http://www.ajc.com The latest headlines from AJC en-us Copyright 2009, Cox Newspapers Inc., AJC Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:02:40 EST Newspapers COXnet RSS Generator v1.0 http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/08/17/52/image_1352178.jpg http://www.ajc.com 5 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/2008/12/13/mkinged_1213.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/2008/12/13/mkinged_1213.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:48:41 EST The fallout between Cobb EMC and its for-profit, but money-losing affiliate, Cobb Energy, is not likely to go away quickly now that both parties have agreed to settle the lawsuit that so rancorously split the utility over the last year. While the EMC's members have their company back, what they still may lack is any confidence that the utility's executives and board of directors really understands what happened. Indeed there are still rumblings within Cobb Energy's management and stockholders that the whole affair was much ado about nothing. They contend it was created by an unholy alliance between this newspaper — which revealed details about the financial arrangements between the two companies that most co-op members had never known — and greedy trial lawyers trying to make a quick buck by representing a handful of disgruntled members. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/12/06/mkinged_1206.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/12/06/mkinged_1206.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 5 Dec 2008 20:42:46 EST Cobb County municipal officials and developers and their bond-attorney friends keep giving redevelopment a bad name. In fact, their abuse of the system makes it difficult for those of us who believe government has a legitimate role in helping to finance redevelopment in parts of the county where it is desperately needed. Four weeks ago, Georgia voters took a giant leap of faith along those lines by changing the state Constitution to allow school taxes, in very specific cases, to be deferred on property under redevelopment. (The amendment was needed after a state Supreme Court ruling in February that school taxes could not be used for such purposes.) http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/11/22/mkinged_1122.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/11/22/mkinged_1122.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:17:08 EST There is no consolation for a parent in the death of her child, and certainly none that can be achieved by lashing out at someone else. Yet Altamesa Walker couldn't help but respond that way in a TV interview after the death of her little daughter, Brandee Kelley. Little Brandee had been hit and killed by a car on South Cobb Drive just before dawn Monday morning. Her mother, who was with Brandee, had put her family at serious risk by deciding to try to dart across five lanes of traffic, and the choice proved tragic. I feel for Walker. Her child is dead in a senseless accident. I also have sympathy for the driver of the car, who became the unfair target of Walker's ire after the accident. Even though he was exonerated by police and had called 911 as soon as the accident happened, his life will not be the same. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/stories/2008/11/15/mkinged_1115.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/stories/2008/11/15/mkinged_1115.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:39:36 EST More observations about the election from a Cobb County perspective: The big bear is out from hibernation. Georgia's mountain man, Zell Miller, has got it all wrong. The big Democratic bear — former governor and U.S. senator — hibernated throughout the long presidential and Senate campaign over the summer and fall only to emerge a few weeks before winter to urge Georgians to vote for Republican Saxby Chambliss in the Dec. 2 runoff election for U.S. Senate. Georgia's "maverick Democrat" shared the stage Thursday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre with defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain warning that the Democrats want a filibuster-proof Senate to back up the "spend-the-wealth, income-distribution" agenda of President-elect Barack Obama. If "maverick" is meant to define a politician uncomfortable with his own party's values and agenda, no doubt Zell Miller is a maverick. Then again the same could be said for his friend, John McCain. Both guys should have switched parties years ago. Cobb is still firmly Republican territory. There's a reason why Chambliss chose Cobb County as the site to hold his first major event in the Senate runoff against Democrat Jim Martin. The county is definitely trending back toward a more even split between Republicans and Democrats, but the GOP still rules. A cursory analysis of election results from Nov. 4 shows that four of the six cities in the county (Marietta, Smyrna, Austell and Powder Springs) now are Democratic territory. But the cities of Acworth and Kennesaw and unincorporated east Cobb — the most affluent and heavily populated section of the county — remain heavily Republican. The outcome may have been different had the Democrats found viable candidates to put up for local offices and legislative seats there, but they didn't. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/11/08/mkinged_1108.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/11/08/mkinged_1108.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 7 Nov 2008 19:50:52 EST Handicapping the outcome of a vote on something as hard to decipher as a constitutional amendment on redevelopment and taxes is risky business. After waiting in line for hours and at the end of a long ballot, voters' eyes can glaze over and they can just as easily tap "yes" as "no" just to complete their civic duty. But promoters of Amendment No. 2 on Tuesday's ballot — the one that allows school districts to forgo school property taxes to finance bonds for redevelopment projects — were correct to target Fulton and DeKalb counties as their base. The measure passed statewide by a relatively narrow 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, a difference of fewer than 110,000 votes out of 3.6 million cast. One of the counties that bucked the statewide trend was Cobb County, which in recent years became ground zero for opposition to tax allocation districts, the mechanism that allows local property taxes to help pay off debt for redevelopment projects in designated zones. Cobb voters rejected the measure by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/stories/2008/11/01/mkinged_1101.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/stories/2008/11/01/mkinged_1101.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:30:25 EDT If you are watching election results through the prism of Cobb County's changing political and racial demographic next week, pay attention to these races: Martin vs. Chambliss http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/25/mkinged_1025.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/25/mkinged_1025.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:13:19 EDT Once the November election is over, Cobb County will have completely revamped its seven-member school board from those embarrassing days — not that long ago — when it was attaching "evolution is just a theory" stickers on science textbooks and trying to spend $75 million on take-home laptop computers for students. Fortunately, both those bad ideas were halted by judges who ruled the board lacked the authority to make such decisions. Yet the memories linger. In January, four new members elected next month will join the three current members who were elected in 2006, with all seven replacing incumbents who were beaten or voluntarily resigned from the board since those controversies. And maybe, just maybe, that newly reinvigorated board will get its act together and focus on some important issues facing the Cobb schools. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/18/mkinged_1018.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/18/mkinged_1018.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:01:53 EDT Vacant strip malls are the acne scars left on the suburban landscape from disposable retail development. In metro Atlanta, they're everywhere. When you get excited to hear a new Wal-Mart might replace one of them, you know it's really bad. It's even worse when Wal-Mart changes its mind and leaves you and your neighbors more time to drive past the acres of pock-marked asphalt, rusting light stands and the darkened signs of stores long-since departed. So it was with genuine rapture that those of us who live on the southwest side of Marietta greeted the news this week that Cobb County government is spending $6.25 million to buy a mostly-vacant strip mall on Powder Springs Road and turn it into a senior citizens center and government offices. The county also plans a $3.6 million makeover of the site, including changing the exterior design of the place. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/04/mkinged_1004.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/10/04/mkinged_1004.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 3 Oct 2008 18:36:16 EDT This week's trifecta of news and notes from around Cobb County: The governor and the commission chairman. It's getting more obvious that County Commission Chairman Sam Olens and Gov. Sonny Perdue — both Republicans — aren't on the same wavelength. Olens has become increasingly critical of mismanagement within the state Department of Transportation, both as Cobb chairman and as chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission, the 10-county regional planning agency. He obviously cheesed off the governor's office again earlier in the week by suggesting Perdue should have invoked his authority to order an odd/even license-plate fill-up rule when Georgia's gasoline supply was disrupted by back-to-back hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. A spokesman for Perdue fired back that if Olens thought the idea was so good, he could have ordered it himself for Cobb County. But as the chairman noted, that idea would work only if adopted on a metrowide basis, at the very least. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/2008/09/27/mkinged_0927.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/2008/09/27/mkinged_0927.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:35:22 EDT Despite the drought, the grass is plenty green on the site of what was once the Johnny Walker Homes public housing project in Marietta. But aside from the grass and the antique-reproduction streetlights, not much has come out of the ground on the vacant tract. A few blocks away, on another former public housing site, sits another depressing, cleared-out landscape of fading dreams. Meeting Place, one of the city's most ambitious redevelopment projects, was to be a collection of homes, condominiums and apartments within walking distance of the historic Marietta Square. Only one square block of it has been built. Now, both projects are on hold, victims of a collapsed housing market and tighter lending requirements. They may indeed come back to life at some point and renew the hopes of Marietta officials to get the city back in the redevelopment game. But Meeting Place and other similar projects around Cobb County — which until recently was a hotbed of activity for redevelopment and innovative schemes to finance them — may also live or die by how voters statewide decide a state constitutional amendment in November. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/09/20/mkinged_0920.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/09/20/mkinged_0920.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:25:22 EDT Wrapping up a busy week in Cobb County with these thoughts: The SPLOST vote. It appeared closer than it actually was. The measure passed with more than 60 percent, which was good because it was necessary and the right thing to do. But the next time the Cobb County School District asks us to renew a sales tax for school construction — and there will be a next time, there always is — voters in the district should insist on a few conditions. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/09/06/mkinged_0906.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/09/06/mkinged_0906.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 5 Sep 2008 20:37:24 EDT Like swarming locusts that show up every few years, the "Stop the Road" signs are back in the Whitlock Avenue area of Marietta. Someone has floated the idea, again, of widening the main thoroughfare leading into and out of the west side of the Cobb County seat. Such talk is heresy among Old Mariettans, who vigilantly guard the aesthetics of the two-lane road the way Buckhead residents want to protect West Paces Ferry Road or north Fulton residents guard Johnson Ferry Road from hordes of outsiders who use them to get somewhere else. But new homes and retail shopping malls in west Marietta, west Cobb County and neighboring Paulding County continue to be opened and pour new commuters daily onto the road. Whitlock area residents complain that it's not their fault that development on the corridor hasn't been better controlled, and the commuters complain that Marietta refuses to deal with the reality that it is no longer just a drive-through suburb. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/30/mkinged_0830.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/30/mkinged_0830.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:58:33 EDT It's going to be hard enough convincing Cobb County voters to renew a 1-percent sales tax to finance school construction, technology and other capital needs for another five years. But in recent weeks, school district officials have made it even harder. That's too bad, because the Sept. 16 vote requires careful deliberation and will affect every taxpayer in the county, not just those who own property. Over the summer, Cobb Superintendent Fred Sanderson stumbled badly by deciding to promote a middle school principal to a high school post only to find out after the appointment that the guy is an unreformed sexist. That total breakdown within the administration — the promotion came while one of Sanderson's other administrators was investigating the principal for previous bad behavior — was made worse when the appointee, Lawrence Bynum, got to his new job. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/23/mkinged_0823.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/23/mkinged_0823.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:09:54 EDT Of the three main archetypal Atlanta suburbs — Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and east Cobb County — only east Cobb has not decided to become a city. Why is that? The three communities, located in three different counties, literally bump up against each other. They grew up during the white-flight era from the city of Atlanta in the 1960s, but eventually became the residential destination of choice for many newcomers to metro Atlanta in the booming 1980s. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/14/mkinged_0814.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/opinion/king/stories/2008/08/14/mkinged_0814.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=17 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:37:51 EDT She loved this yearly ritual, when kids close the book on summer and head back to school. Since retiring from teaching four years ago, she'd taken to waiting with neighborhood kids at the school bus stop in front of our house, quizzing them about who their teachers were, telling them how much fun they would have learning new things this year. If she missed them in the morning, she'd catch them when the bus brought them home. When she left her third-grade classroom, she didn't look back. She always said that if it ever became just a job, she'd stop. You don't teach halfway, or hold anything back, she said. You go all-out. Still, she missed the kids. I could tell. The start of the school year reconnected her with a nearly 30-year career as a teacher. It was fun to watch her with them at the bus stop.