Blogs - East Cobber

Cobb sheriff appoints chief investigator, Osborne alum to second in command

June 19, 2013 Leave a Comment

From left, Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren, and newly appointed Chief Deputy Sheriff Milton Beck.
Special to the MDJ

Sheriff Neil Warren has appointed his chief investigator, Milton Beck, to the position of chief deputy sheriff, the No. 2 person in charge of the office.

Beck replaces Lynda Coker, who retired.

Warren has a staff of 795 and an annual budget of $67.7 million.

The sheriff is the chief jailer and runs the 3,077-bed Cobb County Adult Detention Center. Beck said the jail averages a daily population of about 2,000 to 2,100. The sheriff also has the responsibility of serving warrants.

“On a yearly basis you’re probably looking at 24,000 criminal warrants come through our office a year and probably 45,000 civil processes that come to us to be served,” Beck said. “We’re an extension of the courts. We provide that service. And of course provide courthouse security to the judicial complex is one of the constitutional responsibilities of the sheriff.”

Beck joined the Cobb Sheriff’s Office in 1989 as a deputy sheriff. Through his career, he has been assigned to every division of the office from the jail to the Marietta/Cobb/Smyrna Narcotics Unit to Court Services, Uniform Field Services and Internal Affairs.

He was appointed chief investigator in 2004 where he was in charge of the Operations Division.

Beck’s salary, which is set by the Cobb Legislative Delegation, will be raised from $111,928 to $123,356.

Warren said his office is fortunate to have so many deputies with the training, qualifications and ability to continue the tradition of providing the citizens with the professional law enforcement services they have come to expect.

“At this time, I felt Chief Deputy Beck’s experience, knowledge, commitment and dedication would best serve me, the community, and this agency well,” Warren said.

A native of California, Beck, 48, is a member of the Osborne High School Class of 1983. He earned his bachelor’s degree in management from Western Carolina University, is a 2001 graduate of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government Management Program and a graduate of Leadership Cobb.

He and his wife, Brandi, live in Powder Springs. They have two children, Connor and Sara, who attend Hillgrove High School.

“You know, the words that come to my mind is I’m very humbled and I’m very blessed by Sheriff Warren’s appointment,” Beck said. “I just look forward to continuing to working, continuing to lead and working with the men and women in the Sheriff’s Office. Humbled and blessed, that’s what it is. My cup is overflowing.”

(Reprinted from the Marietta Daily Journal. Written by Jon Gillooly, Jun 06, 2013. Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Cobb sheriff appoints chief investigator Osborne alum to second in command)

Filed Under: Public Safety, [Featured], [PostToSocial] Tagged With: Lynda Coker, Milton Beck, Sherriff Neil Warren

Chairman on anti-tax activist’s appointment: ‘Hold off’

June 18, 2013 Leave a Comment

East Cobber Lance Lamberton

County Chairman Tim Lee on Tuesday delayed anti-tax activist Lance Lamberton from being appointed to the county’s 15-member citizen group that provides oversight for special purpose local option sales tax funds.

First-year Commissioner Lisa Cupid planned to appoint Lamberton, president of the Cobb Taxpayers Association, to the county’s SPLOST watchdog committee, but during (the June 11) meeting she announced that a member of the Board of Commissioners had approached her with concerns about Lamberton.

“I’m not going to reveal any names, but I heard from someone on the board who had some concerns, just one person who did,” Cupid said. “They saw the paper this morning, they came directly to me. It was minutes before this meeting. Just out of respect I want to give them the benefit of conversation before I make a motion.”

While she and the other commissioners don’t always vote the same, Cupid said she has a good working relationship with them, “and I’d like to preserve that, and if it means just holding this off for another meeting so we can have that conversation I’m going to give my peer that respect.”

Cupid said the vote on Lamberton will again come up at the June 25 meeting.

Lee admitted to the MDJ after the meeting that he was the one who asked Cupid to hold off on the Lamberton vote.

“My issue is this: when we make appointments to any board it’s always good to have someone who is a subject-matter expert if it’s required and to have someone who is perceived by the community to have an unbiased, very even keel, educated perspective on the whole issue, not one that is to the extreme on one side or the other,” Lee said.

Lee said his opposition to Lamberton serving on the SPLOST committee was the same reason he opposed immigration reformer D.A. King serving on the new committee recently formed to find best practices for ensuring the county doesn’t hire illegal immigrants.

“To put someone in there that might be biased one way or the other creates a distraction that takes the focus away from the true work, and we’ve had how many years of successful oversight representation and review by the citizen committees?” Lee said. “Have not found anything. I don’t believe it would be any different if (Lamberton) were on it. I just think the focus would go away from what their primary responsibilities are to what does Lance Lamberton think is occurring, and I just don’t think that’s the way to go.”

Lee said he intended to speak with Cupid about the appointment in private, but if she still wanted to appoint Lamberton, “Then it’s a district appointment, and she can bring him forward next week if that’s what she wants to do.”

Lamberton, who was not at the meeting, made the following comment when told of what Lee had said.

“Is the Chairman saying that if you are opposed to the SPLOST passage you are biased, but if you are in favor of it that makes you unbiased? That to me sounds irrational and unreasonable,” Lamberton said. “As far as being knowledgeable, I think I’m just about as knowledgeable as any lay person could possibly be. I mean, my organization and I have done thorough research on every single possible project that is on the SPLOST list, and the reason we came up with our opposition is because so many of the projects on the list we felt were more wants versus needs.”

This is not the first time Lee has moved to stop a watchdog resident from serving on a county committee. In 2011, Lee, along with commissioners Helen Goreham and JoAnn Birrell, voted down Commissioner Bob Ott’s appointment to the Citizens Oversight Committee, Thea Powell. Powell, herself a former commissioner, has a countywide reputation for asking tough questions and is a withering critic of one of Lee’s strongest allies, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce.

Then-Commissioner Woody Thompson, who held the seat prior to Cupid, referred to the vote against Powell as “purely political” at the time.

(Reprinted from the Marietta Daily Journal. Written by Jon Gillooly, Jun 12, 2013. Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Chairman on anti tax activist’s appointment ‘Hold off’)

Filed Under: Government & Politics Blog, [Featured], [PostToSocial] Tagged With: Board of Commissioners, Lance Lamberton, Lisa Cupid, splost, Tim Lee

Athlete of the Year: Williams adds titles to cap ‘OK’ senior season

June 18, 2013 Leave a Comment

Kendell Williams Staff photo by Kelly J. Huff

Kendell Williams wasn’t too happy about the way she was competing leading up to this season’s state meet in Albany.

The Kell senior wasn’t getting the kind of results she wanted.

“This season was actually shaky for me,” Williams said. “I wasn’t performing how I was expecting myself to perform until (the state meet). That made state even greater because I wasn’t expecting to perform that well there either.

“But I think it was an OK season. Towards sectionals is when it started getting to the point where I was getting the numbers I wanted.”

If “an OK season” includes long jump, 300 hurdles and high jump championships at the Class AAAAA, Cobb County and Region 7AAAAA meets — which is what Williams accomplished — then what would a great season be?

For Williams, it’s not just about winning — it’s about achieving the best marks possible.

“What keeps me going is I know I want to be an Olympian,” she said, “so I have to keep working towards that goal.”

Williams, the 2012-13 Marietta Daily Journal/Cobb County Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year, is well on her way to achieving her goal.

She capped her stellar four-year career at Kell with three more state championships this spring, bringing her total title haul to 11. She set a state record in the 100 hurdles and ran the fastest time in the nation among high school athletes after crossing the line in 13.23 seconds in the finals. Williams also set the state record in the long jump at 20 feet, 9¾ inches and cleared the high jump with a leap of 5-8.

For her efforts, Williams was awarded the overall high points award in Albany, as well as the award for high points in the field events.

“It’s really cool,” Williams said of the honors and awards she’s received. “I work really hard, so it’s good that it’s paying off and that other people notice. It feels really good.”

Kell coach Andi Jenkins knows the type of athlete Williams is and wants to become.

“This is the fourth year in a row for Kendell as the MDJ athlete of the year,” Jenkins said. “She is one-in-a-billion. You don’t have athletes like that that come through your doors hardly at all. To actually have the opportunity to coach her has been a real honor. She’s an excellent athlete, but she’s an excellent person first, and that’s what I think is so special about her.

“She does everything you ask her to do. She doesn’t complain. She’s a hard worker. That’s something, I think, a lot of people need to realize. She has a lot of natural ability, but she works hard to get where she’s at. I think that’s what makes her special as well.”

Williams will be heading to Georgia this fall to compete alongside her brother, Devon, and she has him to thank, in a way, for getting her involved in track and field.

“I got started when I was 7,” she said. “It was the Fourth of July and (my family and I) were at my brother’s baseball game. All of the boys were racing, and I wanted to race, too, so I kicked off my shoes and outran them all. So, my parents were like, ‘We need to sign her up for track.’ So, I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s been a part of my life.”

Williams’ exploits, as well as those of her teammates, helped Kell to a runner-up showing at the Class AAAAA state meet, the best finish in the program’s history.

“I’m so happy for my team,” Williams said. “I wish we would have won. That would have been the perfect way to end senior year. We all tried super, super hard. We took the biggest team ever to state this year, so it was fun to be with all of them. We were all excited. It was good.”

With Olympic aspirations in sight, Williams will continue to work hard at everything she does.

“The heptathlon in 2016 is what I’m aiming towards, so, hopefully, I can get there,” she said. “I’ll probably still compete in the hurdles, high jump and long jump, too, but I still have to work on my throws to score well in the heptathlon. I don’t do throws during the high school season, but I definitely do them in my indoor and summer seasons. I’m looking forward to competing and preparing myself.”

(Reprinted from the Marietta Daily Journal. Written by Carlton D. White, June 7, 2013. Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Athlete of the Year Williams adds titles to cap ‘OK’ senior season)

Filed Under: Teen Blog, [Featured], [PostToSocial] Tagged With: Kell High School, Kendell Williams