Last year James Whitcomb, an East Cobb resident, swam 10 miles at the Mountain View Aquatic Center to help raise money for Tunnel to Towers.
He got pledges exceeding $20K, and recently let us know he’s asking for the same this year as he repeats his “Mega Swim” challenge.
This year, however, he’s extending his time in the pool to 13.1 miles—a half-marathon—when he pops into the pool at 6:30 a.m. Friday.
Tunnell to Towers is a non-profit that assists seriously injured first responders and military veterans with mortgage-free homes and other housing assistance.
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!
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!
A participant in a 2018 town hall regarding the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center expresses a common sentiment of our times.
In April, the journalist-turned-venture capital entrepreneur Katherine Boyle penned a widely-read essay that really lit a fire under me at the right time.
A reporter at The Washington Post when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper, Boyle has had a front-row seat at the convergence of media and technology in the early 21st century.
She’s now a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley VC firm started by Marc Andreesen, the web browser pioneer behind Mosaic and Netscape.
Boyle has made the leap of many journalists going into something else over the last two decades, as our profession and various media industries have been in major transformation if not rapid decline.
In her piece for the Common Sense newsletter founded by Bari Weiss, a former columnist at The New York Times, Boyle concluded that American dynamism is lagging primarily because we’re just not all that serious about building for the future.
She takes aim at the massive institutional decay and warped priorities that have marked our times. Yet she strikes a tone of optimism in closing when she writes that “We do not need aging institutions to pave the way for American dynamism. But we need American will.”
I nodded my head often while reading this blunt, but hopeful argument. This paragraph from Boyle in particular I want to shoot straight into my veins:
“Building is an action, a choice, a decision to create and move. It is shovels in the dirt with a motley crew of doers who get the job done because no one else will. Building is the only certainty. The only thing we can control. When the projects we believed were Teflon strong are fraying like the history they toppled, the only thing to do is to make something new again.”
I’m among the journalists who couldn’t imagine doing anything else but the news, and that’s what prompted me to start East Cobb News. The idea was to bootstrap it for a couple of years, then ramp up the editorial and business side.
In March 2020, just as I was seeking office space and lining up freelancers, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and we all know what happened next. I buckled up to cover a story unlike anything else in my 40 years as a professional journalist.
Building something from scratch is hard enough, but carrying on during such a surreal time was something I never imagined.
There were days when I literally did not know what day it was, or if I would ever write something that wasn’t about COVID.
As I’ve noted previously, we got major increases in web traffic due to extensive coverage of the local COVID response, which affected people in every aspect of their daily lives.
That was a silver lining, to know how valuable your product has become to others, and I’ve tried to identify others as we appear to have put the worst of the pandemic behind us.
As another Labor Day holiday approaches, I feel very gratified to have made it this far, re-energized and grateful to the community that we’re serving.
I hear from readers frequently about how they appreciate what they read at East Cobb News, and I can’t overstate how much that means to me. I get some complaints, too, and try to address them in the same way as the compliments.
It was 14 years ago this week that I left the newspaper business, when I took a buyout at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I was taken aback this week to read that the place that nourished my career over 18 years appears to be ending daily print editions, publishing a newspaper only on the weekend.
This scenario isn’t all that surprising, and other newspapers are likely to follow suit.
The ink-stained wretches in my profession have been nostalgic about the old days for years. While I will always love what newspapers have been (for the most part), the news isn’t about a delivery system. It’s not about the feel of a newspaper in your hands with your morning coffee.
Tactile pleasures aside, it’s about the news, and the best way to provide it and deliver it to a readership. That’s why it’s imperative to keep building outlets that meet their readers and advertisers where they are.
The slogan under my masthead is “Local News for the Way You Live Today,” and that’s my the premise of my building project.
I’ve watched my own industry evaporate in front of my eyes, and chronicled the last couple years of death and loss during a pandemic, tearing and burning things down, the ripping apart of the social fabric and the public trust. All I want to do is keep building, keep making this site the best it can be for a community that nurtured me.
It’s not on a scale of the tech companies or a larger news media entity. I’ve planted a seed where I am, and want to cultivate it.
Most of all, I want to build something that will outlast me. A former colleague at Patch who started her own news site and magazine in Walton County has sold them to the local newspaper.
Her example and determination helped inspire me to start East Cobb News. Cynthia Rozzo, the founder of the EAST COBBER, recently sold the magazine to her advertising manager, Laren Brown, who is carrying the publication into its third decade.
That’s remarkable staying power, something I hope to realize some day. But there’s still a lot of building to do. I’m unpacking the results of a recent reader survey, and plotting out editorial and business objectives for the rest of the year.
For the first time in a long time, however, I’m going to take a couple days away from the screen, Sunday and Monday—barring major breaking news—and absorb the true meaning of Labor Day.
I hope you will too, and I encourage you to stay in touch.
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!
The McCleskey Family-East Cobb YMCA and Northeast Cobb YMCA are among the branches participating in the Metro Atlanta YMCA’s Annual Days of Service events next Saturday, Sept. 10.
The events bring together volunteers to complete service projects at the branches and to benefit those in need in surrounding communities.
The McCleskey-East Cobb Family YMCA (1055 E. Piedmont Road) will host volunteers to assist with outdoor painting projects from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The Northeast Cobb Family YMCA (3010 Johnson Ferry Road) will host volunteers for a beautification day, also from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Volunteers will assist with weeding, trimming, painting curbs, and cleaning up the parking lot. The Northeast Y will also be packing hygiene kits and making blankets for children.
For information and to sign up to volunteer, click here.
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!
The 14th Cobb Diaper Day is returning in September and October in virtual format, with a goal of collecting 100,000 diapers for families in need.
Simple Needs GA is one of the Cobb non-profits distributing diapers to parents in need.
Organizers said those interested in contributing can do so in several ways. They can make direct contribution to the Cobb Diaper Day website, purchase them on Amazon through the Cobb Diaper Day Wish-list and declare a collection day at workplaces and organizations and with families and friends.
Since its inception in 2008, the non-profit Cobb Diaper Day has collected and distributed more than a million diapers.
Two Wednesdays in October have been designated for dropping off diapers at the solar flower garden of Cobb EMC (1000 Emc Pkwy NE, Marietta): Oct. 12 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Oct. 26 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Once collected, the diapers will be turned over to several community organizations for final distribution:
Cobb Douglas Public Health Teen Pregnancy Program
Communities in Schools of Georgia in Marietta/Cobb County
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!
Single-family homes on half-acre lots are being planned by Brooks Chadwick. For a larger view, click here.
A noted East Cobb development firm will soon submit plans to Cobb officials for a single-family subdivision on Shallowford Road near Blackwell Road.
Brooks Chadwick is proposing to build 29 homes on nearly 18 acres of the Powers property, which includes a 13-acre lake.
But the developer isn’t seeking a change from the present R-20 zoning, so there won’t be any public meetings.
Todd Thrasher, a managing partner at Brooks Chadwick Capital LLC, told East Cobb News that although there’s a denser R-15 neighborhood nearby, “we feel like our future community will be prettier, and allow for a better development as an R-20 community than if we were to rezone and cramming for density on our site.”
The issue of density has come up about the project, and Thrasher said “I wanted the community to know that we’re not putting up apartments.”
Density has become a hot topic in recent months in an area of Northeast Cobb that’s been undergoing substantial development.
Cobb commissioners last fall approved a 92-home subdivision on Ebenezer Road despite objections from nearby residents over density and stormwater issues, but the developer, Pulte Homes, later pulled out of the project.
Also last year, commissioners approved the redevelopment of the Sprayberry Corners Shopping Center that includes senior apartments. A plan to include market-rate apartments was scotched by the developer, Atlantic Realty, after commissioner JoAnn Birrell opposed them.
The Powers property is is in an area that is strictly single-family residential.
The homes being planned by Brooks Chadwick in its 23rd residential development in East Cobb would start at around 4,000 square feet, with prices starting around $1 million.
Thrasher said they’re just inside the Lassiter High School attendance zone and will have one access point, on Shallowford Road.
Brooks Chadwick sold off those 49 acres to other developers and Thrasher said his firm is likely to follow suit with the Shallowford Road property.
“We’ll buy the land, put the street in” as well as other basic infrastructure before selling off to another homebuilder, Thrasher said.
The Powers property includes 42 acres, and he said that land along the north side, bordered by Eula Drive, is being sold to another builder for nine residential lots.
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!
John Swierenga, owner of Trash Taxi: “We can fix this without disrupting what we have.”
A number of mostly small and independent trash haulers pleaded with Cobb officials Wednesday to work with them to resolve long-standing service issues.
Most adamantly, they asked that Cobb not approve a code amendment that they claimed would put many of them out of business.
Even before the “trash summit” at the Cobb Civic Center, Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said neither she nor any of her colleagues were in favor of a designating a single hauler for each of four commissioner districts.
That was at the heart of a proposal by the Cobb Sustainability, Solid Waste and Beautification director presented last week during a work session.
Commissioner JoAnn Birrell had previously suggested delaying trash service changes until January, but Cupid was hopeful changes to the proposal could be hammered out by the time commissioners vote on code amendments later this month.
UPDATE: After we published this story, Birrell included the following information in her weekly e-mail newsletter:
“As the code amendment package has been advertised, there will still be a public hearing at 9 a.m. on Sept. 13 on all proposed code amendments. However, after the public hearing, we plan to make a motion and vote to table the Solid Waste code section. It is a consensus of the BOC—none of us are in favor of the proposed one hauler per district.”
She and fellow Republican commissioner Keli Gambrill attended the summit along with Cupid. You can watch the full two-hour summit below.
The trash-related proposals are expected to be pulled before commissioners vote on code amendments later this month.
“We want a code amendment framework to address all these issues,” Cupid said at the outset of the meeting, referring to five areas of concern that she said have continued since the recession.
They include some areas that haulers will not serve, inconsistent service, multiple trash haulers serving the same neighborhood, illegal dumping and a lack of curbside recycling.
Kimberly White, executive director of Keep Cobb Beautiful, a government agency, said the county had to close several recycling dropoff spots it maintained because the private hauler it contracted with “couldn’t keep up.”
Some of those locations became an eyesore, she said, and KCB is trying to reopen more spots.
Shannan Salvey, co-owner of S & B Junk Removal, said in prepared remarks that the county “couldn’t handle recycling and now you want to manage trash for the whole county.”
She said the proposed code amendment would “take away our customers’ pursuit of happiness.” A single-hauler monopoly, she said, goes against “the foundations of our country.”
Unlike the previous work session, Wednesday’s meeting with the haulers included a lengthy discussion on recycling.
The proposed code amendment also would have required trash haulers to provide recycling services, something Cupid said residents have been complaining about.
Jon Swierenga of East Cobb, owner of Trash Taxi, said he and other haulers offer recycling, but it’s not mandatory and it comes with an additional fee.
When White said that “charging extra for recycling is too much” for some customers, he responded that “it’s not that we don’t want to recycle. But we cannot absorb all that cost.
“It’s not that the service isn’t available,” Swierenga said. “It’s that customers don’t want to pay for it. That’s the issue. We want to provide the services but we can’t do it for free.”
Also sitting at the table was Parks Huff, a noted Cobb zoning attorney who was representing the haulers. He suggested improving communications with the public as well as the haulers.
“It costs the same to pick up recycling as it does trash,” he said. “That needs to be communicated.”
He also said he didn’t know there was a recycling station at Lost Mountain Park until he went there one day.
Haulers said they were blindsided by the code amendment, which was proposed without their input. Jonathan Jenkins, head of the Cobb solid waste department, said he hadn’t met with haulers since 2019.
“We need time to address these issues,” Swierenga said. “We would like to hear of complaints that we can respond to in 24-48 hours. We can fix this without disrupting what we have.”
He said he was optimistic in saying that “I see a win-win down the road on this.”
Cupid reiterated that there isn’t a proposed 18 percent fee increases for sanitation services that some opponents of the proposed code amendments had claimed.
“We want every resident to have access to trash service, a robust recycling program and reduce litter in the county,” she said in a statement in her newsletter Friday. “This is a constructive meeting, and we are going to work to improve communications and work towards a solution.”
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!
An East Cobb man was sentenced last week on child sexual exploitation charges after pleading guilty in Cobb Superior Court.
Steven D. Porter, 65, was given a 10-year sentence by Judge Gregory Poole and ordered to serve two years in prison, according to Cobb Superior Court records.
The Cobb District Attorney’s office said a jury trial call was scheduled for Porter’s case last Tuesday, Aug. 23, but he entered a guilty plea instead.
Porter was taken into custody in the courtroom and was held at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center before being transferred to the Georgia state prison system Thursday afternoon, according to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records.
Porter was charged in April 2021 after Cobb Police executed a search warrant at his home and found on a thumb drive more than 300 photos and videos of children performing sexually explicit acts, according to his arrest warrant.
According to the arrest warrant, police sought the search warrant after someone uploaded sexually abusive material involving children to an IP address connected to a residence on Snowchase Way, located off Freeman Road near Johnson Ferry Road, between Aug. 2, 2016 and April 1, 2021.
Porter was released in April 2021 after posting an $11,200 bond, according to court records.
He was indicted on 10 counts of child sexual exploitation in October. According to the indictments, the photos and videos found at his home depicted children between the ages of 6 and 12, some posing nude, engaging in acts of intercourse and sodomy with adult males.
In Porter’s sentencing, all 10 counts were merged together, according to court records. Terms of his probation include no contact with minors, except for supervised visits with his biological grandchildren in the presence of adult family members.
In December, Porter requested a bond modification to allow for visitation with his seven grandchildren, who range in age from 3 to 10, according to court records.
Poole allowed Porter to have in-person and virtual visitations that required his wife and the children’s parents to be present at all times. His wife also was required to record the virtual calls with his grandchildren, the court records show.
After his release, Porter also will not be allowed to possess or subscribe to sexually oriented material and he cannot utilize a 900 phone number or rent a post office box or drop box without approval of a probation officer.
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!
The playing of “Hava Nagila” is a long-standing tradition at Noshfest.
For the first time since 2019, Noshfest is a go.
The Jewish food and cultural festival at Temple Kol Emeth (1415 Old Canton Road) returns to its usual time slot—the Labor Day holiday weekend—in a format similar to pre-COVID.
After postponing the 2020 event to Spring 2021, organizers called that off too, and said the 2022 festival would take place in September.
The event, now in its 10th year, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday and Monday.
Entry is free but you’re asked to bring two cans of food per family to be donated to MUST Ministries.
In addition to food vendors and cooking demonstrations, the schedule includes live entertainment, tours of the synagogue, a kids’ zone, crafts, face-painting and dancing.
Among the Noshfest food items include noodle kugel, potato knish, cheese blintz, bagels with cream cheese, Dr. Brown’s sodas, babka, halvah, pastrami and corned beef on rye and Hebrew National hot dogs.
The local food vendors include Alumni Cookie Dough, Bagelicious, Marietta Diner and Shish Kabob Mediterranean Grill.
You can find East Cobb News calendar listings in one handy place on our site. If you have events to share with the public, please e-mail: [email protected] and we will post them here.
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!
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has again extended a suspension of the state’s gas tax that was due to expire this month.
Instead, he is continuing the suspension of the 29-cents-a-gallon tax for gasoline and 32-cents-a-gallon for diesel through Oct. 12. The suspension has been in place since March, and has been extended several times before.
Although gasoline prices continue to fall—to under $3.50 a gallon in many parts of East Cobb—Kemp cited continuing inflation elsewhere and supply chain issues.
Kemp, a Republican who is seeking re-election in November, blamed Democrats in Congress and said that “we can’t fix everything Washington has broken, but we can use the resources we have as a result of our responsible budgeting to keep more money in the pockets of hardworking Georgians.”
His announcement comes right before the Labor Day holiday weekend, and the new extension approaches the elections.
Stacey Abrams, Kemp’s Democratic opponent, has urged that he extend the gas tax suspension through the end of the year.
She hasn’t issued a statement on the latest extension, but when Kemp renewed the extension in August, she accused him of refusing “to provide Georgians with the stability they deserve and commit to a full-year suspension.”
The Georgia Department of Revenue estimates that the state gas taxes raise around $150 million a month for road maintenance projects.
Georgia motorists still pay a federal gas tax of 18 cents a gallon.
According to AAA-The Auto Club Group, Georgia’s gas prices are among the lowest in the country, as are most Southern states.
The current statewide average of $3.38 a gallon is “5 cents less than a week ago, 44 cents less than a month ago, and 43 cents more than this time last year,” AAA noted on Monday.
Metro Atlanta’s average of $3.43 a gallon is among the highest areas in the state.
In early June, the statewide average was $4.49 a gallon.
The most expensive state for gas is California, which averages $5.25 cents a gallon.
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!
The Flying Biscuit Cafe at Parkaire Landing has been closed since mid-August due to what the company is saying is an ownership and management change.
The new proprietors have been hiring staff and have been off-site for training, according to a Flying Biscuit social media post.
They have announced a reopening date of Sept. 12. We’ve contacted the company for more information on what’s behind the changes and what customers can expect when they return.
This is Flying Biscuit’s second stint in the East Cobb area. The 3,000-square-foot Parkaire location opened in March 2021 in the former La Vida Massage space after a delay of more than a year due to COVID-19.
Flying Biscuit left East Cobb in 2010 in a freestanding space at Woodlawn Commons now occupied by Chase Bank.
The Atlanta-based breakfast and lunch chain has 12 restaurants in metro Atlanta and another in Athens, five in North Carolina, four in South Carolina, two each in Alabama and Florida and one in Texas.
Cobb Foodie Week set
Several East Cobb restaurants are taking part in Cobb Foodie Week, a promotion of Cobb Travel & Tourism that takes place from Sept. 10-17.
The restaurants establish their own specials, discounts and menu options. The East Cobb participants include the following:
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!
Cobb commissioner Jerica Richardson’s latest “Community Huddle”—a virtual meeting for constituents to discuss county government issues—concerns proposed code amendments.
Cobb code amendments are updated twice a year, and the current proposals cover 10 areas of the ordinance.
The Cobb Community Development Agency is coming back to commissioners to attempt to regulate AirBNB short-term rentals, especially AirBNBs (Chapter 78).
The proposed amendment would require a short-term rental certificate from the county business license office, a local agent to be available 24 hours a day and following occupancy and vehicle limits.
The county also is proposing to expand its authority in the inspection of multi-family rental housing units (Chapter 18) to include a required occupational tax for apartment complex owners and inspection of a quarter of a complex’ units every year.
Commissioners will hold specific public hearings on the code amendments on Sept. 13 and Sept. 27, before voting on them on the latter date.
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!
The Jason Cunningham Charitable Foundation, a non-profit that assists children with hearing loss, is holding a golf fundraiser in the fall.
The Jason Cunningham Charity Golf Classic takes place Oct. 17 at Horseshoe Bend Country Club (2100 Steeplechase Lane, Roswell) and includes prizes and other activities.
Cunningham, a 1999 graduate of Wheeler High School, suffered from hearing loss as a child, and he ultimately received hearing aids. But as an adult his communications issues led to depression, and he died in 2015 at the age of 34.
His friends and family began the foundation to raise funds and awareness for children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Since its inception six years ago, the JCCF has raised more than $400,000 to provide financial assistance for education, advanced hearing technology and medical care to more than 60 families and more than 300 children.
For information about the foundation and to sign up for the golf event, click here.
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!
The Cobb Board of Elections and Registration recently moved to new offices on Roswell Street near the Big Chicken.
There’s an Open House scheduled for next Saturday, Sept. 10 that also will include a job fair to fill positions for the November general elections.
The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the new facility, 995 Roswell Street, Marietta.
The agency recently moved there from offices on Whitlock Avenue. The Cobb elections board voted earlier this month to relocate early voting to the headquarters, which features expanded and more secure space.
The ribbon cutting takes place at 11 a.m., and the job fair starts at 12 noon.
Representatives from every department within the elections office will be available to speak with job candidates about the open positions, which include poll workers, warehouse prep and more.
For more information about Cobb Elections, click here.
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!
The Cobb County Public Library System said Monday that Sunday hours at its main branch and three regional libraries will resume starting Sept. 11.
Those locations include the Mountain View Regional Library (3320 Sandy Plains Road), as well as the main Switzer Library in downtown Marietta, the South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton and the West Cobb Regional Library in Kennesaw.
According to a release sent by the library system, they’re the largest libraries in the system.
The hours will be what they were before the pandemic—1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
For more on the services at the Mountain View Regional Library, click here. The phone number is 770-509-2725.
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!
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!
East Cobb News reader Bob violated two tenets of online commenting: Typing in all caps—signifying yelling—and venturing off the topic. Don’t be like Bob.
Ever since I made the switch to online journalism nearly 20 years ago (how time flies!), I’ve constantly wrestled with how to handle reader comments.
The immediacy and engagement can be beneficial components to building a thriving audience for community news.
And yet the instant availability of digital technology to cause mayhem and spread toxic messages often overwhelms those more noble aspirations.
Even before the age of blogs, social media and smartphones, online communication was an open sewer for mischief, threats, insults and worse.
If you remember the “alt” message boards of the late 1980s-early 1990s, you know what I’m talking about. Compared to today’s performative Twitter mobs, they truly resembled the Wild Wild West.
There were no moderators, almost everyone was anonymous and good luck getting anything taken down that was truly distasteful or even slanderous.
Perhaps I’ve become a bit numb, and even jaded, by what I read online to understand how this atmosphere can strike a nerve with readers today.
At more than 27K pageviews and counting, it’s the most visited post on East Cobb News in our 5+ years of publication.
Stories like that tend to generate plenty of reader comments, and this one certainly did.
For the most part, readers were civil, if irate.
Then somebody hit the CAPS LOCK BUTTON and didn’t turn it off for a good while.
That was a response to another reader complaining about having fled a “police state” in Cobb County that’s led by “Commie Democrats.”
And so on it went like this for a brief sequence, running a bit afoul of our Comments Policy.
Another reader noticed all this, and e-mailed me. He said he appreciates reading about local news and issues at East Cobb News, but “I’m not sure what benefit your comment section brings to your news organization. It’s kind of a dumpster fire and I’ve never seen a productive conversation happen on it. Literally just people calling each other ‘commie’ and other names.”
He makes good points, and I replied that for the most part, readers here don’t get that far off the chains. We’ve had a fairly respectful environment for community conversation in spite of the limitations on online platforms, not just on the site but our social media channels as well.
Shortly after our exchange, I shut off reader comments for that post, linked to our policy and revised it to include the following:
Before posting a comment, ask yourself this: Would I say this to someone in person or over the phone? Also, read through your comments for spelling, grammar, etc.;
In other words, behave like an adult on this platform.
When I was an online editor at the AJC, I had to moderate comments during the sordid saga of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, as he faced charges of being involved in a dogfighting ring.
For weeks before and then after he was hauled off to federal prison, his football career destroyed, I waded through some nauseating comments, chucking more into the “unapproved” bin than I ever imagined.
What Vick copped to was indeed reprehensible, but after my moderating shift was over, I felt like I needed to take a shower.
We all need a place to vent and rant, but online forums unfortunately have become havens for increasingly vile, putrid expressions.
Frankly, I expected East Cobb News coverage of the Tokyo Valentino adult store and the controversy at Mt. Bethel Church to generate some red-flag comments (sex and religion!).
While they certainly prompted some racy reactions to the former and some biblically-inspired pronouncements to the latter, it was nothing that couldn’t be managed.
It is possible to express strong views without boiling over.
In our increasingly overheated times, many media outlets have decided to dispense with allowing comments at all, and not just major corporations.
Another local independent online news publisher here in Cobb County just switched the off button, for many of the same reasons others have.
For the time being, I’m going to leave them on and keep them going. I still think there’s an opportunity to have civil exchanges on important topics.
Most of you do that; it’s always a small handful that ruins it for everyone else.
I may come to regret this, and there likely are trolls out there waiting to lick their chops.
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!
State Rep. Mitch Kaye (directly under the Star of David) and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick (standing at his right), both of East Cobb, are part of the 16-member Georgia-Israel Legislative Caucus delegation.
State Rep. Mitch Kay and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb are part of a bipartisan legislative delegation from Georgia currently traveling in Israel.
Members of the Georgia-Israel Legislative Caucus arrived in Tel Aviv on Monday, meeting with members of the Israeli Knesset, as well as representatives from the country’s military, diplomatic, business and legal communities.
The legislators also met with Major General (Ret.) Alon Levavi to learn more about the Georgia Israel Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE).
“This trip is about strengthening the deep bonds of friendship and shared values between Georgia and Israel,” Kaye, a Republican from House District 45, said in a release issued by the Georgia House of Representatives.
“I am already encouraged by the warm welcome we received upon arriving in Tel Aviv, and I look forward to expanding our understanding of this incredible nation over the next several days.”
Kaye was the first Jewish Republican elected to the Georgia legislature in the 1990s and earlier this year won a special election to fill the unexpired term of former State Rep. Matt Dollar through the end of the year.
Other legislators and their families making the trip include House members Debra Bazemore (D-South Fulton), Micah Gravley (R-Douglasville), Debbie Buckner (D-Junction City), Karen Bennett (D-Stone Mountain), Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) and Darlene Taylor (R-Thomasville).
The release said the Gov. Brian Kemp issued a commendation recognizing the trip, noting that Georgia exported more than $280 million worth of goods to Israel and imported $652 million worth of goods from Israel in 2021.
His commendation “also also commended the launch of the Georgia-Israel Legislative Caucus, the expansion of direct flights between Atlanta and Tel Aviv starting next year and the GILEE program with Israel,” according to the release.
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!
The Cobb County Public Library System announced this week that starting Sept. 6, citizens can obtain passports at two of its branches.
They include the Mountain View Regional Library (3320 Sandy Plains Road) in East Cobb and the West Cobb Regional Library (1750 Dennis Kemp Lane, Kennesaw).
They have been approved as Passport Acceptance Facilities by the U.S. State Department and library staff have been trained to process passport applications.
The library system said in a release earlier this week that passport services at those branches will be available via appointment only Monday—Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Thursday—Saturday from 12-3 p.m.
But the applications will be limited to first-time adult applicants, age 16 and older, and children under 16.
Renewals will not be processed at the libraries, and passport photo services will not be provided.
The costs are a passport application fee determined by the State Department and a $35 acceptance fee, each payable by check, money order or cashier’s check.
Starting Sept. 6 the library system will begin accepting appointments online or by calling the library branches directly.
For information on passport services at Cobb libraries visit cobbcat.org or call 770-528-2326.
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!
East Cobb resident John Swierenga, owner of Trash Taxi, addressing commissioners Tuesday.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners and the leadership of the county’s solid waste department have scheduled a “summit” next week with private trash disposal companies.
Cobb government said in a release on Friday that the meeting will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 2 p.m. at the Cobb Civic Center (548 S. Marietta Parkway).
The county release said trash company leaders are being summoned “to address a history of complaints by residents in Cobb County of missed pickups, poor customer service, and lack of recycling services.”
The meeting comes several days after commissioners heard a proposed code amendment change that would limit trash pickup services to one private hauler for each of the four commission districts.
But at Tuesday’s commission meeting, Jonathan Jenkins, Director of the Cobb Sustainability, Waste, and Beautification Department, said he had not met with trash companies since 2019, and did not seek their input before proposing the code amendment changes.
“About 20 haulers in Cobb County could be put out of business,” said John Swierenga, an East Cobb resident and owner of Trash Taxi, during a public comment period.
“Large capital [would be] needed to bid on these contracts,” he said. “We face restrictions because there’s no disposal capability we have.”
Swierenga and his brothers started Trash Taxi in 2004, and the company serves around 16,000 customers, mostly in northwest Cobb. Trash Taxi recently expanded into some areas of East Cobb.
He estimated that between 90,000 to 100,000 Cobb citizens get their trash service from small haulers, and that big companies are struggling.
One them, Swierenga said, called him to ask if he could send Trash Taxi trucks to Gwinnett County to help pick up their garbage.
Jenkins said he got the idea for dedicated haulers for a particular area of the county from Gwinnett, which recently implemented that ordinance.
“This proposal, if enacted,” Swierenga said of the Cobb proposal, “could be a colossal failure.”
Citizen complaints have focused strongly on American Disposal, one of the bigger haulers that has bought up smaller competitors to consolidate its market position.
“Just stop,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Earlier Tuesday, at a work session on code amendments, Commissioner JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb wanted the trash proposal to be tabled until January.
She and fellow Republican Commissioner Keli Gambrill said they do not support eliminating competition in trash service, and other commissioners expressed concern about the proposal.
But Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said there would be enough time to modify the proposal before a scheduled vote Sept. 27.
Wednesday’s meeting is being billed as a work session. It is open to the public, but there will be no public comment period.
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!
Instead, he is continuing the suspension of the 29-cents-a-gallon tax for gasoline and 32-cents-a-gallon for diesel through Oct. 12. The suspension has been in place since March, and has been extended several times before.
