Greetings, y’all. I’m writing this issue from the Smyrna’s own Rev Coffee.

It’s been a minute/month, so we’ve got some catching up to do! In this issue you will find the following:

  • Highlights of some cool events over the past month
  • Review of previous County Commissioners meetings
  • Preview of tomorrow’s County Commissioner meeting
  • News & Updates

Highlights

A weekend to celebrate

This past weekend, Cobb County was filled with multiple popular events including Chalktoberfest in Marietta, A Taste of Acworth, and the Smyrna Birthday Celebration.

One common theme from these events is that the main Streets and roads were closed to cars and open and filled with thousands upon thousands of people!

These events serve as yet another example that we should have more events like this and give more of our public space and right of way to pedestrians.

The streets around the Marietta Square are open and filled with people! (Credit to Chalktoberfest FB page/Hector D.)
Atlanta Road opened up for people for Smyrna’s Birthday Celebration! (Credit to Kristen for the pic!)

Braves game highlights

Congrats to the Braves for winning yet another NL East Division title and it’s time we get our voices ready to support them on yet another chase for a World Series Championship.

Recently, Cobb 4 Transit organized a group outing to a Braves game where everyone was encouraged to get there without using a car. We biked, walked, took transit, and those who took a car used an electric vehicle.

We proved that it’s possible, but there are definitely opportunities for improvement to make non-car transportation to Braves game safer and more attractive. I should be finalizing the review in the next couple of days and will send out a special issue.

Take me out to the Ballgame…but not with a car!! (credit to random fan we met at the game:)

Bike Ride Along w/ Root Local

Recently, a few of us joined local sustainable advocacy organization Root Local and biked the River to Mountain Trail from Marietta Square to Downtown Smyrna to The Battery.

It was about 16 mile round trip and the trail is about 95% complete with the final portion under construction right now. Overall, it’s a great trail but there are some concerning spots, most notably the Windy Hill/Atlanta Rd intersection.

The route we took from Downtown Marietta to Downtown Smyrna and then the Battery.
The crew at the Mountain to River trail bridge near downtown Marietta (credit to Tabitha)

Recent Commissioner Meeting Updates

The last two Commissioners meetings had one thing in common: they were both long!! The Commissioners meeting on 9/13 lasted over 5 hours and the meeting on 9/27 lasted 4 and a half hours.

The primary reason for the length of these meetings was due to public hearings on the code amendments.

On 9/13, 26 people made comments at either the public hearing or public comment phase, 23 of which were related to the code amendments. 15 of these were about trash collection. About 5 of them were regarding short-term rentals and the remaining were about multi-family units. The highlights of the meeting were that a new Economic Development Director was hired and some allocation of ARPA funding to various causes.

On 9/27, 30 people made public comments at either the public hearing or public comment phase, 25 of which were related to the code amendments. Since the trash code changes were removed, the majority were related to either multi-family housing or short-term rentals. The primary highlight of this meeting was that the code amendments were approved. You can see an overview of the code changes and the votes in the presentation here.

Upcoming Commissioner Meeting

Guess what! We have another Board of Commissioners meeting coming up tomorrow (as I write this) at 9AM. Here’s the agenda for the meeting:

  • 3 Presentations
  • 2 Public Hearings (one on SPLOST projects for parks and the other on the 5 year Comp Plan update)
  • Consent Agenda has 15 items
  • Regular Agenda has 21 items

Looking at the agenda, there’s nothing that stands out except for the public hearings and one item (No. 36) related to a few transportation projects: Big Shanty Rd widening, Chattahoochee River Trail, and Cumberland Core Loop.

News & Updates

MARTA has announced that they have selected Collie Greenwood as the General Manager

Culdesac held a public meeting for the Murphy Crossing Development in Atlanta
Note: Their other development in Tempe, AZ is pretty awesome and car free!

Reader input (Thanks Tyler): Mableton Improvement Coalition hosted their economic development summit recently. Here’s a good recap of the event!

Atlanta has released their plan to spend $750 million on infrastructure. Here’s the official document. Highlight: $151 million for sidewalks, $131 million for safe streets.

Expect lots of traffic over the next 9 months on the top-end of I-285

Larry Johnson of the Cobb County Courier has continued his Accidentally Car Free series!

Here are some great graphs showing the impact of more bikes and biking in Copenhagen. My favorite? The one showing that there are now more bicycles than cars entering the city center!

How do we make this happen in Cobb?

Thanks for reading and if you know of anything happening in the county, let us know so we can add it to next week’s issue. Email us at abettercobb@gmail.com

-Matt