Joni House: Cobb needs parks, not tantrums

From the Marietta Daily Journal on Sunday, October 26, 2008 by Joni House, guest columnist

There's a current dust-up over Cobb's greenspace priorities brought to a head by the possible purchase of the 9.95-acre Hamby tract in downtown Kennesaw. The property was part of the 2006 Greenspace Bond list of recommended possible purchases.

On the one hand, the city is reluctant to see the parcel go as greenspace. We can understand that the carrot of future tax roll revenues that development would bring is a powerful carrot indeed. On the other hand, the county is pursuing its due diligence in considering whether the parcel in fact merits purchase as public greenspace with a portion of the funds remaining from the 2006 bond issue.

External pressure on the county to purchase this tract is being articulated in some citizen circles in declarative, absolute statements extolling this parcel as "the best" of all uses for the funds remaining from the original 2006 $40 million bond issue.

But in the Citizen Advisory Committee's recommendations on spending the 2006 bond revenues, "what's best" took on many meanings. The Citizens Advisory Committee spent countless hours, some into the late nights over cold chicken fingers, in vigorous discussions about what Cobb citizens now and in the future would most value in greenspace tracts in a public portfolio of recreational lands. In many cases, parcels that were appealing to some of us were also-rans to others. Some members valued historical merit, others hydrology, others accessibility to non-mobile populations, others connectivity to existing parks.

The 15 minds met by building an objective rating system that identified multiple criteria for the "ideal" greenspace purchase, weighting each criterion as to how important it was, and then using a mathematical model to calculate a numeric score for each property.

The relative rankings of the properties were often "caveated" in our recommendations to the Board of Commissioners. One of the main cautions raised time and time again in our recommendations to the board was what the best use of citizen money would be in various combinations. Even though the committee was not charged with financial aspects of the transactions, as we had information on a parcel or could see disparities in relative possible pricing among competing parcels, we passed that information along as footnotes to our recommendations.

For example, we could observe that pricing over a certain amount per acre would have made one parcel seem overpriced relative to others, or, we could identify that a property was eligible for external matching funds to help stretch Cobb taxpayer dollars.

The committee had considerable heartburn about whether our "good only within certain dollar criteria" could actually be executed within the highly complex world of real estate transactions where the nuance of the recommendations is easily lost. We also worried about the influences of "buy it simply because it's cheap" would be the pitfall at the other end of the negotiation spectrum.

Yes, the committee members all had our favorite parcels. And yes, we were appointed by our respective commissioners who rightfully were concerned about their districts. Yet in fairness, we never felt pressure to allocate by voter population, relative taxes paid, city vs. unincorporated, or other divisive factors that could have been introduced to derail a portfolio approach.

And most amazing in the process, as a committee, when our advocacy speeches had been given (and re-given), we could come together for the good of the county as a whole. We honestly felt that the committee and the county staff had been given the statesman-like example of the board of commissioners to act in a non-partisan, non-polarizing way.

Where the purchases were made depended largely on where the land was nominated, whether it was available in a willing seller transaction and how it ranked based on the criteria the committee developed. Timing and negotiation processes, market forces and sheer tenacity on the part of county staff and dedicated sellers made what was purchased a very strong county-wide portfolio.

It's just plain wrong for anyone now to go on record and state unequivocally that any parcel remaining is "the best." Invariably all of our recommendations were qualified in some way. But just as the history-justifies-spending-greenspace-money advocates may want to lose their myopia, so should the cities think of their duty to support the county in which their residents live.

But really, the $3 million from the last bond issue shouldn't be burning a hole in anyone's pocket right now. Arbitrage rebate is not an issue. There are other properties on the list. $3 million could allow the county to option some land now. Or, the $3 million could just be rolled forward into what hopefully will be a new bond issue with an entirely new list of lands nominated and evaluated.

No matter how contentious our committee debates were, no matter how late we went, no matter how many packs of "Shut the Hell Up Gum" were passed around the room, nobody threatened to take their ball and go home. Nobody offered to sabotage the process because someone else said their land parcel was less than the best.

We'll be voting on Nov. 4 to add $40 million more bond funding to expand the remarkably successful greenspace portfolio to reach even more of our citizens. Threats to throw the future Cobb greenspace program under the bus for a single parcel of land or for any other divisive allocation scheme are tantrum-throwing, not advocacy. And Cobb citizens deserve better.

Joni House is president of the Grayfen Group, a management consulting firm in Marietta, is co-chair of Friends of Hyde Farm and is vice chair of Parks Bond Citizens Advisory Committee.



Posted comments:

Enter Your Name says - Yes! Our County leaders should not give in to the pressures of a few when a committee of 15 took careful consideration when selecting properties.