Cobb commissioners approve funding to finish police Precinct 6

The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved spending $2.2 million to finish interior work on the new Cobb Police Precinct 6 in Northeast Cobb.

The facility located next to the Mountain View Aquatic Center on Gordy Parkway at Sandy Plains Road was budgeted for $5 million as part of the 2016 Cobb SPLOST (Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax).

Ground was broken in late 2021, but rising construction costs pushed the project well over budget, to $7.7 million, and commissioners approved an additional $400,000 last year.

But the Cobb Department of Public Safety said the building is only 60 percent complete, with interior build-out still to be finished, and the work needs to be done now to avoid funding issues.

Public safety director Mike Register, a former Cobb police chief, said $200,000 of the new funding from the county’s general fund reserve would be for contingency costs for Batson-Cook, the contractor.

Commissioner JoAnn Birrell of District thanked Register, who was recently reappointed to his former role and who took she and her colleagues on a tour of a project she has been pushing for for years.

The vote was 4-0, with Chairwoman Lisa Cupid absent.

“This is a long time coming,” she said, noting the funding is the last of her allotment from the 2016 SPLOST. “Thank you for bringing this home as soon as you got here. You hit the ground running with this. I appreciate you championing this.”

Construction is expected to be complete by next spring, with initial staffing to be for administrative staff.

Register said a typical schedule for the precinct would be from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. as the police department works to fill a high number of vacancies, especially for patrol officers.

Precinct 6 isn’t initially being staffed for patrol staff. Most of the East Cobb area is covered by patrol units from Precinct 4, based on Lower Roswell Road, and stretching from Canton Road to the Powers Ferry Road corridor.

“It’s going to immediately impact the citizens and give them value,” he said.

Register said citizens could typically get daytime services including copies of police incident reports and for other law enforcement services.

“As our vacancies begin to dissipate, we’ll begin to slowly staff the precinct with about half the beats, as we bring it up to a fully staffed precinct,” he said.

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