The group advocating for East Cobb Cityhood held another virtual town hall meeting last Thursday with Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood as the featured guest.
During the hour-long session, which included pre-screened questions from the public, Lockwood emphasized the “local control” message that East Cobb Cityhood proponents have been pressing.
You can watch a replay of the town hall by clicking here.
Milton became a city in North Fulton in 2006 and has 39,000 residents. Lockwood said that like some of the sentiment in East Cobb, there was vocal opposition to cityhood at the time.
“A lot of people just didn’t want [a new] government,” he said. “It was ‘leave us alone.’ But once we started making improvements, it was interesting to see people starting to expect more.”
Lockwood is serving his third consecutive term as mayor and is in his final term in that capacity due to term limits.
He said what he’s most proud of in Milton is “a sense of belonging and community” that has developed since cityhood.
“There’s a sense of pride, of more people getting involved” in civic affairs and community life,” Lockwood said.
Milton provides more services than the proposed city of East Cobb, including police and fire that were part of the initial East Cobb cityhood effort in 2019.
Lockwood said when it comes to zoning and planning, “people want things to be the same.” He said Milton has effectively limited density to maintain a suburban and in some cases rural feel to an affluent community that’s similar to East Cobb.
Density and urban-style development are growing issues in Cobb County, especially with East Cobb redevelopment projects at Sprayberry Crossing and in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford area that have drawn community support and opposition.
The JOSH redevelopment involving East Cobb Church would fall within the city limits of East Cobb, which includes less than half of the 2019 map and would have a population around 55,000.
The revived East Cobb Cityhood effort is focused on planning and zoning [along with code enforcement and parks and recreation] in the wake those and other development issues in the county.
Craig Chapin, the cityhood group’s head, said during the town hall that some of the pushback agains denser development “isn’t about how things were in Cobb County. You’re looking at a community and wondering what the future will look like.”
During the town hall, the cityhood group showed results of recent polling on cityhood issues reflected in the slides below. More details can be found on the cityhood website.
Related content:
- East Cobb Cityhood group details leadership team
- At town hall, Cityhood leaders stress ‘local control’
- Q & A: State Rep. Matt Dollar, sponsor of cityhood bill
- Cityhood opposition group calls renewed effort “Jaws 2”
- East Cobb Cityhood bill calls for Nov. 2022 referendum
- East Cobb Cityhood effort revived with new services, map
- East Cobb News Cityhood Page
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East Cobb News some balance in your reporting please. You seem to go out of your way not to cover the large opposition.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Question – why is the vote to form a city limited to ONLY those in the proposed area? I would think that if I lived in the parts of Cobb County that aren’t in this proposed city, that I should also have a say on whether I want to see part of the county tax base shift to this city. It may mean that I face higher taxes and costs.
Is anyone pushing back on this, and looking to let the rest of the county have a say?
So you would deny someone the right to form a new city because you feel entitled to their money?
That’s not the way I read his comment at all. What I heard was that he’s concerned about what Cobb County taxes will do if they lose the income from the city of East Cobb (assuming it’s approved, which I hope it won’t be). Thing is that they’d still be paying Cobb County taxes, along with East Cobb city taxes and school taxes and franchise fees on utilities and hiring out Cobb County services that they’re not providing, such as fire and police.
Part of what they’re pushing for with cityhood is the city’s residents’ tax money staying in their own area instead of going to another area of Cobb. The reality is that a group of real estate people of various parts of the process want control over the zoning but have to provide three services to be a city. Fire, EMS, and police are not among the services being proposed to be offered in the proposed city. Zoning is – and was last time, too.
Thank you for your spot on comment.
Posing a straw man argument that uses left speak words like “deny”, “feel”, “right” and “entitled” (my goodness, all in ONE sentence!) tells me all I need to know about your answer.
No, the citizens of Cobb County are in and have been in this together for a century. The taxes and fees from other areas of the county currently support the East Cobb area, just as East Cobb county taxes do for the other areas.
Using the language of envy and greed so that a handful of developers and wanna be politicians get to build their own little club is not reasonable. What you basically are saying is “the rich folk in East Cobb are free to take their money can go form their own sandbox.” Doesn’t sound very altruistic or equitable to me.
Total costs for this have to come from somewhere (the new/extra buildings, salaries, funding of services, etc) aren’t made out of thin air – and unlike our politicians in DC who can just print money to fund pet projects, local gov must balance their budgets. So the total overall spend in Cobb County will go up.
And part of that increase will be shifted to the non-city areas of Cobb. That is my point. And if that is the case, the people who will be affected by it should have a say. Otherwise, (to use a metaphor) you are forcing me to pay for your country club dues, when I don’t get to benefit from or use the clubhouse facilities.
I have a test for this whole thing. Include in the proposed law/legislation the statement that no one who is a board member or volunteer of the East Cobb City project is eligible to run for or hold any City office, including mayor, or be employed by the City for a period of 8 years after it is formed.
See how long that lasts.
You talk about envy and greed while defending someone worried that a new city would cause his taxes in unincorporated Cobb to go up.
Again, Jeff, you don’t let us down with a straw man twist of what I said.
My point is that should it pass, the person living in the non-City area will most likely will see his taxes/costs go up, or have services reduced – and he had no say/vote in that. Because voters elsewhere got to decide against him (the old ‘taxation without representation’ thing).
That is a true ‘redistribution of wealth’ in the purest sense. And I’m sure you are against that.