Last week a national organization that examines municipal and local governance concerns published a series of posts about Cobb County growth issues, especially in the years since the recession.
The organization is called Strong Towns, which I have not heard of before. It describes itself as a non-profit media organization that’s based in Brainerd, Minn., a small town with a population of 13,000 or so, not close to a metropolitan area.
On Tuesdays I like to focus on local government, since that’s when many Cobb Board of Commissioners meetings take place. Today’s meeting has been cancelled, and I thought I’d delve a little into this interesting, but flawed examination.
The five-part Strong Towns report, which has gotten some chatter on Cobb citizens social media groups, refers to Cobb as “a suburban region that epitomizes the folly of going into debt to build more and more infrastructure with no ability to pay for it.”
While that’s certainly how many locals around here feel about what’s happening in the county, I think the premise is faulty, and I’m skeptical of some of the claims made in this report.
Strong Towns misses one of the biggest points of all: Cobb remains a very attractive magnet for jobs because of its diversified economy and a well-educated workforce, the partial byproduct of another major attraction here, excellent public schools.
Cobb isn’t as “addicted to growth,” as the initial post is titled, as much as new residents and employers are continuously drawn by quality services and low taxes. A heavy pipeline of development bottled up during the lean years of the recession is taking shape.
These realities were not examined by Strong Towns, but I will link to all the posts in this series so you can read for yourself:
- Cobb County: Addicted to Growth
- Cobb County’s Triple-A Bond Rating Is A Joke
- Growing Lasting Wealth in Cobb County
- The True Cost of Debt In Atlanta’s Suburbs
- The Road Ahead for Cobb County
In an evergreen post elsewhere on its site, Strong Towns claims that many cities and counties in America are falling for a “Growth Ponzi Scheme,” which it further asserts as “the dominant model of suburban growth since the mid-20th century.”
The final post about Cobb started off with a reference to Bernie Madoff, who’s serving prison time for defrauding investors.
Really? To try to make a link between criminal behavior and the development and financial issues of a bustling suburban county, albeit one with major budget problems, borders on being irresponsible, as well as willfully misunderstanding.
I will always detest the Atlanta Braves stadium deal because the process was a total sham. But that doesn’t explain the county’s budget, tax and spending issues, which go back many years.
The county wasn’t chasing growth as much as it wasn’t sufficiently funding the growth that was already here or on the way, or was having trouble keeping up with the pace of the growth.
(Here’s a good example: When our family moved to East Cobb in the early 1970s, our home was still on septic tank, with the Sope Creek sewer line still under construction.)
There is an anti-suburban sentiment behind this report, and this is the biggest problem with it:
“Much of Cobb County . . . feels like nowhere. It has no center of gravity. It has no thriving urban core to serve as a tax-revenue cash cow.”
Ironically, the area around SunTrust may prove to be just such a place. Cobb does have many misplaced priorities, symbolized by the Braves deal, and which I wrote not long ago stripped away the illusion of supposedly fiscally conservative government.
Instead of really trying to understand the unique challenges facing a Sunbelt community that has gone from mostly rural to suburban and now urban in many spots, and in about a half-century or so, Strong Towns wants Cobb to be more like Brainerd, I guess (a place where I’ve never been).
From what I’ve read about this organization, it wants every place to be like small-town America, with bucolic downtown cores, pedestrian-friendly shops and restaurants and adaptable to a “traditional development pattern.”
While that sentiment does have some conservative support, and it’s appealing to me as I continue on in middle age, it has never really come about in Cobb, for better or for worse.
It’s a nice ideal, but it doesn’t offer any practical solutions. Strong Towns produced a lot of words about Cobb County but with little real local knowledge on the ground about its subject.
That matters.
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I received this from Bo Wright, the development director of Strong Towns:
“Thanks for your thoughtful response to our series of articles. I actually grew up in Cobb County and most of my family still lives in the area. My mom went to Marietta HS and my dad went to North Cobb HS, so our family has roots there. I no longer live in the area (a combination of life, spouse, and jobs). I live just outside of Philly, and our team is scattered across America — Chuck Marohn, our founder and president is the only one in Brainerd, MN.”
Bo didn’t offer any comments about the post, other than to offer to discuss what the group does next time he’s in town.
I do appreciate the comments posted here and wasn’t totally dismissive of the Strong Towns report. I just think so much was missed, especially SPLOST, as was mentioned here, among other things.
It helps to have feet on the ground and while there was much that I missed in my reply, there seemed to be a preconceived notion of what Cobb should be.
The county certainly has a lot of challenges even after a tax increase, and I think the Cobb school district does as well, which something else this report didn’t even mention.
I’m not a rah-rah cheerleader for Cobb, but there was an anti-suburban dismissiveness that was hard to ignore, and I don’t think that’s helpful.
What’s happening here with growth and public funding of services is so much more complicated than pulling data from afar and jamming in to a template that doesn’t apply to this community at all.
There is a very good point made by the authors of the blog that is missed here. What happens when the growth stops?
For 40 years the County has relied on new subdivisions and the growth in the tax digest to hide all evils. Eventually though either one of two things will happen:
1. Folks will stop moving to Cobb (or move out) due to traffic, poor quality of life, or maybe just demographic changes;
2. It will become like Manhattan, with every acre build out in a concrete jungle and 24 hour traffic.
At that point (and nobody can predict the future, so it might be in 10 years or 100) it is “game over” for the current financial model in Cobb. The County will have to figure out how to provide services for residents without relying on new developments and gimmicks like SunTrust Park.
You can’t write about infrastructure and debt in Georgia without talking about the SPLOST system, which finances infrastructure without taking on debt. It has its flaws, but it does address some of the debt concerns Strong Towns raises. As the debt-rating article rightly points out, the Braves deal is what saddled us with an unusually high (for Cobb) level of debt, and that’s one of the biggest problems with the stadium deal. But Strong Towns acts as if the stadium was business as usual for Cobb.
Strong Towns also displays a horrible understanding and use of statistics. It notes that 88% of of people below the poverty line in metro Atlanta live in the suburbs, but doesn’t mention that at 90%-plus of metro Atlanta residents are in the suburbs. It points out the number of people in poverty in Cobb without comparing it with the total population. That’s lazy and misleading.
Parachute journalism is bad (part of the reason we need local news sites like East Cobb News). But there’s no evidence that Strong Towns even bothered to parachute in; they just prejudged us from afar.
Wendy, I agree like with you 100%. The article read more like a made up fable, a dystopian nightmare, by someone who has never been here. There are certainly budget and debt issues but Cobb still is one of the most desirable places for residents and business alike. The Battery, and the growth around it, will transform that area of Cobb that previously was dying on the vine. After I got done reading the articles I said to myself “what a scary place why would anyone live there?”. As a 45 year resident it certainly wasnt the Cobb/Marietta I have always loved. Your article summed it up perfectly. Thank you!
Wendy, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Their “Planner” mentality completely missed the mark for Cobb but their premise of funding infrastructure before building is a solid recommendation. Their article on debt is also worth consideration. Trying to connect the dots in our budgets and annual reports is almost possible and there assumption that there is far more debt that what we see is spot on. Were you aware we have over 100 Miles of sewer and water infrastructure that is far past it’s end of life but we still are taking 10% out of the water fund?