A member of an informal citizens steering committee examining a possible East Cobb cityhood initiative has resigned, saying he and other committee members weren’t being told who funded a $36,000 feasibility study released last week.
Joe O’Connor, a resident of the King’s Cove neighborhood and a longtime community activist, told East Cobb News that he insisted that Joe Gavalis, president of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood, Inc., offer more clarity about who’s pushing for a portion of East Cobb to become a city.
“I told Joe, ‘you’ve got to be transparent about this,” O’Connor said, recalling his conversation late last week. “His exact words to me were, ‘It’s none of anyone’s business.’ “
In response to questions from East Cobb News, Gavalis on Wednesday did not address O’Connor’s issues with who paid for the feasibility study or his other transparency concerns.
Instead, Gavalis said those who had been invited to serve on an ad hoc citizens group were being made the subject of “some misinformation” by “an attendee who is not for cityhood [and who] chose to share the names of people in the group knowing there were individuals who asked to remain anonymous and who had not made up their minds.”
He said the group is still gathering basic information about possible cityhood. “Many East Cobbers who attended are simply asking questions just like everyone in the aftermath of the Georgia State cityhood feasibility release,” Gavalis said.
East Cobb News contacted some of those individuals. One was upset her name had been given to a reporter and did not want to be interviewed. Some others have not returned messages seeking comment or were unavailable.
O’Connor said he has been friends with Gavalis, a resident of the Atlanta Country Club area, for many years, as they both have served on the Cobb Neighborhood Safety Commission and the Cobb Elder Abuse Task Force.
O’Connor also said he had problems with some of the data and information included in the study compiled by the Georgia State University Center for State and Local Finance. (Read it here, and view a proposed city map here.
In a response to written questions from East Cobb News over the weekend, Gavalis declined to say who funded the study or to name the individuals serving on the citizens committee.
He said the cityhood group, the Commitee for East Cobb Cityhood, Inc., has received donations from around the community to fund the study but he provided no specifics.
Among those on the citizens committee is former Cobb commissioner Thea Powell. She told East Cobb News that she thinks the cityhood idea is worthy of consideration, but “the process should have started sooner, of going out into the community.”
Powell—who said she hasn’t formed an opinion about whether East Cobb should be a city—referenced recommendations from the Georgia Municipal Association that strongly encourage cityhood advocates to get community input early on.
O’Connor said his first meeting about the cityhood idea was held in the office of G. Owen Brown, founder of the Retail Planning Corp., a commercial real estate firm located at Paper Mill Village. Brown is listed on the cityhood committee’s state filing documents as its incorporator. Gavalis is the only other individual who has been named.
O’Connor said after he first began reading through the study last week, he “immediately saw problems.”
Some of the statistical data was outdated and inaccurate, he said, and he was troubled by the low number of businesses in the proposed East Cobb city (around 3,300), far fewer than those in Alpharetta, Johns Creek and similar cities that were compared (bottom line in the chart below).
The residential-to-commercial split in the proposed city of East Cobb would be 85 to 15 percent.
“That’s a concern,” O’Connor said. “The other cities have a good combination.” In East Cobb, he said, “we’re so much more residential.”
Powell also noted that those business number stats are from 2012. “We’re working on really old figures when the economy wasn’t doing very well,” she said.
In his response to that issue over the weekend by East Cobb News, Gavalis said that the city of Milton, also in North Fulton, has a similar breakdown of its tax base, and there hasn’t been millage rate increase there since 2006.
Gavalis said he was asked to lead a possible cityhood effort after some citizens complained they didn’t think they were getting their money’s worth in county property taxes. He has not said who any of those people are.
Among the service priorities Gavalis indicated for a possible city of East Cobb were police and fire and community development, including planning and zoning.
A cityhood effort is a two-year process, requiring state legislation calling for a referendum that must be approved by voters living within the proposed city area. Cityhood advocates must also provide a feasibility study.
Gavalis told East Cobb News the community will be informed but did not indicate when that might be. Here’s more of what he told us Wednesday:
“We are in the beginning stages of our planning process and are seeking answers to some legitimate and sincere questions at this time. The Committee is not trying to be evasive but instead we have honored requests from participants who did not want their names disclosed since this group is still informal. We want to be transparent but we are compiling answers to questions about the study and formalizing our strategy on the expertise levels that will be needed to provide insight and professional advice.
“When we complete our strategic plan we will finalize who will be formally asked to join us and then we will announce who has accepted.”
With the possibility of legislation coming in the new year, Powell thinks the larger community should have been told more by now.
“Public input is of utmost importance,” she said. “Ultimately it doesn’t matter what I think. They will have the final say.”
O’Connor has been supportive about a city of East Cobb, writing a letter to the editor of The Marietta Daily Journal and commenting on East Cobb News to that effect.
But, he said, that support is based on solid “facts and numbers” and a willingness to make a good-faith effort to inform the public. He doesn’t think that is happening.
“I’ve always said that if you’re hiding something, then you’ve got something to hide,” O’Connor said.
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