A group pushing for East Cobb cityhood is eyeing the end of the current Georgia legislative session to have local legislation filed that would call for a referendum, probably by 2020.
A notice of intent to file local legislation was published Friday in The Marietta Daily Journal, Cobb’s legal organ.
The legislature has only eight days remaining in its 2019 session. For a referendum to take place next year, it would at least have to be introduced this year.
As of the close of business Friday, no such bill had been filed.
The group, known as the Committee for Cityhood for East Cobb Inc., hired a lobbyist before the General Assembly session but has been quiet since then.
Commissioner Bob Ott told East Cobb News that they’ve been invited to speak at his next town hall meeting, on March 28 at the Catholic Church of St. Ann.
Related coverage
The group has been reluctant to reveal much information about who’s behind the cityhood effort and has cited general “local control” and public safety concerns.
It did pay $36,000 for a financial feasibility study that made a favorable conclusion. The proposed city map would include only a portion of what’s considered East Cobb, all of it within Ott’s District 2. The population would be around 96,000.
(Here’s the cityhood group’s website.)
The MDJ reported Friday that David Birdwell, an East Cobb resident, is also involved in leading the group. Joe Gavalis, an appointee of Ott’s to the Cobb Neighborhood Safety Commission, is the president of the group, and real estate developer G. Owen Brown of Retail Planning Corp. is listed as having paid for most of the study.
No other individuals have been publicly named, and when the group asked an ad hoc citizens committee to look over a feasibility study, one of those citizens, Joe O’Connor, quit in protest, citing a lack of transparency.
Birdwell, like Gavalis, lives in the Atlanta Country Club area. According to the Cobb Chamber, he’s also in the real estate industry and has gone through the organization’s Leadership Cobb development program.
Local incorporation legislation must be introduced by at least one Senator and one House member who represents at least a portion of the proposed city.
Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick and Reps. Sharon Cooper and Matt Dollar are the three lawmakers who could do that. They have been contacted for comment by East Cobb News.
UPDATE: Kirkpatrick told East Cobb News that “I haven’t taken a position on this but the bill will get the conversation started.”
The notice of intent to file the bill indicates the sponsor is Dollar; cityhood bills are initially filed in the House.
A cityhood bill for Mableton was filed last week by State Reps. Erica Thomas, Erick Allen and David Wilkerson of South Cobb. The South Cobb Alliance citizens group has been seeking incorporation but has not yet had a feasibility study done.
Unlike the East Cobb group, the Mableton group has gone to the public with a number of town halls and other events in the community over the last couple of years.
The earliest a Mableton referendum could take place also would be next year. That proposed city would have a population of more than 87,000.
Some of the reasons cited for cityhood there are similar to East Cobb, in particular more localized control of services.
Cobb hasn’t had a new city in more than a century. Mableton was briefly a municipality, from 1912-1916.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
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!
Real estate developer G. Owen Brown of Retail Planning Corp. is listed as having paid for most of the study. This must scare most of the East Cobb citizens. It seems like Mr. Owen Brown might be pocketing from some school rezoning that will occur with the proposed city of east cobb.
This smells of big money and developers and secrecy. Do NOT see any advantages.
How about some transparency for starters and town halls?
Glad to see the process getting started. I support cityhood, but will not vote for a bad plan. The committee has got some explaining to do.