Activists revive support for bond to buy parkland

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Monday, June 30, 2008 by Tom Opdyke

They came with notepads and camp chairs and folding metal chairs to sit in a building where classic cars are restored.

Amid drill presses and pneumatic tools, near where a rusting Red Racer children's wagon is perched on a display shelf, about 50 people sat in Paul Paulson's classic car shop in western Cobb County on Sunday to talk about preservation, instead of restoration.

They quickly heard what they came for: Cobb government officials think they can raise another $40 million to buy parkland without a tax increase if voters will OK it in November.

The people in the shop — homeowners, business operators and environmental activists — only needed that word to crank up a local lobbying effort that in 2006 produced an authorization for the first bonds by 72 percent of those who voted.

Paulson, who led the last effort, said he needed $81 to reactivate the group's Web site and e-mail list. Supporters passed a straw hat while county Commission Chairman Sam Olens talked. It soon had enough money for one man to get change for a $100 bill.

Olens asked Paulson to gather the group and re-energize the effort in support of a second bond issue for parks.

Coming off a huge success in the past year in which Cobb has bought or acquired control of more than 400 acres with about $37 million, Olens and the others knew it was the right time to put their case for a second wave of open space purchases.

The thought was ratified immediately by David Hong.

"I'm here to pledge the East Cobb Civic Association will support a second bond. They just don't know it yet," said Hong, the association's president.

Olens said the County Commission would vote July 21 on whether to put a request for another bond issue on the November ballot.

The mechanics for taking on the additional debt without a tax increase involve spreading out the bond over 15 years — instead of 10 for the current $40 million parks bond — and using one-tenth of one mill from the fire district tax. That amounts to about $8 a year in a tax shift for the owner of a $200,000 home.

Commissioner Tim Lee said the shift would not harm the county's fire and emergency operations because the fire district tax yield has grown more than projected.

Olens added, "Even at the lower [fire] rate, we're taking in a similar amount of money."

Cobb has obtained six of the seven priority parcels it identified for its first round of purchases.

If a second bond were approved, some of the lesser tracts identified in the first round might be sought.

Lee, whose northeast Cobb district saw only one greenspace purchase in the first round, said that "a higher, better network of pocket parks" could be part of the goal for the next round of buying.

WHAT'S BEEN BOUGHT

Cobb County has agreed to spend a little more than $37 million of its $40 million. Here is what it bought and what Cobb intends to do with the land:

• 15 acres on Henderson Road off Veteran's Memorial Highway. Price: $2.4 million. Contains Civil War earthworks, adds to other county property and will connect to the Nickajack Creek Greenway Walking Trail.

• 18 acres off Stilesboro Road in northwest Cobb. Price: $1.4 million. Addition to the 75-acre Leone Hall Price Memorial Park on the south side of Stilesboro. The county also owns 14 acres on the north side of Stilesboro.

• 112 acres off Dallas Highway at Old Hamilton Road. Price: $18.8 million. Will be combined with 44-acre Oregon Park.

• 26.5 acres off Wesley Chapel Road in northeast Cobb. Price: $4.3 million. Much of the land is pasture, with some wooded area surrounding a pond.

• 138 acres off Brownsville Road. Price: $5.2 million. Addition to 88-acre Stout Park gives Cobb 226 acres of open space, 40 acres more than Atlanta's historic Piedmont Park.

• 135 acres off Lower Roswell Road. Price: $5 million (Cobb's share). The Hyde farm, which borders the Chattahoochee River, will be operated jointly with the National Parks Service as a educational center with a working farm that shows agriculture in the early 1900s.