Editorial control of the Oconee Patch web site, moved in August to Athens, has shifted again, this time to metropolitan Atlanta.
As part of a major restructuring of Patch, about two-thirds of the editorial staff members nationally have lost their jobs, according to media blogger Jim Romenesko, who has a record of breaking inside stories about Patch.
While the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce provided Epps Bridge Centre developer Frank Bishop the platform to go public with his campaign for liquor by the drink in the county, the Chamber has taken a much weaker stand itself.
Bishop, the keynote speaker at the Chamber’s Banquet and Annual Meeting last Thursday night, asked the Board of Commissioners to put the issue on the ballot and the public to vote to allow restaurants to sell liquor.
The message on Wednesday evening for any of the roughly 75 people in the audience who wanted to hear it was very clear.
Barrow, Jackson and Walton counties made mistakes by moving their government buildings out of the center of their county seats.
The Oconee County Utility Department has assigned sewer service capacity in Epps Bridge Centre for Kinnucan’s, a speciality outfitter that already had one area store in the Alps Shopping Center on Alps Road in Athens.
The county has not yet issued a building permit for the store, which will be located in an extension of the building now housing Guitar Center.
Frank Bishop, developer of Epps Bridge Centre, used his keynote speech before the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce tonight to call for a county referendum to approve the sale of liquor by the drink in restaurants.
Bishop first asked those in attendance to shop locally to help guarantee the vitality of his shopping center.
House Bill 310, passed by the Georgia Senate on Jan. 14 and by the Georgia House on Jan. 17 and signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday, contains a provision that will allow the Oconee County Board of Commissioners to put the 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax on the May 20 ballot.
The Commissioners are scheduled to make that decision at their regular meeting on March 4, but they could not have put the issue before voters until later in the year–probably in November--had the General Assembly not passed and the governor not signed the House bill.
The Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir Management Board this afternoon decided not to grant an extension in the time line for construction of the reservoir and dam despite an estimate that between 45 and 60 days had been lost due to heavy rains on Dec. 22.
The 3.4 inches of rainfall over a 19-hour period resulted in a breach of the coffer dam being used in construction of the actual dam, Project Manager Jimmy Parker told the Board at its meeting in the Walton County government building.
Resurgence Park, the large development underway between SR 316 and Virgil Langford Road east of the Oconee Connector, will be before the Oconee County Development Review Committee tomorrow morning as the next step in getting the project and its assisted living faculty underway.
Thrive Senior Living, an Atlanta-based company, has said it will operate an 85-bed facility on one of the lots in the 23-acre project, but developer Nichols Land and Investment Company must get approval of the site plans for the overall Resurgence Park before it can more forward on the assisted living facility.
Oconee County officials, in a meeting at the Civic Center last night, provided citizens with the first overview of projects under consideration for the proposed 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum planned for the May 20 ballot.
The list contained some surprises.
The three Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate on Friday night asked those in attendance at the Oconee County Democratic Party gathering in Watkinsville to remember who had come to meet with them and, by extension, who had not.
“We shouldn’t anoint our candidates,” Steen Miles from Decatur said. “Every candidate should present their views before you, the voting public, and let them make their decision.”
Oconee County is projecting that it will receive $55 million from the proposed Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to be on the ballot on May 20, up from the $40 million projected from the current SPLOST.
Revenue from the current 1 percent optional sales tax is running behind projections, however, and county officials now are expecting it will generate only about $35 million by the time it expires at the end of next year.
Best Buy is joining a lengthening list of Atlanta Highway retailers moving their operations to Oconee County’s Epps Bridge Centre.
Oconee County Code Enforcement issued a commercial building permit on Monday for a 30,299-square-foot-building for Best Buy to be located on the east side of the shopping mall, adjacent to Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Oconee County farmland activist Russ Page and Laura Hall from the Athens Land Trust have called a meeting for Thursday to push for inclusion of funding for farmland protection in the county’s 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.
The meeting comes before two oportunities—on Jan. 13 and Feb. 10—for citizens to indicate what projects they want to have included in the language for the next SPLOST referendum, scheduled to be held May 20 of this year.
