A second candidate for the upcoming Mableton municipal elections has been disqualified after his qualifying fee check bounced, Elections Director Janine Eveler said Tuesday.
Henry Okafor, a boxing coach, was one of six candidates for mayor of the new city. He has been “removed from the ballot after his qualifying fee payment was returned for insufficient funds,” Cobb County said in a news release.
Okafor joins Dr. Paul Chukelu as the second candidate in as many days to be disqualified over a bad check.
Qualifying fees were $900 for mayoral candidates and $600 for council candidates, to be paid by cash, personal check, money order or cashier’s check. Elections for mayor and the six-member council are scheduled for March 21. Okafor has until February 2 to demonstrate that the returned check was a bank error, the county said. If he fails to do so he will not appear on the ballot.
A train was stopped on the tracks in downtown Marietta for about four hours on Tuesday afternoon.
CSX cited a mechanical issue. The Marietta Police Department said the train was unable to move until the conductor inspected each car.
Officers from the department blocked off traffic on Whitlock Avenue, as well as Mill and Polk streets. Some lunch-goers were forced to hop between cars to return to work from Marietta Square.
The tracks cleared at approximately 5 p.m.
Pope has again turned to a familiar face to lead its football program.
Sean O’Sullivan, a 2004 graduate of the school, was chosen as the Greyhounds’ new head coach. He replaces Tab Griffin, a fellow alum for whom O’Sullivan served as Pope’s defensive coordinator in 2017.
Griffin stepped down after the 2022 season, in which the Greyhounds went 1-9. In all, Griffin was 26-35 in six years at the helm.
O’Sullivan, who comes back to Pope after spending the last three seasons rebuilding Centennial into a playoff team, is the ninth head coach in a program history that dates back to 1988. In three seasons at Centennial, O’Sullivan went 6-23, but he took a winless team in 2020 and rebuilt it into a playoff team this last season, going 5-5 during the regular season, including a 4-2 mark in Region 6AAAAA. He also spent the 2018 and ‘19 seasons as the coach at North Atlanta, where he was 12-9 and led the Warriors to their first playoff appearance in 23 years. O’Sullivan also has experience as an assistant on the high school level at Mount Vernon Presbyterian and Westminster, and on the college level at Southeastern Louisiana, Mars Hill and Delta State.
At Pope, O’Sullivan takes over a program that has had only one winning season in the last decade and has not won a region title or playoff game since 2011.
Following his graduation at Pope, O’Sullivan continued his playing career at West Georgia, where he earned four letters as a member of the Wolves’ offensive line. He finished his career at Mars Hill, playing one season at left tackle.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners averted another procedural standoff Tuesday night as Republicans JoAnn Birrell and Keli Gambrill agreed to vote on county business.
The decision avoided a repeat of the board’s meeting two weeks prior, when Chairwoman Lisa Cupid asked police to escort them from the dais after they attempted to abstain from voting on county business.
But the two commissioners participated only under protest Tuesday, both remarking that while they intended to represent their constituents, they maintain the board is currently operating unconstitutionally. They reiterated that the county’s effort to draw its own district lines under an untested assertion of “home rule” is in clear violation of Georgia law. And it hardly lowered the pressure in the room before a packed and raucous audience, as no more than a few minutes at a time went by that weren’t broken by cheers, jeers, and applause. The meeting, however, devolved shortly after the first vote, as Gambrill and Birrell called into question the accuracy of the minutes of the January 10 meeting from which they were removed. More explosively, Gambrill went so far as to request a forensic audit of the county clerk’s audio recording of those proceedings, “to ensure that the integrity of our systems are in place.” Gambrill and Birrell both said that in spite of what was recorded, they did not vote to enter executive session during the January 10 meeting (the vote appears in the minutes as passing 5-0). The minutes also did not reflect Cupid asking security to escort the commissioners from the dais after they continued to not vote. (County staff played the clerk's audio for reporters after the meeting. Cupid can be heard calling for a vote to enter executive session, which is seconded, and Cupid announces the vote as passing 5-0. The incident was not captured on the live stream of the meeting.)
Gambrill’s suggestions of malfeasance prompted sharp rebukes from her Democratic colleagues, particularly Cupid, who called it “nothing but a display of pomp.”
Cobb Police were on the scene after a car went for a swim in the Chattahoochee Monday.
The department’s Underwater Search and Recovery Team responded to a submerged SUV Monday morning, according to a social media post.
Police said the Audi Q5 drove into the water at Paces Mill and traveled about 750 meters downstream before sinking beneath the surface.
“Divers entered the 46 degree water and recovered the vehicle back onto shore,” police said in the post. “The driver was able to swim back to safety and is being treated for their injuries.”
Live! at The Battery announced its events lineup for February and March 2023, plus ongoing happenings like Girls Night Out, Freedom Friday and Silent Saturday. For tickets to these events, check out Live at the Battery dot com.
Ongoing happenings include:
#CobbCounty #Georgia #LocalNews
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