Neighborhood Notification Initiative

Neighborhood Notification for Cobb 2012-2013

The NNI Stakeholder presentations were the culmination of CRN's seven year effort to persuade Cobb County to adopt a codified governance model that would recognize neighborhoods. Creating a voluntary registry for neighborhoods would enable them to receive targeted planning and zoning information. This in turn, would lower barriers to participation for residents who wanted to get involved in community planning and zoning issues. The barriers included lack of easy access to zoning information, zoning meetings held during business hours, lack of familiarity with the zoning process and a relatively small number of civic or neighborhood groups active on a regular basis.

Unincorporated Cobb County is one of the most densely populated counties in Georgia, yet has only four district Commissioners and a Chairman. Each Commissioner represents @ 172,000 residents. Cobb currently has no term limits for commissioners and this dynamic, combined with a strongly pro-business and pro-development philosophy can result in governance that is less than responsive to the concerns of average citizens. Cobb has resisted efforts to officially recognize neighborhoods or community groups by codifying a model like Atlanta's Neighborhood Planning Units, Athens-Clarke County's Neighborhood Notification Initiative or other types of Community Councils that are geographically based.

Above: monthly zoning booklets were printed by the zoning division in limited numbers and it was necessary to pick them up at the zoning office, which was open only during weekday business hours. This limited public access to zoning information.

In September 2012, with support from the Board of Canton Road Neighbors, Carol Brown initiated a series of stakeholder presentations designed to promote the Neighborhood Notification model of governance adopted in Athens-Clarke County for Unincorporated Cobb. The concepts behind programs like NNI are summarized below:

• Including citizens in decisions about their community gives policy and planning legitimacy.
• Increased participation improves the quality of representative democracy.
• When citizens feel they are heard it increases their confidence in officials, and that the system “works”. It also increases their own sense of effectiveness.
• Inclusion of marginalized communities may be the best way they can get their issues on the agenda.
• Communities have different character and different needs- a codified program recognizes that fact and supports pluralism in planning, not one size fits all.
• Codifying neighborhood participation creates a permanent and official structure that transcends today's activists, elected officials and staff. It is there for future generations.

The meetings concluded in May 2013 and a Work Session Agenda presentation was made by Brown to the Cobb Board of Commissioners on June 23, 2013. Then Planning Division Manager Dana Johnon made a presentation to the BoC on August 27, 2013 responding to the NNI proposal.

No action was taken until October 31 when Community Development Director Robert Hosack emailed Brown to state that the County was not going to adopt a neighborhood registry, but an option for the public to sign up for zoning and variance email updates would be made available in November 2013.

By late November 2015, 1,500 residents had signed up for the Zoning notification email.

In May 2012 Carol Brown was awarded a Master of Arts in Geography (Urban) from Georgia State University.

In June 2012 Brown was accepted into the University of West Georgia's Master of Urban and Regional Planning program and received a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from University of West Georgia in July 2014.

The PDF files that outline the presentations and stakeholder meetings can be downloaded below.

NPU for Cobb County 2006

Neighborhood Advocate concept