East Marietta Library

East Marietta Library demolished; Lower Roswell Road improvements continue

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East Marietta Library demolished.
The site of the old East Marietta Library will become the new entrance to Sewell Park and the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)

As the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center gears up for its Dec. 4 opening, the old East Marietta Library building that stood for 50 years went away last week.

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Work crews demolished the old facility as part of a connected road construction project along Lower Roswell Road.

The old library site will be the entrance to the new library and to Sewell Park. That entrance will be part of a newly figured four-way intersection at Lower Roswell with Shawnee Lane.

The Lower Roswell Road West project stretches from Holt Road to the South Marietta Parkway includes road widening, turn lanes around Eastvalley Elementary School and Sedalia Park Elementary School and repaving.

The 1.29-mile project is expected to finish in December.

 

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Opening events scheduled for Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center

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Sewell Mill Library
A Cobb County government aerial photo of the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, taken earlier in October. The new branch opens Dec. 4.

The opening of the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center (2051 Lower Roswell Road) is still a little more than a month away—Dec. 4—but there’s a full slate of activities for the first month that’s already been scheduled.

James Mitchell of the library staff has passed along a schedule of what’s coming up in December, and it features a wide variety of events: from writers and filmmakers meetups, classic film screenings, a photography class, a music enrichment session with the conductor of the Georgia Symphony Orchestra, concerts, a regular Open Mic night and more.

That’s because the $10.6 million Sewell Mill Library goes far beyond books to include study and training rooms, a conference room, dedicated children’s and teen spaces, a community room, an art gallery and classrooms, an outdoor amphitheater and a black box theater.

We’ve posted these events to our full calendar listings; you can click on the links below for the full event information:

  • Writers Groups: Meeting every Tuesday at 6 p.m., these groups can include any genre or focus. The first meeting is Dec. 5;
  • Secrets of Better Photography: A seven-week course begins Dec. 7 and registration is required;
  • What Does An Orchestra Conductor Listen To?: Tim Verville, Music Director of the Marietta-based Georgia Symphony Orchestra, shares his musical tastes, which venture far beyond classical in two sessions on Dec. 8;

    Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard, Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center
    The films of French director Jean-Luc Godard will be featured Dec. 9 in the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center’s first Great Directors Series installment.
  • Great Directors Series: The work of legendary filmmakers will be explored every other Saturday for adults only, starting with Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa on Dec. 9 and 23 respectively;
  • Making Comics Workshop: Local comic artists Carlos Perez and Ananya Vahal will lead adults and teens 14 in a Dec. 9 workshop with limited space. Registration is recommended;
  • The Private Pageant Concert: Marietta electronica/dance/rock musician Tim Exit performs his mixed-genre show at the library’s Black Box Theater on Dec. 9;
  • Open Mic Night: Starting Dec. 12, musicians of any genre are welcome in the Black Box Theater;
  • Classic Movie Thursday: This weekly series starts with an Alfred Hitchcock flick on Dec. 14, followed by John Wayne, John Ford and Michael Curtiz in December. You’re invited to bring food and drink to enjoy with the film;
  • Filmmaking Meetup: Writers, directors and actors of all kinds are welcome at the first meetup on Dec. 19.

We’ll have more details on the opening of the library when they become available.

This reminder: If you were a patron of the East Marietta Library you can pick up materials ordered on hold at the Switzer Library in downtown Marietta or another branch of your designation.

If you checked out materials at East Marietta branch that are due, those also can be dropped off at any Cobb library system branch.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Relishing a lifetime of memories at the East Marietta Library

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East Marietta Library
The East Marietta Library will reopen as the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center in December. (East Cobb News photos by Wendy Parker)

“It is now 5:30. The library will be closing in 30 minutes.”

When I heard the announcement over the intercom, I winced and fought back some emotion.

Because this closing wasn’t just for this one day. It was forever.

I had a half-hour to look around the East Marietta Library on Saturday, the last day the little block two-story building was open to the public after 50 years of dutiful service to a growing, and thriving, community.

East Marietta Library

The East Marietta Library, located at 2051 Lower Roswell Road, is within walking distance of the house where I grew up, in the Pioneer Woods neighborhood (directly behind Faith Lutheran Church). When I wasn’t at Sewell Park, playing softball or tennis or swimming, I was at the library.

These twin community gems were like a second home, a convenient place to slip away from younger siblings and after-school chores. I didn’t need a parent to ferry me to a place where I could let my imagination roam, whether it was in left field at Sewell Park or the rather roomy shelves of the children’s section of the library downstairs.

East Marietta Library

I can’t remember how many books I checked out, but I remember taking home more than once a book about “new” journalism featuring Tom Wolfe, and the Baseball Encyclopedia. These were the days when reference books could be checked out, and those volumes became de facto parts of my own library at home, at least for two or three weeks at a time.

East Marietta Library

The building had been obsolete for years, and it was the subject of a long lobbying campaign to be replaced. Finally, that came about, when Cobb voters included a new facility in the last SPLOST. While I was thrilled, I also knew I would have bittersweet pangs about the East Marietta branch closing.East Marietta Library

On Saturday, with time in my childhood time machine dwindling, I rummaged around the shelves of books, which were being labeled by category for their removal to the new $10.6 million Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, which opens up next door in early December.

Earlier this week, Cobb commissioners finally voted to fund additional staff needed for the new place, in what had become a testy and frankly disappointing turn of events. In their budget battles, we’ve seen both East Cobb commissioners fighting over library funding, pitting one branch against another, ignoring citizens’ pleas to do right by what many here think are underfunded, but popular community treasures.

East Marietta Library

It reminded me of the ugly budget incident a few years ago, when then-commission chairman Tim Lee threatened to shut down East Marietta and all but a few of the Cobb libraries in a stunt to get his colleagues to the bargaining table during the recession. While that ploy worked, it created a lot of community bad will, and not just from library diehards like me.

A few years later, the same commissioners approved a creative way to finance a nearly $400 million dollar bond issue for the Atlanta Braves’ new stadium, then declared it wasn’t going to raise property taxes. Libraries, on the other hand, continue to be nickel-and-dimed, considered a “non-essential” service by the commissioner who wanted to close the East Cobb Library (and who even once held a town hall at the East Marietta branch meeting room).

East Marietta Library

There seems to be no political will to open libraries before, say, 11 a.m. on a Saturday (or 1 p.m., as was the case with the East Marietta Library). No Sunday hours at all, unless it’s the main branch in downtown Marietta, but only during the school year.

Tiny little East Marietta has been a real workhorse during these past 50 years, built with money from the very first Cobb library bond, and opened when the area was becoming rapidly suburbanized. As it closes, it was serving a community in transition that was taking advantage of the modernized information and resource needs of the public.

East Marietta Library

Like my old Wheeler High School, though, I appreciate what’s contained in the walls of old buildings, even if they’re eventually torn down.

East Marietta’s grand opening on March 7, 1967, coincided with the opening of the Kennesaw, Acworth, South Cobb, Sibley, Powder Springs and Lewis A. Ray branches. They were all built from the bond issue; it was the dawn of a new era in Cobb County, in which quality-of-life concerns were beginning to be met.

I know the Sewell Mill Library is going to be fabulous, and I can’t wait to take a look inside. But as the last 30 minutes began to trickle down to the last 15 on Saturday, and as the librarians continued their packing, I got a little choked up.

East Marietta Library

For a moment, I thought about checking out one last book with the East Marietta branch stamped in the bank, a volume that’s survived since the days of physical card checkout. At least for three weeks, I could have a relic in my possession, and savor what those memories continue to provide.

East Marietta Library

But I decided it was time to move on, to let these memories assume their rightful place. They’ll always be there, but better days are ahead for this library, and I’m confident the new place will continue to serve and elevate its citizens well.

East Marietta Library

East Marietta Library

East Marietta Library

East Marietta Library

Sewell Mill Library funding approved; East Marietta branch to begin closure

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Sewell Mill Library
East Cobb News file photos

After a brief but sometimes testy conversation Tuesday morning, the Cobb Board of Commissioners approved the completion of funding for the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center on Lower Roswell Road.

The board voted 3-2 to spend $284,227 to fund five full- and part-time positions for fiscal year 2018 in order to proceed with the opening of the new facility on Dec. 4.

East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, chairman Boyce and commissioner Bob Weatherford voted yes; commissioners JoAnn Birrell and Lisa Cupid voted no.

Operations at the East Marietta Library, located adjacent to the new Sewell Mill branch, are expected to wind down this week.

The funding includes the transfer of $94,491 from the budget for the East Cobb Government Service Center, which will move some of its business office functions to the tag office in the same building (previous East Cobb News post here).

Ott said he worked with staff from the Cobb library, parks and public services staff to pare down the price tag for the Sewell Mill Library funding from around $700,000 to less than $300,000. The funding source is from “one-time monies” that has become a touchy topic on the commission as it voted this summer not to raise the property tax millage rate and as it adopted the FY 2018 budget with nearly $20 million in contingency funding.

That approved budget didn’t include Sewell Mill Library funding. Ott and Boyce said the county was obligated to move ahead with the transition now due to contractual obligations in demolishing the East Marietta Library building, creating a parking lot for the new library and rebuilding the road that leads into the adjacent Sewell Park.

“The reality is we have a $10 million investment the board has known about for years, and it’s been dropped in my lap,” Boyce said, then veering into a philosophical statement.

“Libraries reflect the culture of our society,” he said. “It is important to open up this facility that residents have been expecting for a long time.”

East Marietta Library
The East Marietta Library opened in 1967.

Birrell and Cupid objected to funding the Sewell Mill Library now, saying they wanted take up the matter at a commissioners retreat later this month. Birrell suggested a delay in opening the new branch until January.

“I understand that we can’t build things like this and then leave them empty,” she said. “My concern is the timing.”

Cupid concurred: “Why this can’t wait another 20 days is beyond me.”

She cited other unmet funding requests—including Cobb non-profits, the purchase of police body cameras and wish lists from other government agencies—as equally valid, and questioned the wisdom of using contingency funding for sustained expenses.

“There’s no way of knowing if we’re going to have this money year after year after year,” Cupid said.

Ott, who had suggested closing another library in his district, the Lewis A. Ray branch in Smyrna, to solve the contingency problem, became visibly upset.

“Don’t sit here and make inaccuracies,” Ott snapped, demanding that Cupid not interrupt him. “You did not reach out to address your concerns.”

Cupid said the finalized agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting came to her late.

Boyce said the vote over Sewell Mill Library funding is “the first of many battles we’re going to have” because the board voted against his proposal in July to raise the millage rate 0.13 mills (previous East Cobb News post here).

Weatherford said that amounts to just $4 million, or one percent, of the overall county budget, so “blaming everything on that vote is erroneous.”

Birrell, who had suggested closing the East Cobb Library during the budget process, reiterated her concerns of getting into a habit of dipping into contingency.

“We’re going to be digging a deeper deficit that we’re never going to overcome with one-time money,” she said.

Cobb fiscal year 2018 budget approved in close vote

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Cobb fiscal year 2018 budget

After a lengthy public hearing and discussion and the possibility of not approving a budget today, the Cobb fiscal year 2018 budget was adopted by the Board of Commissioners.

The $403.4 million budget is based on the millage rate of 6.76 set by commission in July, and using $19.7 million in contingency funding—”one-time monies” in budget parlance—to balance the budget. More than $1 million for Cobb community charities was not included in the budget, and representatives of many of those organizations were vocal about keeping their funding.

The new budget includes funding for the East Cobb Library, which commissioner JoAnn Birrell had proposed closing, but does not include funding for the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, which will replace the East Marietta Library and is slated to open this winter.

Like the funding for the charities, funding for the new library is expected to be taken up by the commissioners in the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

What follows is a live-blog format of the public comment period, both from the public and the commissioners, that was updated as the budget proceedings took place.

We’ll have other matters from today’s commission meeting, including the approval of the Cobb 2040 Comprehensive Plan, posted separately.

We’ll also link to the final budget document once it’s made available online. Here’s the original.

1:41 PM: The budget passes 3-2, with Boyce, Birrell and Bob Weatherford voting yes, Ott and Cupid voting no.

1:28 PM: Chairman Mike Boyce is the last member of the board to speak, saying “budgets are never easy.” Regarding the non-profits, he said many provide services that government should be doing, but they do it better. “This isn’t black and white. The bottom line is we can’t give you what we don’t have . . . money because of the millage rate.”

Carving out a budget based on a 6.76 millage rate includes figuring out how “to provide services this county has come to expect.” He said “we’re a five-star county” and that he hopes conversations over the next few months will result in some kind of consensus from the board in the future.

Boyce makes motion to approve budget, with Birrell seconding.

1:15 PM: South Cobb commissioner Lisa Cupid said the budget situation today is “the direct result of the millage rate vote [from earlier this summer] that I did not support.” She also said that the situation is “not only mind-boggling but somewhat shameful,” and cited cuts in assistance to community non-profits, the continued limited hours for libraries and more.

“This is a not a good situation that we’re in today, to not pass a budget” that will “put us in a worse situation. There are real people with real needs that are attached to” what is tied into the budget.

She also referenced how the needs of the Braves are being accommodated, but not those who benefit from community charities. “I’m just troubled by this whole ordeal.” Cupid said she cannot support the budget proposal.

1:08 PM: The public hearing is closed, and the commissioners are making some opening comments during their discussion period. Northeast Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell said: “Is this a perfect budget? No. But is pretty much a flat budget” and she supports it.

East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott said he would like to see some details on how to deal with the one-time money, but “I don’t see it there.”

1:01 PM: Michael Paris of East Cobb, head of the Council for Quality Growth, spoke in support of the proposed budget. “Go forward and make sure we continue to make this county great,” he said.

12:29 PM: Ray Thomas, a South Cobb resident, expressed concern that the budget proposal includes contingency funding despite an improving economy and rising Cobb tax digest. “What happens when things really get tough? . . . This is very disconcerting.” He said the county has two choices: cut back services or find more revenue, and he cited a rise in the millage rate.

12:23 PM: Dan Daniel, a longtime East Cobb resident and volunteer at the East Cobb Library, pleaded with the commissioners to keep that branch open. If it closes, he said, nearby residents would have to go a great distance to patronize the library system.

12:01 PM: The public hearing on the budget is continuing, but we’re taking a break. This very well may be an all-day meeting, given what else is on the agenda, and what looks to be a commission impasse on the budget. Some very impassioned speakers already, and there are more to come.

11:22 AM: The directors of a number of community service organizations, including MUST Ministries, Family Promise of Cobb County and the Cobb Schools Foundation, are speaking on behalf of continuing the county funding they receive. The proposed budget does not include charities funding.

A retired citizen, John Morgan, asks the commissioners to consider “what will your legacy be?” especially as it pertains to Cobb’s homeless, and cites several Bible passages. The crowd applauded as he concluded.

11:05 AM: The first speaker is East Cobb resident Abby Shiffman, the chairwoman of the Cobb library board of trustees, and she’s urging the commission not pass a budget today, especially as it pertains to the library budget. “How can you pass a budget without specifics?” she asked, noting that the library system has suffered “cut after cut after cut” with no increase in funding, including expansion of library hours, since the recession. The notion of closing a library branch (Birrell has proposed closing the East Cobb Library) “without a true hearing is something I cannot understand.”

BTW: Tonight is the Cobb Library Foundation’s gala dinner, “Booked for the Evening,” featuring East Cobb author Jonathan W. Jordan, that’s one of the year’s biggest fundraising events for outside money to support the library system.

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Despite protests, Birrell defends proposal to close East Cobb Library

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JoAnn Birrell, Cobb Commissioners
JoAnn Birrell—speaking here to a business group last week—says closing the East Cobb Library would reduce duplication of services. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)

After several East Cobb residents objected to the possibility of closing the East Cobb Library on Tuesday, the Cobb commissioner making the proposal strongly defended her position, and laid out a detailed set of numbers in making her case.

JoAnn Birrell, who represents Northeast Cobb, said at the end of a long Board of Commissioners meeting that “this has never been a personal agenda” but instead addresses what she terms as an issue of duplication of services.

She said she’s proposing the East Cobb Library closure because of the new Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center that will open before the end of the year, replacing the adjacent East Marietta Library.

The two libraries are located five miles apart on Lower Roswell Road, and carry some expensive operating costs, Birrell said. (That’s also about the same distance between the two East Cobb-area libraries in her district, the Mountain View Regional Library on Sandy Plains Road, and the Gritters branch off Canton Road.)

The East Cobb Library opened in the Parkaire Landing Shopping Center in 2010, after being previously known as the Merchants Walk Library and relocated when that shopping center was redeveloped.

“This is about being a responsible steward of the taxpayers’ money,” Birrell said, reading from a written statement, adding that budget decisions will be made by the board, not one commissioner.

The East Cobb Library closure plans were first made public last Thursday, at a town hall meeting held by East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, who said Birrell “has been relentless” in proposing the move (East Cobb News coverage here).

Birrell said her proposal “was just one” cost-saving suggestion as the commission was presented last week with a proposed FY 2018 budget of $890 million, including $21.5 million in one-time reserve funding to avoid a property tax increase.

After hearing protests to the closure plan earlier Tuesday at the first formal public hearing on the budget, Birrell said the consolidation of Cobb libraries has been “years in the making,” and referenced the 2011 budget crunch. In the wake of the recession and a steep decline in the Cobb tax digest, then-commission Chairman Tim Lee proposed permanently closing 13 of the 17 county library branches, including East Cobb and East Marietta.

But he backed down after vocal public opposition. While no branches were closed, library hours and staffing levels were reduced.

Most of the funding for the new 8,600-square-foot Sewell Mill library complex, which will include an amphitheater and other cultural arts space, comes from the 2016 Cobb government SPLOST (special local option sales tax) approved by county voters.

Birrell said the new library will have annual staffing and operating costs of roughly $732,000. The East Marietta Library currently costs around $524,000 a year to run, according to her figures.

The East Cobb Library, she said, not only has annual staffing and operating costs estimated at $771,000 a year, but another $263,000 a year, ($21,961 a month) is paid out in lease costs at Parkaire Landing.

For that kind of money, Birrell said, the county “could hire three police officers” as part of a larger recommendation in a recent police chiefs’ report that Cobb add 60 more officers to meet current public safety needs.

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East Marietta Library slated to close in mid-Oct., reopen in mid-Nov. as Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center

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Sewell Mill Library

The Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center under construction on Lower Roswell has an updated projection for its opening: mid-November, according to District 2 commissioner Bob Ott.

The adjacent East Marietta Library that’s been open since 1966 will close in mid-October, as the transition of moving materials into the new facility begins. Here’s more from what Ott’s office issued via email on Friday:

Construction of the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center is moving forward steadily, with only limited interruptions due to rainy days, said Cobb County Library Director Helen Poyer. Progress on the project includes ongoing interior painting, landscaping nearing completion and paving is scheduled for late summer. . . .

The construction project is now ahead of schedule, Poyer said, with officials expecting to re-open library service in new facility around mid-November.
 
“Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center will serve not only the immediate community, but the entire Cobb community,” Poyer said. “The special library and PARKS services will draw citizens from across Cobb County. It will be a destination for people who want to be engaged in traditional library service as well as in technology and the arts.”

Reminder: Ott is having a town hall meeting Thursday at 7 p.m. at the East Cobb Library (Parkaire Landing Shopping Center, 4880 Lower Roswell Road).

East Marietta Library
(East Cobb News photos by Wendy Parker)