After years of being an eyesore, the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center in 2019 became the target of a redevelopment proposal that energized citizens frustrated by inaction regarding the rundown retail center.
In June, those leading the Sprayberry Crossing Action Facebook group said they had been meeting with Atlantic Residential, an Atlanta-based multi-family developer interested in building a mixed-use complex.
It would have some retail but would be largely residential, with apartments and senior-living units taking up most of the property at the southeast corner of East Piedmont Road and Sandy Plains Road.
In August, some of those community representatives met with Atlantic Residential to get more details, and shared them with the public. They also were hopeful of holding a town hall meeting to go over the plans.
But that’s when some opposition began to arise, mostly due to the apartments and the density of the proposal.
By September, the Atlantic Residential revised its plans, calling for nearly 400 residential units (nearly half of them apartments, along with senior living and townhomes), 30,000 square feet of commercial space and other amenities.
Some of those critical of the apartment units started their own Facebook group and contend that kind of development isn’t suitable in an area with single-family homes.
Other opposition arose from those with family members buried in a cemetery at Sprayberry Crossing that was slated to be relocated in the Atlantic Residential proposal.
The developer said in late September the plan would be undergoing “substantial changes” that have not been detailed since then.
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After a career of public service spanning more than four decades, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson announced in 2019 he would be retiring at the end of the year.
The Republican former real estate agency owner from East Cobb suffered continuing health issues during the year. In addition to his battle with Parkinson’s Disease, he fractured ribs during a fall at his Washington apartment.
He underwent rehabilitation at WellStar Kennestone Hospital said in August he could not complete his third term that ends in 2022.
Isakson, the first Georgian to serve in both houses of the state legislature and Congress, made bipartisanship and his role as the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman his hallmark.
Along the way, he endeared himself to colleagues in both parties, who paid tribute late in the year.
In a moving scene on the floor of the U.S. House, Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta hailed Isakson, who was sitting nearby in a wheelchair, and the two men warmly embraced.
In his final speech on the Senate floor, Isakson called his 15-year tenure in the U.S. Senate “the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
He implored his colleagues to “find a way to find common ground.” He said, “America, we have a problem,” but that “we can do anything” by dropping hard party labels. “Bipartisanship will be the way you accomplish things, the way you live.”
Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Buckhead businesswoman Kelly Loeffler, a political novice, to succeed Isakson through the elections next November. The winner of a “jungle primary” then would fill the remaining two years of Isakson’s term.
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After more than a decade, and some questions of whether it would ever come about, Mabry Park opened in 2019, a long overdue passive park addition in East Cobb.
The ribbon-cutting celebration in May included members of the Mabry family, who sold 26 acres of their historic farmland on Wesley Chapel Road to Cobb County right before the recession.
The economic downturn halted the project at that point, although a master plan was later completed to maintain the future park with a rural feel.
The Friends of Mabry Park persisted with their vision, along with Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell, and many citizens of the nearby Northeast Cobb community.
“We couldn’t have gotten here without the community,” said Peter Hortman, the current president of the Friends of Mabry Park.
In another part of Northeast Cobb, a master plan was unveiled and adopted by the Cobb Board of Commissioners for future development.
Like Mabry Park, nearly 18 acres of land of Ebenezer Road will also feature a lake as its centerpiece, but also is proposed to include recreational fishing.
What’s to be called Ebenezer Downs would still need construction funding by the commissioners, and no timetable has been outlined.
The land purchase in 2018 was made with proceeds from the 2008 Cobb Parks Bond referendum.
That same funding source was tapped for the county to acquire 22 acres of the Tritt property on Roswell Road, envisioned as an extension of adjacent East Cobb Park.
In early December, one of the leaders of the Friends for the East Cobb Park was honored as a recipient of the East Cobb Citizen of the Year Award.
Tom Bills was the park volunteer group’s first treasurer, as it scouted property and then worked to fundraise the purchase, and as the park was built for its 2003 opening.
The former Tritt property is designated as greenspace for now.
Bills is currently is a senior construction project manager for the Cobb Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, and was involved in the Mabry Park project.
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During the first weeks of the 2019-20 Cobb County School District academic year, two East Cobb high schools went on lockdown, and a student at another school was arrested after threatening violence and attacking a teacher.
Those incidents raised concerns by school safety advocates about the district’s measures to handle such incidents.
A trespasser was quickly apprehended after walking onto the Sprayberry campus with a gun and a Wheeler student was arrested after other students alerted teachers and staff that he had carried a gun on a school bus.
At Walton High School, a student was arrested for making terroristic threats, saying he would shoot up the school when he was taken from a class for having alcohol in a water bottle. He also was charged with battery for kicking a teacher.
An East Cobb parent who helped form a Cobb schools safety group last year acknowledged that the district is taking more concerted steps to ensure safety and communicate better, but still thinks its approach is largely reactive.
She’d like to see the district invest more in mental health counseling and a “social emotional learning” program other school systems have begun.
The Walton incident wasn’t made public for a week, and then only because of news reports, while the Sprayberry and Wheeler cases were made public the day they occurred.
The district has continued to stress its safety resource effort called Cobb Shield, which contains information about its police force, emergency management procedures and code red drills, which are required each semester at all 16 high schools.
District spokesman John Floresta said Cobb schools was “batting 100 percent in the way each incident [at the East Cobb schools] was handled,” from quick actions by school officials to apprehend those posing a threat, to relaying information to the school community.
“We’re being as proactive as any school district I know,” he said.
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The two new members of the Cobb Board of Education—including one who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters—weren’t bashful about outlining new ideas and initiatives for the Cobb County School District in 2019.
Democrats Charisse Davis and Jaha Howard narrowed the board’s Republican majority to 4-3 when they were sworn in in January, along with re-elected member David Chastain of the Kell and Sprayberry zones, who served as chairman this year.
Those three would ultimately clash in September, when Chastain made a motion to eliminate board member comments at the end of meetings.
Some of Howard’s remarks had strayed from Cobb school business into other political topics, local and national, and during a tense discussion, the Republican majority voted 4-3 to impose the ban.
That split was evident earlier in the year, when Davis and Howard voiced a desire for the board to consider making some changes, including closing loopholes, in the Cobb school senior tax exemption.
As the board began the budget process, Chastain told an East Cobb audience he was adamant nothing would happen regarding the exemption, eligible for homeowners 62 and older.
School district officials estimate that costs more than $100 million a year. Davis said she doesn’t want to eliminate the exemption, but noted that Cobb is one of only two school districts in metro Atlanta that doesn’t have any conditions to its senior tax exemption.
At a school board retreat in the fall, she and Howard raised the subject again, but it was rejected.
Davis and Howard also have publicly suggested the Cobb school district create a cabinet-level position for equity and diversity in the wake of calls by some parents and school staff in the county for Cobb schools to address what they claim are unaddressed and systemic racial biases.
In 2020, four board members will be up for re-election, including David Banks of Post 4. He’s finishing his third term representing the Pope and Lassiter districts, and has drawn two Republican opponents.
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As the final notes of “Silent Night” wafted through the sanctuary, I kept looking at the light.
The candlelight that we all held in one hand as we sang, kneeling, at the end of a lovely Christmas Eve service.
I didn’t want the light to go out, and kept the candle burning during the processional, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
After that, the overhead lights had come on and as I exited the building, I looked back at a beautiful sight. The soft lights that radiated from the building, and the Christmas tree in front, left me in a comfortable glow.
I was filled by the warmth of a festive event, the embrace of new friends and the promise of new birth.
For the second year in a row, I attended the Christmas Eve candlelight service at St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church on Holt Road.
What was different this year is that I’ve been going there for the last few months, after many years of not being religious in any way.
Bit by bit, week by week, a little more of a light that had dimmed for me began to brighten up again.
Earlier this year I lost my mother, and finding my way out of that darkness has been rough. My first Christmas without her was going to be especially difficult.
On Monday, as I scratched off the last few items on my grocery shopping list, that sense of loss overwhelmed me, and I barely made my way out of the store without breaking down.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, that melancholy reappeared, and I wondered if I had the strength to go to church.
It was on Christmas Eve a year ago I learned my mother’s lung cancer had become so advanced, and she had gotten so weak, that she decided to forego any chemotherapy. She lived two more months, and for me that favorite of her holidays has become a bittersweet memory.
After the candlelight service Tuesday night, I drove past our old house, and noticed that the current residents had decorated a Christmas tree in the front yard, with beaming green and red lights. I smiled, knowing my mother would be delighted.
The lights of the holidays always made her happy, but she always knew how to look for the light every day of the year.
She found it, in her faith and her family and her sense of fidelity to friends and strangers, and really lived it.
It’s a lesson she taught me long ago, and that I’m trying to learn anew. The light is not always visible, and often is buried amid darkness and despair.
But it’s there, if we’re willing to let it shine.
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The year 2019 marked some dramatic change for several East Cobb faith communities, including one of its best known. Johnson Ferry Baptist Church has a new pastor, only the second its history.
Rev. Clay Smith was called from First Baptist Church in Matthews, N.C., to succeed founding pastor Rev. Bryant Wright.
Wright, who initially ministered to a tiny congregation in vacant office space in the early 1980s, shepherded the church into one with more than 8,000 members, with a sprawling campus on Johnson Ferry Road that now includes a large activities center, ball fields and a K-12 school.
In addition, Wright began the non-denominational Wright From the Heart Ministries, reaching radio and multimedia audiences, and was president of the Southern Baptist Convention as it welcomed historically black congregations.
At the end of 2018 Wright indicated his desire to step away from his Johnson Ferry duties, and will continue with Wright From the Heart.
Another long-time spiritual leader in East Cobb announced this year he will be retiring in 2020. Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth became the Reform synagogue’s first full-time rabbi in 1986 and took part in community protests against an anti-gay resolution by the Cobb Board of Commissioners in the early 1990s.
Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth is retiring at the end of June 2020.
Later he took up the cause of working to exonerate Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager who was lynched near what is now Frey’s Gin Road in 1915. In the wake of 9/11, Lebow started an annual Ecumenical service the week before Thanksgiving, inviting faith leaders and worshippers from around the north metro Atlanta for music, humor and interfaith messages of unity.
Earlier this year, Eastside Baptist Church made the news when the Southern Baptist Convention had listed it for possible “defellowshipping” related to a 2017 sexual abuse case.
Newspapers in Texas had reported on allegations of abuse in the SBC, but Eastside Pastor John Hull was publicly critical of the SBC for the listing, saying the congregation on Lower Roswell Road had addressed the matter promptly.
A former Eastside youth ministry volunteer was convicted of two counts of sexual battery in 2016 and is in prison; the church took actions to improve security, strengthen background checks and increase safety as Hull was coming on board.
The SBC later removed Eastside from the list, saying no further investigation was warranted.
In September, a longtime East Cobb church announced it was closing its doors, due to declining an aging membership and financial issues.
Members of Powers Ferry United Methodist Church gathered in early December for “homecoming” as the 65-year-old congregation prepares for its final service on Dec. 29.
Also as the holidays approached, two East Cobb churches became one. Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which had been sharing space with Hope Presbyterian Church on Sandy Plains Road, merged with Christ Presbyterian.
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A good number of retail, restaurant and service businesses opened in East Cobb during 2019, but it was the handful of closures that caught many locals by surprise.
Two of them in particular drew plenty of attention later in the fall. The Fresh Market at Woodlawn Square had a markdown sale as it closed its doors in October, and Egg Harbor Cafe shuttered in December after not being able to work out a new lease.
Also closing during the past year was the Loyal Q Tavern at Parkaire Landing Shopping Center and Once and Again Books on Shallowford Road.
The year 2019 was a healthy one for new fitness center openings, including Fit Body Boot Camp and SPENGA East Cobb, among others, as well as Explore Chiropractic at Parkaire.
Other new stores include The French Table and Pineapple Porch, home decor outlet, Frenchie’s Modern Nail Care and Code Ninjas, a coding school for kids.
Carwash USA, which had been located at Roswell Road and Old Canton Road, reopened at the former Wells Fargo Bank branch on Johnson Ferry Road at East Cobb Crossing Shopping Center.
Jennifer Cortez, a former manager at the now-closed Kaminsky Jewelry store on Post Oak Tritt Road, opened Jennifer Jewelers in the same spot.
The Credit Union of Georgia opened a branch on Johnson Ferry Road, and The Solana East Cobb, a senior living facility, marked the end of its first full year in business with a grand opening in November.
New restaurants and eateries in East Cobb include Jim ‘Nicks BBQ, the first business at the new Sandy Plains MarketPlace, Clean Juice at Woodlawn Square, Roll On In at Woodlawn Commons and Duck Donuts at Merchants Walk.
Two other restaurant chains relocating to East Cobb won’t be opening until 2020. Mellow Mushroom will be taking the former Common Quarter space at Woodlawn Square, and Flying Biscuit Cafe is coming to Parkaire Landing by next spring.
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Keep Cobb Beautiful’s annual Bring One for the Chipper Christmas Tree recycling program starts Christmas Day and ends next Saturday, Jan. 4.
Starting Christmas Day and continuing through Jan. 4, you can drop off trees at the Home Depot stores at Providence Square (4101 Roswell Road) and Highland Plaza (3605 Sandy Plains Road).
On Saturday, Jan. 4, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the following county parks in East Cobb will serve as drop-off locations:
Fullers Park (3499 Robinson Road)
Sewell Park (2055 Lower Roswell Road)
Noonday Park (489 Hawkins Store Road)
When you bring a tree you’ll get a free sapling, as long as supplies last.
No flocked trees will be accepted, and all trees must have decorations, mesh, lights, stands, strings and other items removed.
Free mulch also is available; for more information, call 770-528-1135 or visit keepcobbbeautiful.org.
An East Cobb boy scout troop is collecting trees this Saturday, Jan. 28, and next Saturday, Jan. 4, as a fundraising project.
It’s Troop 565, which meets at Eastminster Presbyterian Church, and they’ll be making curbside pickups those days starting at 8 a.m. within the Walton, Wheeler, Pope, Lassiter and Sprayberry attendance zones.
The cost for the retrieval is $25 a tree, and they’re asking that you sign up here for the service. The donations are tax-deductible and the proceeds go toward troop programs.
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GRACEPOINT School for dyslexic learners announced today their accreditation received for the school’s Orton-Gillingham program by the AOGPE (Academy of Orton Gillingham Practitioners and Educators). The Orton–Gillingham Approach is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading, writing, and spelling does not come easily to individuals, such as those with dyslexia. All academic teachers at GRACEPOINT are trained as Orton-Gillingham Classroom Educators. Training involves methods to teach and Enremediate all areas of literacy, not just reading and spelling and to provide this instruction one-on-one, in a classroom, or with any size group.
Students at GRACEPOINT receive 90 minutes of explicit Orton-Gillingham reading instruction each day.
GRACEPOINT’s instructional program is now 1 of only 16 programs in the nation to receive this accreditation.
“To have your OG instruction endorsed by the Academy is such a high honor,” shared Joy Wood, GRACEPOINT Head of School. “I am very proud of the teachers and staff at GRACEPOINT that are so dedicated to restoring hope to the brilliant dyslexic minds we serve each day. There is incredible reward in seeing realize they are not ”
This news comes in the wake of many recent initiatives and accomplishments of the company, including:
Enrollment growth from 4 to 124 students since the school’s beginning in 2012
Accreditation by the SAIS (Southern Association of Independent Schools)
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The original Mt. Bethel Community Center on Johnson Ferry Road also housed a school and was the first Cobb Police precinct location in East Cobb. (Special photo)
It’s hard to imagine the East Cobb we live in now being mostly farmland not that long ago. But going back in history turned out to a delightful departure from current news cycle for many of our readers after we published a story this summer about a family that remembered the community when it was called Mt. Bethel.
As the siblings of a prominent Mt. Bethel family told us, the changes have been rather recent: They were among the first graduates of Walton High School in the late 1970s, attending classes with suburban peers while they grew up on a farm on Lower Roswell Road at Woodlawn Drive.
Some of their cows occasionally wandered into a new planned community with a golf course that changed the area for good.
“When Indian Hills opened, that was a huge caveat to a changing community,” said Cherie Chandler, the fifth of the six Poss children. “That’s when it went from being Mt. Bethel to East Cobb.”
Her sister Gail Poss Towe saw a story we published in May about the demolition of a home near theirs belonging to Wilce Frasier, and was eager to share stories about a very different time.
We sat down with the three youngest children of Arthur and Evelyn Poss, who threw themselves into family and community life with eagerness and impact.
From left, Gail Poss Towe, Mark Poss and Cherie Poss Chandler, the youngest children of Arthur and Evelyn Poss. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)
The response from readers to this story was heartwarming: More local history, please! While we haven’t been able to do that as much as we had hoped, we’ve got some ideas along those lines heading into 2020.
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East Cobb Cityhood leader David Birdwell met a skeptical and at times hostile crowd at the group’s first public appearance in March. (ECN file photos)
The leaders of the East Cobb cityhood effort did the right thing this week by calling off their push for legislation and a referendum in 2020.
They were running out of time to get too many things done—including finalizing a map and a proposed list of services—and had stoked even more opposition, suspicion and confusion for months this spring and summer when they barely connected with the public at all.
County elected officials, including legislators, hadn’t been told what was going on.
State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick said she got a lot of negative feedback about East Cobb cityhood.
After its first town hall meeting in March, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb had its work cut out, as citizens packed a church parish hall and demanded to know who, what and especially why this was being proposed.
A month later the cityhood group had a town hall meeting at Walton High School. Like that and future events it held, citizens could ask questions only by writing them down on a note card for a moderator to read. Or not.
This is no way to have a meaningful dialogue with the public about a dramatic change in their local government, in an initiative that would ultimately be decided by citizens.
Neither is having a cityhood bill filed in the legislature the day after that first town hall meeting, and on the next-to-last day of the General Assembly session.
At the time, I thought it smacked of another bad-faith effort on the part of the cityhood group, which paid for a financial feasibility study issued last November, but whose members remained anonymous and unwilling to meet with the public.
At one point on its website, the cityhood group explained that it wasn’t identifying its donors or others involved for fear of harassment from their “enemies” and the media.
By dodging such basic questions, and setting up a non-profit 501(c)4 “social welfare” organization to conceal donors, original cityhood leaders likely created more opponents than they ever conjured up in their paranoid imaginations.
Public suspicions were immediate, and they continue today: Development interests are behind this. Nothing but a land grab. Look at what’s happening in Sandy Springs. We don’t want that coming here.
Also: We don’t want another layer of government. My property taxes are bound to go up. The services I get from the county are just fine.
When the cityhood group finally faced the public, newly appointed cityhood leader David Birdwell didn’t stand much of a chance.
East Cobb cityhood leader Rob Eble speaks at a Wheeler HS town hall meeting in November.
I’ve found him and Rob Eble, another newcomer to the group, to be well-intentioned. But overcoming the bad start of others has been a tall order, and it’s dogged them ever since.
So has the lack of any kind of public groundswell for a City of East Cobb. When prominent civic leaders say they were blindsided by this, that’s telling.
Trying to push through legislation in two years, hiring high-profile lobbyists and keeping the public in the dark for months hurt the cityhood case even more.
Another big question: What’s the rush?
Other cityhood efforts in metro Atlanta have taken several legislative cycles. There is so much to work out, in addition to finances: Intergovernmental agreements, start-up costs, staffing even a bare-bones city hall, and that darn map.
Eble told me this week the cityhood group never finalized an expanded map to include the Pope and Lassiter school zones. It was an estimate provided by a GIS service that detailed the original map.
Ultimately, the East Cobb cityhood effort struggled from a lack of organization more than having what many consider a shadowy agenda.
Eble admitted the cityhood group made mistakes communicating with the public. As for the idea of cityhood, he said, “I still believe in it. But nobody’s trying to shove anything down anybody’s throat.”
There are many who will never believe this, of course, and they will remain ever-vigilant to stop cityhood.
Yet I’ve also talked to, and heard from, citizens who are unsure. They weren’t necessarily opposed to cityhood but wanted more information, and didn’t feel like they were getting it.
Some others roiled by an annexation spat this summer with the City of Marietta have been open to the idea of an East Cobb city, fearing the county can’t protect them.
As these last few months have transpired, I do think the idea of cityhood is worth considering. I’ve been accused of being biased, both for and against a city, but I don’t really have an opinion.
Too big to succeed?
As someone who grew up in East Cobb, I’ve seen my community become suburbanized, and now more densely developed in some areas.
This is happening all over the county, which has more than 750,000 people and is projected to have a population of one million by 2050.
Before the cityhood issue was raised, I had been wondering if Cobb County government could continue to operate as it has.
There are serious concerns about public safety staffing, the county’s growing pension obligations and addressing transportation and development concerns.
Is Cobb too big to govern the way it is, with a countywide chairman and four district commissioners serving nearly 200,000 people each? And representing communities that are distinct from one another?
Tre Hutchins and Galt Porter of the South Cobb Alliance, a pro-cityhood group in Mableton.
There are times when commissioners are squabbling during their meetings that I wonder if they can even agree on what to have for lunch.
I’ve thought a citizen-led, grassroots cityhood movement in East Cobb could gain some traction, especially around zoning, development and land use issues.
I could see a City of East Cobb providing those and other community development services, including code enforcement.
I’ve never understood why the cityhood effort centered upon providing expensive police and fire services to supplant excellent, if not fully-staffed county departments? We have the lowest crime and fire rates in Cobb County.
Why not provide something better than what exists now, in say, sanitation, where the increasingly monopolized American Disposal private hauler is the subject of many complaints?
A financial review group studying the East Cobb feasibility study recommended that option, at least to start.
A “city light” form of government could serve East Cobb much better than one worrying about how to pay for new fire trucks and police cars and trained professionals to staff them.
Transparency matters
The “pause and reset” phase for cityhood, to borrow Eble’s phrase to me, is a good time to rethink those matters, as well as to be fully forthcoming with the public before gearing up for 2021.
At the outset, the cityhood group should lay out all of its finances, including how much money has been spent, and who’s been footing the bills.
Identify everybody who’s given money to the cause, and been involved in the effort in a significant way. Everybody.
This isn’t a private business deal, but an entirely public matter that could affect the lives of more than 100,000 people.
Follow the lead of the Mableton cityhood effort, which conducted extensive town halls over a couple of years to really hear what the public thinks, without note card questions and a “here’s what we want to do” mentality.
East Cobb cityhood leader David Birdwell at an East Cobb Business Association debate in November.
Like Mableton, have a city map fully detailed, including city council districts that were indicated in the East Cobb bill but never visualized, and provide an online survey.
Better communications include regular use of social media. The East Cobb cityhood group barely updated those platforms and its website, which is absurd heading into the third decade of the 21st century.
Cityhood leaders should have regular discussions with legislators and other local elected officials, since without their support a referendum will likely never happen.
The East Cobb cityhood group certainly has serious intentions. It had the money to buy access and line up the mechanics of getting a bill passed in the legislature.
What it didn’t have was a concept of what it really takes to gather public support, and its efforts to explain its reasons for cityhood were belated and underwhelming.
Something as substantive as creating a new local government shouldn’t be accepted as easily as cityhood leaders may have thought. Nor should it be categorically rejected as the anti-city East Cobb Alliance has maintained.
For those of us who have an open mind about the issue, we’re still receptive to hearing a better case being made.
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A young visitor approaches the stage at the Sewell Mill amphitheater. (East Cobb News photos by Wendy Parker)
It was around 50 degrees when Cocoa and Concert began Friday at the Sewell Mill Library, as a few dozen people brought coats and concert chairs, sipped on hot cocoa, enjoyed crafts and the music of local artists.
After a colder and wet weekend, the week of Christmas will be warmer, with temperatures reaching the mid-60s by Christmas Day and staying in that range the rest of the week.
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Thanks to reader Karen Fox, who sends along word that her family home in East Cobb is having a special holiday lights treat on Saturday night.
The lights are synchronized to music that you can listen to on your car radio at 88.3FM, and the display features two snow machines, leaping arches, an animated skating pond and a frozen display.
She says Santa will be visiting Saturday, starting at 7 p.m., and will be available for free pictures, hot chocolate and treats. He usually stays an hour or so, or until the last child is seen.
The display is free to enjoy between 6-11 p.m. nightly through Jan. 6, but Karen says they’re accepting donations for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church.
The address is 2994 Clary Hill Court, located off Post Oak Tritt Road near McPherson Road, in the Clary Lakes subdivision. Below is a map to help you get there, along with more photos and a video.
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East Cobb cityhood has been greeted with skepticism since the group’s first public appearance in March. (ECN file photo)
The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb announced Thursday it will not be pursuing legislation next year that would call for a referendum later in 2020.
A bill introduced this year by State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb was to have been considered in the upcoming legislative session.
But after two public events last month, including the announcement of an expanded proposed city map, the cityhood group said it’s opting to go through another two-year legislative cycle.
“We are committed to continuing this process,” cityhood CEO David Birdwell said in a statement. “We want to take the time to do it right because we know that the more educated voters are on this issue, the more they will support it.”
East Cobb News has left messages with Birdwell and Dollar seeking comment.
Rob Eble, another cityhood leader, told East Cobb News the group “got a lot of feedback,” and “people feel like the process was rushed. That was the biggest complaint.
“We really took that to heart. The last thing we want is for this to be divisive and this was becoming divisive.”
Eble said the cityhood group wants to make a renewed effort to engage more with the public.
He acknowledged that while there are those who oppose cityhood, others said they weren’t sure what they thought but felt they didn’t have enough information and felt the process was being rushed.
Last month, the cityhood group conducted a town hall meeting at Wheeler High School and participated in a debate with cityhood opponents.
The cityhood group had not made any further public comments or appearances since then, until Thursday’s announcement.
The expanded map was to have included the Pope and Lassiter attendance zones, but the cityhood group has not produced a detailed map for the public.
Legislators, including State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb, who would be the bill’s likely sponsor in the Senate, said they haven’t seen a map.
When contacted by East Cobb News Thursday, Kirkpatrick said she was glad for the cityhood delay, because of feedback she got from constituents.
“I think that’s a wise decision,” she said. “This is going to be much more fair to the people of East Cobb.”
She said the group was running out of time to have a new map ready for the legislative session, and constituents were all over the map on what they thought about cityhood.
Kirkpatrick said some were opposed, others worried about their taxes going up, and some were concerned about development issues.
“There’s just been a lot of confusion,” she said, referring to the changing map and suggestions to change the proposed services of a City of East Cobb.
She said she was preparing to do a poll before the legislature begins, but holding off on cityhood for now “is a better approach.”
East Cobb Cityhood leaders David Birdwell, Karen Hallacy and Rob Eble at an April town hall meeting at Walton High School. (ECN file)
Earlier this week, the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood, produced what it called its best estimate of the revised map. Birdwell estimated the new population would exceed 115,000.
The Alliance said it still considers the legislation active, since the cityhood group “is no longer in control of what happens in the Legislature.”
“Until/Unless [Dollar] says he will withdraw the bill, and does withdraw the bill, he can, and very well may, continue to push this bill forward, regardless of what the Cityhood Committee says they want.”
Dollar, who sponsored the cityhood bill in the house on the next-to-the-last day of the 2019 legislative session, told East Cobb News earlier this month that the map was still being revised and probably would be until the 2020 General Assembly starts.
Eble said the map Birdwell showed during the Wheeler town hall was an estimate done by a GIS firm for the cityhood group.
“That’s one of the reasons we don’t want to do this during the legislative session,” Eble said.
The decision to delay cityhood comes a little more than a year after the group unveiled a financial feasibility study conducted by Georgia State University.
That study concluded that a City of East Cobb, in unincorporated Cobb in Cobb Commission District 2 east of I-75 and with a population of 96,000 was financially viable.
The study concluded that a city could provide community development, police and fire services at or below the current Cobb millage rates, and with a surplus.
But skeptics of the study and of cityhood emerged quickly, as the group declined to identify donors and others pushing for a municipality.
The group asked several citizens to examine the feasibility study. One of them, Joe O’Connor, quit the ad hoc group when he was told it was none of his business to know who funded the study.
O’Connor said he was told most of the study was funded by Owen Brown of the East Cobb-based Retail Planning Corp., which leases shopping center space. Brown is the cityhood group’s treasurer, but the refusal to name others has fueled suspicions of development interests behind the cityhood drive.
Earlier this year, Birdwell, a retired entrepreneur with a real estate background, became the public spokesman for the cityhood group and is listed as its CEO.
He conducted the first public meeting involving the cityhood group, during commissioner Bob Ott’s town hall meeting in March, and was met with skeptical and at times hostile reaction.
Under state law, cityhood bills must go through a two-year cycle. A bill would have to be reintroduced in 2021 and must be passed by the full legislature by 2022 for a referendum to take place.
Alliance leader Bill Simon said his group will continue to track Dollar’s bill unless or until “it dies in committee, or is defeated in the Legislature. One thing we know from experience in watching the Georgia Legislature: Nothing is ever guaranteed, and we trust nothing we hear or read when it comes to legislation.”
Eble said the cityhood group’s plan is “not to give up,” but to use public feedback it received to offer a fresh approach to connecting with the public.
“We made some mistakes,” he said, “but there’s no ulterior motive here.”
Mindy Seger of the anti-city East Cobb Alliance debates David Birdwell of the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb in November (ECN file)
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U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath voted with her fellow House Democrats Wednesday as DonaldTrump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
The 6th District Congresswoman, who represents most of East Cobb, voted for both articles of impeachment that she also had supported last week in the House Judiciary Committee.
The vote on Article 1, abuse of power, was 230-197; and for Article 2, obstruction of Congress, the vote was 229-198.
Trump was charged on the first article for allegations that he threatened to withhold foreign aid to the government of Ukraine if it did not investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate.
The second article alleged that the president impeded its investigation in the Ukraine matter.
Only two Democrats voted with the Republican minority. Another Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who’s running for president, voted “present” on both articles, saying she preferred that the House censure and not impeach Trump.
Barry Loudermilk, a Republican who also represents Cobb County and is a strong Trump supporter, noted in floor remarks before the votes that:
“One week before Christmas, I want you to keep this in mind: When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers. During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president in this process.”
Republicans have charged the impeachment process has been motivated entirely for partisan reasons, and that it’s being done to subvert the 2016 presidential election.
McBath is among a few dozen House Democrats who represent districts that voted for the president. Trump carried the 6th District, which also includes North Fulton, Sandy Springs and North DeKalb, but only with 51 percent.
McBath, who last year became the first Democrat to win the district in 40 years, is being targeted again nationally.
The two Republicans running for the seat, former Rep. Karen Handel and Marjorie Greene Taylor, have been critical of McBath on impeachment.
Trump joins Andrew Johnson (1867) and Bill Clinton (1998) as presidents who’ve been impeached in the House. Both were acquitted in trials in the U.S. Senate and served the remainder of their terms.
The current Senate has a Republican majority. Georgia Sen. David Perdue is a strong defender of Trump, and incoming Sen., Kelly Loeffler, who succeeds the retiring Johnny Isakson in January, blasted the House process as an impeachment “scam.”
Trump has been Tweeting his displeasure with the impeachment vote, calling it a “hoax,” and retweeting others critical of the Democrats. He also Tweeted this:
I got Impeached last night without one Republican vote being cast with the Do Nothing Dems on their continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!
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The last two school days before the holiday break in the Cobb County School District will be shortened days.
On Thursday and Friday, schools will be releasing early for local school professional learning sessions, so the buses will be out and about around the lunchtime hours.
Students will be served lunch at school before they’re released.
Here’s the early release chedule, and it’s the same for both days, two hours earlier than usual.
11:30 a.m. – High School
12:30 p.m. – Elementary School
1:30 p.m. – Middle School
The first day of the second semester is Monday, Jan. 6.
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A number of initiatives have been begun to address those trends, including the Cobb Opioid Fatality Review Project under the auspices of the Cobb District Attorney’s Office. That project received a nearly $900,000 U.S. Justice Department grant to cover three years.
On Wednesday DA Joyette Holmes sent out the following message about the project’s first review:
In the DA’s Office, Judicial Case Manager Latoya Inzar and Inv. Matthew Mize are dedicated to the Fatality Review Project.
“Cobb County completed its first opioid fatality review (OFR) on Nov. 20, with great participation from stakeholders and the U.S. Department of Justice,” Inzar said. “We were able to review three recent overdose deaths, and recommendations followed to improve policy and practice. As the OFRs are still new to Cobb County and the state of Georgia, our team will continue to improve the process.”
Among the accomplishments, Inzar created a treatment guide and community resource booklet of food, housing, healthcare and other resources available to Cobb residents impacted by the opioid crisis.
Project leaders have attended various trainings, and they participated in Marietta Police Department’s opioid symposium in September. They regularly review findings of the Cobb Medical Examiner on overdose deaths and are engaged in mapping and analyzing individual cases.
Mize, who works to identify the drug dealers behind overdose deaths, said: “The significance of this work is that it will save lives, but more importantly, we aim to transform the lives of those suffering from addiction so that they may reach a sustainable recovery.”
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From Jane Lang of the Good Mews Animal Foundation comes the following information about an ongoing cat adoption special, and the flyer has more details:
Good Mews has a lot of cats that have been with them for months, some even years. They’d love to find their long-time residents a forever home in time for the holidays! So from December 16th-31st, all cats that have been at Good Mews 6 months and longer will have a reduced adoption fee of $25!
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The following East Cobb food scores from Dec. 16-20 have been compiled by the Cobb & Douglas Department of Public Health. Click the link under each listing to view details of the inspection:
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