Is it time for Cobb to pass - Another Parks Bond?

From the Marietta Daily Journal on Sunday, May 18, 2008 by Joe Kirby, Editorial Page editor

Cobb residents voted by an absolutely overwhelming 70-to-30 percent margin in 2006 to tax themselves in order to buy land for future parks. The money has been put to good use too, with four choice pieces of undeveloped Cobb real estate now owned by the public and slated to become parks.

So now, why not play a doubleheader? That is, why not have another parks bond referendum -- maybe as early as this fall?

There are answers pro and con, and I'll tackle the "pros" first.

First of all, while the 2006 bond has brought the county four appealing tracts of land, there's no reason to think that they, combined with the parks we already have, will be enough to satisfy our future need for parkland. Cobb has about 5,160 acres of parkland at present, including the four new parcels, for its 660,000 people. That's about 2 percent of the 217,000 acres of land in the county. Meanwhile, our population is going to keep growing, to an estimated 763,000 in 2030, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

High-ranking county officials said two years ago the county optimally should have an additional 2,000 acres more of parks than it now has. One would assume that would still be true, because the four parks bond-financed purchases total only a fraction of that, some 161.7 acres.

Yes, Cobb is fortunate that it also is home to substantial federal parkland, the 2,920-acre Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' acreage along Lake Allatoona. But those parks are congested, too. KMNBP, for example, is visited by between 1.2 million and 1.4 million people per year, most of them recreationists, not the history-minded.

One of the pressing arguments for the bond last time is just as pressing now: The county is just about built out. Tracts big enough to be suitable for a park, even a passive park, are hard to come by. Half a decade from now there may be few left. A decade from now, there certainly will not be any.

And that brings us to perhaps the best argument for rushing another bond question onto the November ballot: the fact that with the real estate and home-building markets in low gear and interest rates still at rock bottom, we have an unexpected window of opportunity for buying land at affordable prices. That window won't stay open forever.
Plus, as a practical matter, the strikingly diverse coalition of advocates that were so effective in touting the parks bond last time around could easily be reactivated. With a successful template to follow, their work should be simpler this time. There's still adequate time to lay the groundwork for such an effort. The deadline for submitting a referendum question in time to make it onto the November ballot is not until Aug. 8, according to Cobb Elections Supervisor Sharon Dunn.

But as mentioned above, there also are reasons for holding off on another parks bond. For starters, there's the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum for schools expected in September. School supporters are sure to argue that the parks bond might overshadow the SPLOST even though they would be two months apart, and there's no question that the parks question would be the more popular of the two.

One solution would be for the parks advocates to officially endorse the SPLOST as well and work just as hard for its passage as for their own measure. If we're buying parkland for our children, it makes just as much sense to make sure the cost of educating them is covered as well. And if voters are upset at how their school taxes have been spent, they should take it out against the school board members in November, not take it out against our children in the SPLOST referendum.

Anti-tax sentiment must always be taken into consideration, especially in a conservative community like Cobb. Yet the cost of another parks bond might be no more noticeable than that of the current one. The cost to taxpayers of the 2006 bond was just $13.60 per year for the owners of a $200,000 house. That's the equivalent of three fancy lattes in return for a gift that will keep on giving and giving to future generations of Cobb children and adults.

Some will say that buying attractive land takes it off the tax rolls and robs the tax digest of future growth. That's true; but it's also true that developing such land would bring tax costs of its own in terms of schools, roads, police, etc.

Still others will say the county should wait until the current bond money is all spent and the new land has been digested. But it will be years before the new parks are up and running. By then, there wouldn't be much left to choose from. The beauty of buying now is that the county can pick and choose what it wants and negotiate from a position of strength, rather than having to settle for whatever undeveloped land we can get.

Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks' famous line was, "Let's play two!" And maybe those who united to pass the 2006 parks bond should be thinking along the same lines.