Cobb Mayors Blame County for Mediation Over Service Delivery

Days after the announcement that Cobb County and six of its cities will soon begin official mediation over the highly contested service delivery strategy (SDS) agreements, Cobb’s mayors put the blame for the unprecedented legal battle on the county in a unified statement.

“The cities want to emphasize to constituents that we’re not in this fix because of procrastination,” said Powder Springs Mayor Al Thurman. “We worked in good faith long before the deadline.”

SDS agreements, also called 489 agreements, outline how much the county reimburses each city for essential services they provide — like police, fire and water — to ensure there is no “double taxation” of citizens.

The county and six of its cities have until Oct. 31 to reach an agreement about the value of those services. But after nearly two years of discussion, the zero dollar proposal from the county has pushed the cities to seek legal representation to find a middle ground before time runs out.

“Cobb city residents pay county taxes at the same rate as those who live in unincorporated areas, and the county and cities have long agreed that the county would offset the cost of services to prevent city residents from getting double taxed on services such as police departments, which are a huge portion of our city budgets,” said Acworth Mayor Tommy Allegood. “The cities are simply looking to continue a fair-to-all, time-tested and proven method that has worked for decades in Cobb County.”

The county previously published an article outlining the details of the service delivery strategy — what it is, the timeline of negotiations, and the nature of the disagreement.

The reason for the standstill, according to the county, is that six of Cobb’s seven cities — Mableton is not included in an agreement until its transition period ends in June 2025 — are asking that Cobb “pay them substantially more money,” but the focus of the intergovernmental agreement needs to be on services, not cash.

“Any exchange of funds is to pay for those services,” the county wrote. “A simple donation of county taxpayer funds (paid by residents of the cities and unincorporated areas) to provide extra money to cities in an (agreement) is not fair to the taxpayers and is improper.”

The county added in the article detailing the ongoing disagreement that the substantial increase is not feasible: “Agreeing to give the cities more county taxpayer dollars would burden ALL county taxpayers and would not solve issues the Service Delivery Strategy process is designed to address.”

Austell Mayor Ollie Clemons said Cobb and its cities have long had a good working relationship, and the mayors are “disappointed to come to this impasse, which has never happened in the past.

“What we’ve asked for is simply a continuation of the system we’ve always had in the past,” Clemons added. “The only difference is indexing it for inflation. None of the cities wanted mediation. We’re in this situation because the stakes are enormous, and we’ll do whatever it takes to pulling these negotiations out of the ditch.”

A county spokesperson noted it was not the county, but the cities that proposed mediation.

“It is curious why they suddenly took issue with the county accepting their offer,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the county is committed to rooting out duplicated services to ensure taxpayers are not overcharged, and to identifying services taxpayers may be paying for but are not receiving.

“This is the goal of the upcoming mediation,” the spokesperson added. “We are confident it will be successful.”