After learning that the proposed City of East Cobb map would include areas she represents, Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell gave an emphatic answer Tuesday about what she thinks about it.
“I don’t support it,” Birrell said after pro- and anti- cityhood representatives debated before the East Cobb Business Association.
‘I don’t see how you’re going to provide better services for the same taxes you’re paying now.”
That’s what anti-cityhood advocates have been saying after the group leading the cityhood push has claimed a new municipality can deliver better services at the same tax rate East Cobb residents are paying now to the county.
For the first time, opposing forces in the cityhood issue faced one another in a forum format that included opening and closing statements and questions from the audience.
Among the crowd of nearly 200 at the Olde Towne Athletic Club was Birrell, whose District 3 includes some of east and northeast Cobb. The original proposed city boundaries included only parts of District 2, represented by commissioner Bob Ott.
But at a town hall meeting Monday, the Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb announced that the map had expanded to include the Pope and Lassiter school attendance zones.
Birrell said she has not heard anything from the cityhood group about revising the map, and that the only information she learned came from visiting the cityhood committee’s website.
“They’re encroaching in my district,” she said. “So now I’m being outspoken.”
Ott, whose town hall meeting in March was the first public event for the cityhood committee, has not taken a position on the issue.
There’s been speculation he would be interested in running for mayor of East Cobb if a city is created, but he hasn’t responded to that, nor has he indicated if he will be running for re-election or another office in 2020.
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During the debate, David Birdwell of the cityhood group repeated many of the same points he had given at the Monday town hall meeting: That a new city, with around 115,000 residents, would give citizens more local control of their government, improve public safety, not raise taxes and develop a stronger civic identity in East Cobb.
Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood, mentioned the current staffing and retention issues facing Cobb public safety agencies and wondered “how a new city just getting its legs would be able to solve this problem better than any other city has.”
She also pressed Birdwell to reveal the identities behind those funding cityhood expenses that include a Georgia State University feasibility study ($36,000) and more recently, two high profile lobbyists for next year’s legislative session (both at more than $10,000 each).
He said three of the 14 members of the cityhood committee have real estate backgrounds (including himself). Those names are not currently listed on the group’s website, but he said he “would be glad to share it.”
“It raises suspicions about what people are doing” behind the scenes in the pro-cityhood group, Seger said.
She pressed him to name names, saying the cityhood committee has issues with a “lack of transparency.”
Birdwell said a”large group” of East Cobb residents have made donations, but he didn’t identify anyone during the forum. He said in addition to town hall meetings in the spring and Monday’s at Wheeler High School, the cityhood committee has met with homeowners associations, business groups and others.
Seger also said she had heard nothing from State Rep. Matt Dollar, the East Cobb Republican who sponsored a cityhood bill in the 2019 legislative session, in regards to the revised city maps.
“We don’t need a new city for this area,” said Seger, an accountant who has lived in East Cobb since 2006.
Birdwell argued that if real estate interests wanted to pursue high-density development in East Cobb, “they would want to keep it like it is,” meaning having zoning cases decided by county commissioners.
“If you love East Cobb the way is is,” Birdwell said, borrowing the Alliance’s slogan and holding up the opponent’s business card, “the best way to keep doing that is with incorporation.”
Birdwell said after the forum the cityhood group would like to have some more town hall meetings, ideally in December, before the legislative session begins in January.
Dollar’s bill would have to pass both houses next session for a referendum on East Cobb cityhood to take place.
Although originally eyed for the primaries next May, Birdwell said it would be “virtually impossible” to put a cityhood referendum on the ballot then, and that it would more likely be on the November 2020 general election ballot.
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