The Cobb Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to spend $8.3 million to buy some of the Tritt property next to East Cobb Park.
It was a 3-0 vote (with commissioners JoAnn Birrell and Lisa Cupid absent) to purchase 22 acres from Wylene Tritt with proceeds from the 2008 Cobb Parks Bond referendum. She’s donating 7.7 acres and the Friends for the East Cobb Park is donating around $102,000 as part of the acquisition.
The vote was greeted with applause and cheers from the audience, including members of the Cobb Parks Coalition, who pressed for the funding of the bond that commissioners finally approved last year.
However, commissioners funded only $27 million of the original $40 million amount that voters approved 10 years ago, due to legal reasons in the referendum’s payment schedule.
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Before the vote, Roberta Cook, active with the Cobb Parks Coalition, spoke during the public comment, bringing a tin cup as a reminder to commissioners that “the $40 million cup is still not full.”
“We are thankful for the Tritt property acquisition and look forward,” she said, to securing the remaining $12.5 million “that will fill up the cup.”
After the vote, Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, whose District 2 includes the Tritt property, saluted Cook and Jennifer Burke of the Friends for Tritt Park. He set a large decorative stein before him, saying it was “my cup” for the Tritt Park.
For now, the newly acquired land will remain as green space. It’s the only land in District 2, which includes most of East Cobb, that was purchased with the parks bond funding.
With that sale, all of the $27 million has been spent. The Tritt parcel was not on the original list of possible property for possible purchase.
Tritt had sued the county in 2016 after her attempt to sell the land to a developer, Isakson Living, for a senior living complex was thwarted due to a rezoning denial. That case was later dropped, and the county entered into lengthy negotiations with her about a sale for park land.
The reason this park is going to be realized, Cobb commission chairman Mike Boyce said, “is because the board agreed to change the list.
“Every one of these commissioners cares passionately about the county,” and not just his or her district. “Because they do that, we’re going to have this property.”
Ott said the first discussions the county had with about Tritt for the land came when Sam Olens was chairman, and continued with his successor, Tim Lee.
But the bond approved by voters in 2008 was not funded then due to the recession.
During the Isakson Living zoning case, East Cobb citizens opposed to that development urged the county to buy the entirety of the 53-acre Tritt land, which reportedly was valued at $20 million.
That was before the bond was finally funded last year. Boyce, who campaigned on providing the funding in his 2016 election victory over Lee, said at times he wished he hadn’t, given the difficulty of some of the negotiations.
Commissioner Bob Weatherford said that “I’ve never worked as hard as I did on these park properties. It’s not as easy as you might think, when you have $27 million and want to buy something.”
Burke said she and her group are “very excited” to have what is being called for now as Tritt Park “for our children and grandchildren.”
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