East Cobb cityhood leaders still haven’t made public details of a revised map of the proposed city, more than a month after announcing new boundaries at a town hall meeting.
A group opposed to cityhood isn’t waiting around. On Monday, it released what it calls a “best-estimate” of what it thinks the new proposed map will look like.
The East Cobb Alliance said its version of the map was done with donated efforts from South Avenue Consulting, a Smyrna-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) firm. The map, according to the Alliance, is 95 percent accurate.
The map was done, the group said, without exact GIS coordinates from the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb and was drawn from the image cityhood leader David Birdwell displayed at a Nov. 11 town hall meeting at Wheeler High School.
At their first town hall meeting in April, cityhood leaders said they would be revising the map, most likely to include the Pope and Lassiter attendance zones.
Birdwell indicated at the Wheeler meeting the new boundaries would indeed include most of the Pope and Lassiter areas.
He didn’t offer precise details, saying he had first seen the new map only that day. He wasn’t sure if a financial feasibility study done for the cityhood group based on the original map would have to be revised or redone.
East Cobb News has left messages for Birdwell seeking comment.
He did not respond to a message earlier this month when East Cobb News contacted State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb, the cityhood bill sponsor. He wasn’t at the Wheeler town hall and said he had not seen the map shown at that meeting.
Dollar did say that the map is undergoing revisions and probably will be after the Georgia legislature convenes in January.
His bill must pass the full legislature in order for a cityhood referendum to be held next year. Lawmakers also would approve the final map and proposed city charter.
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- Proposed city map expands to include Pope, Lassiter districts
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But other local lawmakers, including State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb, said they haven’t seen the new map as they hear from citizens about cityhood.
The original map included all of unincorporated Cobb in commission District 2 east of I-75, excluding the Cumberland Community Improvement District.
The cityhood group later released a detailed GIS-generated map that lets citizens know whether their neighborhood would be in the proposed city.
That map hasn’t been updated to reflect the proposed new boundaries.
The East Cobb Alliance estimate indicates that the northern boundary of the city would be the Cobb-Cherokee line, stretching from extreme Northeast Cobb to the Trickum Road-Jamerson Road intersection.
The additional areas would some of the Ebenezer Road corridor, mostly below Blackwell Road, and most of the Holly Springs Road corridor, and would fill in the area between Holly Springs and Sandy Plains with the area in the original map.
Also in the proposed new city would be the Sandy Plains-Shallowford area with a cluster of commercial and retail properties as well as several county facilities:
- Mountain View Regional Library
- East Cobb Senior Center
- Mountain View Community Center
- The Art Place
- Mountain View Aquatic Center
- Carl Harrison Park
- Sandy Plains Park
- Sweat Mountain Park
The original map included a population of around 86,000; at the Wheeler town hall, Birdwell said the new map would include a population of around 115,000, but that was an estimate.
The cityhood group is proposing a City of East Cobb provide community development (including planning and zoning), police and fire services.
Those new areas all fall in Cobb commission District 3, represented by JoAnn Birrell, who’s opposed to cityhood.
She said after a Nov. 12 debate between Birdwell and Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance that nobody from the cityhood group had contacted her about the new map.
“They’re encroaching in my district,” she said at the time. “So now I’m being outspoken.”
Since then, Birrell has included cityhood information in her weekly newsletter, urging her constituents to get in touch with their elected officials, including Cobb’s state lawmakers, to tell them what they think.
She also included contact information for members of the House Governmental Affairs Committee, the first step for the cityhood bill’s consideration.
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The map still has a half mile no mans land between Marietta and this new city west of piedmont around Allgood Rd.
Also include Northampton Subdivision- originally Frank Gordy’s (Varsity owner) Farm.
He was a true visionary for the Atlanta area.
The biggest land grab since the gold rush.