Organizers of the Tuesday evening Town Hall Meeting With Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins were not able to get Collins to attend, but they did turn out a very large crowd that produced a stack of 163 comment forms to deliver to Collins’s Monroe Office this week.
Selected individuals in the auditorium of the Athens Library read aloud a number of those questions, and the crowd remained engaged and orderly for the more than 90 minutes set aside for the meeting.
The group in Bishop that submitted a rejected application to begin the recall process for that city’s mayor and three member of its Council can restart the process at any time, according to a new interpretation of the state laws covering recalls.
Despite that option, Jacob Spaulding, who picked up the application forms and returned them to the Oconee County Office of Elections and Registration on March 3, said that he and his colleagues have decided to end their recall efforts.
Members of the Georgia House of Representative, led in part by Oconee County Rep. Houston Gaines, are working hard to make life difficult for members of governmental bodies that voted to opt out of the state’s new floating homestead exemption.
In Oconee County, those are the members of the Oconee County Board of Education, who voted 4 to 1 on Feb. 3 to approve a resolution not to participate in the inflation-adjusted homestead exemption.
Oconee County Democrats are going forward with plans to hold a Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday evening, even though they acknowledge invited Republican 10th Congressional District Rep. Mike Collins has said he will not attend.
The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Athens Clarke-County Library Auditorium, according to an email message sent out by Harold Thompson, Oconee County Democratic Party Chair, on Friday (March 14).
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is considering allowing its contractor to close the Oconee Connector interchange with SR 316 for 45 days during reconstruction of that intersection.
Construction of the three-interchange bundle consisting of Jimmy Daniell Road, Virgil Langford Road, and the Connector is expected to begin later this year with the Virgil Langford Road flyover of SR 316.
Oconee County Schools has collected 99 percent of its projected revenue from ad valorem taxes and from title taxes, two-thirds of its funding from the state Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula, and 28 times the budgeted amount for investment income.
Oconee County Schools Chief Financial Officer Peter Adams made that report to School Board on Monday, saying that, in the eighth month of the school year “we are on target for the period, maintaining a well balanced financial position.”
The Oconee County Board of Education on Monday approved a state-required five-year facilities plan that projects growing enrollment through the 2028-2029 school year and calls for expanded high school instructional space to address that growth.
The total cost of the construction in the plan is $67.1 million, with $16.2 million of that listed as eligible for state funding and the remaining $50.9 million coming from local sources.
