A citizens group that scrutinizes Cobb County School District finances on Thursday released a rendering of a planned $50 million special events center and criticized Superintendent Chris Ragsdale again for a lack of details.
In remarks at a Cobb Board of Education work session, Watching the Funds-Cobb leader Heather Tolley-Bauer said that her group has been asking for details for more than a year, to no avail.
“Now we know why they wanted to keep the details a secret,” she said in disclosing a 190,000-square-foot building near the district’s central office in Marietta that includes 148,000 square feet of space for an 8,000-seat basketball arena, as well as two hospitality suites.
Those details have not been previously acknowledged by the district.
In addition, there will be 41,000 square feet of space for conferences and banquets, and more than 1,500 parking spaces.
Watching the Funds-Cobb posted the above rendering on its Facebook page after the work session, saying it came from an unidentified “concerned citizen.”
Tolley-Bauer said the new details reveal what she claims are skewed priorities.
She said that the taxpayer-funded Macon Centreplex, which is the host of state high school basketball championships, was losing more than $2 million a year in recent years when a third-party management company was brought in, and while it’s cut some of those losses, the facility still operates in the red.
“We don’t understand why you prioritize conference rooms and suites over classrooms and labs,” Tolley-Bauer said. “Are you here to educate our kids or run an events management business? Because one has a high return on our investment and the other will cost us and our children millions in tax dollars for years to come.”
Ragsdale and the board did not respond to Tolley-Bauer’s comments during the work session—they typically don’t engage in public comment.
In response to a request from East Cobb News seeking comment, a district spokeswoman provided the following statement:
“The District is excited to share more details, once design possibilities become confirmed and construction plans and shovels hit the ground. For now, imagine possibilities like graduations with enough space for everyone, science fairs, robotics competitions, band performances, academic competitions, 5th grade graduations, sporting competitions, staff recognitions, and other events–all with enough space for student and staff families and friends.
“Whatever the final design of the facility, it won’t use classroom dollars and will be one of the best multi-purpose values in the state.”
Cobb currently holds graduations and some large-scale events such as teacher of the year luncheons by renting space from other entities.
Board member Becky Sayler of Post 2 in South Cobb pressed for details of the planned facility in March, when the board was asked to hire a construction manager, saying that “I remember getting big-picture ideas, but I still have not seen details for an expense of this magnitude.”
She voted against that hire, as well as the decision to proceed with the facility in a 2023 vote. Sayler said she wanted to see feasibility, cost savings, budget impact, maintenance and staffing costs, but Ragsdale said that ““all that information was covered.”
Watching the Funds-Cobb, which disputes the need for a facility at all, has cited information from an open records request showing that the Cobb school district spent $45,000 last year to rent the Kennesaw State University Convocation Center, where most graduations are held.
Ragsdale has said repeatedly that the KSU arena—which seats around 4,000—isn’t big enough to accommodate the people who want to attend graduations.
“For far too long, we have had families that cannot have grandparents on both sides attend a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he said in March 2023.
“I think it’s very pressing. Literally, we owe this to the parents. We have tried to find a solution for this for years.”
He initially asked for the special events center to be on a project list for the current Cobb Education SPLOST (Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax) in 2021.
But before putting that SPLOST out to referendum, the Cobb school board removed the center from the list, citing other pressing facility needs at schools.
Two years later, Ragsdale proposed the special events center again, with funding to come from the proceeds of property sales of former school properties, including the original campuses of Mountain View and Brumby elementary schools in East Cobb, as well as capital outlay reimbursements.
A previous board also approved spending $3 million to purchase two parcels of land next to the district’s headquarters on Glover Street in Marietta where the special events center will be located.
But Watching the Funds-Cobb also expressed concerns about traffic issues for major events. In a release sent out after the work session the group said it obtained a letter “on the condition it not be shared” that “reveals that the district plans to use shuttle buses to transport visitors to the event and conference center.”
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