Three members of the five-member Georgia State Election Board voted last week to send to the state Attorney General Office two Oconee County cases because of possible violations of Georgia law.
One of the cases involved a “residency issue,” while the other involved what was labeled as “ballot harvesting,” though the case dealt not with ballots but with petitions submitted to get two candidates for the Oconee County Board of Education on the ballot as independents in 2022.
The Oconee County Board of Education on Monday voted to increase the pay scale for mechanics by more than 22 percent at the entry level and by more than 29 percent at the top pay scale in an effort to recruit and retain employees for that job.
The pay increase follows similar adjustments for bus drivers, and supervisors and school food nutrition workers, identified, along with mechanics, as positions that are hard to fill and hard to retain.
Democrat Eric Gisler pulled out a squeaker Tuesday night, defeating Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by 197 votes in the House District 121 Special Election to replace Republican Marcus Wiedower, who stepped down on Oct. 28.
Gisler won by increasing his vote percentage in Oconee County from the 26.0 percent of the vote he received in the county in his 2024 challenge of Wiedower to 35.5 percent against Guest on Tuesday night.
Attorney David Ellison has informed the Oconee County Board of Commissioners that his client Deferred Tax LLC objects to the county initiated rezone of property owned by Deferred Tax at the corner of the Oconee Connector and Mars Hill Road.
In a letter dated Nov. 25, Ellison said the county is proposing to “down zone” the 33.7 acre site, an “action that would impose a significant detriment” on his client.
Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest IV raised $143,551 in the 18 days from his qualification for the Dec. 9 House District 121 Special Election on Nov. 7 to the Nov. 24 filing date with the Georgia Ethics Commission, or almost $8,000 per day.
At that point–15 days before the election on Tuesday–Guest had spent only $1,260, so he had a net balance on hand for those 15 days of $142,290.
The Oconee County Planning Commission has only two items on its agenda for its Monday night meeting, but both items, if they are approved by the Board of Commissioners and developed as proposed, will have noticeable impact on the county.
Townley Family Partnership LLLP is asking the county to rezone 242.3 acres stretching from Clotfelter Road to Malcom Bridge Road from AG (Agricultural) to R-1 (Single Family Residential District) for a 119 lot residential subdivision.
The final day of early voting on Friday for the Dec. 9 House District 121 Special Election between Democrat Eric Gisler and Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest IV saw 665 Oconee County voters cast a ballot, the largest number of voters to turn out in the 14 days of early voting.
A total of 5,172 voters cast a ballot in Advance In Person voting and another 23 voted Absentee By Mail by the end of the day on Friday, meaning that 19.2 percent of the eligible voters in the county have cast a ballot going into Election Day on Tuesday.
