The Cobb County Board of Commissioners held a work session on September 22, 2026, to review the annual 2026 code amendment package. Department heads presented proposed amendments to chapters 2 through 134. The draft amendments were made public on September 4, 2026, and two public hearings for the board are scheduled for October 6 and 13, 2026; Chapter 134 will also be heard by the planning commission. No votes were taken. (The agenda and minutes were not available; this summary is derived from the meeting transcript.)
We're not gonna have that conversation today. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Cobb County Board of Commissioners work session this September 22nd, 2026. Today we'll receive a presentation regarding the 2026 code amendments, and I will call up our director of community development to kick off today's discussion. Okay, good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. Um this is our annual code amendment work session. So uh today we're gonna have the department heads and the the staff that have prepared the code amendments that are in your package to come forward and present their amendments. We're gonna move pretty fast um and and just sort of work through the the amendments in order as they're shown in your packet. So we'll start with chapter two, working our way through 134. Um please, at any point, if there's any questions, let us know. We're happy to talk about those. Um as a reminder, this is sort of the first step in the code amendment process, at least from the public process standpoint. The codes were made public, the draft code amendments were made public on September 4th. Um they are posted on the county website after this, after today's work session, we will also have two public hearings, actually three, because 134 will also be heard at the planning commission, but that the two public hearings for these code amendments for the board of commissioners to consider are gonna be on October 6th and 13th. So everything keep in mind is still a draft until it's adopted on October 13th. So we're gonna jump right in. Sabrina Wright, our economic development director is going to talk about the amendments to chapter two. So economic development is chapter two, and we are looking to address some of the code changes in this section. Um section two-166 that addresses just the definition section. So there the only change that was made was just to reference economic development as a department rather than a division. Um next section is just describing the duties that were established for the economic development department. And um some of that just removes some of the language about um incentives that we don't have anymore. It also removes, which is a pretty significant thing, um, removes the community development block grant as well as work source cob from the administration of the economic development department that was formerly within our code there. So we updated some language in that regard as well. Section 2.2.168 is the most significant changes here. We have um outlined and the per this was the main primary purpose of the code amendment for economic development was to update our incentives programs that we offer here at the county. Um so this just gives you just an outline of some of the sections that were changed. Um and the biggest change is that we have, and some of the other pages will go into this a little bit further. The biggest change is that some of our incentives were redundant, like they offered the exact same incentive with caps on building permitting fees, business license fees, and uh collaboration with other economic development agencies to support their incentives as well, meaning the development authority as well as the Georgia Department of Economic Development. And so this incentive, we re-established, we eliminated the business retention incentive proposed is to eliminate the business retention, targeted industry, and the special economic impact incentive again because they all offer the exact same incentive and create one incentive on a tiered basis. So the incentives will be provided for projects that meet a certain job and and investment amount as well as salary requirements on a tiered basis. We can go to the next slide. This is a summary of the entrepreneurship grant. And the only change that was made here was just to outline uh some of the requirements that we now have, as well as to acknowledge that some of the other requirements will be made by the economic development department. It's not a comprehensive list that's established within the code, but some of the things that we require are not necessarily within the code. For example, of course, they must be a Cobb County-based business. They cannot be home-based businesses, they can't sell alcohol. Um, we don't support franchises because we want to make sure the money stays right here in Cobb County and different things of that nature, meaning they have to be in business seven years or less, and some of these things were not previously identified in the code. And this strategic business investment incentive program is the new incentive that I drafted to consolidate all those previous incentives that I mentioned before. Again, so this just consolidates all of those overlapping incentives into one incentive program that will be that will determine incentive levels based upon job creation, salaries, as well as the capital investment amount of each project on a case-by-case basis. And the specifics of this program will be discussed with the internally with both the business license department as well as building permitting to determine the appropriate caps that are necessary. Our previous cap that we did, which was not which was never codified, was five thousand dollars for building permits, and that has been on the books for many, many years and is not sufficient uh to meet the needs of Cobb County right now. So we will still offer a cap there, but that'll be an internal determination. So again, that was the biggest thing there to consolidate those incentives and facade grant program. Um this incentive here, we this is something that we've already had on the book, so we just eliminated that and just replaced that within another code section, and it just determines that again this is a grant that's funded by community development block grant funds. And just having a conversation, I think on Friday. Um, this is not in the code, this is such a sidebar, but in having conversations just Friday with CDBG, we may want to reconsider funding source for this because a lot of these uh funds are geared toward housing and development, so we may need to address the funding source there, but again, everything else there remains the same as it relates to um the properties that are in HUD designated areas, and this is again for facade grants throughout Cobb County, including the seven cities. The tax allocation district or TAD, this just puts the TAD within our code. We did not have this in the code section. Well, we had a policy, but we didn't have this codified here. So this does not create a tad or anything in the county, does not create a tad again, it just puts this within our code so that if one ever is considered by the county that the board can consider that for approval or not, um, but it just puts the TAD language within our code.