Speaker Summaries

Bill Byrne, candidate for Cobb County Commission Chair, spoke at the regular Madison Forum luncheon on February 11, 2008.

He said that about a year ago he decided to run again for Commission Chairman As he began to get back into business and participate, tiied to fix things without a whole lot of success, tried to change some things with a whole lot of frustration, he decided that if you can’t change the system, you’ve got to provide an alternative. As he spoke to a number of various groups of different interests, he had to make himself known again. It was very important to him to say this is how I feel, but it was much more important to know how we feel. So, getting the feedback was most important, so see if his feelings, concerns, and reservations were shared by anybody, let along a majority. Over that year, he began to realize there re five major issues in this county. There are two that are county-wide. There are three others, and depending on where you are in this county is dependent upon which is most important. Depending on which group you are talking about, that can change as well. Those are the five issues, he said, he wanted to talk about today, because he sincerely believes that’s what the campaign is going to be abut in this primary season. Cobb County is going to have to make decisions, because he and Sam do not agree on any of the five. Mr. Byrne said there are reasons for that. There are justifications for that.

Mr. Byrne said he would have to define for us what Mr. Olens’ views are on these five issues, since Mr. Olens was not present. Most of them have been very well documented, but when you are telling a group what someone else thinks, you have to be factual and honest about it. He said he brought documentation he would refer to as he went through the process, and as he goes through the process, he would ask a constant question. He said he didn’t want us to answer the question; he just wanted us to energize our thought process about that issue at that time, in time. Think about what he is talking about, because he is sure that 75% of what he will be talking about, we don’t know about. And there is a reason for that. So, the question he will be asking us throughout the presentation is: Do you know that?

Mr. Byrne said the first two issues are universally of concern throught the county. The first is water. The second is immigration. He said immigration surprised him. He know there were pockets of concern, but he never realized the extent of that concern was countywide. There are three difference counties inside Cobb County, depending on where you are. They are geographically and politically divided. They make up our voter base. The other three issues are transportation, growth management, and taxation and spending.

The first is water. Mr. Byrne said we are In the third year of a five year projected drought in Cobb County. We just finished the third year. The year 2008 is projected to be worse than last year. In ’09 even worse, before it begins to get better. It’s not his opinion, although it is his viewpoint. The second fact is that the State of Georgia is the only state in a 16-county southeastern region that does not have a single natural lake. Every lake inside the State of Georgia is man-made. To give an example of the water sources that metro Atlanta and south Georgia are relying on. Because what happens in south Georgia is extremely important in metro Atlanta. The Chattahoochee River begins in a spring in the north Georgia mountains and flows through our state. The Flint River begins in a spring at the end of a runway at Hartsfield=Jackson Airport and provides the volume of water necessary to south Georgia for agricultural uses. The two rivers come to a common point in southwest Georgia to form the Apalachicola River that flows through the panhandle of Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Allatoona, main source for Cobb, for Paulding, for Douglas, and for Cherokee Counties. Managed by the Corps of Engineers. Serviced by Cobb-Marietta Water Authority – not Cobb County. They are the wholesale provider of water treatment plant, purification plant in Cobb County. Cobb County buys its water from the Cobb-Marietta Water Authority. Paulding County gets 100% of its water from the Cobb-Marietta Water Authority, Cherokee County and Douglas County proportional, and even the City of Atlanta to some degree. The Cobb-Marietta Water Authority is enormously important in this debate. Lake Lanier, man-made, is organized and controlled by the Corps of Engineers as well. It services the majority of the counties and jurisdictions south of Cobb. Every time you hear the debate about the three states at war with each other, legally, for the last 20 years, it’s over the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier. It has zero impact on us, because we don’t get anything from either one. Our water comes from Allatoona. Mr. Byrne said, as he speaks to us, the lake is at 38% capacity. In January we were two inches below the norm for January. In February it hardly rained a lick in almost two weeks. The projections of the drought for 2008 are very real. The government in the State of Georgia passed legislation. It was the first thing accomplished in this general assembly. It’s useless and they think they have resolved and solved our problem. They’ve created eleven water planning districts all across the states, put Cobb in a 16-county, political boundary district where their one sole purpose, over a three year period of time, is plan and evaluate the program. Mr. Byrne asks, what have we been doing the last three years? Plan and evaluate? We should have had that long before now. He says that is telling him we are going to plan and evaluate and not do anything for thee more years. What has Cobb County done to plan for this? Absolutely nothing. There is no water management plan within the Cobb County government, let alone the Cobb County water system. We are reactionary to what happened to us, not plalnn9ing, and evolving, and adjusting to crises. More importantly, the Atlanta Regional Commission, our planning agency that includes a 10-county metropolitan Atlanta area has absolutely no water resource management plan. Governor Barnes, in the last year of his administration, created the North Georgia Water Planning District. He recognized the potential problems and the realistic viewpoint that traffic and air quality were not going to be the determining factor for the quality of our growth, but the quality and quantity of water to sustain us all. He created that agency within 16 counties. His problem. - he didn’t fund it.
They meet, coordinate drink coffee, and go home. The is no master plan from the North Georgia Water Planning Agency. Government failure from the state, the regional, and the county level is rampant. Conservative Republicans have failed their constituencies. So, today we are in the middle of a crisis, and no one knows what to do about it. What’s Cobb County’s reaction to it? We basically oversimplified two things. First of all the governor issued an order of conservation that all counties, including Cobb, but water use by 10%. Cobb County did that. It was one of the few counties that was able to do that and comply with the law. That’s pretty easy to do in November and December when we re not watering our lawns, washing our cars, and filling up our swimming pools. But we did it. And, secondly, the Board of Commissioners, to their credit, said we are going to put in a system where the more water you use, the more you are going to pay for it. Mr. Byrne said he encouraged that, he agrees with that. Good policy. But, he said, we cannot conserve our way out of this problem. The State of Georgia, the ARC that Sam Olens is chairman of, have made these statements: “Growth is not the problem with our water. It is not the cause of the problem”. But they don’t carry it further. That factually accurate is realistically false. If you’re looking at the big picture, within the Chattahoochee, Lake Lanier, and Allatoona at their maximum capacity, water is plentiful. In functional, realistic, everyday terms, half the water we have, by law is sent south. We can’t use it. It is sent sough to Alabama and Florida. We have 50% of our capacity to sustain our growth. When you have that condition, the density and the population can only be sustained by a certain amount of water. When you cut your lake level in half, and say that’s all I got 20% of it is unusable. It’s used for filtration. It’s below the inlet in which water leaves the dam. You can’t get to it. You can’t use it. So, in reality, we’ve got 30% capacity from Lake Allatoona with which to sustain our quality of life and expand it through growth. We cannot conserve our way out of this problem, and growth has to be evaluated. And we have got of visit our policies and make the necessary changes, because what we have is a limited resource in which to sustain ourselves. Mr. Byrne said, in his viewpoint, Governor Purdue, Lt. Governor Cagle, Speaker Richardson, Sam Olens, and the ARC have totally failed us. This isn’t a new issue. We’ve known about this. We’ve completed three years of drought, three years of discussion, three years of debate, and what are we going to do about it? We are now in our fourth year, and we’re still studying the stuff. That’s not leadership. That’s not problem solving. That’s not serving constituencies. That’s avoiding making the difficult decisions. Mr. Byrne asked – what makes him different from Sam Olens? In 1997, at the Atlanta Regional Commission and to the Board of Commissioners, he made a very detailed presentation on two issues. One was water. And, he said to them that we needed to change our focus. That our water supply can be determined by volume, and that volume should determine our growth policies. We can no longer accept and attract and welcome in everyone as if our utilities were endless. He said we aren’t going to find any new water, so we’ve got to create new water. He offered two concepts. The Board of Commissioners in Cobb said we don’t have the problem. We don’t have the resources to address it, so we’re not going to support it. Without their support, the ARC was very kind and let him make his presentational put it into committee, and it never got out.

Mr. Byrne said we need to create regional retention ponds along our major drainage basins. A retention pond is designed to catch water, hold water, and dissipate it through percolation and evaporation. It’s a manner in which you control storm water runoff. His proposal was to put in a concrete or asphalt floor within a regional retention pond so it would
T percolate and minimize the evaporation for when we have major storms, pump that water into dump trucks, carry it to our water treatment plants, pur it into our system. That’s where all the water in our lakes comes from. Why are we allowing this resource to go unused? Depending on the month or year in which we generally get 50 inches of rain in this area, we can capture 26% of that in other than closed areas. Secondly, and they are now doing this in Orange County, California, convert waste water into drinking water. We came close. In our of our treatment plants, the northwest treatment plant, we put in the necessary technology to change waste water into what’s called gray water. And, we pump that to various recreational facilities, including Cobblestone Golf Course, and we irrigate the fairways and the greens with it. Gray water is a waste product from solid waste. And, he said, we need to install the technology to turn gray water to drinking water. What are our options? Two additional sources of water in addition to what we have. The technology is in place to do it. The political will is not. What are we going to plan for? What do they have to study that they don’t already know? Do you know where Allatoona it? Do you know where that water comes from? Let’s get past that. Lanier. What happens if we lost Lanier? The Federal Court ruled last week against Georgia and for Alabama and Florida. We have to continue sending half our water to them. If we don’t address the issue of growth, if we lost Lanier, do you think the rest of the region is going to let Allatoona sit over here untouched? The General Assembly wants to charge out with weapons loaded and take water from the Tennessee River in Tennessee. They just never asked Tennessee about it. That’s the kind of leadership that you elected and sent down to that big black hole called the golden dome. Mr. Byrne said that kind of leadership terrifies the living hell out of him. We cannot conserve our way out of this problem. But we can manage the problem. ‘Water should determine our growth policies. Our growth policies shouldn’t determine the amount of water we need to sustain us.

Mr. Byrne’s second issue is transportation, which, he said, is equally important. First, he addressed an article in the Marietta Daily Journal of December 16th in which Sam Olens says; ’Cobb, metro Atlanta growth is coming at a heavy price’. Mr. Byrne says Mr. Olens is right. We are paying a helleva price for the growth in this county. He quoted a portion of the article: “Let’s not forget that, thanks to the foresight of Olens and the rest of the Board of Commissioners, a new reservoir, built jointly by Cobb and the City of Canton, is coming on line this month.” Three lies. They know better. In 1995, Cecil Pruitt, the then-mayor of Canton, came to Mr. Byrne at ARC with a plan for a reservoir and asked if he would jointly support his presentation to the Cobb-Marietta Water Authority. They went through about six months of evaluating his proposal. The Cobb-Marietta Water Authority, in 1996, adopted the concept of that reservoir. Twelve years later, it’s completed and filling up as we speak. It won’t be ready next month. It will be two years before the reservoir fills up if it’s a normal rainfall year. It isn’t. It won’t. It’s not going to be there. They know that. Sam Olens wasn’t even an elected official, and the Board of Commissioners never had anything to do with it. The Cobb-Marietta Water Authority did, and does. Mayor Cecil Pruitt did. Mr. Byrne said he helped him. He said he didn’t do it, he endorsed it. $100,000,000 later we have a reservoir. 25% of the financial obligations belong to the City of Canton. 75%, $75,000,000 belongs to the taxpayers of Cobb.

Earlier, Mr. Byrne said, he talked about how Governor Purdue, Lt. Governor Cagle, and Speaker Richardson failed us miserably on water. The only thing they’ve done worse is transportation. They don’t have a clue about how to deal with that issue. But they’re full of proposals. GDOT, Georgia Department of Transportation, is a bureaucratic nightmare, a totally incompetent agency. He said, show me one road in five years that GDOT has started, let alone finished. Not one. About a year ago Cobb County approved a SPLOST. In November, at a forum sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, that was discussing transportation issues, Mr. Byrne said he asked the DOT Director who was representing the County, what is out SPLOST going to do for us in Cobb County. The Director said that the SPLOST would raise about $800,000,000 in local funds, and when we use that with matching funds from the state and the federal government, we will have about $1.3 billion to spend over a 10-year period of time. Mr. Byrne asked the director; how is that going to impact the county, and how is it going to solve one single problem we have just to keep up with the growth. There was no answer from the man who was going to manage these funds. Mr. Byrne asked the director if they had a transportation master plan for the county. The answer was no, they have a list of projects and a line item fund to expand and improve existing corridors and fix intersections. Mr. Byrne asked, we don’t have a master plan for transportation purposes in this County? The answer was no. Does ARC have one? No. How about GDOT? No. How about the State of Georgia anywhere? No. Do we know what we are going to do in the next ten years with that money? Yes, we’re going to widen roads. Are we going to fix any problems? No. We’re going to accommodate the growth that’s projected to come here over the next ten years.

Water, transportation. What’s Sam Olens’ response to that over at ARC? They are our transportation planning organization. Their proposal is this: Acknowledging that we don’t have a master plan and that we’ve got a problem, Sam Olens is proposing that we have a regional tax for regional transportation purposes in our region. Tell that to people and they say – he never said that. Mr. Byrne said, yes he did and showed the press release from the ARC with Sam Olens’ signature endorsing a regional tax for regional transportation purposes. Mr. Byrne said, what does regional mean? It means they want our money to fix other people’s problems who don’t have their own SPLOST programs. And, with our 4% sales tax, our educational SPLOST, transportation SPLOST, and a regional tax, how much more are they going to take from us? And, Mr. Olens’ focus is to fix the transportation corridor that serves Atlanta, Fulton, and DeKalb Counties. Mr. Byrne asked, where did he come up with that idea for concern? Mr. Byrne said is wasn’t Mr. Olens’ idea. It’s the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s idea. They drafted the legislation. They sponsored the legislation. They had press conferences acknowledging that. Sam Olens, Mr. Byrne said, is their spokesman. They knew they couldn’t come to Cobb, or Cherokee, or Gwinnett, or Douglas, or Paulding with a tax proposal from the City of Atlanta. It has to come from ARC with Sam Olens as their spokesman. Mr. Byrne said he promises he will do everything he can to kill that proposal.

Mr. Byrne said, as we talk right now, four different tax proposals are in the General Assembly sponsored by the Governor, the Speaker, or the Lt. Governor. He said the last time he checked the majority in the Assembly were Republicans and all talking about tax increases. Who is representing our interests, here?

But, Mr. Byrne said, to get back to water for one issue, because he’s talking taxes, what is Sam Olens’ proposal to Cobb County’s conservative nature? Mr. Olens says “we cut our water consumption by over 10%; we cut our revenues by over 10%. I want to raise your water rates to offset the loss of revenues.” Mr. Byrne said that is the proposal on the desks of the commissioners. Because we have done what we were asked to do.

Mr. Byrne said transportation is going to kill us. A national study shows our region to be the second most congested traffic, behind Los Angeles, but catching up. What’s our response to that? Increase taxes. What are we going to do with them? We don’t know, but let’s increase taxes. Do we have a master plan? Not yet, but let’s get the revenue first. That’s not good. We should justify the need. Just this weekend Casey Cagle came our with a proposal. He wants to have a state-wide permanent tax in which local governments can say, we’re going to have a SPLOST Program, list the projects, the amount we need, and if passed by the voters, the county gets to keep 80%. 20% goes to the state to do with what they want. Mr. Byrne said not in this state, not in this county, not for this boy. Didn’t Mr. Cagle have an R beside his name when he ran for office?

Mr. Byrne said, in 1997 he talked about transportation big time. And at that time there was proposed a master plan for transportation purposes, redesigning a regional transportation corridor that also included a light rail system that began at Mars Hill Road and Lost Mountain Park to pick up the traffic from Paulding, Polk, Floyd Counties coming in to Cobb through Roswell all the way over to Lawrenceville on the TGA 120 corridor. MARTA would come up GA 400 and intersect at a regional transfer station which they had already projected to do/ And in the 41, corridor a light rail system from Marietta to a CIE Community Improvement District covering the Galleria area, a major employment center, to Town Center CIE, a major employment center. A monorail elevated to serve those two groups, along with a regional network of roads improvements to resolve and solve our problems then, but redefine our growth policies for today, ten year later. The ARC adopted the policy unanimously. Even Mitch Scandalakis, and Bill Campbell, the two he had to work with in his administration, endorsed it. It never happened. If we had done that in 1997, what would be the debates today, eleven years later? How would that have influenced our growth management policies of today? Mr. Byrne said he also presented to the ARC a southeast region high speed rail concept throughout the southeast, first to go from Atlanta to Chattanooga. That was killed as well. That’s now renovated and coming back to Cobb County and coming back to the State of Georgia.

Wm Byrne asked; what’s his proposal? The ARC concept is high density mixed use development, therefore he is opposed to it, no matter where, but particularly in Cobb County. He will fight that. He will oppose anything ARC proposes. He opposes what he calls the Cobb 750 proposal, the land use plan that minimizes Cobb County’s projection of no more than 750,000 people in our county. We’re at 680,000 today. If the water, sewer, bridges aren’t in place, don’t develop. What happened in Chase development with infrastructure; infrastructure had to be in place to control development. Six cities are for high density only. For the rest of Cobb, low density, residential, period. We’ve got to return to the conservative values of limited governmental control spending, reduce taxes and fees. That’s the policy. Control what you have, based on the infrastructure available, rather than providing infrastructure for just about everything.

Fourth topic, spending and taxes. In the five years Sam Olens has been chairman, our property taxes have increased an average of 40% in this county through reassessment. That means some are higher, some are lower, but the average is 750%. To increase the use of CCT by increasing their fees by 40%. In one year alone Cobb upped spending by 19%, $127,000,000. Where did they get it? It’s called tax increases, fee increases. Largest single increase in the history of the State of Georgia, according to Charles Bulloch, University of Georgia political scientist. Our tax digest, $1.7 billion. Where did that come from? Property tax reassessment. What is Mr. Byrne’s proposal to all of that? Dramatically different from what we have. Several of his proposals include tax cuts, three of them. And they start and end with property taxes. Working with our local delegation, he will work to exempt all property taxes on private recreational property serving recreational homeowners associations. He will work to exempt all inventory taxes on business operations. He will work with the local delegation to tax reassessment at a yearly basis of no more than 5% a year. Rather than the unlimited amount on a yearly basis, and will work to reduce the millige rate every year in office, just as he did the ten years he was in office.

The issue of immigration is controversial. Most of the opposition to the work of Sheriff Warren comes from GALEO. Mr. Byrnes said his proposals are several, one of which is something he could do as chairman that Sam Olens refuses to. The first four are nothing that he can do. The first is to establish English as the official language of Cobb County. Secondly, complete the approved wall. Expand the number of border patrol agents, expand the numbers of ICE agents, and prosecute the companies that are violating the law. And, cease all the monies to sanctuary cities like Berkley, California. What he said he can do at a local level, he would support the existing laws that allow the sheriff to address immigration at the local level and expand training for police officers so that the Cobb County Police Department can do the same thing. Sam Olens refuses to do that. We can help, support, and expand the abilities to address the immigration laws in the County. Why isn’t Sam Olens prepared to do that? He is a part of an organization that he joined in 2005, called GALEO. This is an open borders, full amnesty organization which was funded and founded by 100 people and corporations, all Democrats. Headed by seven elected Democratic officials and Jane Fonda. That’s the group Sam Olens joined. He showed the press release and newsletter welcoming Mr. Olens into the fold.

Mr. Byrne said Mr. Olens’ stand on growth is mixed use, high density growth at all costs for all reasons. Mr. Byrne’s proposal is to put a limit as to the amount of people we can handle in our county. On transportation, Mr. Byrne said he passionately believes that water, sewer, roads, and bridges have to be in place first before growth is approved. Invest in them first, manage growth second. Reduce spending, control the size of government, and cut taxes. Focus your law enforcement assets to managing effectively the federal laws as they deal with immigration. Those are the five issues that the debate is going to be about this summer. We are going to have a clear choice. It’s our choice. This is our county. This is our home and business. What do you want it to look like? How do we want it managed? And who do we want to answer to us.

Sam Olens’ focus and issues are on special interest groups that have raised a quarter of a million dollars to campaign this summer. Every single major builder, developer, supplier, contractor, architect – you name the special interest group, that’s his agenda. It’s to comply with their wishes, their needs. The Atlanta Chamber, the Cobb Chamber, the growth community. The people mean nothing.
Where is the people’s voice? Who is going to represent us? We’ve got the choice, we’ve got the opportunity. Mr. Byrne says take it seriously, and he hopes we make the right decision.