East Cobb public safety services

Cobb Cityhood town hall focuses on East Cobb public safety

by
Cobb Fire Chief Bill Johnson
“The last thing we want to do is remove services for residents of unincorporated Cobb,” Cobb Fire Chief Bill Johnson said.

Public safety services for the proposed City of East Cobb generated much of the discussion at a town hall meeting held Wednesday night by Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid.

It’s the first of several town halls county officials will be holding in the coming weeks as voters in East Cobb, Lost Mountain and Vinings will decide cityhood referendums on May 24. A Mableton cityhood bill is still being considered in the Georgia legislature.

County leaders said they cannot take official positions on cityhood, but said their sessions are meant to be informational.

Questions were submitted by citizens in advance and read on index cards by Cobb public information officer Ross Cavitt.

(You can watch a replay of Wednesday’s town hall, which lasted around an hour, by clicking here. Dates and locations for future town halls are to be determined.)

At a Cobb Board of Commissioners work session in February, county finance head Bill Volckmann said the impact to the county budget would be $41.4 million annually if all four cities are created. (The county has created a cityhood page that is being updated.)

Of that, they estimate $23 million would come out of East Cobb alone (East Cobb cityhood leaders have taken issue with those financials, saying they’re misleading).

Cobb Cityhood TH Financial Impact Chart

That’s because only East Cobb is proposing to have its own police and fire departments and an E911 service.

The leaders of those agencies for Cobb County government said at the town hall they’re still learning about the details of those services in East Cobb.

But they all said it’s likely that response time for those services will rise for citizens in a new City of East Cobb.

East Cobb would have two fire stations—current Cobb Station No. 21 on Lower Roswell Road and current Cobb Station No. 15 on Oak Lane.

Cobb Fire Chief Bill Johnson said those two stations would have to expand their current footprints by 13 percent to serve a City of East Cobb with nearly 60,000 residents and covering 25 square miles.

The problem, he said, is that citizens on the western edge of the city are currently served by Station No. 20 on Sewell Mill Road, No. 3 on Terrell Mill Road, No. 19 on Powers Ferry Road and No. 3 next to the Mountain View Regional Library, all of which would remain in unincorporated Cobb.

“They absolutely will see an increase in their response time,” Johnson said.

Should a City of East Cobb be formed, mutual aid agreements would be negotiated with Cobb Police and Cobb Fire, which have similar agreements with the existing six cities in the county, to provide backup.

East Cobb fire map
Cobb Fire officials said citizens in the red shaded areas in the proposed East Cobb city and currently serviced by fire stations in unincorporated Cobb would have higher response times.

An East Cobb Police Department would be stationed at current Cobb Precinct 4 headquarters, with an estimated 71 officers, according to a financial feasibility study prepared for the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood.

Interim Cobb Police Chief Scott Hamilton echoed Johnson, and said that “if anybody needs help, we’ll come. At the end of the day, we’re a family and we all take care of each other. But response times are going to get longer.”

Cobb public safety leaders said they haven’t had any contact with East Cobb Cityhood proponents, but some meetings are slated to begin next week.

Cobb E911 director Melissa Altiero said she’s unclear if East Cobb would be handling its own emergency calls or have them answered by Cobb.

She said Cobb answers calls inside the City of Marietta, which has its own police and fire services, “and it’s a seamless response.”

Transferring calls from one call center to another, she said, takes an average of 40 seconds.

Altiero also said she would be concerned about misrouted calls further delaying response time in a City of East Cobb, and said there’s nothing in the East Cobb financial study about what kind of radio system it would have.

That study proposes transferring the 2.86 mills in the Cobb Fire Fund to provide the main revenue source for a city with an estimated $27.7 million annual budget (and that also provide planning and zoning, code enforcement and possibly parks and recreation services).

Johnson said that would amount to $14 million in lost revenue for the Cobb Fire Department, out of annual budget of $110 million.

What that would mean for the county fire department is uncertain, financially or in affecting its service levels.

“The last thing we want to do is remove services to unincorporated Cobb,” Johnson said. “The citizens have come to expect a high level of service and we want to continue to provide that service.”

Before those remarks, Cavitt read a citizen question to Cupid about whether the county would increase taxes to offset the loss of revenue due to new cities being formed, but she deflected it.

“It depends,” Cupid said. “But I am not aware of a new city that has been formed that has not raised taxes.

“If somebody can show me a new city that has not raised taxes, then no, your taxes won’t be raised. Will they be raised immediately, if this moves forward on the May ballot? The answer is no.

“In the short run, no would be a qualified answer. But in the long run, I have yet to be pointed to a new city that has not been formed where they have not had some increases in taxes.”

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