Eddie Mathis
City of Mountain Park - Council Candidate
Roots, History, and Mountain Park Public Safety
I have deep roots in this area and a family connection to Mountain Park's founder. My mother's family, the Colemans, came to Roswell in the 1830s, preceding the arrival of Roswell King. My 5th-great grandfather Richard Coleman was one of the few white men to hold a passport from the Cherokee Nation that allowed him to live and work north of the Chattahoochee River when it was still officially Cherokee Indian Territory. He worked at the Lebonan Mill located off Holcomb Bridge Road near the current Red Lobster Restaurant site. William Proctor, A Cherokee Indian who owned the Lebonan Mill, later died on the Trail of Tears. My father's family came to Forsyth County in the 1850s. My grandfather Edd Jackson Coleman's sister Nan Coleman was the wife of Tommy Garrett. In 1910 Tommy and Nan Garrett started Garrett's Store at the corner of Alabama Road (GA Hwy 92) and Sandy Plains Road. In 1927 Tommy Garrett founded the City of Mountain Park as a summer resort community. Tommy Garrett died in December 1946, the year before I was born.
I grew up in Roswell in the 1950s and spent many hours in the old sand bottom Mountain Park pool and sometimes swimming in Lake Cherful. There was a ski jump in Lake Cherful, and I remember my uncle Lamar (Hobo) Coleman jumping that ramp on water skis. Back then, Roswell was still a small town. Roswell's Northwestern city limit was on Woodstock Street at North Coleman Road. The Northern city limit was at Hog Wallow Creek, just north of the Dairy Queen on Alpharetta Street. Mountain Park was just a remote little village, and although it was only 7 miles from Roswell to Mountain Park, it seemed like a long drive to me.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Roswell Volunteer Fire Department provided fire protection for Roswell and Mountain Park. Volunteers were alerted to a fire by a siren on top of the fire station. The first person to reach the fire station on Alpharetta Street would drive the truck after writing the address on a blackboard in front of the Fire Station. Other responders would either go by the station for the address or follow the sound of the truck's siren to the fire. There was some training, but in the early days, the responders would show up at a fire in their business clothes and do the best they could to douse the fire. As the Volunteer Fire Department matured, training improved with many volunteers as well trained as their counterparts in Atlanta and Fulton County.
Emergency Medical response was virtually nonexistent. In October 1961, my 39-year-old father had chest pains as he drove by his doctor's office. He stopped at the doctor's office for help. There was no CPR at the time and no defibrillators. The doctor's office called the Roswell Funeral Home. They responded with a siren-equipped hearse to transport my father to the VA hospital in Brookhaven. He died as the hearse crossed the Chattahoochee River Bridge. That was a tragedy for my family, but in 1961 that was the norm for a rural Georgia community. At that time, Roswell was a rural area. There were only about 3000 residents in Fulton County north of the Chattahoochee River. Around 1970 a state law was passed preventing funeral homes from transporting emergency medical patients. In response to that law, a group of Roswell volunteer firemen purchased a Metro Ambulance franchise. They obtained EMT certification and, for the first time, provided qualified emergency medical care and transport for North Fulton emergencies.
You may ask why this story is relevant to Mountain Park today. It is relevant because without an agreement with Roswell for public safety services, Mountain Park's access to emergency medical care and fire protection today is not far removed from what was available in the 1960s. Without a solid contract with Roswell for fire and emergency medical response, the lives and property of Mountain Park citizens are at risk.
So how did the contract with Roswell come into existence? On April 30, 1998, Mountain Park Mayor Jay Barnett and Roswell Mayor Jere Wood signed the first Public Safety Services Agreement. This contract called for an annual fee of $27,000 for an indefinite term, with a provision for cancellation with 90 days' notice. On April 20, 2009, Mountain Park Mayor Jim Still and Roswell Mayor Jere Wood signed an amended agreement that called for an annual $33,864.56 fee with annual Consumer Price Index adjustments. I am not aware of any formal arrangement before 1998, but I do know that in the 1960s and 1970s, Roswell Volunteer Fire Department responded to rural North Fulton fires based upon a good neighbor policy at no cost.
Based on a conversation I had this spring with former Roswell Mayor Wood, in 1998, Mountain Park Mayor Jay Barnett approached Mayor Wood, asking that Roswell annex Mountain Park. Since the response to this request was to create an affordable Public Safety Service Agreement between the cities, it appears that the no-cost good neighbor policy was no longer active. Realizing that Mountain Park could not afford to deliver modern public safety services to its citizens, Mayor Barnett reached out to the City of Roswell for a solution. Mayor Wood realized if Roswell annexed Mountain Park, the required improvements in Mountain Park's infrastructure would be very expensive. His response was to offer an agreement to provide public safety services to Mountain Park at a price that Mountain Park could afford.
Remember that in the mid-1990s, Roswell was in a period of rapid expansion in response to the 1996 Olympics. Despite Roswell Mayoral Candidate Wood's early 1990s anti-sprawl political campaign, seemingly uncontrolled development surrounded Mountain Park. Along with that development came more professional public safety services in Roswell and higher expectations from Roswell's and Mountain Park's citizens. Mayor Barnett was astute enough to realize that Mountain Park could not meet those higher expectations and that the surrounding progress was leaving Mountain Park behind.
Many in Mountain Park will say that being left behind is a good thing and that our quaint 1960s-feel makes Mountain Park unique. I agree. I love the quaintness and the small-town feel of our little city. But it is that same 1960's small-town feel that leaves me uneasy about the health and safety of our citizens. When a city cannot provide state-of-the-art public safety services, it is time to consider alternatives. Mayor Jay Barnett believed that in 1998 and I believe that today. When the ARC survey recently asked, "Should Mountain Park dissolve its charter? 44% of those who responded answered 'Yes". 30% responded "Unsure, and only 26% responded "No." For the last 23 years, the Roswell/Mountain Park Public Safety Service Agreement has been a bandage covering an open wound of inadequate funding. The sitting Roswell City Council has ripped off that bandage. That open wound needs immediate care. Unfortunately, Mountain Park does not have a competent EMT to call on for help.
Mountain Park's public safety history brings me to why I am running for Mountain Park City Council. Although we have many issues facing Mountain Park, I believe public safety is the priority. Our citizens need to be secure that competent, well-trained, experienced police and fire personnel will respond within minutes when an emergency occurs. Today, I do not have that security. And although the MPVFD is striving to grow and train a competent crew of volunteer first responders, that will take many months, if not years, to accomplish. But even with a well-intentioned and dedicated crew, we cannot afford to provide them with the needed equipment. Public safety is my number one reason for believing that it is time for Mountain Park to consider dissolving its charter.
In addition to public safety, there are many other infrastructure challenges to consider: siltation problem in both lakes, maintenance of the city's bridge, roadway right-of-way maintenance and roadway repaving, and stormwater management. All of these issues require money and expertise that the city does not have and cannot afford.
It is clear from the ARC survey that many of our citizens are ready to consider dissolving the city's charter. We all assume that the result would be that the state legislature would force The City of Roswell to annex Mountain Park, our taxes would go down, and the level of services would go up. I believe that ultimately that is what would happen. However, there are many complications along the way. I fully support Councilman Mark Murphey's proposed study to determine what dissolving the city charter will mean. There are consequences and benefits of dissolving the city charter. There are consequences and benefits of remaining a city. After a complete and professional study, we need to look at each side of the equation and decide based upon facts, not emotion.
We have to answer this ultimate question: Does Mountain Park have the critical mass of taxpayers necessary to support our citizens' expectations of modern public safety services and infrastructure. As I stated earlier, if our citizens decide to keep the charter, then I will work aggressively and creatively to ensure the city provides the best services and infrastructure the city can afford. If our citizens decide to dissolve the charter, I will fully support aggressively pursuing that goal as quickly as possible while maintaining a high level of public safety services.
