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UPDATED, 1:07 p.m.: Cobb DOT now says the intersection has reopned to traffic. Lower Roswell had been closed between Shadowlawn Drive and Indian Hills Trail.
ORIGINAL POST, 10:46 a.m.: Around 10:38 a.m. this morning, Cobb DOT announced that Lower Roswell Road is closed at Indian Hills Parkway due to a broken gas main, and that traffic delays are very heavy.
Please avoid the area; we will post more updates as we get them.
By now most Cobb property tax owners should have received their bills for 2017; most were mailed out in the last week or so. Here’s what the county sent out earlier this week as a reminder:
More than 261,500 bills, representing $729,711,039 in 2017 property taxes, have been mailed. There were 245,942 bills resulting in $674,891,143 for real property and 15,582 bills resulting in $54,819,896 for personal property.
The Tax Commissioner’s Office bills and collects property taxes for Cobb County Government, Cobb County Board of Education, Cumberland and Town Center Community Improvement Districts and the Cumberland and Six Flags Special Services Districts. All six of Cobb’s cities bill and collect their own property taxes. State of Georgia property taxes have now been eliminated. The chart below details this year’s property taxes for our billing and collection authorities:
| County General | $ 186,988,125 |
| County Bond | $ 4,237,623 |
| County Fire | $ 79,471,996 |
| School General | $ 442,724,334 |
| Cumberland CID | $ 6,567,316 |
| Town Center CID | $ 3,228,681 |
| Cumberland SSDII | $ 5,681,507 |
| Six Flags SSD | $ 811,457 |
| TOTAL | $ 729,711,039 |
Payments received or U.S. postmarked after Monday, Oct. 16 will incur a 5 percent late penalty, plus monthly interest on the unpaid balance. Payments can be made online at www.cobbtax.org, by automated IVR at 1-866-PAY-COBB or by mail to P.O. Box 100127, Marietta, GA 30061-7027. In-person payments are accepted at the Property Tax office at 736 Whitlock Ave., Marietta, the East Cobb Government Service Center at 4400 Lower Roswell Road in Marietta and the South Cobb Government Service Center at 4700 Austell Road in Austell. Payment drop boxes are located both inside and outside the Whitlock Avenue location, as well as inside both Government Service Centers. Payments via check will also be accepted at any Motor Vehicle office.
If you need a detailed explanation about what’s on your bill, the Cobb tax commissioner’s office has created this PDF with a line-by-line description.
Thursday’s Cobb Board of Education agenda leads off with plenty of recognitions carried over from the 2016-17 school year, including athletic accomplishments in spring sports.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the board room at the Cobb County School District main office, 514 Glover St., Marietta. An executive session begins at 5:30 p.m.
Athletes and teams from Lassiter and Pope high school will be recognized, including the entire Pope athletic program, which earned the Class 6A Georgia Athletic Directors Association Directors Cup for overall athletic excellence.
In addition, several academic recognitions will be made, including AdvancEd STEM certification at Brumby and Shallowford Falls elmentary schools and Mabry Middle School (more about the CCSD’s STEM program here.)
The board also will recognize the recent Georgia Department of Education STEAM certification to Wheeler High School (East Cobb News coverage here), the first high school in the state of earn that status.
The rest of the agenda is fairly light, you can view the full agenda PDF by clicking here.
After several East Cobb residents objected to the possibility of closing the East Cobb Library on Tuesday, the Cobb commissioner making the proposal strongly defended her position, and laid out a detailed set of numbers in making her case.
JoAnn Birrell, who represents Northeast Cobb, said at the end of a long Board of Commissioners meeting that “this has never been a personal agenda” but instead addresses what she terms as an issue of duplication of services.
She said she’s proposing the East Cobb Library closure because of the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center that will open before the end of the year, replacing the adjacent East Marietta Library.
The two libraries are located five miles apart on Lower Roswell Road, and carry some expensive operating costs, Birrell said. (That’s also about the same distance between the two East Cobb-area libraries in her district, the Mountain View Regional Library on Sandy Plains Road, and the Gritters branch off Canton Road.)
The East Cobb Library opened in the Parkaire Landing Shopping Center in 2010, after being previously known as the Merchants Walk Library and relocated when that shopping center was redeveloped.
“This is about being a responsible steward of the taxpayers’ money,” Birrell said, reading from a written statement, adding that budget decisions will be made by the board, not one commissioner.
The East Cobb Library closure plans were first made public last Thursday, at a town hall meeting held by East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, who said Birrell “has been relentless” in proposing the move (East Cobb News coverage here).
Birrell said her proposal “was just one” cost-saving suggestion as the commission was presented last week with a proposed FY 2018 budget of $890 million, including $21.5 million in one-time reserve funding to avoid a property tax increase.
After hearing protests to the closure plan earlier Tuesday at the first formal public hearing on the budget, Birrell said the consolidation of Cobb libraries has been “years in the making,” and referenced the 2011 budget crunch. In the wake of the recession and a steep decline in the Cobb tax digest, then-commission Chairman Tim Lee proposed permanently closing 13 of the 17 county library branches, including East Cobb and East Marietta.
But he backed down after vocal public opposition. While no branches were closed, library hours and staffing levels were reduced.
Most of the funding for the new 8,600-square-foot Sewell Mill library complex, which will include an amphitheater and other cultural arts space, comes from the 2016 Cobb government SPLOST (special local option sales tax) approved by county voters.
Birrell said the new library will have annual staffing and operating costs of roughly $732,000. The East Marietta Library currently costs around $524,000 a year to run, according to her figures.
The East Cobb Library, she said, not only has annual staffing and operating costs estimated at $771,000 a year, but another $263,000 a year, ($21,961 a month) is paid out in lease costs at Parkaire Landing.
For that kind of money, Birrell said, the county “could hire three police officers” as part of a larger recommendation in a recent police chiefs’ report that Cobb add 60 more officers to meet current public safety needs.
Newly elected Georgia Congresswoman Karen Handel got the biggest applause—a standing ovation from some in the audience—at Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s town hall meeting last Thursday at the East Cobb Library.
Handel, a Roswell Republican who defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in a June 20 runoff, said she’s made several trips to East Cobb, which gave her strong margins in the most expensive House race in history.
Before Ott spoke to a couple hundred constituents on the county budget and other local items, including the proposed closing of the East Cobb Library (East Cobb News coverage here), he turned the microphone over to Handel, whom he campaigned for extensively.
She immediately condemned the racially-inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month that left one person dead and injured dozens of others, calling it an “evil, evil attack.” Of racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry, Handel said, “It is wrong. It is evil. It has no place in society and this country.”
The few hundred whites who showed up to protest the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville “are not representative of this country,” she added.
Without mentioning President Donald Trump—who came under fire for his post-Charlottesville remarks—Handel issued a call for fairness, respect and civility, “some basic kindness,” as Americans confront racial and other cultural issues that have flared up in recent weeks and months.
Less than two months since taking office, Handel also defended Congress—or at least her chamber, the House—against criticisms that it’s not getting much done.
She said more than 250 pieces of legislation have been passed in the House, including a repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in the wake of the recession. Some in the audience voiced displeasure, but Handel said the rollback was necessary.
She also said she was bewildered that the Republican-led U.S. Senate failed to pass a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, after it passed the House.
“I would have supported it,” Handel said of the ACA repeal, which was approved in the House before her election. Of the continuation of Obamacare, she said that “the status quo is unsustainable,” a reference to the rising costs of premiums on the ACA exchanges.
Many insurers are seeking significant hikes or withdrawing altogether (here’s a projected 2018 summary from the Kaiser Family Foundation which includes an anticipated seven-percent increase in Georgia for one of the lowest-cost plans, and a 34-percent boost in subsidies).
“The rubber will hit the road when the open enrollment period begins in fall,” Handel said.
Handel has been assigned to the House committees on Judiciary and Education and the Workforce.
Her district office is in the same location at her predecessor, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price: 85-C Mill Street, Suite 300, Roswell.
The district phone number is 770-998-0049.
We’ve begun sending out a weekly e-mail newsletter that’s free and easy to subscribe to (here’s our first edition!). The East Cobb News Digest is distributed on Sunday, with the top headlines of the week, a look ahead at the coming week, photo features and more.
We want to to help you keep up with what’s happening in East Cobb, easily find community resources and services and share your news with friends and neighbors.
We don’t sell or share our e-mail list with anyone, although in the future we will be sending e-mail messages from local business and sponsors. Simply click the button below to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The parking lot was full and so was East Cobb Park on an atypical Monday. The first solar eclipse to pass over the United States in nearly 100 years could be spotted—at least partially—in sunny, clear skies over East Cobb, and many took off from work and school to take in the spectacle.
While some schools allowed their students to witness the event outside, some cancelled plans late, unable to verify the safety standards of special viewing glasses purchased for the occasion.
Down the street on Roswell Road, at least one East Cobb business closed early due to the eclipse.
At the park, spectators tested out their glasses beforehand, and got a little excited when some clouds covered the sky minutes before the arrival of the moon.
The front quad of East Cobb Park looked like it was a weekend, with picnickers and sun-gazers scattered about in anticipation.
Right around 2:35, with the eclipse only a minute away, nearly all heads in the park craned skyward, as the moon partially passed over the sun, momentarily darkening an otherwise bright day over East Cobb.
With metro Atlanta not located in the eclipse’s “Path of Totality,” there weren’t many “oohs” and “aahs” coming from spectators at the park. But their attention was totally focused on the sun for the two or three minutes of partial eclipse visibility.
Moments after the eclipse had moved on, streaking toward its final U.S. destination near Charleston, S.C., East Cobb Park returned to its usual Monday afternoon look.
(East Cobb News photos by Wendy Parker)
We’re just a couple hours from solar eclipse visibility in north Georgia, and the Cobb County School District is taking extra safety precautions.
Some schools that had planned outdoor eclipse sightings will be observing on television indoors instead if their glasses haven’t met safety standards.
It’s a school-by-school issue, depending on whether the glasses ordered or bought by students there have been approved; there’s a lot of chatter this morning on a Facebook page. According to one poster, some schools found out very late that they didn’t have the proper glasses; keep in mind these reports are not official information coming from CCSD.
The following message was included in a note to parents of Simpson Middle School students this morning:
“. . . our students will have to view the eclipse from inside our building on the TV due to the inability of the solar eclipse glasses company to confirm their safety.”
If you’re an East Cobb parent, what’s the latest you’ve heard about your child’s school? Let us know: editor@eastcobbnews.com or call/text 404-219-4278.
In our area, the moon will begin to cover the sun at 1:05 p.m.; maximum coverage is expected around 2:36 p.m. The sun will be fully visible again around 4:01 p.m.
The 45-minute delayed release plan for Cobb schools announced earlier is still in place.
After an inspiring sermon message and a picnic lunch, members of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church dived into an old-style summer carnival Sunday afternoon as they celebrated the 125th anniversary of the church’s founding.
The carnival atmosphere included cotton candy, snow cones and hitting the bell.
That’s where long-time Mt. Zion member Dayle Thompson was volunteering.
Thompson said she and her family began attending Mt. Zion around 30 years ago, when her children were young, because of the church’s strong youth programs.
They had come from a bigger church where they felt they didn’t quite fit in, and found that for them, Mt. Zion “was the right size.
“They really try for a family appeal,” she said. “Especially as you get older, you find your church family becomes as important as your own family.”
She is involved in the adult Sunday School program and has been a part of Mt. Zion’s participation in the Family Promise of Cobb County outreach program, which includes 13 faith communities in the county.
Mt. Zion’s first service took place on Aug. 19, 1892. The congregation moved to its present location on donated farm land at 1770 Johnson Ferry Road in 1964. Historical messages were pinned to the walls of the gymnasium, with deeply-researched answers underneath.
The church’s original location was on Post Oak Tritt Road near Johnson Ferry and where the Mt. Zion Cemetery is still located. The current sanctuary was opened in 1976, and the Family Ministries building opened in 1985. More renovations were made in 1997, not long after Mt. Zion marked its 100th anniversary.
An employee at the Sunrise at East Cobb assisted living facility has been charged with murder after a 91-year-old resident there died on Friday.
Landon Terrel, of Powder Springs, has been charged with felony murder, aggravated battery of a person age 65 or older and neglect of a senior care resident. According to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records, he was arrested late Wednesday.
Cobb Police said Adam Bennett, 91, died on Friday at WellStar Kennestone Hospital where he was taken Tuesday via ambulance due to injuries suffered at the facility. Sunrise at East Cobb is located at 1551 Johnson Ferry Road, just north of Roswell Road.
Cobb Police said detectives concluded Bennett had been assaulted at the assisted living facility by someone on staff. (Here’s the information police have released.)
According to a Fox 5 report, the victim suffered broken ribs, a lacerated kidney, and a punctured lung.
The Nail Design salon that’s been located at the East Lake Pavilions Shopping Center (2100 Roswell Road) is moving, but staying within the same shopping center.
A sign went up recently at Suite 2176, near the T-Mobile store and the Mezza Luna restaurant, and that’s easily visible to foot and car traffic coming in the Roswell Road entrance.
Know of a business that’s coming or going in East Cobb? Moving? Changing key personnel or making other changes to its business? Let us know, and send photos if you like, to: editor@eastcobbnews.com.
Some good news and bad news on the East Cobb prep football scene Friday, as the 2017 season got underway:
Two more East Cobb teams are in action today, at the Corky Kell Classic in Atlanta:
Pope and Sprayberry open their seasons next week.
Just a few days after seeing the proposed fiscal year 2018 Cobb County budget for the first time, commissioner Bob Ott briefed East Cobb constituents on the numbers Thursday night and offered some suggestions that could punctuate budget discussions over the next few weeks.
At a packed town hall meeting in the community room of the East Cobb Library, Ott outlined the $890 million spending plan proposed by commission chairman Mike Boyce, including using $21.5 million in one-time reserve funding.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners will hold the first of two public hearings on the budget on Tuesday before approval on Sept. 12. That’s not much time to absorb a proposed spending package that’s 3.79 percent higher than the FY 2017 budget, and only weeks after a heated battle over the property tax millage rate.
The budget document also was released this week [there’s a downloadable PDF here] as Cobb homeowners were mailed their property tax bills for 2017. As Ott reminded them, “the tax bill you just got is to pay for [the last fiscal] year.”
The proposed budget is based on the current millage rate established by commissioners last month. Ott and fellow East Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell prevailed in their refusal to raise the millage rate by 0.13, as Boyce had wanted.
The inclusion of the proposed reserve funding to help balance the budget is a dramatic one. A total of $10.4 million would come from the reserve for a county employees pay and classification implementation study; $5.7 million would come from the Title Ad Valorem Tax Reserve; and the $5.3 million would come from the county economic development contingency.
“The board has to decide what are the critical needs,” Ott said. “The bottom line is, it’s your money.”
Specifically regarding the reserve money, Ott, an ardent opponent of tax increases, repeated himself: “It is my belief that it’s your money,” and that there’s “no reason” for it to remain unspent and raise taxes instead.
As they prepare for a new football season that begins tonight, high school coaches in East Cobb and around the nation have been answering familiar questions about the safety of the sport.
Concussions and other crippling injuries involving former NFL stars continue to make the news. In late July, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that 110 of 111 now-deceased professional players whose brains had been examined had been diagnosed for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
That’s a degenerative brain disease that’s been connected to concussions, and is discovered only in brains donated after death. The names of NFL legends with CTE is a long and sobering one: Dave Duerson, Frank Gifford, Junior Seau, Bubba Smith, Ken Stabler and many more. Some, like Duerson and Seau, have committed suicide.
Some living former NFL players have serious memory loss, also associated with concussions and linked to CTE. The physician and researcher credited with discovering CTE says any parent who lets their child play football is committing child abuse.
Some have called for the termination of youth football altogether, or at least seriously limiting contact for young players before high- and middle school age.
But coaches asked about the subject at last week’s East Cobb Pigskin Preview breakfast (ECN coverage here) say their sport is being unfairly characterized.
“High school football is not what you see on ESPN,” said coach Jep Irwin of Lassiter, whose Trojans play at Johns Creek tonight in their season opener. “There’s never been a safer, better time to play high school football.”
He was referring to how the media has reported about CTE and professional players. Irwin said that technology, equipment, officiating and medical intervention all have improved vastly in his eight years at Lassiter, including concussion protocols.
“Is it [completely] safe? No,” Irwin said. “There’s risk in everything that humans do.
“What you see in the NFL is not the case at the high school level. We’re not about win-at-all-costs” when it comes to the welfare of players.
Daniel Brunner, the first-year coach at Walton, pointed out that concussion rates for girls soccer are also high, “but nobody’s talking about shutting down girls soccer.”
Brett Sloan, the new coach at Kell and a former Walton assistant, said what he stresses with his staff, players and their parents is an education process at the youth level.
Other coaches say they also limit the amount of contact that takes place in practice. The East Cobb coaches said they weren’t trying to dismiss the severity of the CTE issue, and they understand parental and player concerns.
Concussion and CTE research at the high school level is not as extensive, but coaches say they’ve never been more committed to ensuring the safest environment for their kids.
Including Irwin, whose son is a sophomore at Lassiter and plays football.
“I love my son more than I love football,” he said. “If I didn’t think it was safe . . . then why play at all?”
East Cobb News has been online for about six weeks, and already we’ve covered quite a few events in the community that you may not have seen—averaging about two a week, sometimes more.
Since we’re new, and picking up new readers all the time, we thought we’d serve up a “best of” photo gallery from these events. Because we launched in the middle of the summer, we have a lot of outdoors and sports-related pictures, but they’re all popular community events we enjoyed attending. As we continue to grow, we plan to cover all kinds of events that capture the essence of the East Cobb community, and the spirit of the people who live here.
That’s why we’re asking for your help. If you know of a community event you’d like for East Cobb News to cover in the future, or have photos of an event that’s taken place that you’d like to share, please contact: editor@eastcobbnews.com.
East Cobb News is practicing the community-collaborative approach to local news, and reader/organization contributions are always welcome! When you submit your news and photos, you’re helping us serve our readers better. East Cobb is a big place with so much going on, and we want to earn your trust and become this community’s leading source of real-time news, events and information.
To see more photos and read stories about these events, please click the links below.
The weather may still feel like Dog Days, but the calendar of events in East Cobb for this weekend is filling up with a fall-like flair.
All kinds of school events, including the return of high school football, grace the weekend slate of activities. Here’s a sampling, with links for more details:
Click the East Cobb News calendar page for more events this weekend, and beyond. Help us make the calendar even better by sending your items to: calendar@eastcobbnews.com.
Please stay in touch, and have a great weekend!
Principals from a number of East Cobb and Northeast Cobb public schools were recognized Tuesday at the Northeast Cobb Business Association luncheon at Piedmont Church.
It was the first teach appreciation luncheon since the school year began in the Cobb County School District July 31.
School partnership programs, including a high school senior internship program are a major part of the NCBA’s community outreach efforts.
Robin Lattizori, a Cobb assistant superintendent for elementary schools, serves on the NCBA board.
The NCBA’s upcoming Upbeat event is an appreciation for school volunteers in the Northeast Cobb community. On Oct. 21, NCBA is holding a Casino Night to benefit the STEM initiative in Cobb County schools, and tickets and sponsorships are still available.
The guest speaker was Cobb County Manager Rob Hosack, an East Cobb resident (more about his remarks in a separate post) who succeeded David Hankerson earlier this year.
Littie Brown, left, current president, and Rosan Hall of the East Cobb Business Association present a $250 donation check to Jimmy Gisi, director the Cobb Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department, at Tuesday’s monthly ECBA luncheon at Indian Hills Country Club.
The donation was part of the ECBA’s community outreach project. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)
Information submitted by the Cobb County School District:
Wildlife Forever named Walton High School art teacher, Kathleen Petka, the 2017 State-Fish Art Educator of the Year.
Along with her award, the 13-year veteran teacher earned a $500 gift card for classroom art supplies from the award’s sponsor, Triarco Arts & Crafts. The national award, which supports Wildlife Forever’s mission of conservation education, preservation of habitat, and management of fish and wildlife, is given to educators who communicate the spirit of conservation to students through excellence in visual arts education.
Petka educates her students about the importance of safeguarding natural resource through their annual participation in the State-Fish Art Contest, supported by the U.S. Forestry Service, among other preservation organizations.
Since her students started participating in the State-Fish Art Contest, they have won numerous state awards.
“The contest is a wonderful opportunity for students to learn, care, share, teach, and create,” Petka explained. “They take ownership of their works [of art] and get to select the state fish of their desire, write with meaning, create art with a message, and they get to share their works, all while learning how important it is to be mindful of our environment.”
Here’s more on the Wildlife Forever state-fish art program.
Cobb Police shut down a short stretch of Roswell Road east of Johnson Ferry Road Tuesday afternoon due to an accident, but it caused plenty of traffic headaches.
A dump truck struck a power pole and traffic in both directions was shut down between Timber Ridge Road and Bishop Lake Drive for a couple of hours.
The shutdown took place approximately between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., with major backups on Timber Ridge and Bishop Lake during that period, with some after-school bus and related traffic also affected.
Shortly before Roswell was re-opened, the Catholic Church of St. Ann—located at the Roswell-Bishop Lake intersection—sent out a notice on its Facebook page for parishioners to build in more time for tonight’s 7 p.m. Feast of the Assumption mass.
Power crews were still working on the side of the road once Roswell was re-opened to traffic.
