Cityhood opponents cheer as East Cobb, Lost Mountain, and Vinings strike out

May 26—Voters gave three thumbs down to the Cobb cityhood initiatives of East Cobb, Lost Mountain, and Vinings, all of which were defeated in Tuesday's elections.

The resounding "no" votes were a stinging rebuke to the efforts which sought to wrest control of land use and other services away from Cobb County, and into the hands of new city governments.

East Cobb was crushed under a 46-point margin, as 16,289 voters opposed cityhood (73%) and 5,900 were in support (27%) as of Wednesday morning, when 100% of precincts were reporting.

"The community didn't just say no," anti-East Cobb advocate Mindy Seger declared Tuesday night to fellow opponents, raising their glasses, "they said hell no!"

The Lost Mountain effort in west Cobb saw a smaller margin that was nonetheless decisive. Voters favoring cityhood numbered 10,900 (42%), while opponents of the measure were 15,004 (58%).

Vinings saw the narrowest margin of any of the referendums, which was still a 10-point defeat for cityhood advocates. Supporters garnered 1,150 votes (45%) and opponents gathered 1,405 (55%). In a small electorate of only around 2,500, the margin was just 255 votes.

As the dust settled, politicians and advocates around Cobb told the MDJ they weren't necessarily surprised by the efforts' failure. What they did not expect, however, was the sheer margins of defeat — a margin they attributed to the measures being hurried to the ballot without clear and broad community support.

Though election results are considered unofficial until certified, and a referendum on Mableton cityhood waits in the wings of November, Tuesday's outcome means that Cobb will, for now, remain a six-city county.

'The process is broken'

The first time State Rep. Don Parsons, R-east Cobb, heard about a city of East Cobb was a few years ago — but not from its proponents.

"Somebody from the MDJ ... called me one day, and asked me what I thought about this effort to form a city of East Cobb. And I told him, 'Well, I haven't heard anything about that,'" Parsons recalled.

It was around that time that advocates of cityhood first rolled out the original cityhood proposal, which ultimately failed to get off the ground. Proponents went back to the drawing board, announcing last year they'd revived the plan. Former State Rep. Matt Dollar, R-east Cobb, soon introduced a bill to put the city on the ballot.

The cityhood committee was largely quiet through 2021, save for the release of a feasibility study from Georgia State University which found the city financially viable.

Things began to move quicker when the General Assembly convened in January. In a series of committee hearings, lawmakers favoring the proposal argued East Cobb and its sister efforts would provide greater political representation for residents with a "government closer to the people" than the county's.

Democratic legislators (support largely broke down along partisan lines) protested the bills were being rushed to a vote without adequate scrutiny. Among the mid-session changes in East Cobb's case was bumping the referendum up to May, from an original date of November.

"It was so messy. It was so sloppy," said State Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna. "I mean, I would read these bills, and ... the sponsor would say, 'Well, the city is set up this way.' I'd read the bill, and I would say, 'Well, the bill doesn't specify what you're saying.'"

Added State Rep. David Wilkerson, D-Powder Springs, "The process is broken on how these cities are created ... it's driven from the Capitol, and should really be a process that's driven from the public."

Nonetheless, East Cobb came up for a vote in the House on January 27. Parsons would be the only Republican member of the Cobb delegation to vote against it.

"It seemed to me that it was a a small group of people there, who really didn't reach out to the people in the area, and they didn't have a lot of interest in what people thought about it," Parsons said.

West Cobb Commissioner Keli Gambrill echoed that sentiment.

"That was one thing that I had heard at all the meetings that I had attended is, you know, they wished the legislators would have engaged the community prior to putting the legislation forth," she said.

In the waning days of the election, the East Cobb proposal came under increased scrutiny related to its plans to provide police and fire services. Anti-cityhood activists obtained an earlier draft of the East Cobb feasibility study. The group said that draft found the city would not be financially viable without providing such services and laying claim to county fire millage revenues. The revelation came as residents were already questioning the need for new public safety departments, something neither Lost Mountain nor Vinings had proposed.

After his "no" vote, Parsons said he received "two emails from people who were in favor of East Cobb, and they kind of wanted to take me to task for having expressed opposition to it."

"Those are the only two (communications) in support of that proposal I ever, to this day, have received," he added.

City vs. county

During the early days of the session, the cityhood debate focused on the benefits residents would receive under a municipal government: local control over zoning, improved services, and a more responsive government, all without any new taxes.

Though that pitch remained, the tenor of the conversation changed after county government stepped into the picture. In February, Cobb announced it would undertake a "robust public awareness campaign" to educate the voters on cityhood. Though the county insisted its efforts were neutral, cityhood leaders accused Cobb of putting its thumb on the scale.

From then on, all three efforts began to focus more on the dangers of staying in unincorporated Cobb. The most prominent argument was that the county had designs on "urbanizing" the suburban enclaves.

"There have been several alarming decisions that have been made on the number of projects that are coming in towards the boundaries of east Cobb. It's just a matter of time," East Cobb advocate Cindy Cooperman said in April.

Or as State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-west Cobb, put it in February, "I have felt for some time, as have my neighbors, that we have a bull's-eye on our back out here."

Chairwoman Lisa Cupid became a target particularly after her remarks in her March State of the County address, which cityhood proponents warned were a harbinger of things to come.

"I can tell you that if you want grocery stores next door to you, if you want schools next door to you, if you want a laundromat next door to you, affordable housing is going to have to go somewhere," Cupid said.

After Tuesday's results were known, Cupid told the MDJ, "Last night, three areas of our county determined not to move forward with cityhood. While the vote speaks for itself, we have the opportunity to take the concerns and desired services into consideration as we lead our county and make it a place inclusive of all."

Even in defeat, East Cobb advocates warned of the danger of continued county governance.

"The Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb has worked hard for the citizens' right to vote for a city and as advocates for the proposed city. Although the county and opposition didn't want citizens to vote, the community had their voices heard," the group said in a statement.

"Make no mistake; the facts have not changed. East Cobb will be under increasing growth and tax pressure from Cobb County to urbanize our community. Our polling told a different story from the results last night. Cobb's policy direction explains why the county worked so hard to stop the cityhood effort(s)."

Commissioner Gambrill — whose zoning record became a matter of fierce debate in west Cobb — said there are "a lot of fences to be mended" in the aftermath of the contentious campaigns.

"But the county also needs to step up our game in encouraging the citizens to be involved and contributing to how we want to proceed going forward," Gambrill said.

State Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, a Lost Mountain proponent, told the MDJ he's heartened by the agreement he found on the campaign trail.

"One thing that was confirmed in this Lost Mountain effort, in the countless town hall meetings, and individual connections, and virtual town halls we did — I am overwhelmed in the consensus that the citizens of west Cobb want to preserve the rural-residential specialness of west Cobb County," Setzler said.

The voters, he acknowledged, disagreed on the best way to do that.

"Keli Gambrill, Lisa Cupid, and the commission have said they recognize and they pledge to support the rural residential prerogatives of west Cobb County, and that they would continue. We as leaders are going to hold them to that," Setzler added.

A social media post from Cobb County said staff met early Wednesday morning to talk through the results.

"This is an opportunity for us to continue to engage with our residents," County Manager Jackie McMorris said via the post. "We will address concerns we heard during our various town halls, in emails, and in community meetings. Tuesday's vote does not end the discussion, but should start new conversations."

'End of the rainbow'

Jubilant cityhood opponents said the outcome was a vindication of their argument that cityhood was not all that had been promised by its advocates.

"We sent what I hope is understood as a clear message that we not only rebuke this referendum as it was, but we rebuke this virus of sophistry and winning at any cost," said Dora Locklear, a leading anti-Lost Mountain activist.

Added the anti-East Cobb group's Seger, "It was rushed. There were things that were missing from the financial study. The 'why' reasoning wasn't answered for a lot of people."

Further clouding the debate in the months leading up to the referendum were a trio of lawsuits challenging the legality of the city's charters (Locklear was named as a plaintiff in the Lost Mountain suit). Those lawsuits, which were put on hold until after the vote by Superior Court Chief Judge Rob Leonard, will now be a moot point.

Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University, said, "We've had some notable problems and issues with cities that have formed, so it's not the end of the rainbow that sometimes proponents make it out to be."

He contrasted Cobb's pushes with Sandy Springs, where "they've been champing at the bit for decades," or Brookhaven, "which has a significant tax base and can provide services and facilities."

"When you try to get a citizen to vote to incorporate, they've got to be assured that they're going to be better off if they do that," Swint added. "I think it's becoming harder to make that case ... If you don't know, if you don't understand what this is, you probably should either not vote or vote against it."

So what does all this portend for Mableton, where residents will go to the polls for their own cityhood referendum in November?

Rep. Wilkerson warned that he's already heard from residents concerned about being included in a city they don't know much about and aren't yet on board with.

"People still view Cobb as being better as one than they do being broken up into pieces," he said. "What it means at the end of the day (for Mableton), I don't know."

Mableton advocate Leroy "Tre" Hutchins said the group is far from discouraged by Tuesday's results. There's much that's different from the other proposals, he said, including that Mableton wants to encourage new development, not stave it off.

"Our individual desires are quite different than our counterparts," Hutchins said. "... It's all about communities of interest, and ensuring that we improve our quality of life as a community. I think that has been our focus from the beginning, focusing on, how can we assist our county in ensuring that Mableton is one of the shining stars of Cobb County?"

— MDJ reporter Hunter Riggall contributed to this report.