Mableton Mayor Michael Owens at Public Safety Town Hall meeting Photo: Larry Johnson, Cobb County Courier
By Larry Felton Johnson
The town hall meeting Monday evening in the auditorium of the Riverside EpiCenter in Mableton included a presentation by Mayor Michael Owens, a contentious exchange between Owens and Cobb County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, and wide-ranging and sometimes hostile questions and input from Mableton residents who took the microphones.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the City of Mableton’s plan to form a Public Safety Division, funded primarily by a dedicated citywide Public Safety Special Service District (SSD). The SSD was approved by the Mableton City Council in December of 2025, but at that time the council did not set a millage rate. The city has now tentatively proposed a rate of 4.5 mills. One mill equals $1 in tax for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value, which in Georgia is generally 40% of its fair market value.
At a 4.5 mill rate, $100,000 of a home’s value would result in the following:
In Georgia 40 % of the value of a home is taxable, so $100,000×40%=$40,000.
$40,000 × 0.0045=$180
So for every $100,000 of value, the homeowner’s tax for public safety services, if the resident isn’t in an exempted category, would be $180.
Owens opened the meeting with slides and a presentation.
He stated that the city sought a long-term agreement through 2034 but was offered a maximum of three years by the county, eventually reduced to a one-year, non-renewable agreement for $13 million, expiring May 31, 2027.
Owens said that key issues leading to the city’s decision to set up its own Public Safety Division included the following:
- Cobb County’s positions that municipal court revenues go to Cobb County’s general fund
- Cobb’s position that county courts handle local traffic violations instead of Mableton’s municipal court
- All forfeitures going to Cobb County
- Restrictions on Mableton’s local ordinance authority
- The requirement that county permission be given for public safety-related grant applications.
“Once we looked at Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA), there were some issues that we found that we were not in alignment with and that was municipal court revenues,” Owens said. “This IGA has written and there’s a specific line in there that says any court revenue would go to Cobb County’s general fund.”
“And I’m sorry, but as a distinct city that has our own municipal court, we felt that any municipal court revenue should stay within the city of Mableton and that is something that we were unwavering on,” he said.
Owens said that Mableton needs its own Public Safety Division for local control, accountability, and long-term stability, arguing that the “city-lite” model, which initially avoided the cost of a city police department, became unsustainable when negotiations became contentious.
City-lite is not defined in Georgia law, but resulted from the state’s requirement that at least three services be chosen as a condition of a city incorporating. During the wave of incorporations that began in 2005 some cities chose to select a limited number of services, and to forgo setting up expensive services like police departments. The theory was that public safety would be contracted with the county.
Owens stated that the SSD is estimated to generate $21 million annually from a 4.5 mill tax rate, with exemptions for seniors and disabled veterans.
Mayor Owens stated that to this point, Mableton operates without a local property tax, funding operations through insurance premiums, business licenses, occupational taxes, permits, fees, and other local revenue. He said that the SSD millage will not be put in the general fund, but will be dedicated to the Public Service Division.
He said that residents of city already pays 2.99 mills through the Cobb Fire Fund for fire services (since Mableton does not operate its own fire department). He said that creating a public safety SSD follows the same principle: residents pay a dedicated millage for a specific service, and those funds cannot be diverted for other purposes.
Owens talked about the “city-lite” concept, where Mableton started with limited services, and said that since incorporation, the scope has has evolved to provide most municipal services, including business licenses, planning and zoning, permitting, code enforcement, and a municipal court.
Reactions from residents during the Q&A
[Editors note: Since many people spoke, and I knew the names of some, but not all, of the speakers, I’ve omitted the names of all the speakers, with the exception of Chairwoman Cupid — LFJ]
Reactions from residents who took the mic during the Q&A were wide-ranging.
A resident stated that senior citizen exemptions from the SSD millage rate should be limited to low-income seniors, as many seniors, like herself, could afford the rate. This was met with hostile murmuring from some people in the audience, and City Manager Bill Tanks broke in and announced that the audience should treat all speakers with respect.
Another resident objected to specific language in the SSD that allows the transfer of funds from one purpose within the Public Safety Division, to another purpose within that division, and said it violated the promise not to use public safety funds for other purposes.
Owens responded to that resident’s statement. “Public safety and the Public Safety Division will contain multiple different agencies regarding code enforcement, the city marshal’s office, police services, community engagement.”
“So within the special service district, there’s multiple line items that are in there,” he said. “So I can transfer money from code enforcement to community engagement. I can transfer money from the police department over to marshall’s office.” He said the money would not be moved out of the Public Safety Division.
But most of the residents who took the mic after the mayor’s presentation asserted that the process was not transparent, that a new police department would place a financial burden on the city and its residents, and doubted the urgency in setting up a police department.
One resident asked, “How is this city going to build and afford a police department without hitting the residents hard or ending up with a small police department that is more concerned about getting grants and revenue than actually serving the people of this city?”
Another raised a concern about the lack of data available. “Your presentation tonight, there’s a lot about money. There’s no data,” she said. “You don’t have a spreadsheet in your presentation.”
“There’s no data about how much Cobb County police costs in general,” she said. “There’s no data about how many citizens are served by that. There’s no data about how the 80,000 citizens of Mableton, what portion we are.“
Another resident raised doubts about how urgent setting up an independent police department is.
“What is the urgency of doing public safety now when we’re all standing in a rented facility to get our points across?” she asked. “We don’t have a place to … We need a home so that we can be a city and you can have an office and we can come in there and hit the table and discuss things with you. We need our council members to have a place where they can privately meet with us and have discussions. And so I just want to know the urgency with doing this when we haven’t done the rest.”
Chairwoman Cupid’s objections
Cobb County Board of Commissioners Lisa Chairwoman was seated in the front row during the town hall, and raised objections to some of the statements by Mayor Owens, first from her seat, and later from the Q&A microphone.
The first objection she raised was about what she considered inaccurate statements about how the county arrived at the dollar amounts for Mableton’s payment for police services.
She defended the county’s cost calculations and negotiating approach. She stated that when Cobb County first evaluated the cost of providing public safety services to Mableton, they calculated $22 million based on a comprehensive assessment of service delivery costs.
Cupid said that to make the number more reasonable for Mableton, the county removed certain countywide costs—such as investigative services and the real-time crime center—and arrived at $18.5 million.
She said that the amounts presented by the county were not arbitrary figures.
“We are not pulling numbers out of a grab bag when it comes to public service. This is not a number that goes up willy-nilly year after year.”
She also raised a strong objection to Mayor Owens’ characterization of the terms in the IGA regarding grants, and said the language in the IGA was not intended to remove the city’s local control.
“When grants are applied for, please let the county know so we can coordinate,” she said.
“Similar, when it comes to events that are on roads, whenever there’s even county roads, we have to coordinate with fire. We coordinate police because there are multiple services associated with it.”
She said that coordination is standard practice:
“It’s not to take anything away from Mableton’s local control, it’s to make sure that all the actors who are responsible for the safety of those streets are coordinated, that they’re well aware of what’s going on so that they can properly respond.”
“I just didn’t appreciate that being viewed as a negative, as us taking away your local control,” Cupid said. “This is about us partnering to keep our streets safe as we would for this jurisdiction.”
Mayor Owens concludes the meeting
Owens concluded the meeting with the following comments, urging residents to fill out a survey posted on the city’s website.
“So again, I understand that the issues that we have… Continue to come to our council meetings, continue to reach out to your council people. We are here to listen. We’re here to understand your concerns, your wants, your needs, your issues.”
“Continue to reach out to us. Please continue to go onto the website, look for information, contact us, reach out to us, use the QR code, go to the website and fill out the form,” he said. “You want to make sure your voice is heard, fill out the form.”
“This is not the last meeting we’re going to have, Owens said. “This is the very first one.”
“We’re looking for a public safety director, working with our city manager and team to make sure we start to recruit and all the building,” he said. “Again, I told you there’s already some progress there. This will be an evolution. This will be a progress as we go forward. Nobody’s standing here today saying we have all the answers. It’s not what we’re doing. But we will continue to have more meetings. We’ll continue to work through what we need to do for the future.”
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