Published: 06/18/2008

With the Marietta city elections coming up in less than a year and a half, IMPACT (Involved Mariettans Planning Actively for the City of Tomorrow) has been looking at some past results and has found some interesting, or some may say troubling, outcomes.

Our city's voter turnout rates of 24.6 percent in 2001 and 19.4 percent in 2005 were poor. Compare those numbers to the turnout rates of 40 percent in the 2006 governor's race and the 60.7 percent in the 2004 presidential race and it becomes obvious that having the city elections as stand-alone elections discourages voter participation. Just like the upcoming SPLOST vote, the city elections come at a great financial cost to the taxpayer.

An even more serious issue is the distribution of votes throughout Marietta's seven wards. The votes of four councilmen constitute a majority. In 2005, some 4,342 citizens voted in our council elections. The winners of Wards 1,5,6 and 7 received a total of 652 votes. In other words, a mere 15 percent of those who voted and 2.7 percent of the 23,819 registered voters elected a voting majority of our city council. The election results of 2001, when six of seven council seats were contested, were virtually the same.

In our opinion, Marietta has several factors that prevent its government from performing as well as it should. First is that Marietta has too many wards. In 2001, some 2,075 people voted in Ward 4, while Ward 1 had 108 voters. In 2005, exactly 63 people voted in Ward 1. The last time Ward 1 had a contested election was 1981. Twenty-seven years ago. Ronald Reagan had just been inaugurated.

Marietta has 60,000 residents. Cobb County has nearly 700,000 and operates quite well with four district commissioners and a county-wide commission chairman.

Second, only Marietta's non-voting mayor is elected city-wide. Therefore we have no voting members of our city government that are held accountable by the entire citizenry. Even though they may choose to do so, no members of our council are forced to view the issues on a city-wide basis. That is why we often get into turf wars such as the recent parks fiasco. Everyone agrees that we need better parks. We have money available to improve our parks, but we cannot get anything passed because the council splits into an east vs. west confrontation. The battle that raged over where to have the Marietta Redevelopment Corporation spend its money is still going on. Once again, we have the council split along the east vs. west lines.

IMPACT requests that the city council consider (1) changing our elections to coincide with either the presidential or the governor's election. It should be the goal of all elected officials to have every eligible citizen exercise his or her right to vote. If we can double or triple our turnout rates by changing the year of our election, then we should do it. The cost savings make it an even better choice. (2) Change the make-up of our council to include five wards plus two at-large seats.

This set-up works well for Cobb County. The gridlock that is such a constant occurrence in Marietta's government is virtually non-existent in Cobb. When elected officials know that their constituents are paying attention and that people are waiting to take their jobs, they are put into a position of having to get things accomplished.

How can you have any accountability when you have wards that have contested elections once every three decades?

Larry Zenoni

Vice president, IMPACT

Marietta