Marietta DJ "Around Town" column, numerous topics of interest today
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AROUND TOWN: Cobb County declines request for Charlie Kirk vigil at government facility
- 14 hrs ago
- 7 min to read
Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA
PHOTO BY AL DIAZ/Miami Herald/TNS
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Organizers planning to host a vigil for the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk in the parking lot of the East Cobb Government Service Center say the county declined their request.
The county said it cannot accommodate a large crowd at the center because it could interfere with police and fire operations.
Jenna Ruth Byars, an east Cobb resident and member of the Cobb County Republican Women’s Club, is attempting to host the vigil along with other area residents and club members in Kirk’s memory.
Kirk was shot and killed last week during an event at Utah Valley University. He was 31. Prior to his death, Kirk was best known as the co-founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization that aims to promote conservative ideals to young voters.
The goal with the vigil, Byars said, is to honor Kirk’s life and work to fight against the “left ideology.”
“For me, Charlie Kirk is a little bit different. I love what he had to say (and) I’m a big supporter of him in that he is allowed to say whatever he wants,” Byars said. “He was a good debater, he was always respectful, he always backed up his facts. I’m just supporting the fact that he was good at what he was doing.”
Originally, the vigil was scheduled to be hosted in the parking lot of the service center on Lower Roswell Road, across from Mt. Bethel Church. The service center also houses the Cobb County Police Department’s Fourth Precinct and Cobb Fire’s Station 21. The group was forced to change their plans, Byars said, because county officials said “we prefer you go elsewhere.”
According to Byars, she contacted the office where she asked a staff member for permission to host the event there.
“One officer said, ‘Let me check with the chief of police,’ and the chief of police — he didn’t contact me — but through the grapevine, they said no,” Byars said.
The reasoning the county gave her was that county officials did not want the vigil to “affect their business of operation,” even though the vigil would take place at 7 p.m., outside of office hours.
“That was the only explanation they gave us,” she said.
A county spokesperson told Around Town the event was promoted without approval from county officials, and that Cobb officials have attempted to contact the vigil’s organizers without success.
“This location is not appropriate for large public gatherings, as such activity could interfere with critical police and fire operations,” county officials said. “The public should be aware that this facility cannot accommodate this event due to the potential disruption of public safety operations. Anyone who attempts to attend will not be permitted to gather there.”
According to Byars, the group is now attempting to find another location to host the vigil in hopes of keeping it running.
Should the vigil still be hosted Thursday, approximately 250 candles will be available for those attending. It will begin at approximately 7 p.m., but the location is still to be determined.
Anybody who is “going to be peaceful and respectful” is welcome to attend, Byars said.
“The plan is … we’ll probably say a little prayer to say thank you to the Lord for sending us Charlie in the first place.”
Overall, the vigil will be “just a peaceful gathering” and “just a quiet memorial” in Kirk’s memory.
Byars said the hope is to “carry the torch” of Kirk’s work.
“There’s a cultural problem in east Cobb and it’s the left ideology,” she said. “There’s been a cultural shift in east Cobb over the last 10, 15, 20 years with people coming in — transplants — and east Cobb has shifted purple.
“He (Kirk) was doing a movement against the left ideology … We want to carry his torch on speaking the truth.”
Updates on the vigil’s location can be found on the MDJ’s website at mdjonline.com.
Donovan Giardina
Submitted
KENNESAW CITY COUNCIL RACE: Kennesaw voters will only see one two-way race for Kennesaw City Council on the ballot this November.
Ph.D. candidate Donovan Giardina, 27, and real estate broker Jon Bothers, 54, are both vying for the Post 3 seat on Kennesaw City Council — a position occupied by retiring Councilman Pat Ferris.
Jon Bothers
Submitted
Ferris previously served Kennesaw in the Post 5 seat from 1985 to 2001 and rejoined the council representing Post 3 beginning in 2017. He was reelected in 2021.
Council members Antonio Jones and Anthony Gutierrez, of Posts 4 and 5, are running unopposed.
Giardina, who grew up in Canton, has lived in Kennesaw for about four years with his fiancée, Lexie Newhouse. He holds a bachelor’s in public management and policy from Georgia State University and plans to get his Ph.D. in criminal justice from the university by May.
“The entire time that I’ve been working on my Ph.D., I’ve been actively involved in government and governmental programs,” he said.
Giardina has worked with agencies such as the Department of Community Supervision and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council on projects to make programs more effective and efficient and currently consults with the Northern District of Georgia’s Accountability, Treatment and Leadership (ATL) Court Program, an alternative-to-incarceration initiative.
Giardina believes he would be an “asset to the city,” considering his knowledge of governmental programs, policies and processes and ability to read city government documents.
“Normally you have to pay for that outside expertise, you have to contract out. For me, that wouldn’t be necessary,” he said.
Since moving to Kennesaw, Giardina said he and Newhouse have been active volunteers with the Kennesaw Downtown Development Authority — in fact, Newhouse sits on the board of the authority — and the Kennesaw Farmers Market. Supporting small businesses and redeveloping the city’s downtown to become more of a “destination” are central to his campaign, he said.
“We have a lot of small businesses in Kennesaw that are looking for places to set up shop. In our downtown, we have a lot of undeveloped plots that I think would serve as great, great storefronts for some of these vendors,” Giardina said.
Giardina also said he wants to improve public safety by raising downtown crosswalks to curb height to enhance pedestrian visibility and pushing for “more cohesion between municipal police departments.”
“What happens in Acworth affects Kennesaw. What happens in Marietta affects what happens in Kennesaw. What happens in Woodstock affects what happens in Kennesaw,” he said. “I want to see some cross-city collaboration to a level that we don’t currently have, and I think I would be a good person to help facilitate that.”
He also supports alternative transportation options such as bike lanes and multi-use paths as part of upcoming road projects — making Kennesaw “more connected with the other cities around us.”
On Wednesdays leading up to the election, Giardina said he will be going out to various parks in the city, handing out free water and talking to joggers and walkers.
While it is Giardina’s first time running for office, campaigning is no new task for his opponent.
Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, Bothers grew up in Cobb County, graduated from Pebblebrook High School and studied political science at the University of Tennessee.
He previously ran for office in Kennesaw three times, though he said the last run was largely about keeping his name in the conversation. This time, he said, he is fully committed to running a “strong campaign.”
“My goal right now is to get out and let the people know that I’m putting them first here in the city of Kennesaw,” Bothers said. “... We’re going to be having events all over the city for the next two months. It’s going to be the strongest campaign the city has ever seen.”
Bothers, a real estate broker, moved to Kennesaw in 2002 with his wife, Audra, a math teacher at East Cobb Middle School. Together, they have three daughters.
Bothers told Around Town, though he had planned to run one more time anyway, this election was extra special.
“Once the election happens, I’m going to have two of my daughters able to vote for me for the first time,” he said. “So that seemed very special to me.”
For Bothers, affordability, infrastructure and transparency are key issues.
“I have a home that I bought here in the city that I couldn’t afford to buy if I needed to buy one today,” he said. “... All these luxury apartments, they’re absolutely beautiful, but the average person can’t afford to live in them. That’s Manhattan prices. That’s downtown Atlanta prices, that should not be in the city of Kennesaw.”
Bothers believed the city should encourage developers to include a range of housing options to make homeownership attainable for more residents. He pointed to neighborhoods like Legacy Park, with varied price points, as a good model.
He also thought the city’s ordinances and zoning laws needed updating.
“Most of them that we still live by were made back in the ’70s. The world has changed, the city has changed,” Bothers said.
Other priorities include repairing aging sidewalks and streets, upgrading older parks and expanding bike paths and walkability across the city.
Bothers also wanted to see the city embrace its relationship with Kennesaw State University, which, although unincorporated, is “still an important part of the city,” he said.
“The city right now does everything they can to keep from being a college town because they want to be a small, historic city. And you can have both,” Bothers said. “You can definitely have both there. We need to be more inviting of things with the university, because our city is going to keep growing.”
Gabriel Sanchez
MDJ
DATA CENTERS: During last week’s Cobb County Legislative Delegation meeting, state Rep. Gabriel Sanchez, D-Smyrna, asked Dan Buyers, one of the delegation’s appointees to the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, and the authority’s General Manager Cole Blackwell if they had any concerns about data centers, especially since one was recently approved for Bells Ferry in Marietta.
Buyers said data centers were “concerning to the entire water industry.”
“I will tell you that we have capacity, given our allotment from Allatoona and the Chattahoochee River, we’re in great shape here in Cobb County,” Buyers said. “We’re not in jeopardy of a single data center project robbing citizens of their ability to access clean drinking water, but it is a concern nationally.”
Blackwell added that the data center in Marietta would not be using “a large amount of water, by comparison to most data centers.”
“Had they gone with less efficient technology to cool the center, they may be using 2 or 3 million gallons a day, but as it is, they’re probably going to use closer to 40,000 gallons a day,” Blackwell said.
Something to keep in mind, however, was that when a center decides to “be more efficient with their water, they use a lot more electricity,” Blackwell said.
“So there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Georgia Power and other utilities for electricity to go to these data centers. Of course, water is used to make electricity too, so it is a concern,” Blackwell said.