Townley Family Partnership LLLP is planning an 120-lot residential subdivision on what is now farmland bordered by Hodges Mill Road, Hog Mountain Road, and Rocky Branch Road in the northwest of the county.
While some of that acreage is inside the unincorporated Eastville community and is already zoned Agricultural Residential, the bulk of the 299.9 acres planned for the subdivision currently is zoned Agricultural.
The Hard Labor Creek Reservoir Management Board on Tuesday agreed to a $122 million contract with Archer Western Construction for a 12 million gallon per day water treatment plant on the Walton County reservoir.
The cost for construction of the plant is an increase from the estimated projected cost of $114.6 million the Board had received in June based on completion of 60 percent of the design work and an increase from $104.8 million at conceptual stage in September of 2023.
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) last week awarded a $139.4 million contact with Archer Western Construction LLC and Heath & Lineback Engineering Inc. for reconstruction of the SR 316 interchanges with Jimmy Daniell Road, Virgil Langford Road, and the Oconee Connector.
The existing at-grade intersection at Jimmy Daniell Road will be replaced with a a grade-separated, diamond interchange with a single-lane roundabout at the northern ramp and another single-lane roundabout at the southern ramp.
Oconee County Schools administrators have drafted and sent to Sheriff James Hale for review a Memorandum of Understanding designed to put school resource officers in each of the system’s 12 schools by the start of the next school year.
The Memorandum also formalizes the placement of the two school resource officers now in the county’s two high schools for the remainder of this school year.
Oconee County commissioners last week spent 16 minutes deciding what to do with a driveway leading to an unpermitted guest house on Garrett Road and an hour deciding what to do with an unpermitted storage shed on Oconee Forrest Drive.
The decision on the driveway was one the commissioners had delayed following a zoning hearing a month ago, and last week they sided with the homeowners and allowed them to use an existing driveway the commissioners previously had blocked rather than build a new one.
For the first time since at least 1995, Oconee County Schools had a drop in enrollment, based on official school census data for October filed with the Georgia Department of Education.
The enrollment decline is at PK-5 and at the high school levels. Middle school enrollment actually increased last year to this.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration met on Friday to certify the Nov. 5 election results, adding four voters to the final presidential tally, all four of whom voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.
The addition didn’t change the results, of course, with Republican Donald Trump getting a rounded 67.32 percent of the vote in the county, rather than 67.35 percent, and Harris getting 31.50 percent before and after the addition of the four votes.
Former President Donald Trump improved his vote percentage in Oconee County on Tuesday by 1.6 percentage points over 2020 and ever so slightly over his figure for 2016, leading a strong performance by Republican candidates in the county.
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins improved his percentage in the county over 2020 against Democratic challengers, as did Republicans state Sen. Bill Cowsert, state Rep. Houston Gaines, and state Rep. Marcus Wiedower.
The Oconee County Library Board of Trustees will look very different when it meets again in January at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park.
Mark Campbell, who has been on the Board for two five-year terms and served as Board Chair for the last two years, will not be at the table in the front of the room.
Oconee County commissioners are scheduled to continue their discussion of proposed changes to the county’s Alcohol Beverage Ordinance on Tuesday night with the goal of taking final action on a revised ordinance at its regular meeting on Dec. 3.
The five commissioners spent 35 minutes at their agenda-setting meeting this past Tuesday (Oct. 29) reviewing a draft of the ordinance from County Attorney Daniel Haygood.
Just more than 70 percent of the active voters in Oconee County cast a ballot by the end of the final day of early voting on Friday.
That figure includes the 21,272 voters who cast a ballot in-person, the 1,446 who returned an absentee ballot, and the single person who voted provisionally but whose ballot has now been accepted, for a total of 22,719 returned ballots.
