Cobb Plaintiffs: Trim Birrell's District

All of the plaintiffs in the Cobb County redistricting case “are satisfied with virtually all aspects of the court’s initial redistricting plan with one exception.”

It’s just not the same exception.

The five county commissioners, in a joint filing today, asked U.S. District Judge Steve Jones to tweak the border between Helen Goreham’s District 1 and JoAnn Birrell’s District 3.

in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, they want Jones to move his proposed dividing line east so it runs northwest along Interstate 75 until Chastain Road. The border would run west along Chastain Road and McCollum Parkway to Cobb Parkway, then would follow Jones’ existing line north to the Cherokee County border.

That change would shift , and most of the Town Center Area Community Improvement District back into Goreham’s district.

“All of these features are intertwined with existing District 1 and constitute a core of an existing district—District 1,” the commissioners’ filing reads.

Has an era of cooperation and goodwill arrived for the Cobb commissioners?

Jonathan Crumly—the Marietta lawyer who brought the lawsuit against the commissioners last month, then accepted their switch to his side Monday—focused his lone concern on the other side of Birrell’s Northeast Cobb district.

He wants Jones to move two precincts along the Fulton County border—Roswell 01 above Ga. 120 and Timber Ridge 01 below it—from District 3 to Bob Ott’s District 2.

“Plaintiff believes this minor shift will sustain the integrity and solidification of the East Cobb community of interest and is supported by the testimony of Commissioner Robert J. Ott, the current Cobb County Commissioner for District 2,” Crumly wrote.

No one asked for a change in Woody Thompson’s District 4 in South Cobb, whose shifting borders prevented the General Assembly from enacting a new district map for the to reflect the 2010 census.

As Thompson told South Cobb Patch on Monday, “We got Mableton back.”

The judge plans to make a final decision on the map by Thursday to allow candidate qualifying in two weeks and the primaries July 31 to proceed without a hitch.

Birrell, meanwhile, is holding a Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the if you want to ask her about the case.

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