Sunshine laws apply to citizen committee

From the Marietta Daily Journal's Around Town column on Tuesday, November 21, 2006, by MDJ associate editor Bill Kinney

WITH PASSAGE of the $40 million referendum for parkland acquisition safely in the rear view mirror as of Nov. 7, its backers now have moved to the next phase of the process, which is selecting the 15 members of the committee that will recommend various tracts for acquisition.

Parks proponents met at the Ruth Ellis Dance Studio on Marietta Square on Sunday afternoon to discuss the next steps. And with the way the Atlanta Falcons have been playing as of late, it was no big deal for them to give up an afternoon of watching the NFL to do so.

It was the same location at which Parks Coalition members had met throughout the summer to discuss strategy, but Sunday's meeting turned out to be the biggest yet, with 50 attendees, 20 of them first-timers.

"That reminds me of the old expression, 'Success has a thousand fathers, but failure only one,'" said Coalition head Paul Paulson afterward with a smile.

Among those on hand - all of whom were big backers of the referendum from the outset - were Cobb Board of Commissioners Chairman Sam Olens and Commissioners Helen Goreham and Tim Lee. Others included county Properties Manager Bob Ash and county Planning Commissioner Bob Ott.

The advisory board will have 15 members, but Paulson will not be one of them, by his choice, citing his busy schedule.

Each commissioner will appoint three members to the body, which then will look at properties available, at the county's needs, and then make recommendations to the board of commissioners, which will have final say on what land to try to buy.

Two likely members as Olens' appointees to the advisory board have already surfaced. They are local attorney John Pape, treasurer of the Coalition, and attorney Gary Wolovick, an Emory Law School classmate of Olens' who also was active in the successful effort to add four acres to the Kolb's Farm portion of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park a few years ago.

Paulson stressed that the advisory committee will fall under the state's Sunshine Laws.

"We want to give it transparency so that people can see what's going on with it," he told the MDJ's Joe Kirby on Monday.

Meanwhile, Paulson is consulting with representatives from the national Trust for Public Land and the Georgia Conservancy to see what processes those not-for-profits use to determine how specific tracts of land are worth saving. The group may also look to see what steps were followed in DeKalb and Carroll counties, which passed park-acquisition referendums in recent years.

"There's no need for us to try and reinvent the wheel if we don't have to," Paulson said.

There's also the possibility that the Trust could hold an educational seminar for board members, he added.

Paulson said that the Cobb Parks Coalition, the loose-knit group he assembled to lobby voters to back the referendum, will stay in existence for the time being and have its next meeting sometime after Christmas. Other major figures in that group are retired Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park Superintendent John Cissell, communications director Diane Quammen, Joni Cope, and Marietta businessman Larry Ceminsky.