session.
At the time, I thought it smacked of another bad-faith effort on the part of the cityhood group, which paid for a financial feasibility study issued last November, but whose members remained anonymous and unwilling to meet with the public.
At one point on its website, the cityhood group explained that it wasn’t identifying its donors or others involved for fear of harassment from their “enemies” and the media.
By dodging such basic questions, and setting up a non-profit 501(c)4 “social welfare” organization to conceal donors, original cityhood leaders likely created more opponents than they ever conjured up in their paranoid imaginations.
Public suspicions were immediate, and they continue today: Development interests are behind this. Nothing but a land grab. Look at what’s happening in Sandy Springs. We don’t want that coming here.
Also: We don’t want another layer of government. My property taxes are bound to go up. The services I get from the county are just fine.
When the cityhood group finally faced the public, newly appointed cityhood leader David Birdwell didn’t stand much of a chance.
East Cobb cityhood leader Rob Eble speaks at a Wheeler HS town hall meeting in November.
I’ve found him and Rob Eble, another newcomer to the group, to be well-intentioned. But overcoming the bad start of others has been a tall order, and it’s dogged them ever since.
So has the lack of any kind of public groundswell for a City of East Cobb. When prominent civic leaders say they were blindsided by this, that’s telling.
Trying to push through legislation in two years, hiring high-profile lobbyists and keeping the public in the dark for months hurt the cityhood case even more.
Another big question: What’s the rush?
Other cityhood efforts in metro Atlanta have taken several legislative cycles. There is so much to work out, in addition to finances: Intergovernmental agreements, start-up costs, staffing even a bare-bones city hall, and that darn map.
Eble told me this week the cityhood group never finalized an expanded map to include the Pope and Lassiter school zones. It was an estimate provided by a GIS service that detailed the original map.
Ultimately, the East Cobb cityhood effort struggled from a lack of organization more than having what many consider a shadowy agenda.
Eble admitted the cityhood group made mistakes communicating with the public. As for the idea of cityhood, he said, “I still believe in it. But nobody’s trying to shove anything down anybody’s throat.”
There are many who will never believe this, of course, and they will remain ever-vigilant to stop cityhood.
Yet I’ve also talked to, and heard from, citizens who are unsure. They weren’t necessarily opposed to cityhood but wanted more information, and didn’t feel like they were getting it.
Some others roiled by an annexation spat this summer with the City of Marietta have been open to the idea of an East Cobb city, fearing the county can’t protect them.
As these last few months have transpired, I do think the idea of cityhood is worth considering. I’ve been accused of being biased, both for and against a city, but I don’t really have an opinion.
Too big to succeed?
As someone who grew up in East Cobb, I’ve seen my community become suburbanized, and now more densely developed in some areas.
This is happening all over the county, which has more than 750,000 people and is projected to have a population of one million by 2050.
Before the cityhood issue was raised, I had been wondering if Cobb County government could continue to operate as it has.
There are serious concerns about public safety staffing, the county’s growing pension obligations and addressing transportation and development concerns.
Is Cobb too big to govern the way it is, with a countywide chairman and four district commissioners serving nearly 200,000 people each? And representing communities that are distinct from one another?
Tre Hutchins and Galt Porter of the South Cobb Alliance, a pro-cityhood group in Mableton.
There are times when commissioners are squabbling during their meetings that I wonder if they can even agree on what to have for lunch.
I’ve thought a citizen-led, grassroots cityhood movement in East Cobb could gain some traction, especially around zoning, development and land use issues.
I could see a City of East Cobb providing those and other community development services, including code enforcement.
I’ve never understood why the cityhood effort centered upon providing expensive police and fire services to supplant excellent, if not fully-staffed county departments? We have the lowest crime and fire rates in Cobb County.
Why not provide something better than what exists now, in say, sanitation, where the increasingly monopolized American Disposal private hauler is the subject of many complaints?
A financial review group studying the East Cobb feasibility study recommended that option, at least to start.
A “city light” form of government could serve East Cobb much better than one worrying about how to pay for new fire trucks and police cars and trained professionals to staff them.
Transparency matters
The “pause and reset” phase for cityhood, to borrow Eble’s phrase to me, is a good time to rethink those matters, as well as to be fully forthcoming with the public before gearing up for 2021.
At the outset, the cityhood group should lay out all of its finances, including how much money has been spent, and who’s been footing the bills.
Identify everybody who’s given money to the cause, and been involved in the effort in a significant way. Everybody.
This isn’t a private business deal, but an entirely public matter that could affect the lives of more than 100,000 people.
Follow the lead of the Mableton cityhood effort, which conducted extensive town halls over a couple of years to really hear what the public thinks, without note card questions and a “here’s what we want to do” mentality.
East Cobb cityhood leader David Birdwell at an East Cobb Business Association debate in November.
Like Mableton, have a city map fully detailed, including city council districts that were indicated in the East Cobb bill but never visualized, and provide an online survey.
Better communications include regular use of social media. The East Cobb cityhood group barely updated those platforms and its website, which is absurd heading into the third decade of the 21st century.
Cityhood leaders should have regular discussions with legislators and other local elected officials, since without their support a referendum will likely never happen.
The East Cobb cityhood group certainly has serious intentions. It had the money to buy access and line up the mechanics of getting a bill passed in the legislature.
What it didn’t have was a concept of what it really takes to gather public support, and its efforts to explain its reasons for cityhood were belated and underwhelming.
Something as substantive as creating a new local government shouldn’t be accepted as easily as cityhood leaders may have thought. Nor should it be categorically rejected as the anti-city East Cobb Alliance has maintained.
For those of us who have an open mind about the issue, we’re still receptive to hearing a better case being made.
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East Cobb cityhood leaders heard plenty from citizens at a Wheeler High School town hall meeting this week. (ECN file)
In trying to lay out a case for why a City of East Cobb might be a better value for citizens’ tax money than Cobb County government, those behind a cityhood movement used some animal analogies this week.
They described East Cobb as a “golden goose,” with its middle class and wealthy homeowners comprising a hefty portion of the county’s tax base, and not receiving the public services, especially police and fire protection, to justify their property tax bills.
East Cobb citizens, they argued, may feel like a frog in slowly boiling water, unaware of how much worse the heat can get if they don’t figure out a way to jump out.
“How are we being boiled?” shouted a woman from the back of the auditorium at Wheeler High School, angry not at the message she was hearing, but the messengers.
Like many of the more than 100 or so people in attendance at a town hall meeting Monday night, she was more than skeptical of the cityhood narrative that East Cobb would be better off as a new city, with more responsive local government delivered without a tax increase.
Cityhood leaders Rob Eble and David Birdwell and Bill Green of the Independent Financial Group at the Wheeler town hall. (ECN file)
It’s a message that the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb has been trying to make for several months, and that was renewed again this week.
“I was one of the frogs,” said Bill Green, who described himself as a cityhood skeptic, then became part of what was called the Independent Financial Group that concluded that a City of East Cobb is fiscally viable.
Before attending the cityhood’s first town hall meeting in March, he said, “I didn’t know what was going on.”
His comments to many of those in the Wheeler auditorium were unconvincing.
Cityhood leaders were heckled repeatedly by citizens unhappy about what they said is a lack of information, or a lack of transparency, or some of both.
Most of all, they remain deeply skeptical that the cityhood group that formed a little more than a year ago has given them any good reason to support a dramatic change in how their local government operates.
“I think it’s a solution in search of a problem,” said John Morgan, who lives in the nearby Willow Ridge subdivision.
He said he moved to East Cobb from DeKalb County more than 30 years ago, is satisfied with the Cobb County services he gets and doesn’t understand calls for what he said would be “another layer of bureaucracy.” Furthermore, slicing off an affluent part of Cobb would be “devastating” for the county and its AAA bond rating.
“And for what? We have a great life here. Why this?”
It’s a refrain that’s been heard repeatedly, and increasingly with more vigor, in recent weeks. A newly formed citizens group opposing cityhood, the East Cobb Alliance, was part of a debate with cityhood leader David Birdwell on Tuesday at a luncheon meeting of the East Cobb Business Association.
Mindy Seger, an accountant, went toe-to-toe with Birdwell on several fronts, taking issue with a financial feasibility study, claims of better police and fire services, and individuals on the cityhood committee with real estate ties.
When Birdwell said only three of the 14 cityhood leaders had real estate estate backgrounds, including himself, she asked, “can we get that list?” (It was released on Friday, on the cityhood’s revamped website, and contained several changes from the initial group members announced in March).
When asked to identify those who’ve been funding cityhood expenses, Birdwell would say only that a “large group” of East Cobb residents have been making donations.
In several ways, Seger is the ideal representative for those dead-set against cityhood. She was well-prepared and kept to factual concerns opponents have had in what has been an emotionally fraught issue.
Mindy Seger of the anti-city East Cobb Alliance debates David Birdwell of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb. (ECN file)
Like others who’ve come together to fight cityhood, she’s new to this kind of activism. She said after the debate that “there’s kind of been a political awakening” in East Cobb over the issue.
“It’s gotten people engaged,” Seger said, “and that’s a good thing.”
The citizens the cityhood group needs to win over are people like Joe O’Connor, a longtime East Cobb resident who liked the idea of cityhood after Cobb property tax rates went up in 2018.
When the financial feasibility study was released, O’Connor, who worked on East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s first campaign for office in 2008, was among those asked by the cityhood group to offer his thoughts.
When O’Connor asked who funded the study, he said he was told it was none of his business, and he promptly resigned.
State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick is taking a “wait-and-see” approach about sponsoring an East Cobb cityhood bill. (ECN file)
Now, O’Connor couldn’t be more opposed to cityhood. At the ECBA luncheon, he said he received a call a couple weeks ago from a pollster asking questions about cityhood that he thought were designed to produce a “yes” vote. He said he told the caller his vote would be no, and in no uncertain terms.
“It’s obvious they’re not going to tell who’s behind this financially,” O’Connor said. “I never invest in a company when I don’t know who’s running it.”
At the Wheeler town hall meeting, resident Patty Hawkins said she’s got an open mind about cityhood, but wanted to get more information about the proposed city boundary line changes (they now include the Pope and Lassiter school clusters).
“I think it’s something to consider,” said Hawkins, who said “I think I’d vote for it,” but there’s still more she wants to learn about the issue.
For the moment, the cityhood opinion that matters the most may belong to State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb. The cityhood bill introduced last session by State Rep. Matt Dollar still needs a local senate sponsor if it’s to pass the legislature and establish a referendum next year.
Kirkpatrick told the crowd at Wheeler she’s getting mostly negative feedback about cityhood, but is keeping an open mind and welcoming feedback from constituents. She’s planning to do some of her own polling on cityhood before the end of the year, which could decide whether the bill will be taken up at all when the legislature returns in January.
After nearly a year since the cityhood effort was revealed, the lack of a genuine public groundswell remains the single biggest challenge for those proposing a City of East Cobb.
While a key lawmaker feels the boiling heat, and as the community watches to see which way she’ll jump, those who think their “golden goose” is being cooked with a cityhood effort are as loud and organized as they’ve ever been, and couldn’t be more distrustful.
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I drove past Sun Trust Park a couple weeks ago, hours before the Atlanta Braves would clinch the National League East title.
To say that was a happy occasion was an understatement; I trace my Braves’ fandom to 1969, when I first attended a game at Atlanta Stadium and the year they won the West with Henry Aaron. Their opponents that day were the San Francisco Giants and Willie Mays.
During the years to follow, the Braves struggled to solidify the changing business of baseball in an economically challenged area of downtown Atlanta.
Little did I or many of my Cobb County neighbors have any idea, that after only 20 years at Turner Field, the next home of the Braves would be rather close to our homes.
It’s been six years since it was revealed that the Braves had worked out an agreement with Cobb County to jointly finance a new stadium, in the Cumberland area, on Windy Ridge Parkway and visible from I-75.
In that late summer of 2013, Tim Lee became a household name not just in Cobb County, but the metro Atlanta area and the baseball world. As the Cobb Commission Chairman at the time, he was approached by the Braves, and discussions were kept secret for months until the last minute.
Even other commissioners weren’t told until it was clear the word was going to get out. What’s more, they had exactly two weeks before they would be asked to formalize a Memorandum of Understanding that would commit the county to nearly $400 million in public financing.
Lee talked a good game about the money not coming from property taxes. Two of his colleagues, Helen Goreham and JoAnn Birrell, were ecstatic. After some grim years of tax increases and budget cuts due to the recession, here was a big fat piece of economic development, plopped right in Cobb County’s lap.
Anyone who would look this gift horse in the mouth, it was suggested by those doing the rah-rah for the stadium, is a fool.
But two weeks was no time to thoroughly review a 30-year commitment for snags, fine print and other potential issues bound to come up for such a complicated, long-term deal.
It’s not a secret that subsidized sports stadiums and arenas rarely yield the jobs and economic benefits they promise, and quite often come with unexpected costs. But Lee, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and other civic boosters were undeterred.
Lee rammed the Braves’ stadium deal through with a 4-1 vote, with only Lisa Cupid of South Cobb raising questions about the process, and some of the details of the MOU.
That’s how Lee, who died last week from cancer at the age of 62, got some big things done during his six years as chairman. During the recession, he threatened to close down Cobb library branches, to get commissioners to the table to raise taxes and cut services.
That ploy worked, but I came away with a dim view of how Lee operated. The lack of transparency with the Braves’ deal only confirmed that impression a few years later.
Lee lost his bid for re-election in 2016 to Mike Boyce, an East Cobb resident, who drove home the faulty process of how Cobb got the Braves.
Regardless of how Lee swung the deal, what it has represented since then is a kind of transformation of Cobb County.
As the county went from rural to suburban in the late 1960s and 1970s, Cobb is changing again, to an increasingly urban area in many places, including more pockets of East Cobb.
What county officials like to call the “halo effect” of development stemming from Sun Trust Park and The Battery has spilled over to the nearby Powers Ferry Road corridor.
The tax benefits of the Braves’ relocation to Cobb County look like they’re going to pay off. That’s a good thing.
The high-density residential and commercial development that’s popping up all around the county, even possibly to the Sprayberry area, was likely to come whether a stadium was built or not.
However, Sun Trust stands, not just as the home of our Local Nine, but as a symbol that Cobb County is not just the bedroom community that attracted many of us here. The ranch-style homes once built on big, wooded lots a generation ago are increasingly being plowed under for McMansions on postage stamps and upscale townhomes.
Mixed-use developments are replacing standard strip shopping centers as the retail industry goes through major upheavals. Tax incentives for corporate relocations promising new jobs have become more frequent and controversial.
Some of those trends were already in motion when Lee, seeking his first full term as chairman, won a close Republican runoff in 2012. In that election, he had to fend off a former chairman, Bill Byrne, who raised the idea of a City of East Cobb to get votes.
At his watch party at a hotel near Kennesaw State, Lee breathed a sigh of relief when the voting returns finally went his way. He wiped his brow, thanked his supporters and hugged his wife.
Deep down, he was humble and hard-working, from his involvement with the East Cobb Civic Association, to representing an East Cobb district on the Board of Commissioners and as chairman.
Pragmatism was his hallmark, and as much as I disliked the way the Braves deal went down—ends should never justify the means—Lee never regretted it, even if it cost him his political career.
A few hours after Lee’s memorial service Friday at First United Methodist Church in Marietta, the Braves rallied to win a playoff game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Sun Trust.
It’s a shame he didn’t get to enjoy the renaissance of the team and the area where it now plays. My condolences go out to his family, and in lieu of flowers donations were asked to benefit the Atlanta Braves Foundation.
Lee’s actions helped shape a new evolution for Cobb County, one that may be more dramatic than what has come before.
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Sen. Johnny Isakson and his wife Dianne in Normandy in June for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. (Isakson office photo)
As the legacy of Johnny Isakson was being assessed this week by statewide media, and in Washington, D.C., news outlets, the view from home isn’t all that different, but with a few parochial twists.
Even before he became Georgia’s senior senator, a key leader in an emerging Republican majority in the state and a political elder statesman, Isakson was known simply as “Johnny.”
A personable, eager, hardworking real estate agent, he moved to what was to become East Cobb under the auspices of Northside Realty, founded by his father. This was in the mid-to-late-1960s.
He got involved in many business and civic activities, including the Marietta-Cobb Jaycees, the younger division of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce.
That’s how my father became acquainted with Isakson during that time, as Cobb County was going through its first boom period. The Jaycees also included George Lankford, later to become the first Republican elected to the Cobb County commission.
The Jaycees attracted many aspiring and ambitious types, some drawn to seeking political office. Isakson ran for the commission but lost in his first stab at elected office. My dad volunteered in the Lankford campaign but didn’t get involved in politics after that, as he built his own successful career as a home contractor.
Isakson continued taking an active role in community leadership as Northside Realty became a cornerstone of an East Cobb residential market that was just beginning to lay the foundation for the desirable homebuying market that it is today.
He took to politics like he took to selling real estate, utterly determined to succeed. That doggedness would serve Isakson well as a Republican because of the Democratic stranglehold on state, local and federal politics.
As a young legislator, he benefitted from Democrats who weren’t afraid to work across the aisle. When Republicans became the majority party, Isakson returned the favor without hesitation.
After losing a nasty battle for governor to Zell Miller, Isakson was called upon by Miller to head up a state board of education in disarray. Isakson took on the job.
Bipartisanship was never a dirty word to Isakson, a rarity given the increasingly polarized times that paralleled his ascent.
He would succeed combative Speaker Newt Gingrich in the East Cobb-based 6th U.S. House District.
After losing a U.S. Senate GOP primary, Isakson in 2004 won the first of three elections to that body, becoming the first Georgia Republican to ever do so.
That he won’t be able to finish out that third term due to health reasons has saddened many, including those who don’t agree with him politically.
That’s because for Isakson, a person’s politics aren’t a reflection of who they are as a human being. He’s unlike too many of his Congressional colleagues in both parties, as well as the current commander-in-chief, who exploit those differences for the purpose of intentional division.
Isakson is a committed conservative, to be sure, and he has fought hard for those positions and has been a loyal member of his political party. Some observers, especially those with a more liberal perspective, think he could have done more to publicly decry the tenor of the Tweets and other outbursts coming from the White House, among other things.
Earlier this year, Isakson did give Trump a tongue-lashing for comments about the late Sen. John McCain, one of Isakson’s closest colleagues and friends. That the president didn’t Tweet something in return, or respond in any other way, is noteworthy.
In an age of political showhorses, Isakson has always been a workhorse.
Treating people with respect has been a hallmark of his service as an elected official, something he cultivated as a young real estate agent in East Cobb many decades ago.
Eight years ago this month, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Isakson stood in the pulpit at East Cobb’s Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, where he has taught Sunday School for many years.
He delivered remarks during an ecumenical service there that summed up so much of what Isakson has embodied in public life. He was resolute about U.S. objectives in cracking down on terrorism, but in doing so reached out to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faithful in attendance.
That was one set of remarks among the many thousands of speeches he has given in more than four decades on the public stage, but it’s one I heard as so thoroughly decent and devoid of an agenda.
It was refreshing, as was Isakson’s example in so many other ways. He spoke out against an anti-gay resolution adopted by the Cobb commission in the early 1990s that prompted Atlanta Olympic organizers to cancel related events in the county.
The county has come a long way since Isakson stepped into the spotlight, and that’s not a coincidence.
Whether you agreed with his votes and politics or not, his humble leadership style and the personal values he put into practice every day will certainly be missed, especially in these fractious times.
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The first good rain we’ve had in a while was the day our family bid a final farewell to our mother.
Between the showers on Saturday afternoon, we spread her ashes on the soft ground holding dogwood trees that line a slice of Lake Allatoona, just off the Old Highway 41, and close to downtown Acworth.
After more than 15 years since she left Georgia, and two months after her death, my mother, whose name was Arlyn Culpepper, finally came back home to stay.
The small beachhead and pavilion near the shore form a rustic church retreat of which our East Cobb congregation was a part. It was also one of her favorite places, for the sense of peace, faith and family they provided.
On the Labor Day holiday, a big corn roast was always the method of celebration, and we reprised that tradition as we gathered again at Lutherwood.
Our family picnic on Saturday featured plenty of unshucked ears, bratwurst, hamburgers and I can’t remember what else.
We tried to recreate that sense of familiarity that binds families together, and honors those who have left us.
It has been decades since I went there, but upon first sight the memories came flooding back.
For our mother, the South wasn’t home, but it’s where she moved to from her native Wisconsin as a young mother, married to an aspiring homebuilder. Georgia, and metro Atlanta, was where many homes were being built in the early 1960s.
As I started school, we moved to Cobb County, finally settling in East Cobb in the 1970s. It wasn’t easy raising three young children, and after my parents divorced, it got even tougher for her.
Even before she remarried, what she wanted for us was some stability, and that meant more than anything, a sense of home. She bought an early 1960s ranch house right behind our church on Lower Roswell Road as I entered middle school.
For her, being able to walk to our church, Faith Lutheran, just as she did as a young girl, was an important part of restoring a sense of home.
For me, living within a short walk of the ball fields, tennis courts and swimming pool of Sewell Park, and the old East Marietta Library, finally gave me a sense of home.
I left for most of the 1980s, away at college and big-city life in my 20s. When I came back home in the early 1990s, I was shocked. East Cobb was starting to feel more like a city, and less like a suburb.
“What happened?” I once asked mother. “Everybody moved here,” she said.
But when I visited the house, nothing else mattered. Not just the plates of leftovers I took home with me, but the comfort of familiar surroundings and chatter.
She spent those empty-nest years involved in church activities, attending classes at the Enrichment of Life Movement in Marietta, knitting and quilting for cancer patients and family members, and dogsitting for their neighbors.
When she and my stepfather retired to Florida, I knew it would never be the same. They enjoyed those years living near the beach, but after his death in 2015, mother didn’t have much time herself.
Her arthritis and scoliosis worsened, and about a year and a half ago she developed lung cancer that she didn’t tell us much about until it was too late.
Over the holidays, she was hospitalized, but was too weak to endure chemotherapy. She had had enough of doctors, and the pain she was going through, and didn’t want us to deal with months of preparing for the inevitable.
After her funeral in Fort Walton Beach, we looked through so many of the photos she had kept over the years, many of which I had forgotten about. Including my first sports team:
I’m No. 20, seated at the bottom right in the first row, and haven’t seen this in decades. I couldn’t believe she kept this photo, and my grade-school pictures (I’ll spare you those!).
The memories they provide are priceless, but for me, they reinforced the importance of a sense of home.
I don’t meant to prattle on about this, but as I continue on in middle age, those things have become even more important, and not just because I’m building a community news site.
Everybody else in my family lives along the Gulf Coast (I should take a hint!), and while I love going down to visit, this place we call East Cobb is home for me. Of all the many things she did for us, this is one of the finest gifts of all.
My mother missed the seasons in Marietta after she moved to Florida, and always enjoyed returning home for visits in the spring and the fall.
I wish she could have come back for one more trip before her health declined, but I’m comforted that she’s resting close by in perpetuity, near the home—and the sense of place—that she bestowed to us all.
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During Thursday night’s town hall meeting about East Cobb Cityhood, David Birdwell was patient, polite and completely earnest as he took the slings and arrows of a citizenry dubious about what he’s trying to sell.
As a new spokesman of a cityhood movement that stumbled out of the gate earlier this winter—one which refused to identify individuals, thus raising questions about its motives—Birdwell is stepping into the void at a critical time.
Joining the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, Inc., in January, after the release of a feasibility study and after those forming the group had already hired a lobbyist in the Georgia legislature, Birdwell had to face an overflow audience at the Catholic Church of St. Ann by himself.
Rob Eble, a technology consultant who’s been designated the other half of the new public face of the cityhood effort, couldn’t attend after suffering a knee injury.
While that may serve as something of a metaphor for how some see the idea of part of East Cobb becoming a city, Birdwell is adamant that it’s an idea that “makes enough sense to explore.”
A semi-retired real estate entrepreneur, Birdwell has lived in East Cobb for the last 22 years—like many in the cityhood group, the Atlanta Country Club area to be specific—and said after reading the feasibility study he was intrigued enough to learn more.
After being contacted by those in the cityhood group—which still hadn’t gone public even as legislation and a city charter were being drawn up—Birdwell agreed to put himself front and center, something he found improbable.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Birdwell said after the meeting, as the church lights were being turned off and the doors to the parish hall were being locked.
“We don’t have a lot of answers now, but I feel convinced of the reasons why I’m doing this,” he said.
To the more than 500 East Cobb citizens who heard him out this week (or in some instances, heckled him), Birdwell also was firm about something else: “I am not a political person,” he said, prompting howls of disbelief.
They returned a short time later when he insisted that “nobody is doing this for any personal gain.”
The laughs—hearty guffaws—were deafening. Yet Birdwell carried on with his message that cityhood is about more local control, better services and a chance for East Cobbers to shape the future of their community.
I believe Birdwell’s sincerity about what he’s saying, and since East Cobb News began publishing about this issue in December, we’ve heard from many others who feel the same way.
It’s a familiar refrain coming from those who’ve been behind cityhood, yet who still remain in the background. But his job now is to convince tens of thousands of East Cobb residents who remain highly skeptical, if downright cynical, about what they’re being told.
What was reassuring is that there will be another town hall to continue the conversation, on April 29, at Chestnut Ridge Christian Church.
Quite frankly, he’s got a very tough sell to make.
That’s because many of those who question cityhood think the services they get from Cobb County for the taxes they pay are just fine. Some are absolutely convinced their taxes will go up, which Birdwell and the cityhood group say will not happen. Others see a number of people involved in the real estate industry who are behind this effort and get suspicious.
Birdwell may not be political, but from the get-go the cityhood effort smacked of rank politics. The map that was drawn up, and is now part of the legislation and charter submitted on Friday, to the letter matches the boundaries of the East Cobb portion of Commissioner Bob Ott’s District 2.
It doesn’t include a big chunk of what many consider East Cobb. Only the Walton, Wheeler and part of the Pope and Lassiter attendance zones are included in this map. I’ve heard from those living near Sprayberry, Kell and the rest of Pope and Lassiter: Um well, what about us?
Others have suggested, only slightly tongue-in-cheek: Are they gonna call this the City of Walton?
Ott, who told me before the town hall this is by far the biggest such meeting he’s ever held, has been coy about his interest in cityhood. But several of his appointees served on an ad hoc citizens committee that made recommendations about the feasibility study.
Riley Lowery, Ott’s longtime political consultant, is now advising the cityhood group, which was formed in the fall, not long after Cobb commissioners narrowly voted for a tax increase. Ott voted against it, and has said often that some of his constituents are upset that the district provides 40 percent of the county’s tax revenue but doesn’t get the services in return.
Dee Gay, a member of the East Cobb cityhood steering committee, lived in Sandy Springs when it became the first of the new cities in metro Atlanta to spring from a cityhood movement.
“I like it,” she said of Birdwell’s presentation, noting that Sandy Springs cityhood was 20 years in the making. The East Cobb group wants a referendum in the 2020 primaries and actual mayor and city council elections in the 2020 general election.
The problem Birdwell faces is more than perception.
There’s a sense that unlike some other cityhood efforts in metro Atlanta, there isn’t a grassroots uprising to form a City of East Cobb. That those who were skeptical weren’t given many details for months only enhanced their concerns.
Hence, the reactions at Thursday’s town hall.
“There’s such a dearth of information right now, and people are making an emotional decision,” said Linda Carver, president of the East Cobb Civic Association.
Her organization, which represents around 10,000 households, is officially remaining neutral on cityhood.
If there was a groundswell for cityhood, she said, “I think we would have seen that a long time ago.”
This will be Birdwell’s toughest selling point, even though the cityhood group is now eager for volunteer input as town halls and other public meetings will be taking place.
“It’s important for this community to consider,” Birdwell said.
While that is true, he’s got to persuade those who live outside the Atlanta Country Club, or aren’t well-placed in the Walton High School community, or don’t belong to Ott’s kitchen cabinet.
Birdwell was dealt a poor hand, and now he’s got to play it.
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First of all, Happy New Year East Cobb! I wish all of our readers a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year, and hope that you and your family are enjoying the holiday season with relish.
We’ll be getting back to our usual posting schedule shortly, but I wanted to say a few words before we get on with 2019.
As the first full calendar year of East Cobb News is in the books, my heart is full of gratitude for readers who’ve come to this site during 2018, followed us on social media, subscribed to the newsletter, left comments, offered story tips, asked questions, pointed out corrections or just got in touch to say thanks.
I’ve been hearing that a lot lately from readers—thanks for doing this. It’s been a great pleasure to provide news and information that’s all East Cobb, and only East Cobb.
Over the past few days I’ve been compiling our top stories and photos and readers’ picks from 2018, and I’ll include them again at the bottom of this note. Looking back through them, I was surprised how much we were able to report on, because I’ve often felt I’ve only been scratching the surface.
I’m the kind of person who likes to show, not tell. My main objective for East Cobb News for 2019 will be to continue building on a solid foundation for providing news and information for this community.
I’ve appreciated so many of you making your contributions, with photos, stories, tips and suggestions. You’ve helped make this the kind of community resource I want people to feel that they can’t be without.
Whether it’s regular coverage of local government and schools, transportation and development, local businesses and events, I want East Cobb News to really reflect our vast, diverse and thriving community.
Among my aims for the coming year is to do more in-depth stories about what you care about the most, as well as highlighting more people who serve vital roles in our community.
I’ve got a few ideas and subjects percolating along those lines, and if you have any suggestions, feel free to get in touch. Just e-mail me at: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
In this new year I also want to connect community-minded readers with small businesses and organizations that help make the community better. I’ve been a member of the East Cobb Business Association this year and have seen this dynamic up-close, and it’s been very inspiring.
If you run a small business or organization and are interested in advertising opportunities, please get in touch. We’re young, but we’re growing, and we can provide you with a variety of ways to reach your ideal, targeted market.
You have many ways to get community news, from sources that have been around for decades and have plenty of name recognition. East Cobb News is only 18 months old, but I’ve been around here most of my life, and what really drives my passion is that this is the place I call home.
Thanks again for your readership in 2018. I’m excited for what’s in store for 2019!
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!
On Christmas Eve a year ago, I stepped inside church doors for the first time in a very long while and found a seat in a pew.
This church was packed for a candlelight service that resonated with the faces, and the voices, of children. Many of them were invited to come to the front for a special word of scripture.
A young family sat beside me, including a baby held by her father the whole time. Occasionally, she cooed and smiled, as the song surrounding her, surrounding all of us, wafted through the sanctuary.
The music soared, and so did we.
“Peace be with you.” We grasped the hands of those around us and greeted one another with those words.
These are the usual practices and scenarios at church services every Sunday here in East Cobb, and elsewhere.
But as someone who drifted away from faith as a teenager, I felt immediately reconnected with a spirituality that has long eluded me.
Since Christmas Eve last year, I haven’t been back to church, either, mainly because I’m still not sure what I believe. All I know is that the peacefulness of being in that sanctuary on that evening hasn’t left me.
Neither has the sense that it’s moments like those that really reflect the meaning of the season.
The holidays have flown by, and as usual, I have found them overwhelming. The secular activities of shopping and gift-giving, Santa visits and tree lightings are fine and festive, as are office and school parties.
So is helping those less fortunate with the provision of food, clothing, home supplies and gifts for children as volunteers, and with charities.
Yet there’s something that I’ve found missing, something that I’ve only found in a sanctuary, or in connecting with the Christian traditions of the season. Perhaps it’s just another mid-life occasion in which I’m reflecting on the forces that shaped me.
Earlier this week, I heard Handel’s “Messiah,” the whole magisterial thing, performed by New York Philharmonic on a radio program. If that doesn’t uplift you, nothing will.
It made me think about how such music has started bringing back a little closer to God. So have some of the liturgies, many of the Psalms and an appreciation for the richness and variety of what’s available in this East Cobb community we call home.
Many of our local churches have opened their doors to the public for concerts, nativity scenes and other events this season. They’ll do the same on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
If you’re like me and unsure about what you believe, or you’re if simply looking to find a sense of peace, consider taking a step inside.
And may peace be with all of you this holiday season!
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Earlier this week a few hundred newspapers and other news organizations around the country published editorials in response to President Donald Trump’s charged rhetoric against a free press and to advocate for what journalists do.
I’m not sure such a coordinated effort had much of an impact, especially given the state of the newspaper industry. As one national press observer wrote, this tactic played into Trump’s hands, and I tend to agree.
You don’t have to like Trump’s declaration that the press is “the enemy of the people”—it’s an outlandish, false assertion, like so much of what he says—to understand his objectives of inflaming his political base and pushing journalists back on their heels.
Ever since he first ran for president, Trump has engaged in press-bashing that’s truly alarming. While the news media has plenty of shortcomings, including getting much of its coverage of the last election dreadfully wrong, no president should speak like this.
However, I’m more concerned about what public officials do rather than what they say, as demonizing and unbecoming as Trump’s nonsense about “fake news” has been.
One of the papers that editorialized against Trump’s words this week is the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which has been aggressively attacked by public officials for its reporting of a story of great local and national interest.
The Fort Lauderdale newspaper published details about the alleged gunman in the Parkland high school shootings that the school system there released unintentionally.
A local judge was incensed, not by the schools trying to hide vital public information, but by the newspaper, which she threatened to hold in contempt.
The Sun-Sentinelisn’t backing down, although the political and legal power being brought to bear against it is formidable.
Forget all the hot air coming from Washington, Trump as well as an often grandstanding national political press corps that continues to misunderstand what propelled him to the White House.
The Sun-Sentinel case illustrates to me that the real battles for a free press are being fought at the local level, where journalists are in increasingly shorter supply these days.
That’s because chains and hedge funds are scooping up what’s left of independent and locally owned papers, strip-mining them of whatever value is left in a dying business, and leaving their communities to fend for their own news and information needs.
Trump’s newsprint tariffs, reaching 30 percent, are taking a big toll as well, affecting even our local daily newspaper.
For those of us in local news, the retort to Trump shouldn’t be to him at all but to keep doing what we pledge for our communities. The news.
Kevin Riley, editor of the AJC, where I proudly worked for nearly 20 years, wrote that “We’re not engaged in a shouting match with the President. We are working on stories like these,” and then rattled off some of its recent reports.
In the year-plus since I launched East Cobb News, I’ve been grateful to connect with local citizens about critical issues facing our community.
Even when we don’t agree, as was the case with a previous commentary I published this week, hearing from engaged readers and citizens is essential for a free press and the community.
I’m encouraged to be in touch with these East Cobb citizens and taxpayers, regardless of their views, and especially regarding our heated budget process this summer, and continuing discussions on growth, county finances, schools and more.
There’s a lot going on here just in our corner of Cobb County, and I’m eager to continue to build this site and foster important community conversations.
I don’t intend to use East Cobb News as a soapbox like this very often. I want this to be your platform more than anything.
If you care deeply about what happens in East Cobb, don’t be bashful about it.
If you don’t agree with what’s published here, sound off. That’s what the comment section is for on every post.
If you don’t like what you seeing being done in your name as a taxpayer, parent, citizen or in any other capacity, let’s hear it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s get to the heart of the matter, through reporting and discussion.
I’ve seen good results along these lines in the early months of this site, and I look forward to hearing more from you in the months to come.
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Even before she remarried, what she wanted for us was some stability, and that meant more than anything, a sense of home. She bought an early 1960s ranch house right behind our church on Lower Roswell Road as I entered middle school.
