WITH ONLY THREE OUT OF SEVEN Marietta city council races being contested Tuesday and with the city-wide mayor's race considered a slam dunk for former state Rep. Steve "Thunder" Tumlin, don't look for heavy turnout by Marietta's 31,337 registered voters. It's more likely to be "light to modest," observers predict.

Cobb Elections Supervisor Sharon Dunn told AT on Friday that turnout for the non-partisan balloting will likely be in the 20 percent to 25 percent range, or between 6,200 and 7,800 voters. Another veteran observer of city races was projecting turnout slightly lower at just 15 percent to 20 percent.

Such low turnout is due primarily to a mayor's race that is seen as a "yawner," with Tumlin expected to rack up at least three-quarters of the vote against one candidate who's an unknown and another who is a confirmed gadfly.

Most vote watchers AT talked to predict Libertarian Chris Neill would finish a distant second with no more than 15 percent of the vote and Bill Bolton would finish in single digits.

Although Bolton, a MARTA-to-Marietta advocate who favors tunneling Whitlock Avenue under the Square, pulled in a surprising 21 percent when he ran for mayor in 2005, local politicos chalked up most of those ballots as "protest" votes against his foe that year, incumbent Bill Dunaway. Bolton netted just eight votes in his 2001 mayoral run.

Several observers of the local scene describe Neil, 32, as an impressive young man who has turned heads in this race and hope he will stay involved in city politics.

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SHOULD DUNN'S TURNOUT PROJECTION pan out, that would mean voter interest this year was on a par with that in the city elections of 2001, which saw several closely contested council and school board races plus the most issue-oriented mayoral race in recent city history. Two candidates (eventual winner Dunaway and attorney John Hammond) ran on a platform of getting a new operator for the city conference center, jettisoning money-losing Marietta FiberNet and launching a city revitalization campaign. Incumbent Ansley Meaders ran on a status quo platform. Dunaway and Hammond snared a combined 73.2 percent of the vote, with turnout that day of 26.4 percent.

Turnout dropped to 18.8 percent in 2005, when Dunaway was challenged by Bolton.

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THE OTHER PREDICTABLE RACE Tuesday is that between Ward 4 incumbent Councilman Van Pearlberg and developer/Philip Goldstein protege Wes Godwin. Handicappers say Pearlberg, like Tumlin, will romp with 75 percent or more of the vote. One wag joked that most of Godwin's votes will come from ex-jailbirds prosecuted through the years by Pearlberg, who is Cobb D.A. Pat Head's right-hand man.

Friends of Tumlin and Pearlberg say the two will be battling over bragging rights based on who pulls in the biggest winning percentage.

Handicappers still see Ward 5 incumbent the Rev. Anthony Coleman winning without a runoff against former councilman and school board member James Dodd and newcomer Chris Johnson.

Observers say Johnson, who is white, will likely pull more voters away from Dodd than Coleman in the majority-black ward.

The closest council race was expected to be that between Ward 3 incumbent Holly Walquist and former Councilman Johnny Sinclair. But that was before this week's front-page news that the IRS had filed two liens against Sinclair's home for his failure to pay $70,000 in taxes, and that the state had filed a similar lien for $700.

That news prompted one city hall-watcher to exclaim, "What was he thinking?" wondering how anyone would even consider running for office with such skeletons in his closet.

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IF YOU'VE EVER WAITED IN LINE or visited a government office for a birth certificate, car tag or drivers license exam, you know it's not unusual to come away frustrated or angry.

However, when a member of the AT team voted early this week at the Cobb elections office on Whitlock Avenue with family and other friends, it was smooth sailing.

The four or five poll workers warmly greeted the early voters the minute they stepped into the office, cheerfully instructed them on filling out the ballot request and after they voted, thanked them for doing so.

Whether in the private or public sector good service matters and is noticed. It was certainly noticed by a handful of early voters to Sharon Dunn's office this week.

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THE LATE BOB FLOURNOY, Marietta’s colorful and hard-charging mayor during the early 1980s, was often heard declaring loudly that there were two things a city could not have too much of — greenspace and parking.

Unfortunately, that sentiment is not in vogue with our quarrelsome, do-nothing, ethics-challenged current city council, which is about to close out a less-than-illustrious four years at city hall.

Its most-tenured and most-powerful member, Philip Goldstein, shamefully tries to defend the indefensible — claiming that even though he owns or controls a multitude of downtown parking spaces thanks to his private real estate holdings, it is not a conflict of interest for him to be part of the city’s negotiating team as it tries to hash out a deal with the county over the financing of a new parking deck across Lawrence Street from the county’s new Superior Court Building now under construction.

Goldstein contended at Wednesday’s council committee meeting that he has no conflict because he would not own any part of the new deck. R-i-i-i-ght. Nevermind the age-old laws of supply and demand, which in Marietta’s case means that the fewer the parking spaces, the more their owners can charge for them. You can bet the farm that Goldstein is an expert on the law of supply and demand.

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MEANWHILE, ACCORDING TO THE CONVOLUTED LOGIC of Councilwoman Holly Walquist, Marietta would be wrong to lease or piggy-back onto part of Cobb’s deck in order to help our merchants and visitors to the Square.

Why? Because big, bad Cobb County would be the deck’s owner. Of course, ownership wasn’t an issue several weeks ago when she voted to saddle Marietta taxpayers with millions more in conference center debt, even though the Goldstein-controlled Downtown Marietta Development Authority — not the city — owns the struggling Marietta Conference Center and leases it to the city.

Then Councilman Coleman bluntly “cut to the chase” as to the prospects for a city-county joint venture for more parking on the Square.

“It ain’t going to happen,“ he declared.

His prediction prompted a city hall-watcher to speculate that “Philip has already gotten to Anthony.”

As for Councilwoman Annette Lewis, there’s no need for Goldstein to lobby her to oppose the deal. That’s because whenever his right hand goes up to vote, hers shoots up as well. She is every bit as good a rubberstamp for Goldstein as Cobb school board member Holli Cash is for Superintendent Fred Sanderson, or as Nancy Pelosi is for Barack Obama.

AFTER WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S BASHING of the parking deck proposal by the council, mild-mannered Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens must be asking why he’s bothering with this crowd, which probably couldn’t distinguish a brand new Maserati from an Edsel.

Just think: Olens and the county have patiently negotiated in good faith for months with Goldstein, knowing full well he was a walking, talking conflict of interest.

Until recently, however, Olens was too much the gentleman and consensus-builder to publicly hint at such.

All the while, lame-duck Mayor Dunaway was naively insisting his nemesis, Goldstein, was negotiating on behalf of Square merchants and not the Goldstein family, which owns buildings and parking spots galore on and around the Square.

Only Councilmen Grif Chalfant and Pearlberg have, to their credit, sounded off about Goldstein’s gross conflicts of interest.

Then, thanks to Wednesday’s committee meeting, Olens learned what many suspected all along — that Dunaway, with his scorched-earth “leadership” style, has burned his bridges beyond repair with fellow councilmen during the past eight years. He could not muster even a single vote for the parking deck proposal.

What a repudiation! What a send-off gift for the departing mayor.

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ALTHOUGH GOLDSTEIN’S MANEUVERINGS to deep-six the deck are finally starting to take place in public, as was the case Wednesday night, Goldstein-watchers know his preferred modus operandi is to deftly kill such proposals in the shadows without the public ever knowing what happened.

For example, he had almost throttled the parking deal to death in the course of six months of tedious negotiations over something that should be fairly simple, and he had done so without the issue ever even appearing on the public’s — or most of the council’s — radar screens until recent weeks. Neither Dunaway nor City Manager Bill Bruton ever publicly briefed the council on the dragged-out talks that, much to Goldstein’s apparent plan, were going nowhere.

Goldstein’s attempt to secretly filibuster the deck to death via prolonged, secret negotiations was working well until MDJ reporter Jon Gillooly, poking around, reported that negotiations had been under way but had broken off because county officials were fed up with what they viewed as Goldstein’s lack of good faith.

Mayor Flournoy got it right 25 years ago. A city cannot have too much green space or too much parking. But don’t try telling that to today’s city council.