r/CobbCounty

Planning on buying a house this year and I’m confused about the different property taxes in Marietta. Cobb county tax + city of Marietta tax make sense but then there’s also Marietta DMDA and Marietta CID? Are those for regular people or just businesses? Are those certain areas? I can’t seem to find a map of those locations.

I’ve seen huge variation in property taxes across listings in Marietta that range from $40 per month to $400 per month for similarly priced homes. (I understand the tax is calculated by taking 40% of the value then multiplying it by the millage rate).

I'm a dad in Dunwoody, GA who's been investigating Flock Safety's contract with the Dunwoody Police Department since January 2026.

On March 25, 2026, during the Dunwoody City Council Strategic Planning Retreat, the police chief told the Mayor and every council member on camera:

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You can verify it yourself at the 4:03:13 timestamp of the City's own YouTube video.

What are "shot detectors" actually doing?

Calling them gun-shot detectors is the least alarming framing possible. They are high-powered microphones that are already picking up human voices. Flock got caught sending recordings overseas to gig workers who were training their AI models to "distinguish between an adult and a child" — per their own training materials.

ICE Access

At a February 23rd council meeting, a councilwoman asked whether Dunwoody was sharing its data with ICE. Major Krieg's answer: "Ultimately we're sharing with any law enforcement agency that's reaching out to help us in a law enforcement capacity."

The Dunwoody Network Audit logs back this up: 35,932 searches in 2025 by DHS, CBP, and USPIS on data from anyone living, driving, or walking through Dunwoody.

Then on May 13th, after I filed an open records request for the Flock system settings, Dunwoody had in the coincidence of the lifetime just toggled on filters blocking immigration and abortion-related searches, right before handing over the records.

Worth noting: those filters don't prevent someone from searching for those reasons and just writing something else as the justification. That wouldn't show up in any audit trail.

Dunwoody is still opted into nationwide data sharing with 1,000+ external agencies, auto-approved without any human review. Since April 13th alone, 37 new agencies were auto-approved, including departments as far away as Louisiana, Ohio, and Virginia. Every single one of those is another vector for misuse with zero meaningful oversight.

And when a Dunwoody officer was caught using Flock illegally for personal benefit? She walked away without being charged. The system that tracks every citizen regardless of whether they've committed a crime apparently doesn't apply the same standard to the people operating it.

The Part That Should Make Everyone Uncomfortable

The City has already passed an ordinance banning "hate crimes" in 2019.

Here's what the ordinance actually says:

"Discriminate, discrimination or discriminatory means any act, policy or practice that, regardless of intent, has the effect of subjecting any person to differential treatment as a result of that person's actual or perceived… national origin."

The ordinance also requires the City to:

• Develop guidelines for identifying and investigating hate crimes
• Provide hate crime training to law enforcement
• Collect and report annual hate crime statistics to the FBI

Council members present and voting when that passed: Denis Shortal, Lynn Deutsch, John Heneghan, Tom Lambert, Terry Nall, Jim Riticher, and Pam Tallmadge.

Lynn Deutsch is now the Mayor. Lambert and Heneghan still serve on the council.

All three were sitting in the room on March 25th when the chief said the quiet part out loud. None of them said a word.

Even Flock's Own Ethics Policy Prohibits This

Flock's own ethical creed states they "will not adopt technology that... has significant potential for disparate impact on historically marginalized groups."

And two sitting U.S. congressmen (Krishnamoorthi and Garcia) have launched a formal congressional investigation into Flock over its role in enabling surveillance that threatens "the privacy, safety, and civil liberties of women, immigrants, and other vulnerable Americans." Their words: "Flock Group Inc. cannot claim to protect public safety while enabling surveillance that undermines reproductive freedom and civil rights."

Not calling the police is not a crime.

The City Council has one lever here: they can choose not to renew the contract. That's it. What they cannot do is keep pretending they didn't hear what their police chief said.

Does anyone know of a cool, thorough general doctor **within Emory** network? This would be for physicals and general health issues. Any of their locations. Just a cool, super thorough, great doctor 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈. Thank you so much!

The polls at the Thompson Community Center (MA4C) were not working as of 7:15am. All they said was, “Thank you for your patience.”

Hi all! Husband and I (late 20s) are purchasing in mableton and while we don’t have kids, it’s something we are planning to do. The house we’re under contract for is zoned to Mableton Elementary School but whenever I go to google it, I just get general results for elementary schools in Mableton. I lean toward the opinion that schools are what you make of it and the “better” schools tend to just be ranked that way due to wealthier demographics, so I don’t put too much stock into rankings and such but I’m still interested in knowing baseline how this school is perceived. Obviously we’re years away, but as we sit down to plan out finances post home ownership, it is something to think about.

Also just curious about daycares in the area and what they’re like (abundant, scarce, good, hit or miss etc.) nothing super granular, just trying to build the big picture rn

Moving here from Athens Georgia so any other general tips for a new resident are appreciated too :) TIA!

I suppose this title probably will need some explaining. My wife and I, both over 65, are living in a 5 bedroom house in Cherokee county and are thinking of moving for several reasons:

1. We're empty nesters who don't need a 5 bedroom now, so looking to downsize. We also don't intend to pay more for this downsized house than our current house is worth.

2. The current house has lots of stairs. We didn't mind them before but now we don't like stairs at all. You can guess why. 🥵

3. We'd like to get closer to our daughter and grandchildren. They are close to where Woodstock, Marietta, and Roswell come together so a lot of the hits we're finding are in Cobb.

I won't bother asking about home prices and cost of living and other financial considerations. I can find that out easily enough. What I'm wondering about is the governmental forces, like building codes, county ordinances, zoning, taxes, etc. I'm finding several listings for "fixer-uppers" and don't mind doing the work, but wondering if I'm likely to buy a house that once I get in will have some "surprises" when I try to fix things. Or to out it another way, how much will the county folks try to meddle in my business?

Sorry if it sounds like a rant. I just don't trust the government much.

Thanks!

My husband and I have a son who will turn 4 this summer and we’re also looking for a house, so we want to buy in a zone for a great public elementary school. I’ve seen a lot online about the feeder schools to Lassiter and Walton, but what about Kennesaw schools? Does anyone have experience and recommendations for that city?