On Tuesday afternoon, the Cobb Board of Elections certified the results of the November 8 election, declaring Madelyn Orochena the winner of a tight special election for Post 1 of the Kennesaw City Council.
That result, however, stood for about 24 hours. Orochena now appears to have lost.
Cobb’s certified results had shown Orochena leading the seven-candidate field, 16 votes ahead of Lynette Burnette in second place.
In the brief period after certification, the city had invited the apparent winner to come in for an orientation, and a swearing-in ceremony was being planned, Orochena said. She had spoken with the city clerk, who was ordering business cards and name tags. But then, around 4 p.m. Wednesday, Orochena got a call from Cobb Elections Director Janine Eveler. There had been a mistake.
While preparing for an audit, Cobb elections staff discovered that one of the two memory cards from precinct Kennesaw 3A — containing 789 votes — had not been properly uploaded before certification. The new results flipped the election, putting Burnette ahead by 31 votes.
At a special-called meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday, the Board of Elections plans to recertify the updated results.
Orochena, meanwhile, has requested a recount from the county, and filed a complaint with the secretary of state’s office.
The Atlanta Braves and their real estate arm will split from owner Liberty Media to become a publicly traded company.
If the deal is approved by Major League Baseball and the Internal Revenue Service, the team will be held by a new firm, Atlanta Braves Holdings.
The company will include under its umbrella the Braves’ assets and liabilities for the team, Truist Park, the Battery Atlanta, and its cash holdings. The Braves organization was estimated this year to be worth around $2.1 billion by Forbes. The team would join others like Manchester United as among the few publicly traded sports franchises, per the Wall Street Journal.
The Braves move is part of a larger financial reclassification by Liberty of its various entertainment holdings, the company said, as it reorganizes its holdings in Formula 1 racing and Sirius XM.
A Marietta church will kick off a new digital literacy program for formerly incarcerated people on Saturday, and the program has a major tech company attached to it.
Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church is partnering with Google through the Grow with Google Fund for Justice Impacted Communities, which the Rev. Dr. Sammie Dow, the church’s senior pastor, said will aim to engage more than 2,000 people around Marietta and Cobb over the next two years. Pleasant Grove’s program will begin Saturday with the “Digitize Your Day” seminar at 12:30 p.m. The seminar will introduce participants to the program and the digital skills necessary to everyday living.
Dow told the MDJ the program will serve as a resource for people impacted by the justice system, empowering them to acquire digital skills post-incarceration. He said the program will also enable the church to establish its own workforce development and training center, with the hope that it will help close digital literacy gaps and serve as a launchpad for participants to gain employment or promotions in their jobs.
Cobb police said Thursday they have made an arrest for a murder this summer at the Highlands of West Village apartments in Smyrna.
Decatur resident Tavis Crankfield, 20, was apprehended Wednesday afternoon after a “brief foot chase,” the department said, near Powers Ferry and Delk roads. Crankfield has been charged with the murder of Jason Escoffrey in July.
Escoffrey, 21, was found shot multiple times near the apartments’ swimming pool on the night of July 17. Crankfield fled the scene before officers arrived, police said.
In August, the department issued a public call for assistance in solving the murder. Crankfield is currently being held at the Cobb jail without bond.
A new Southern fast food joint opened near Town Center mall this week.
Cozy Coop, which serves fried chicken, ribs and Southern sides, opened Tuesday. The restaurant is on Barrett Creek Boulevard, just off Barrett Parkway, near Interstate 575.
The new restaurant is the invention of cousins Mike Madonna and Ricky Navas.
Madonna, who is a restaurateur, said he had always wanted to do a better fried chicken that elevates the fare of national brands like Popeye’s and KFC.
Navas said that to do that, Crazy Coop will use better ingredients and methods.
Navas is a Georgia native and chef whose resume includes Atlanta restaurants like Storico Fresco, Paces & Vine, and Murphy’s. He said the store’s suburban location feels like a return to his old stomping grounds of Alpharetta and Kennesaw.
Every meal at Cozy Coop comes with cornbread and one of their Southern sides — mac and cheese, collard greens, candied yams, crispy okra, french fries or coleslaw.
The menu also features large family-style meals.
An employee of Cobb Superior Court Clerk Connie Taylor has accused Taylor of ordering her to destroy records related to her collection of passport fees, according to documents obtained by the MDJ.
In a letter sent to the Board of Commissioners and other county staff Thursday, Taylor is alleged to have told accounting manager Maya Curry, “We're just going to Donald Trump this thing,” after her office received an open records request related to her fee collections.
The letter was drafted by Curry’s attorney, State Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, and comes amid scrutiny of passport fees retained by Taylor as personal income. Taylor has reportedly personally collected over $425,000 in fees since taking office in January 2021. The Board of Commissioners was set to take about $83,000 of those collections back into the county coffers at their meeting Thursday night, which Taylor said she had mistakenly collected due to a system "error." But the agenda item was abruptly pulled at the top of the meeting. After receiving the open records request on October 11, Taylor allegedly told Curry she did not have to comply with the request, instructing her to delete electronic records related to the fee collections. Curry, who was “scared, intimidated, anxious, and shocked by what Ms. Taylor was demanding,” complied with the demand, per the letter.
#CobbCounty #Georgia #LocalNews
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