State Rep. Marcus Wiedower brought the House Study Committee on Gaming, which he chairs, to what he called his hometown of Watkinsville on Monday where he had a personal exchange about parenting and gambling with Watkinsville attorney Pam Hendrix.
Hendrix was the last of five persons who chose to speak before the Study Committee in its two-hour-long session at the Oconee County Administrative Building, and she was the sole speaker from Oconee County.
An outside professional air evaluation team hired by Oconee County Schools has concluded that the air quality in a selected classroom and in the gym at Oconee County Elementary School closely matches the air quality outside those school facilities.
Mayah Kirson and Tyler Kelly with Geo-Hydro of Kennesaw reported that for 20 fungal spore types identified in the air inside and outside of Classroom 607 at the Elementary School, fungal spore levels inside the school did not exceed levels outside the school.
The House Study Committee on Gaming In The State of Georgia will hold the first of at least four public hearings at 10 a.m. on Monday (July 28) at the Oconee County Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville.
While the agenda for the meeting has not been released, the topic of the meeting is listed as casino gambling.
The Oconee County Board of Education is preparing to put a referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot for a new Education Local Option Sales Tax (ELOST).
The current ELOST does not expire until the end of 2027, so a new tax, if approved by voters in November, would not take effect on Jan. 1 of 2028.
The developer of a 377-unit senior living community on the Oconee Connector where it dead ends into SR Loop 10 said on Thursday he experts to have a land disturbance permit next week and to begin work on the project once that is in hand.
Paul Aase, Chief Executive Officer of Active Senior Concepts, told a gathering of about 25 future and prospective residents of what will be Celebration Village Athens that he expect construction to start after the end of this year.
The Oconee County Board of Education on Wednesday completed the first phase of its screening of the 19 applications it received for superintendent of Oconee County Schools.
Board Chair Michael Ransom said in an email on Wednesday evening that the Board had interviewed seven applicants in the three sessions it has held and that the Board “in the weeks ahead” will review notes from the interviews.
Oconee County Democratic voters joined with the majority in the state in naming Peter Hubbard as the Party’s nominee to challenge Republican incumbent Fitz Johnson in November for District 3 representative on the state Public Service Commission.
In Tuesday voting in the Democratic Party Special Election Primary runoff, 178 Oconee County voters joined the 192 county voters who had cast a ballot in the five days of Early Voting to give Hubbard 79.1 percent of the vote to 20.9 percent for Keisha Sean Waites.
Both the Oconee County Board of Education and the Oconee County Board of Commissioners are poised to adopt property tax millage rates for the 2025 tax year and Fiscal Year 2026 that are rolled back sufficiently to avoid a state-defined tax increase.
The Board of Education plans to adopt a rate of 13.962 mills, which is calculated to produce $53.1 million in revenue, up from $51.2 million last year, or an increase in property tax revenue of 3.67 percent.
Oconee County Schools took in $3.6 million more in revenue than anticipated in the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget, which ended on June 30, and spent $0.5 million more than expected when the Board of Education approved the budget in June of last year.
Oconee County Schools received $0.3 million less in federal funding in Fiscal Year 2025 than budgeted, and reduced the amount of spending by that same amount.
Only 192 Oconee County voters cast a ballot in the five days of early voting in the Democratic Primary Runoff for District 3 on the state Public Service Commission.
As a result, Democrats are going into election day on Tuesday 50 votes down from the number they had cast in the 16 days of early voting leading up to June 17 Special Election Primary.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners, in a 3 to 1 vote on Tuesday, turned down a request for a commercial development on Mars Hill Road at Bell Road that would have included offices and warehouses.
The Board denied the request by Chad Keller’s CK Capital after more than 60 people filled the Commission Chamber at the Oconee County Administrative Building for three rezone hearings.
Oconee County School Superintendent Debra Harden has asked school Chief Operations Officer Ryan White to have a third party conduct testing for mold at Oconee County Elementary School.
Harden made that announcement to the Oconee County Board of Education on Monday in her first report as Interim Superintendent.
The first of five days of early voting in the Special Democratic Primary Runoff to select the party’s nominee for District 3 Public Service Commissioner gets underway at 8 a.m. on Monday (July 7) at the Oconee County Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville
The only names on the ballot are Peter Hubbard and Keisha Sean Waites.
The owner of the now dormant 150-acre Pointe Preserve subdivision on Price Mill Road south of Gober Road near the Morgan County line is asking the county to declare the two roadways inside the subdivision abandoned.
Ned Butler of Walton County, vice president of TMFT Lot Investments LLC, has told the county that TMFT wants to reverse a decision it made on June 6, 2020, when it gave the county easements for Preserve Landing and Pointe Court, roadways within the subdivision.
Indivisible GA 10 and Indivisible Boldly Blue, in collaboration with Oconee County Democrats, assembled 12 speakers at the Historic Walton County Courthouse in Monroe on July 1 to explain how the tax and policy bill before Congress at that time would impact them negatively.
The speakers made their comments before a crowd of about 50 and then delivered those statements to the Office of U.S. District 10 Congressman Mike Collins, located across the street from the Courthouse.
Oconee County School Board Chair Michael Ransom said the Board would like to name a new school superintendent in September and have that person start serving as superintendent that month.
Ransom said he recognizes that his time line is “pretty aggressive,” and he said it is likely the new superintendent will not be in place until later in the fall semester, and perhaps not until January.Approximately 75 people turned out in the extreme heat on Sunday to unveil a memorial marker on the north side of the Oconee County Courthouse in Watkinsville to recognize the lynching of nine individuals on that site 120 years ago.
The marker lists the names of the eight persons who lost their lives to the mob violence–one miraculously survived–and notes that the 1905 lynching was one of the deadliest such events in Georgia history.
