Immediate Release: 7/25/2007

Marietta Mayor Bill Dunaway gave his annual State of the City speech July 25 at the Marietta Area Council meeting of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce. He discussed the role of the Marietta Daily Journal newspaper and its publisher, Otis Brumby, in the city’s future success and illustrated his opinion on the importance of local government’s ability to control its finances and destiny.

Download the full PDF here

For more information, call 770-794-5502.

Thanks to the AJC for this story - do you think that Marietta is doing things well in regard to these issues?

Ten people are living in Zugey Arzate’s little brick house in east Cobb County, and her neighbors say the crowd is causing big problems.

Arzate says her 1,511-square-foot home on Little Road has ample space for her and her nine relatives from Mexico.

Carolyn and Max Warner don’t like to see a lot of cars parked at a home in their Cobb County neighborhood.

Neighbors say that’s far too many people in a single-family home. They have counted as many as 10 cars on her property. They fear for their property values.

Such complaints have caught the attention of Cobb County officials, who are targeting homes like Arzate’s through a proposed ban on overcrowding in homes that is scheduled for a vote tonight. The proposal would limit the number of people who can live in a home based on its size — one adult per 390 square feet. That would mean Arzate could have perhaps only three adults in her home.

The county also wants to bar people from seeking day labor, a common practice among illegal immigrants hoping to get paid under the table.

Cobb’s actions come as other local governments, frustrated by the federal government’s inaction, are moving to crack down on illegal immigrants. Cherokee County adopted an ordinance in December to punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. Gwinnett County voted last month to require companies seeking county contracts to verify that all of their employees are legal U.S. residents.

Immigrant advocacy groups argue Cobb’s housing ordinance violates federal fair housing laws while the ban on day laborers would be an unconstitutional violation of free speech. “This may be a more sophisticated attempt to create a pretext to target Latino populations, be they immigrants or non-immigrants,” said Elise Shore, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Cobb officials say they are not targeting any one group. They hired outside legal help to try to make its proposals bulletproof. “There is no question that this country has a huge problem with illegal immigration,” said Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens. “There is also no question that many of the boarding houses include illegal immigrants and many of the individuals at the day labor sites are illegal immigrants; however, the practices are offensive whether the individuals are legal or illegal.”

Other Georgia communities — particularly college towns where students irritate neighbors by shoehorning into homes — have similarly cracked down on crowding, according to the Association County Commissioners of Georgia.

Cobb’s proposal is tougher than an existing ordinance on the subject, officials say, because it limits the number of adults who can live in one home based on overall square footage as listed in the county tax assessor’s records. Current county law requires at least 50 square feet of “sleeping space” per adult, and officials must get permission from homeowners to enter houses and measure.

Under Cobb’s proposal, a house must have at least 390 square feet of “total building square footage” for each adult resident and for each car parked overnight. It also would limit the people living in a home to one family or two or fewer unrelated adults and their children and/or grandchildren. Family is defined as parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters.

Officials say they could make exceptions. For example, if a family wanted to let its adult children live at home, it could apply for a land-use permit.

Arzate said she lives with her husband and two children, her father, her brother, and her other brother and his wife and two children. She said everyone living there is in the U.S. legally.

“I don’t know what is the problem. I don’t have too many people here,” said Arzate, speaking in English. “It is only my family.”

Arzate says she suspects she’s being picked on because she’s Hispanic, an accusation her neighbors deny. They have complained repeatedly to Cobb officials about Arzate’s property.

The county has issued citations to Arzate for litter on her property and for cars parked in her yard. Cobb authorities issued a warrant for her arrest this month after she failed to appear in court on the charges.

“They are in the back playing volleyball on their days off,” said Carolyn Warner, a retired Delta flight attendant who lives around the corner from Arzate. “They are probably illegal. … They are all young men.”

A short drive west from Arzate’s home, dozens of men, mostly Hispanic, hang out daily around a RaceTrac gas station on South Cobb Drive. They wait for anyone to pull up and offer as much as $12 an hour for a day of painting or roofing work.

The workers say they used to hunt for jobs in nearby Marietta but stopped after the city started enforcing a 1999 ordinance making it illegal to hire day laborers on streets, sidewalks, parking lots, public property or public rights of way.

Cobb officials have modeled their proposal on the city’s ban. They say they are worried about day laborers starting fights and getting hit by cars.

Speaking both English and Spanish, Antonio Perez stood outside the gas station one day last week, looking for painting work so he could send money to his wife and two children in Mexico.

“No good,” Perez said of Cobb’s plans to crack down on day laborers. And if Cobb goes through with its ban?

Perez said he might look for work in Virginia.

Code Enforcement inspections up 400 percent
Marietta’s Code Enforcement Department has added staff who are addressing more code violations sooner for cleaner and safer city neighborhoods. The number of housing inspections increased over 422 percent.
http://www.mariettaga.gov/news/readarticle.aspx?id=362

Feds award Marietta $200,000 for fighting crime

The United States Department of Justice has awarded the city of Marietta an additional $200,000 to continue the city’s Weed and Seed crime-fighting program along Franklin Road.
http://www.mariettaga.gov/news/readarticle.aspx?id=364

City revokes licenses of Franklin Road nightclub

The city of Marietta revoked business licenses of the Salon Q La Bomba Latin Night Club at 585 Franklin Road July 19 after a hearing with owners. http://www.mariettaga.gov/news/readarticle.aspx?id=365

Marietta Fire and Lockheed Martin teach children fire safety

With black boots stretching past their knees and yellow helmets covering their eyes, more than 40 children enjoyed Fire Safety Day July 17 hosted by the city of Marietta. http://www.mariettaga.gov/news/readarticle.aspx?id=366

Marietta Police recruiting new officers

The city of Marietta Police Department is currently recruiting for the position of police officer. Eligibility information and applications are available online. http://www.mariettaga.gov/departments/emergency/police/recruiting.aspx   
  

Notice of meetings

http://www.mariettaga.gov/calendar/meetings.aspx

Employment with the City

http://www.mariettaga.gov/departments/personnel/employment.aspx

Events around Marietta

http://www.mariettaga.gov/leisure/calendar.aspx

Special Thanks to the MDJ for this story!

SOUTH COBB - Cobb commissioners next Tuesday will vote on whether to approve an estimated $38.8 million connector between Windy Hill and Macland Roads in a heavily trafficked area of southwest Cobb.

Government officials and residents have voiced support for the project’s preferred alternative, construction for which would begin in 2010 if approved by commissioners.

“It’s an extremely logical thing to do,” Ward 2 Marietta City Councilman Grif Chalfant said of the connector, which would come within two miles of city limits. “I think it’ll divert your Macland Road, Powder Springs Street (traffic) and ease the congestion through Marietta.”

In November, the majority of the Marietta City Council supported Chalfant’s plan to examine the Macland Connector as an alternative to the Powder Springs Connector, which Atlanta Regional Commission officials told Mayor Bill Dunaway could not be fast-tracked due to a $4.4 billion federal funding shortfall.

“As far as I’m concerned, (Powder Springs Connector) is dead,” Chalfant said.

The Powder Springs Connector would have linked Powder Springs Street and South Cobb Drive for Paulding and Cobb commuters, whereas the Cobb project would connect Macland Road to Windy Hill Road with a two-lane limited-access rural roadway. The preferred route, “2B,” includes a proposed tunnel under Callaway Road to limit impact on Jim Miller Park to the north.

According to Chalfant, the Powder Springs Connector also would have exacerbated problems with people cutting through the Whitlock Heights neighborhood in Marietta.

“It would’ve given people a good reason to cross there to get to South Cobb Drive,” Chalfant said.

According to county officials, the 2005 1-cent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax will fund design, right-of-way acquisition and construction of the Macland Connector.

Marietta resident Craig Kootsillas, in a letter to the Marietta Daily Journal published July 9, expressed concern for shortfalls in federal funds for the project and other SPLOST-funded projects, but called the Windy Hill and Macland roads connector “critical for congestion relief.”

Opposition, he wrote, “Centers on the fact that the majority of cars destined to use the new roadways are not residents of the area,” but come from the fast-growing areas of west Cobb and Paulding, for instance.

“The local opposition ignores the impossibility of building a fence around the district or imposing a toll on ‘foreigners.’ Simply put, the cars are coming,” Kootsillas wrote. “Instead of wishing them away, local community leaders ought to understand that inaction will lead to regional gridlock.”

At a June 26 commission meeting, Cobb resident Diane Martin also spoke on behalf of a committee in support of the project’s preferred alternative, noting that right-of-way acquisition of 59 modular and mobile homes in Cumberland Creek and Lamplighter Village poses the least relative impact.

“As you are aware, these residential right-of-way acquisitions will not displace owners of homes valued around $750,000 as they are in east Cobb, but rather homeowners whose property range from about $65,000 to $200,000,” she said.

Cobb Chairman Sam Olens said the project has been on the table for at least 25 years.

“There is a huge problem with congestion in the area,” Olens said. “I would certainly prefer to move forward with a project if it demonstrates effective improvements.”

Olens and Chalfant each said there is no panacea to ease growing traffic problems in the area.

The connector, however, may come close.

The Cobb Department of Transportation projects that in 2012, average daily traffic on Powder Springs Road - presently 40,000 - would climb to 44,850 without the connector and fall to 32,000 cars a day with the project.

For Callaway Road, which has an average daily traffic 15,900, the 2012 numbers are 17,800 without the connector and 12,050 with the new road.

According to Cobb DOT Director David Montanye, the project solves a bottleneck problem caused by two eastbound lanes on both Powder Springs and Macland roads that merge into two eastbound lanes.

“You have four lanes of traffic bottleneck into two lanes,” he said, noting morning traffic from commuters working their way east to Interstate 75 increases congestion.

The extremely important project, he said, would connect the gap between Windy Hill and Macland roads.

Southwest Cobb Commissioner Annette Kesting’s district contains the project, which also borders northwest Cobb Commissioner Helen Goreham’s district.

At a June 14 Public Information Open House, Mrs. Kesting said she didn’t see the project as a solution to the bottleneck problem, but said she plans to listen to what her constituents want.

Wards 2 & 3 Town Hall Meeting

Dates: 7/17/2007 - 7/17/2007
Time: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: City Hall - Council Chamber - Lobby Level - 205 Lawrence Street

Description:

Zone 5 - Ward 2 & 3 Town Hall Meeting

• 6-7 p.m.: Walmart Representatives (old Ingles shopping center)
• 7 p.m.: MSTAR and Code Enforcement Reports
• 7:30 p.m.: Councilman Chalfant and Councilwoman Walquist Reports
• 8 p.m.: Question and Answer

Marietta City Council voted July 11 to prohibit trucks from traveling on Church and Cherokee streets between North Marietta Parkway and Kennestone Hospital at all times unless making a delivery in the area.

The restriction bans trucks with gross vehicular weight ratings in excess of 36,000 pounds or having an overall length in excess of 30 feet. Vehicles designed to carry passengers are exempt.

The city of Marietta recently gained ownership and control of Church and Cherokee streets from the Georgia Department of Transportation, allowing the city to implement the restrictions.

Several alternate routes exist for trucks including Interstate 75, Cobb Parkway and North Marietta Parkway.

For more information, call 770-794-5650.

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Watch out poultry lovers: In early 2008, a peep of up to 35 fiberglass chicken sculptures will hatch in Marietta and roost on our streets as part of a citywide public art and fundraising project. While the chickens are incubating, the community will be given more time to become involved with chances to sponsor a chicken before it hatches.

The lil’ chickens were supposed to come out of their shells this summer. The working committee for the lil’ chickens said the deadline has been extended to 2008 to allow the community to become more involved and sponsor a chicken.
Help sponsor a lil chicken

Sponsorships are available to individuals, groups and businesses that will be recognized by a plaque attached to the sculpture and through a series of promotions. Sponsoring a chicken will also allow sponsors to donate money to the nonprofit of their choice.

Marietta Mayor Bill Dunaway said the lil’ chickens of Marietta are a great opportunity to have some fun with a well-known city landmark, the famous Big Chicken on Roswell Street. “It’s a great fundraiser. I’m confident it will bring visitors who will discover all the wonderful things we have to offer,” Dunaway said. “Like Marietta, the lil’ chickens are unique.”

Since the idea was hatched, lil’ chickens of Marietta received enthusiastic support from the Junior League of Cobb-Marietta, city of Marietta, Marietta Museum of History, the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art and the Marietta Welcome Center.

Like the CowParade® in Chicago and the Town Turtles of Sandy Springs, the lil’ chickens of Marietta will put painted and otherwise adorned sculptures on the sidewalks of Marietta in early 2008 for the enjoyment of visitors and residents alike. It also gives local businesses and individuals a way to support the arts and local nonprofits.

The campaign to find chicken sponsors began at the Naked Chicken Kick Off Party. Sponsorships are available for a limited time. Don’t be a chicken! For information on sponsoring a lil’ chicken, visit their Web site at lilchickensofmarietta.com.

The lil’ chickens of Marietta is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization. Their purpose is to promote local artists and their work, and through that process to raise funds for local nonprofit organizations.

special thanks to the MDJ for this story…

Cobb’s chief academic officer Dr. Judith Gilliam listed countless reasons why she couldn’t support the charter school that Arlington, Va.-based Imagine Schools would manage.

Dr. Gilliam said her greatest concern has to do with school’s compliance with the new Georgia Performance Standards.

“It’s the curriculum alignment to the Georgia Performance Standards. We hold our own schools absolutely responsible for teaching the standards. The standards are what they’re tested on. If we don’t hold them responsible for teaching the standards then you’re handicapping a child when it comes to the CRCT test,” Dr. Gilliam said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, the exam that plays a critical role in determining if schools meet federal No Child Left Behind mandates.

But it’s not just curriculum alignment that’s a problem with the charter, she said.

“As we read the charter petition, there were concerns that came in several categories. One was curriculum. There is no, what the charter law calls ‘unique and distinctive’ charter. It is modeled on one that we’ve already passed, so it’s not unique and distinctive,” Dr. Gilliam said.

Imagine officials counter that the school would be infused with an environmental science curriculum unlike any other in Cobb.

Other problems, Dr. Gilliam said, include no media services plan, no unique technology plan, a lack of services for special needs students, budget problems, legal concerns over who runs the school and problems with teachers being highly qualified.

Dr. Gilliam referenced the elementary charter school that Imagine runs in Kennesaw, called Kennesaw Charter Elementary.

“Based on the track record of Kennesaw Charter Elementary we have seven teachers they have reported not being highly qualified, so we have concerns. We want to continue to work with them to have highly qualified teachers for the middle school,” Dr. Gilliam said.

Imagine officials dispute Dr. Gilliam’s charges.

School board attorney Sylvia Eaves, a member of the Marietta firm Brock Clay Calhoun & Rogers, said Kennesaw Charter Elementary has run afoul of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

A parent of a special needs child at the school filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights when her child allegedly failed to receive services the child was entitled to, Ms. Eaves said. The complaint was only resolved when the parent transferred her child out of the school, Ms. Eaves said.

Ms. Eaves said she is concerned about that incident because the Office for Civil Rights holds the Cobb School District responsible in such cases.

“It’s the school district that is ultimately responsible for that,” Ms. Eaves said.

Noticeably absent from the one-hour meeting in the district’s central office, was Cobb Superintendent Fred Sanderson, even though he was in the building.

Asked why he didn’t attend, Sanderson said he had other business to attend to.

After the meeting, Cobb school board member Betty Gray said more discussion would likely need to occur between Imagine and Cobb administrators before she could advise the board to vote for or against the charter.

“I’m very serious when we’re spending taxpayer dollars that we have all data substantiated by accurate reporting,” Ms. Gray said.

If approved, the middle school would be the fifth Imagine school in the Cobb and Marietta school systems.

Imagine operates an elementary school in Kennesaw and one in Marietta. It is scheduled to open two kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools in Mableton and Smyrna on July 30.

Julie Merendino of Kennesaw, a parent who’s petitioning for the middle school charter in Kennesaw, said Thursday’s meeting was worthwhile.

“It’s kind of like a poker game. They have their poker faces on, I guess you could say,” said Ms. Merendino, who has two sons attending Kennesaw Charter School and a daughter who attends North Cobb High School.

Ms. Merendino said she appreciates the fact that board members took the meeting seriously enough to bring in Sanderson’s top brass.

“To me, that says a lot that they’re willing to work with us, and that they’re bringing in their big guns to address concerns and let us know specifics, and I feel that is very positive,” she said.

Thanks to the MDJ for this special alert on what residents will be required to do as of 10/1/2007 in regard to their alarm systems. Any feedback?

MARIETTA - Marietta police and firefighters will get some relief from calls to false alarms thanks to a new ordinance the city hopes will get rid of faulty alarm systems.

On Wednesday, the City Council unanimously passed a false alarm ordinance that slaps fines on home and business owners who have more than three false alarms in a calendar year.

Beginning Oct. 1, all home and business owners who maintain alarm systems must register with the Marietta Police Department so they have contact telephone numbers when alarms go off to verify if an alarm is real or faulty.

“I hope it will be good in the sense that we can use public service for true emergencies instead of false alarms,” said Ward 4 City Councilman Van Pearlberg who brought the idea before the city at the request of the police department in May.

Until now, the city had no penalties for numerous false alarms, which officials say drains public safety resources that could be better used elsewhere.

The new false alarm ordinance establishes fines for violators beginning with $50 for the fourth and fifth false alarms. Owners with sixth and seventh false alarm calls would be fined $100, on the eighth and ninth a $250 fine would be imposed and 10 or greater false alarms would cost $500 for each call.

The ordinance also makes it unlawful to install an alarm system that sounds continually for more than 10 minutes.

The new city ordinance will not levy fines for false alarms caused by inclement weather or power outages.

The ordinance does not apply to government and school facilities, City Attorney Doug Haynie said.

Marietta Police Chief Dan Flynn said a similar ordinance in Savannah was very helpful when he worked there.

“Last year (in Marietta) we had approximately 10,000 alarm calls,” he said. “Over 99 percent were false alarms.”

Flynn said each alarm requires two responding officers and takes an average of 45 minutes to resolve.

“This is roughly 10 percent of the calls we handle,” Flynn said, adding he hopes to cut false alarm responses by 75 percent to 85 percent.

Flynn said the ordinance is a “shot in the arm” for police resources to have more available hours for important operations.

He recalled one city business that had 89 false alarms in 2006. That one location alone demanded approximately 133 hours by police officers just to respond to false alarms last year.

Had the city’s ordinance been in place, the business would have faced fines of more than $35,000 for that many false alarm responses by city police.

Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens said the county does not have a false alarm ordinance, but officials are interested in crafting one.

“No, we don’t, but we are considering one,” Olens said. “We need to take some kind of action.”

Olens added the police and fire departments have been reviewing proposals.

“Everyone’s going to have an alarm going off once in a while,” Olens said, admitting, “There clearly are property owners who are abusing the system.”

Cobb County police have arrested two teens, including a Six Flags Over Georgia employee, in the beating last week of a Marietta teenager just outside the amusement park.

Police viewed park video as part of their investigation and expect to make more arrests.

“We got your names. If we don’t have them, we will have them,” Cobb Public Safety Director Mickey Lloyd said on Tuesday. “This camaraderie ‘one for all and all for one’ on the street doesn’t hold water when somebody is sitting in police custody by themselves being questioned. They are going to tell who you are.”

Police believe the other assailants ”all believed to be young” live in west and south Atlanta.

As many as 25 people were involved in the July 3 beating or know who was involved, said Maj. Paula Sparks, head of the Crimes Against Persons Unit. Police arrested Brad M. Johnson, 18, on Monday at his home in Atlanta.

Christy Poore, manager of public relations for Six Flags, confirmed that Johnson worked at the park in southwest Cobb County.

Poore said Johnson “is a season employee, and I can’t go into more specifics because this is an investigation. I can say he was not on duty the day of the incident.”