The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
City officials hear from ‘complicated’ resident
76-year-old activist persists — and insists on being listened to.
An outspoken Roswell resident who has provoked the ire of elected officials for years with her critique on how city business could be handled differently is finding the new mayor and council more attentive to what she has to say.
Janet Russell, 76, is a constant presence around town and known for taking officials to task during public comment at city meetings, or elsewhere, when she believes they’re overspending or mismanaging projects. The California native moved to her Roswell home 49 years ago.
“Janet has never been on the inside … and she can step on people’s toes pretty quick,” Mayor Kurt Wilson said. “Janet can be abrasive. Not that she’s wrong but she doesn’t give a damn what you think. … She’s complicated.”
Russell complained to former Mayor Lori Henry during a December City Council meeting that the stalled, overbudget Oxbo Road project located less than a mile from her home is comparable to the tragic explosion in the Port of Beirut in 2020.
During a City Council meeting Monday, Russell commented on
diversity and affordability in Roswell and gave city leaders her take on the housing market nationally.
“Remember there is a world bigger than the one you live in,” she told council members. “I have a pretty big worldview of things, and I probably know more diverse cultures than anyone in this room and I challenge them.”
The longtime resident has served on several citizen committees for the city over the years and is considered a community activist with a persistence that was often unwelcome in the past, Wilson and others said.
“I’m just a doer,” Russell said. Roswell’s new Mobile Visitors Center van was Russell’s idea, Councilwoman Christine Hall said. Russell’s idea was to meet people where they are by adding a mobile unit as an extension to the brick and mortar location on Atlanta Street, Hall said, but the city permanently closed the physical office.
After being turned down in trying to get City Hall lit up in different holiday colors throughout the year, Russell convinced officials in February to illuminate the building with yellow and blue lights to show solidarity with Ukraine, Hall said.
Russell recommended the past two veterans honored by City Council and didn’t accept “no” from city staff when requesting a police escort for them to City Hall. Edward G. Bernard, a nearly 100-year-old U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, and Carol Brandau Sundling, who was a flight nurse for the U.S. Air Force and served in Vietnam, separately received proclamations for their service on different dates in March.
“When the administration said, ‘No, (to a police escort) it can’t be done,’ she went to the police chief ...,” Hall said. Both veterans had a police escort to the City Hall ceremonies.
Russell has pressed every city administration in Roswell since W.L. “Pug” Mabry, who served as mayor from 1967 to 1997.
“I can remember going to City Council meetings and saying ‘I would really like to have bicycle lanes ... so I could ride to the square,” Russell said. “I was told I should put my bike in the car and take it to the Roswell High School track.”
Russell said she experienced culture shock when she moved from the San Francisco Bay area in 1973 with her former husband, a Delta pilot, and infant daughter. She had worked as a civilian flight attendant for the military airlift command at Travis Air Force Base, she said.
When Russell arrived in Roswell, Holcomb Bridge Road was a dirt road and a part of unincorporated Fulton County, she said.
“It was whiplash for me moving to the South,” Russell said. “The town I grew up in was 100,000 people of different ethnicities and I kind of like that.”
Russell and her husband divorced less than 10 years later but she still lives in the 1960s home they moved into and raised her two daughters there. She operated a travel agency in the neighborhood on Atlanta Street for 20 years.
Roswell is now multicultural in its population, having grown from about 5,400 people in 1970 to 92,800 in 2020.
“I don’t have a Ph.D., but I have one in living and I reach out to everyone in my community,” Russell told City Council members Monday during her public comment.
Russell has said she doesn’t believe the extent of construction planned for the now $18.5 million Oxbo Road project or the $50 million Historic Gateway project is necessary.
Council members said they don’t agree but they’re listening.
“If you listen, 85% of what she says is spot on,” Wilson said. “She’s just a warrior, to her massive credit. And she will bust you in the chops. I think this town has a great love for her but in many ways she still feels like an outsider.”