Mike Terry

Cobb commissioners seek $90M in short-term loans; East Cobb citizen appointed to planning commission

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The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday authorized county budget officials to begin the process of taking out short-term tax-anticipation notes (TANs) that would be repaid later this year.

By a 5-0 vote the commission approved a measure that would obtain $90 million in TANs, which are short-term loans used to plug county finances and spending between budget years. The current fiscal year 2018 (with a general fund budget of $405 million) ends at the end of the September.

Since the Cobb tax digest is revealed and millage rate is set in July, the county doesn’t begin collecting property taxes until a new fiscal year is underway. Those bills are mailed out in October. The county tax assessor’s office began mailing out assessment values to residential and commercial property owners last month.

According to a background sheet from Tuesday’s meeting agenda, Cobb has been issuing TANs since the late 1980s, a practice that “provides the needed liquidity at attractive borrowing rates to the County.”

(The Cobb County School District also occasionally seeks out TANs, and recently obtained $40 million in short-term loans for construction purposes.)

The TANs are general obligation bonds and interest is usually tax-exempt. Last year Cobb borrowed $60 million in TANs, but the amount has gone up because of a projected fiscal year 2019 deficit of at least $30 million.

The county budget office will begin a competitive bidding process for the TANs in May and present a low bid to the commissioners for approval before any loans would be obtained.

The TANS would have to be repaid by the end of November.

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Andy Smith, the newest member of the Cobb Planning Commission.

Also Tuesday, East Cobb resident Andy Smith was formally announced as the newest member of the Cobb Planning Commission, which advises the commissioners on zoning issues.

He is the appointee of District 2 commissioner Bob Ott and will serve at his first meeting in May.

Smith succeeds Mike Terry, who retired after last week’s planning commission meeting. Terry was appointed when Ott first took office in 2009. Ott, a former member of the planning commission, said Terry did “a yeoman’s job” during his long tenure.

Terry was also the board’s chairman. Judy Williams of Northeast Cobb, appointed by District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell, will assume duties as the new chairwoman next month.

In other business Tuesday, the commissioners formalized the spending of $47,000 for emergency repairs for a sinkhole on Woodlawn Drive (previous East Cobb News post here) and approved a change-order for a $332,781 savings in its final contract with C.W. Matthews for a roundabout project in front of Pope High School.

The final cost for the project, which was completed right before the start of the school year, comes to $3,053 million.

 

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Cobb Planning Commission votes to hold Terrell Mill Towne Center rezoning case

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Terrell Mill Towne Center
The Terrell Mill Towne Center, proposed as a major boost for the Powers Ferry corridor, has drawn strong and mixed reaction from nearby residents.

After nearly two hours of discussion that included heated opposition from residents in a nearby townhome complex, the Cobb Planning Commission on Tuesday voted to hold the long-delayed rezoning request for the proposed Terrell Mill Towne Center.

By a 3-2 vote, the Planning Commission—which is an advisory board to the Cobb Board of Commissioners—requested more time to sort out a major, complex application that was filed in January.

Traffic and density issues were the primary concerns raised by Thea Powell, Galt Porter and Skip Gunther, the three planning board members who opposed the proposal to rezone nearly 23 acres at Powers Ferry Road and Terrell Mill Road. The mixed-use project, which would be anchored by a Kroger superstore, was to have gone before Cobb commissioners Dec. 19.

The latest delay will push back a formal vote until at least February, since Cobb zoning cases are not heard in January.

The $200 million Terrell Mill Towne Center (agenda packet item) also would also contain restaurants, retail shops, and most controversially, a 310-unit luxury apartment complex abutting the Salem Ridge townhomes on Terrell Mill Road.

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Cobb Planning Commission Chairman Mike Terry of East Cobb, who represents District 2, where the Terrell Mill Towne Center would be located, was in strong support of the development by Eden Rock Real Estate Partners. So was Judy Williams of District 3 in Northeast Cobb, who said the project “would be good for the neighborhood, but will have to be tweaked.”

While the Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance—formerly known as the Terrell Mill Community Association—overwhelmingly supported the rezoning, Salem Ridge homeowners expressed strong opposition, especially to the residential component they say is excessively dense for the area.

“Why do we have [zoning] codes at all if we are going to ignore them?” asked Amy Patricio, who represented the opposing Salem Ridge residents.

She argued that the multiple variances requested by developers amounted to “taking the code and rewriting it to serve their purposes.”

Although Terry and Garvis Sams, the attorney for the developers, pointed out that the full proposal is suitable under the Cobb future land use plan and Power Ferry Master Plan, it was the residential component and a self-storage facility that opponents objected to the most.

In particular, Patricio said the UC zoning category sought for the apartments—Urban Condominium—was far more dense than should be allowed, and that there were an “egregious” number of variances as part of the project.

Porter, of South Cobb, agreed about the density issue, pointing to the project’s proposed 60 units an acre, as compared to the current nearby maximum of five units an acre.

“This just doesn’t match Salem Ridge or anything else around here,” he said, calling it “the definition of spot zoning.”

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