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Sept. 9, 2006—A new book chronicles how a public-private partnership with CH2M HILL OMI enabled Sandy Springs, Ga., to become a fully functional city in December 2005. Just released, Creating the New City of Sandy Springs—The 21st Century Paradigm: Private Industry by Oliver Porter tells the story of the formation of Georgia’s newest and seventh-largest city and its innovative approach to service delivery.
After struggling for over three decades to become a city, 94 percent of the voters in this formerly unincorporated Fulton County community approved a referendum in favor of cityhood in June 2005. When it became a city last Dec. 1, one of its first orders of business was to approve a contract with CH2M HILL OMI. In what is notably the nation’s most comprehensive public-private partnership for city operations services, the company provides customer call center, human resources, public information, accounting, finance, purchasing, information technology, public works, transportation, recreation and parks, and planning and zoning services for the city of nearly 90,000.
“I do believe that public-private partnership is the best model for the future,” says Porter, who served as chairman of the Governor’s Commission for Sandy Springs and volunteer city manager during the transition to cityhood.
Porter’s book documents the birth of Sandy Springs and provides a roadmap for other cities wishing to establish public-private partnership models of government. Porter’s self-published book is available in hardback or in paperback at www.authorhouse.com/bookstore, keyword Sandy Springs. |
