After last month’s announcement that the Atlanta Braves will soon become their own publicly traded company, team officials were quick to say little will change, baseball-wise.
“From our perspective, from a Braves’ team perspective, it’s business as usual,” President and CEO Derek Schiller told investors at a November 17 meeting.
Braves Chairman Terry McGuirk echoed that sentiment in a letter to workers for the Braves and the Battery Atlanta.
But business-wise, the Braves’ financial separation from owner Liberty Media could have significant implications down the road.
The Braves are currently traded as a “tracking stock” — a subset of Liberty Media that’s still tied to the firm’s overall performance, but represents one of its subsidiaries. Pending approval by shareholders and Major League Baseball, the Braves will become a fully separate entity within the next six to eight months, executives have said.
Fans and financiers alike will then be able to purchase a stake in the team. Liberty CEO Greg Maffei has said repeatedly the impetus for the spinoff comes from a desire to showcase the Braves’ value independent of Liberty as a whole. The stock will represent not only the team and its assets, but the Battery Atlanta and the Braves Development Company, the latter of which manages the team’s real estate holdings.
The announcement itself came two weeks after Breach Inlet Capital, a South Carolina-based investment firm that counts itself among the Braves’ top 25 shareholders, called for a spinoff of the stock. In an open letter to Liberty’s board, the firm argued the Braves’ tracking stock was trading at about 60% less than its true value.
The letter pointed to the Braves’ continued success, and argued the team is relatively undervalued compared to other major sports franchises.
Breach Inlet Capital founder Chris Colvin speculated the Braves’ undervaluation was due to Liberty’s “confusing and convoluted structure,” referring to Liberty’s ownership of Formula 1 racing, Sirius XM, and other media empires. In other words, the Braves’ true value isn’t apparent because it’s tied up in Liberty’s many and varied financial holdings.
Mount Paran Christian School announced that Peter Hill is the new Head of Middle School, beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year.
Hill comes to MPCS from Catholic Memorial School in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is a member of the Academic Leadership Team, a history teacher and varsity head soccer coach. With vast independent school experience, he has taught a variety of history courses, including AP Comparative Politics, where his students over the years have earned an astounding 94% pass rate. He has served as the International Student Coordinator, developed and implemented the faculty peer mentoring program, and advised and mentored faculty to better enable bilingual students using translanguaging pedagogy.
Prior to Hill’s time at Catholic Memorial, he taught at Marianapolis Preparatory School in Connecticut and St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Boston College.
For Kim McCoy, head of the Cobb District Attorney’s victim and witness office, the long road toward the county getting its own family advocacy center began 25 years ago.
Way back in 1997, she and Jason Saliba, now Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney, toured San Diego’s own center for victims and thought, “We’ve got to have this in Cobb County.”
The center isn’t quite open for business — District Attorney Flynn Broady said he expects it to open in March or April of 2023. But when it does, the location on Fairground Street will be a hub for victims and survivors of abuse to get help and resources under a single roof.
The center was partially funded with a $400,000 grant from the state, and will be the first of its kind to open in Georgia.
When family advocacy centers are implemented in communities, there’s a corresponding reduction in domestic violence homicides, a reduction in childhood trauma, and with that, better outcomes for families. As part of that mission, the DA’s office is partnering with several of Cobb’s well-established nonprofits such as LiveSAFE Resources, the Center for Family Resources, and SafePath Children’s Advocacy Center. Along with staff from the county and its public safety and prosecutorial partners, those nonprofits and community groups will have representatives on-site as well. Broady told the MDJ his office is working on setting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so that community members and businesses can support the center going forward.
Walton’s Jeremy Hecklinski wasted little time turning a breakout junior season into finding a place to play his college football.
The 6-foot-1, 175-pound quarterback committed to Wake Forest on Wednesday, making his announcement on social media.
Hecklinski is coming off a season in which he threw 3,520 yards, 37 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, while also running for five scores.
Hecklinski played his best in arguably the biggest game of the season, in which he led Walton to an upset of Buford in the second round of the Class AAAAAAA state playoffs. In that game, he threw for 315 yards and two touchdowns in beating the Wolves — a consensus top-10 team nationally — on their home field.
Hecklinski chose Wake Forest over offers from Central Florida, Georgia Southern and Eastern Kentucky. His recruiting was just starting to heat up, as it had been reported that Georgia, Georgia Tech, Cincinnati, Duke and Florida State had become interested. Hecklinski was expected to announce his commitment next spring, but he told SI.com that everything just felt right this week.
The City Council Wednesday night unanimously approved allocating the the majority of the city’s remaining federal COVID-19 relief funds for a pair of new parks.
Marietta received roughly $11 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and had already allocated portions of it for a new public safety training center, replacing a water tower, affordable housing, wellness initiatives for public safety employees, repairs to a fire station and the Cobb Veterans Memorial.
The city has broad discretion over the use of the ARPA funds. Wednesday’s vote puts $1 million of the remaining funds toward capping a 57-acre landfill on Merritt Road, behind Lockheed Elementary, to build a new city park. Another $2 million will be offered to Cobb County for 20 acres of park land at Anderson and Burnt Hickory roads, west of Kennesaw Mountain.
In October, Marietta Mayor Steve “Thunder” Tumlin recommended the city consider purchasing the land off Burnt Hickory Road from the county, which includes Schmidt Pond, a catch-and-release fishing site. Marietta would then turn the land into a city park.
At the council’s committee meetings on November 29, Tumlin again brought up the prospect that a future attempt to incorporate a city of Lost Mountain in west Cobb could mean Cobb would be forced to sell the Anderson Road land at a far cheaper price.
Under state law, county parkland can be purchased by new cities at $100 per acre. The proposal for a city of Lost Mountain was rejected by voters in May, along with proposals for cities of East Cobb and Vinings.
Tumlin said in November the county could be motivated to sell the land to Marietta “because cityhood might raise its beautiful head again.”
Should the county reject Marietta’s offer, the $2 million would return to the city’s COVID relief fund.
It may have been a cloudy day, but that didn’t dampen the spirits at the 9th Annual Thanksgiving Classic hosted by the Marietta Country Club.
After a Chick-fil-A breakfast, the golfers were cheered on with pompoms and great enthusiasm from the YELLS ( which stands for Youth Empowerment thru Learning, Leading and Serving) Inc. kids at the shotgun start.
The day-long event saw a record number of 144 golfers participating.
Each year the tournament committee selects a recipient from the Cobb County area. To be eligible, the non-profit must benefit and impact children’s lives. This year the selected beneficiary was YELLS. Previous recipients include such worthy organizations as the Center for Children and Young Adults, Marietta Police Athletic League, KSU CARE, Marietta Student Life Center, Devereux Center, Wellstar Cancer Center and Hospice Angel Fund. Over the past, nine years the event raised over $850,000. The goal for next year is to surpass $1 million in donations.
With the generosity of the players and sponsors, the Marietta Country Club was able to make a huge impact on YELLS Inc. with the presentation of a $150,000 check. YELLS empowers youth to rise as active, healthy and productive servant-leaders within their communities. YELLS is a 501(c)3 non-profit youth development organization based in the Franklin Gateway community of Marietta.
#CobbCounty #Georgia #LocalNews
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