The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood also held a town hall at Olde Towne in early April. For coverage, click here.
As early voting has begun for the primaries and the East Cobb Cityhood referendum, the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood said it is holding another in-person town hall next week.
The group said it will return to the Olde Town Athletic Club (4950 Olde Towne Parkway) on Monday, May 9 from 6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.
Attendance is limited to citizens living within the proposed City of East Cobb with a capacity of 300 people. The event will be recorded for replay viewing.
Registration is required and can be made by clicking here. You will have to provide a home address to confirm that you live in the proposed boundaries. You can check that by viewing an interactive map.
Only voters who live inside the boundaries will be able to vote in the referendum, which culminates on May 24.
Voters can check their cityhood voting eligibility when they check in to vote.
The last of two scheduled debates between the Cityhood committee and the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes Cityhood, takes place Wednesday at Pope High School. It’s sold out for in-person attendance but will be livestreamed at the Rotary Club of East Cobb’s Facebook page.
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East Cobb cityhood group member Sarah Haas explains how a mayor and city council members would be elected in November if the May 24 referendum passes.
In their first face-to-face meeting with the public, leaders of the East Cobb Cityhood effort on Monday addressed claims that development interests are driving their campaign.
It’s a charge that’s been made since the cityhood movement first began in 2019, and was renewed over the weekend by a group opposed to the May 24 East Cobb referendum.
At a town hall meeting Monday at Olde Towne Athletic Club, the Committee for East Cobb Cityhoodonce again stressed that their main objective is fostering local control of basic services and preserving the suburban nature of the community.
On Saturday, a citizens group opposed to the new city pointed out that the pro-cityhood group’s behind-the-scenes leader is a longtime retail real estate executive and expressed concern that high-density development wouldn’t be far behind.
The tax base of the proposed City of East Cobb is 91 percent residential and nine percent commercial, according to a financial feasibility study prepared for the cityhood group.
Chapin’s remark drew considerable applause, and followed emphatic remarks by former State Rep. Matt Dollar that having elected officials who live in the East Cobb area, and not other parts of the county, is vital to shaping the future of the community.
“They care. They give a damn about what goes here because they live here,” said Dollar, the bill’s main sponsor who resigned from the legislature last month. “It’s local control. It’s people you know making the decisions.”
That’s been the thrust of the cityhood group’s messaging since it was revived in 2021. Unlike the abandoned 2019 effort, this one has been centered around planning and zoning, especially in light of the East Cobb Church rezoning case last year that galvanized residents on either side in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford corridor.
In noting the future of two major retail centers—Parkaire Landing and The Avenue, the latter of which is slated for a major overhaul—committee spokeswoman Cindy Cooperman said an East Cobb city government would be better-suited to work as a partner in redevelopment than a county government that’s serving nearly 800,000 with five commissioners.
“That brings more seats to the table, especially when it comes to zoning,” she said. “It really is a question of scale.” For a number of years, she said, the Cobb commission “worked fine.”
The East Cobb Cityhood group said citizens of a new city will pay the same taxes as they do now.
Fellow committee member Sarah Haas said that “it is our desire to tailor [certain services now provided by the county] to the community.”
The cityhood group also was pressed to back up its pledge that property taxes wouldn’t be raised beyond the millage rates that would be transferred from county government.
The proposed city would provide five of the 17 current services provided by the county—planning and zoning, code enforcement, police, fire and parks and recreation.
Residents of the city of East Cobb would still pay a tax bill of 30.35 mills (with 18.9 mills going to the Cobb County School District) as residents in unincorporated Cobb.
The city’s main funding source would be transferring the 2.86 mills of the current Cobb Fire Fund.
“Cities manage better—it’s a smaller footprint,” Chapin said, noting that state law does not permit duplication of services between cities and counties. “It’s not another layer of government.”
But the addition of police and fire services to the mix, and a financial feasibility study, has raised more questions.
While audience members on Monday did not directly ask questions—they were read from index cards by a moderator—cityhood group leaders were asked to explain how public safety facilities would be acquired.
The proposed city would house its police station at the current Cobb Precinct 4 headquarters along with current Cobb fire station 21 at the East Cobb Government Service Center, and also include current Cobb fire station 15 on Oak Lane.
Cooperman cited state law calling for a $5,000 transfer fee for those facilities and “their fixtures,” which she said included equipment (which the East Cobb Alliance disputes).
How a City of East Cobb might purchase the county-owned former Tritt property next to East Cobb Park is “unknown,” according to the cityhood group.
Should a city be created, she said, mutual aid agreements would be crafted during a two-year transition period.
That transition, should it come to pass, also might include negotiations with the county over parks and recreation services.
Parks and recreation services were examined in the feasibility study, but questions remain on how a City of East Cobb would acquire land adjacent to East Cobb Park.
In 2018 Cobb purchased 22 acres of the Tritt property with SPLOST funds, and the 2022 SPLOST referendum, if passed, includes the purchase of the remaining 24 acres of that land.
The Tritt property has been envisioned as being an extension of East Cobb Park, featuring pedestrian trails.
Cityhood group member Scott Sweeney said the process for obtaining that land (at $100 an acre), should a City of East Cobb come to fruition, would be an “unknown,” and Dollar said “it will just get worked out.”
Citizens also asked about the impact of an East Cobb city on schools, which are operated separately by the Cobb County School District.
Sweeney, a former Cobb school board member, stressed that a new city wouldn’t change the current senior exemption from school taxes for homeowners 62 and older.
With cityhood referendums on the May 24 ballot in Lost Mountain and Vinings as well as East Cobb, Cobb County government is holding a cityhood town hall Wednesday at 6 p.m. (more information here).
At least two other East Cobb referendum forums have been scheduled for now: April 19 by the East Cobb Business Association, and on May 4 at Pope High School by the Rotary Club of East Cobb.
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State Reps. Sharon Cooper and Matt Dollar during an East Cobb Cityhood virtual town hall this spring.
The two East Cobb lawmakers who’ve sponsored a cityhood bill for the 2022 legislature will be featured on a virtual information session Wednesday.
State Reps. Matt Dollar and Sharon Cooper, both Republicans, will discuss the results of a feasibility study that’s required for the bill to be considered.
The information session starts at 5:30 and the public can sign up by clicking here. You can also include questions you want answered, as there will not be direct interaction with the participants.
Researchers at Georgia State University concluded in their report that a proposed City of East Cobb, with around 50,000 residents centered along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor, is financially feasible.
But Dollar, Cooper and Cityhood representatives scheduled to appear on the information session will most likely be questioned above all about a surprising development in the Cityhood initiative.
That’s the inclusion of police and fire services (new cities must provide a minimum of three) which were evaluated in the GSU study.
East Cobb News contacted Dollar and the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood to provide more details before the Wednesday session about those changes.
Cindy Cooperman, a cityhood spokeswoman, said that “after reviewing service options and community feedback, public safety was added to the scope of the study in the October timeframe. This addition is very favorable from both a public quality of life and an economic standpoint for the residents of East Cobb.”
The bill Dollar and Cooper submitted in March, near the end of the 2021 legislative session, proposed planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation services.
Road maintenance was added in July, when the feasibility study was commissioned.
During three virtual town halls over the spring and summer, police and fire services were not discussed.
The initial East Cobb cityhood effort in 2018-19 included police and fire services, but the bill was eventually abandoned before the 2020 legislative session.
The revived effort was modeled on what’s called “city light” services, which typically don’t involve expensive public safety services and the imposition of new taxes.
The proposed cities of Lost Mountain and Vinings, whose financial studies also were released recently, focus on zoning and development and do not include public safety.
In the East Cobb study, parks and recreation services were pushed back to an appendix and road maintenance services were given a “snapshot” assessment to “assist a city council in the future to negotiate with the county,” Cooperman said.
The recent GSU study includes transferring the current Cobb County Fire Fund, with a 2.86 millage rate, and that would be the proposed city’s largest source of revenues.
The report also concludes that the city of East Cobb would have a $3 million annual budget surplus.
The city would purchase two existing Cobb fire stations, but there’s no funding for leasing facilities for city government.
Cooperman said that the East Cobb Government Service Center on Lower Roswell Road “would work perfectly for the city hall.”
It’s the location for Precinct 4 of the Cobb Police Department and Station 21 of the Cobb Fire Department, as well as a Cobb tag office and other existing office and community meeting space.
“Should East Cobb become a city it would have access to this facility for its office space and equipment needs,” Cooperman said, adding that “the elected council ultimately has responsibility for the final decision.”
The cityhood bill, if passed by the legislature, would establish a November 2022 referendum for voters in the proposed City of East Cobb to decide whether to incorporate.
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Peachtree Corners city manager Brian Johnson runs the daily operations of one of Georgia’s newest cities.
The municipality in Gwinnett County of 43,000 came into existence in 2012, and he arrived five years ago.
He’s also a veteran of local government and has been involved in other cityhood movements in Georgia.
During a virtual town hall meeting of the East Cobb Cityhood Committee last week, he repeatedly touted the local control benefits of incorporation, noting that Peachtree Corners is similar to East Cobb—a portion of a sprawling, growing county.
Like Cobb, Gwinnett has a five-member county commission, with four district commissioners representing roughly 250,000 people.
That’s more than Cobb, where commissioners’ district include a little less than 200,000 people, a major driving point for the East Cobb Cityhood effort.
“No one individual can represent that many people,” he said at the East Cobb group’s third virtual town hall in recent months.
He noted that even when Peachtree Corners citizens don’t agree with decisions made by their city government, “they feel more comfortable that it was made at the local level.”
The Peachtree Corners City Council is non-partisan with seven elected members. East Cobb Cityhood legislation calls for six non-partisan council members, with one of them chosen by colleagues every two years to serve as mayor.
“Potholes could care less what party you’re affiliated with,” Johnson said. “Local government, city government, is the purest form of service delivery that exists because of that very reason.”
Peachtree Corners is similar to East Cobb in other respects, with an affluent, educated population. The city also provides similar services to what the East Cobb group is proposing—code enforcement planning and zoning.
And like the current East Cobb legislation that’s pending before the 2022 Georgia legislature, Peachtree Corners does not have public safety services. Gwinnett County police and fire continue to serve that municipality.
But Johnson also spelled out the challenges that new cities face. Peachtree Corners opted to provide trash pick-up with one vendor, which he said has led to complaints by some citizens who wanted a choice.
And he also said there are some people who opposed cityhood and other citizens who at times speak out when there are problems, often vocally.
“We’re not perfect, and we hear that every day,” Johnson said. “Government is a difficult business, and we’re invariably going to miss the mark.”
Before Johnson spoke, East Cobb Cityhood Committee member Sarah Haas stressed in a slide that a city of East Cobb would “not be another layer of government” but would be in charge of services transferred from the county.
In addition to code enforcement and planning and zoning, the proposed services are parks and recreation and road maintenance.
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The East Cobb Cityhood Committee is hosting our third virtual town hall to provide information to the residents of East Cobb. People who live within the boundary of the proposed new city are invited to attend.
This will be a live session with Brian Johnson, City Manager of Peachtree Corners, hosted by the East Cobb Cityhood Committee. Brian L. Johnson became the City Manager of Peachtree Corners, Georgia on November 21, 2016. As City Manager, he is the Chief Executive Officer of the City and is responsible to the Mayor and City Council for the management of all city departments and of all city affairs.
Please, register in advance to reserve a spot in the virtual town hall. You can submit questions about cityhood during the registration process. There will also be an opportunity to submit questions during the live session.
If you are not available at this date and time, you will be able to view the recording of this webinar. It will be posted shortly after the live session on the website.
That bill, if approved, would call for a November 2022 referendum to establish a City of East Cobb of 55K along mainly the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.
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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.
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.
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The East Cobb Cityhood Committee is holding its second virtual town hall meeting next week, with Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood as the featured guest.
The town hall is next Thursday, May 20, starting at 6 p.m., and you can register by clicking here. You can read more about Lockwood by clicking here.
The event will focus on the proposed services for the proposed city of East Cobb—planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.
There will be a Q and A session and participants can submit questions when they sign up.
The City of Milton was formed out of part of unincorporated North Fulton in 2006 and has 39,000 residents.
During 2019, East Cobb Cityhood leaders often referred to Milton as a model for what it was proposing at the time—primarily police and fire services—in a community with similar levels of affluence and demographics.
Milton also provides public works, community development (zoning and code enforcement), and parks and recreation.
The previous East Cobb Cityhood effort also pointed to Milton for its steady millage rate, which has been slightly lowered in each of the last two years.
The revived East Cobb group this week posted a “case study” about Milton’s tax surplus and financial status, as well as its provision of services (and another for Peachtree Corners, which became a city in Gwinnett County in 2017 and has a zero millage rate).
Lockwood was re-elected in 2020 to his fourth and final two-year term as Mayor of Milton.
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Group spokesman Rob Eble told East Cobb News the event begins at 6:30 p.m. in the B.B. Williams Auditorium at Wheeler (375 Holt Road).
It’s the second town hall the pro-cityhood organization has conducted, following a similar event at Walton High School (above) in May.
Cityhood leaders also spoke at Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s town hall meeting in March, and at a Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance meeting in May.
The day after the Wheeler town hall, the East Cobb Business Association is having a forumwith representatives of groups supporting and opposing cityhood.
The Wheeler town hall comes a couple of months after an independent financial review of the East Cobb cityhood feasibility study concluded such a city is financially viable without raising property taxes above current levels.
A group that opposes cityhood, the East Cobb Alliance, says a new city would add an extra layer of government and disputes the financial analysis of the feasibility study.
State Rep. Matt Dollar of East Cobb has sponsored a cityhood bill that, if passed next year, would call for a cityhood referendum later in 2020.
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More than 600 citizens turned out to hear an East Cobb cityhood presentation in March. (ECN file)
The leaders of an effort to create a City of East Cobb will be holding their own town hall meeting for the first time on Monday, vowing to foster a dialogue with the public about an incorporation process that has stumbled out of the gate.
The town hall meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of Walton High School (1590 Bill Murdock Road). A panel discussion moderated by Cynthia Rozzo, publisher of the EAST COBBER magazine, will include Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb members David Birdwell, Rob Eble and Karen Hallacy.
The town hall also will include members of a cityhood effort in Mableton, which like East Cobb has had local legislation introduced to be considered next year.
Last month, Birdwell faced an occasionally rowdy audience at Cobb commissioner Bob Ott’s town hall meeting. It was the first public encounter for the cityhood group, which formed last fall, commissioned a financial feasibility study and hired a lobbyist in the General Assembly with cityhood experience.
The group didn’t say much publicly until last month’s town hall, and the cityhood legislation, sponsored by State Rep. Matt Dollar, was filed the following day.
Eble told East Cobb News Friday there’s still a lot of information he has to obtain and digest after he joined the group in January, but pledged that he and the others are committed to a “reset” in communicating with the community.
“I wouldn’t vote on it today,” he said, referring to a referendum tentatively eyed for the 2020 Georgia primary next spring if the cityhood bill passes.
There’s still so much to examine, he said, and more feedback from the public to solicit.
Rob Eble
He’s a life-long East Cobber, and a Walton graduate, who took a look at the feasibility study, which concluded a city could be created without a tax increase, and thinks it’s worth considering.
“It’s all about the process, and shaping it the way the community wants it,” Eble said.
Since last month’s town hall, he said the group has heard from plenty of East Cobb residents about the study—which he expects to be discussed extensively on Monday—as well as the proposed city boundaries.
For now, the map is the unincorporated East Cobb portion of Ott’s commission district (map here), and would include a population of around 96,000.
The legislation calls for a mayor to be elected citywide and a six-member city council, whose districts have yet to be drawn.
Eble said he’s heard from citizens who live in areas of East Cobb outside of the map, and they wonder why they’re not in it.
He added that the map is subject to change, and that doing so “is under discussion. We want to hear from people.”
Skepticism has abounded since the cityhood effort was revealed, most of all why this is happening in an area where no serious municipal push has been made before.
A member of citizens ad hoc group asked to look at the feasibility study quit in protest of what he called a lack of transparency.
Eble insisted that “nobody is trying to push anything down anybody’s throat.
“Nobody’s trying to prosper off this,” Eble said. “We believe that local citizens of East Cobb are much better equipped to have a say about what happens in their backyards.”
Both the East Cobb and Mableton cityhood groups have said they want more responsive local control over government services than what is provided by Cobb, which has a county-elected chairman and four district members who represent more than 185,000 people each.
The proposed East Cobb city services are police, fire and community development, including planning and zoning.
Eble said the town hall format on Monday will include presentations and questions from the audience, to be submitted on note cards.
The cityhood group also will be appearing at a meeting next month of the Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance. Eble said other meetings are in the works with homeowners groups and civic and business associations. Cityhood representatives also be at next weekend’s Taste of East Cobb event.
“This is education,” Eble said. “There is an opportunity to create a community here.”
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He added that the map is subject to change, and that doing so “is under discussion. We want to hear from people.”