Each of the five members of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners tonight expressed opposition to the proposed redistricting plan that is currently moving through the Georgia House of Representatives and that would split Oconee County into two House districts.
They also expressed resignation to the plan, indicating that they will just have to live with what they see as the almost certain outcome.
Oconee County voters as a bloc will have less influence in the Georgia House of Representatives if redistricting plans released on Friday are adopted.
Their influence in the Senate will remain largely unchanged.
Oconee County’s four commissioners as well as the chairman run at large, rather than by district.
The same is true for the five members of the Oconee County Board of Education.
None of the county’s four cities has districts for their council members.
So when the Georgia General Assembly meets a week from tomorrow to begin its discussion of redistricting made necessary by the 2010 Census, the impact for Oconee County primarily will be felt through the county’s status in future Georgia House and Senate districts.
All Oconee County voters currently vote in the 46th Senate District, represented by Athens attorney Bill Cowsert, and the 113th House District, represented by newly elected Chuck Williams, Oconee County businessman.
But that has not always been the case.
As recently as in 2002, voters in the two most northwestern Oconee County precincts–Bogart and Dark Corner–were part of the 73rd House District with Jasper, Morgan, Newton and Walton counties, while the remainder of the county was in the 76th, with Clarke and Madison counties.
And voters in Farmington and Antioch, the two most southern Oconee County precincts, were in the 47th Senate District with parts of 15 other counties, while the rest of the county was in the 46th Senate District with Barrow, Clarke and Jackson counties.
In 2000, prior to the release of the Census of that year, all of Oconee County had been in the 91st House District with Morgan and Newton counties and in the 46th Senate District with Clarke and Barrow Counties.
The Democrats controlled the Assembly in 2001 and drew the new district lines for the state.
The Democratic redistricting subsequently was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court without comment.
The Supreme Court let stand a decision by a three-judge federal panel in favor of a Republican challenge that the new districts were purely political, designed to maximize Democratic representation.
The judicial panel produced the current configuration that puts all of Oconee County in the 113th House District with parts of Clarke, Morgan and Oglethorpe counties, and all of Oconee County in the 46th Senate District with Clarke and Walton counties.
Now it seems possible–maybe even likely--that the 113th will change again, perhaps resulting in the division of the county between or even among districts.
Williams was asked his position on redistricting in the two candidate forums held before the June 21 first round of voting in the special election and in the sole candidate forum for him and Democrat Dan Matthews before the June 19 runoff.
Oconee County residents have made it clear they don’t want to be divided, Williams said repeatedly. The special election was called so Oconee County would be represented in the redistricting session.
But Williams said he could not “commit” that the county will not be divided.
Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis spoke at a legislative hearing on May 16 in Athens, saying he wanted Oconee County to remain whole after redistricting.
He said when the county had been represented by more than one person, those representatives did not always agreed, and that hurt the county.
“I want Oconee County to remain whole. I want it to remain intact,” he said.
But a number of Clarke County citizens who are part of the 113th also spoke at the hearing and made it clear they didn’t like the current configuration, which makes them a minor player in the 113th.
In the current 113th House District, 24.7 percent of registered voters are from Clarke County, compared with 59.7 percent from Oconee County, 9.8 percent from Oglethorpe and the remaining 5.8 percent from Morgan County.
The Clarke County voters are from Winterville, in the far eastern tip of the county, from two precincts in the very south of the county, and from another precinct and parts of a precinct in the far western part of the county.
The three Clarke County pieces of the 113th don’t even connect to each other.
Williams will be under some pressure to fix that problem.
And he also is likely to be under pressure to do something else–help neighbor Doug McKillip create a district that is more Republican.
McKillip was elected in the 115th House District in January of 2010 as a Democrat and switched to the Republican Party before the session began earlier this year. The 115th is entirely in Clarke County and is traditionally Democratic.
McKillip told me that he has no deal with House Speaker David Ralston to guarantee him a better district, but that doesn’t mean McKillip isn’t likely to try to create a more favorable district.
Getting Malcom Bridge or Athens Academy precincts from Oconee County, both heavily Republican and contiguous with McKillip’s current 115th District, would help.
McKillip has been prominent in Republican events since Hank Huckaby resigned the 113th seat in April to become chancellor of the University System of Georgia. Huckaby had been elected to that seat in 2010 after long-time House member Bob Smith stepped down.
Smith, as well as Huckaby, are from Oconee County.
One constraint that could affect any efforts to create a more Republican district for McKillip could be the 1965 Civil Right Act.
Section V of that act says that states that previously created procedures to limit voting by Blacks had to demonstrate that any changes in voting procedures were free of racial discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1969, in a Mississippi case, expanded the definition of discriminatory voting practices under the act to include anything that diluted the impact of the Black vote.
So changes in districts have to meet that stipulation.
Oconee County has very few African-American residents.
The 2010 Census data show that only 4.9 percent of the population is Black of African-American. On July 1, 2011, only 843 Blacks were registered in the county, making up 4.0 percent of the registered voters.
Blacks made up 8.4 percent of the registered voters in the 113th District on July 1, 2011.
In contrast, 17.1 percent of the registered voters in the 115th District, which McKillip represents, were Black.
The 114th, represented by Keith Heard, was 37.4 percent Black, in terms of voter registration.
Heard is an African-American, while McKillip is White.
Blacks make up only 4.1 percent of the Malcom Bridge and Athens Academy precincts, so adding them to McKillip’s district would dilute rather than increase Black representation.
In general, adding Republican voters to a district dilutes the African-American vote, which historically has been disproportionately Democratic.
Williams is likely to be a team player in the House of Representatives.
He touted his connections to the political establishment and the General Assembly during the campaign, and these connections showed up in his campaign financial statement.
According to his June 13 and July 15 campaign finance statements, Williams got $23,850, or 43.0 percent of his campaign funds, from the campaign funds of other politicians, including $2,500 from House Speaker Ralston.
An examination of the timing of these contributions shows that only Winder Rep. Terry England, who gave $2,500 to Williams, contributed before Williams won the June 21 first round of voting, where he had Democrat Dan Matthews and Republicans Alan Alexander and Sarah Bell as competitors. Matthews and Williams went into the runoff on July 19.
England contributed $1,000 on June 18 and $1,500 on June 23, according to Williams’ records.
I checked both Williams’ reports and those of the corresponding campaign committees and found them to be in agreement regarding timing of contributions with minor exceptions.
I could not find in the reports of the corresponding committees five of the contributions Williams recorded. Candidate not running for office had to file a report on June 30, while Williams’ report was through July 15.
Williams and Huckaby’s reports show that the former representative gave $500 to Williams in two equal installments, one before the June 21 election and one after.
Candidate Bell received contributions from the committees of three politicians before the June 21 election. These were $350 from James Mills of Gainesville, $250 from Sam Teasley of Marietta and $250 from Tim Echols of Winterville.
Alexander did not report receiving any funds from other politicians.
The candidates don’t have to file their final statements until the end of the year, and the contributions for Williams are almost certain to change.
It seems likely Williams will have a significant war chest to use should he decide to run for reelection in 2012. On July 15, he had $34,860 in unspent funds.
In addition to using these monies for himself, he also can give them to other candidates, such as those who contributed to his campaign.
In the aftermath of the July 19 election, both The Oconee Enterprise and the Athens Banner-Herald attributed Matthews’ defeat in part to low turnout in Clarke County.
In fact, turnout was only 12.8 percent in Clarke County compared with 15.9 percent in Oconee County.
But Williams won in the 113th District by 1,252 votes, so Matthews would have had to more than double the 1,135 votes cast in Clarke County and gotten all of the extra votes to have gained the lead over Williams.
But Matthews got only 61.1 percent of the 1,135 votes counted in Clarke County, meaning he would have needed an even greater and very unlikely turnout rate to overcome Williams’ victory margin in Oconee County, where Williams got 70.0 percent of the vote.
The real issue was not turnout, but rather that Clarke County contributes only a quarter of the voters in the district.
Reflecting this gap, the focus of the campaign clearly was Oconee County.
All three of the major candidate forums held before the election were in the county, the first organized by Russ Page and me at the Oconee County Library, the second by the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce at North Oconee High School, and the third by the Chamber at th Oconee County Civic Center.
Clarke, Morgan and Oglethorpe make up smaller parts of the district, so it is harder for citizens there to come together and less enticing for the candidates to go visit them.
Campaigns also rely heavily on advertising.
The campaign finance statements show that all candidates spent much more heavily in the Oconee newspapers than in the newspapers in any of the other counties.
Alexander bought ads in The Oconee Enterprise and on Cox Radio. Bell did exactly the same.
Matthews used those two media and bought ads in The Oconee Leader and with WXAG radio in Athens.
Williams ran ads in the Enterprise, the Leader, The Morgan Citizen, The Oglethorpe Echo, WDAK in Greensboro, Cox Radio and Bostwick Broadcasting in Monroe. He put more ads in the Leader and the Enterprise, however, than in the other newspapers.
Morgan and Oglethorpe counties and, to a lesser extent, Clarke County voters were simply given less attention because there were fewer of them.
That is what could happen to Oconee County voters if the county is split as a result of the redistricting agreement the two houses of the legislature come up with in the special session that starts a week from tomorrow.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners last night killed the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s Sewer Line project, but it only postponed a decision on the McNutt Creek Sewer Connector Phase I, which follows the same route along McNutt Creek from Jennings Mill Road to Kohl’s on Epps Bridge Parkway.
Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s was always a misnomer for the sewer line. That name was used by the county in its application for federal funds for the project.
The county argued that the 12-inch sewer line would serve Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s, two businesses on Jennings Mill Road at the McNutt Creek line with Clarke County.
The county pitched the project as one that helped employers of persons making low and moderate incomes.
The federal grant competition, administered by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, was tilted toward projects that served such employers.
Both these businesses needed the sewer line to continue to operate successfully in the county, according to the application.
In fact, the sewer line should have been named the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy sewer line project, for the primary beneficiary of the project was a 114-acre tract behind Kohl’s that is owned by the Gordy family.
The county minimized the value of the sewer line for future development projects so as to focus on the low and moderate income employees of Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s.
With its 4-0 vote last night, commissioners John Daniell, Margaret Hale, Chuck Horton and Jim Luke instructed County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault to tell the Department of Community Affairs to keep the $186,711 grant it had awarded the county in October of 2009.
Over the objections of BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, who does not get to vote unless there is a tie, the four decided to postpone a decision on the 18-inch McNutt Creek Sewer Connector Phase I.
Zoom Bait/St. Mary's Sewer Line Discussion from Lee Becker on Vimeo.
Davis asked County Clerk Gina Davis to register his objection in the record. He said he didn’t want to return the money, and he felt the project would spur development in the county as well as help Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s.
The commissioners argued that the sewer line wasn’t needed by St. Mary’s, which sends its sewage to Clarke County for treatment under a contract signed by the two counties.
And they said that Zoom Bait, which relies on septics, has been less than vocal in asking for county sewers.
Finally, they said providing sewer service to the Gordy tract was not a top priority at this time.
The Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy project morphed into the McNutt Creek Sewer Connector Phase I project only at the BOC meeting last week, though it had been moving in that direction for several months.
At the July 26 meeting, Jimmy Parker, a consultant to the county, presented the Board with a wastewater strategic plan that called for building a gravity sewer backbone in the McNutt Creek and Barber Creek basins.
The McNutt Creek part of the project calls for a gravity fed sewer line from Bogart to Epps Bridge Parkway at McNutt Creek.
From there, the sewage would be pumped either to the Calls Creek sewage plant in Watkinsville or to the Rocky Branch land application treatment site on Rocky Branch Road in the western part of the county.
But Parker, with County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas, had listed the $780,000 sewer line as a lower priority than spending $562,000 for upgrading a section of the Lampkin Branch Sewer line under Government Station Road and $1.5 million for an upgrade to the Calls Creek plant itself.
It seemed last night for a few minutes as if the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy project was going to die a very quiet death.
Horton made a motion to return the money and postpone action on the morphed project, and Hale seconded.
After Mike McCleary, chairman of the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce, spoke on behalf of the project–the only person from the audience to address the Board–Davis asked for comment from the commissioners.
No one said a word.
Then Davis began a 4-and-a-half-minute presentation of his own, reading from comments he had prepared.
That spurred Luke, then Hale, then Horton, and then Daniell to respond.
They didn’t like Davis’ characterizations of their positions, and they didn’t like the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy project.
They also pointed out the new project was not the top project even of Parker and Thomas.
It would not have been unusual at a BOC meeting for the commissioners to vote without discussion.
The pointed and unanimous disagreement with Davis is rare and informative. It is shown in its entirety in the video clip above. The whole discussion lasted just short of 14 minutes.
Davis has always been the driving force behind the project, though the commissioners did vote to go forward with the application to DCA, to add money to the project when the DCA grant came in at half the estimated cost, and to add even more money to the project when bids came in at twice the expected amount.
The turning point was the revelation late last year that the project was going to be of more value to the Gordy property than to Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s.
At the July 26 meeting, Davis had asked Theriault and County Finance Director Jeff Benko to find money to fund all three of the top projects on the Parker and Thomas list.
Theriault told the Board at the start of the discussion last night the county could find the money for all three. He didn’t explain that to the citizens in the audience.
At the end of the meeting, I asked Theriault and Benko for details.
They said the county can take the money for the Lampkin Branch upgrade from 2009 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenues and the money for the McNutt Creek Sewer Connector Phase I from unspent monies from the 2004 SPLOST.
The county already has the money for the Calls Creek upgrade on hand from sewer capacity fees paid by developers for future sewage capacity.
With the loss of the grant and federal funds, they said, the county now is $186,711 short of covering those expenses.
Hikers, bikers and horseback riders will be barred from using the trails at Heritage Park in the south of the county beginning on Monday as the Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir Management Board begins a $1 million stream restoration and preservation project at the park.
All trails in the park will be closed until construction work is completed, which will be in late November, if all goes to schedule.
Construction teams will put up plastic mesh fencing around all trail heads, John Gentry, director of parks and recreation for Oconee County, told me on Thursday, in an effort to keep people from using the wooded part of the park during the construction.
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| Hikers To Be Crossed Out Too |
Gentry said the county considered partial closing of the trails but decided it was a “safety issue” and needed to keep people away from the heavy equipment and construction sites.
The pavilion and public space at the front of the park, on U.S. 441 south of Farmington, will remain open during the construction, Gentry said.
The Oconee County Parks and Recreation Department web site contained an announcement of the closing of the trails this past week, but I saw no signs at the park this morning announcing the closing.
Oconee County is contributing 28.8 percent of the funding for the Hard Labor Creek reservoir project, which amounts to just less than $300,000 of the total cost of $1,031,792 for the work at Heritage park.
The money comes from a $19.5 million bond the county sold in March of 2008.
Walton County is responsible for the remaining 71.2 percent of costs.
The stream restoration and preservation project is one of three connected with the HLC reservoir construction on land owned by Oconee County.
The HLC board has completed a $526,747 project at the county’s Rocky Branch Land Application System sewage treatment facility on Rocky Branch Road and a $476,371 project at Veterans Park on Hog Mountain Road.
A fourth project in Oconee County is on 47 acres of land owned by the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority on the Apalachee River west of Lake Oconee Road and south of U.S. 78.
That project, to restore wetlands, cost $230,545 and is now complete.
The reservoir is to be created by a dam on Hard Labor Creek in southeastern Walton County and, when built, will flood and permanently destroy the creek, many of its tributaries and the wetlands surrounding these streams.
Naturally flowing streams and wetlands contribute to water purification and reuse.
For that reason, the federal government, which has jurisdiction over streams and wetlands in the U.S., requires, as part of the permitting process, that damage done to wetlands and streams must be mitigated by restoration of other streams and wetlands, usually in the same watershed.
The streams to be restored in Heritage Park are tributaries of the Apalachee River, which is a tributary of the Oconee River. Hard Labor Creek also is a tributary of the Apalachee River.
The streams on the LAS site and in Veterans Park are tributaries of Barber Creek, which feeds into McNutt Creek, the Middle Oconee River and then the Oconee River. The Apalachee also feeds into the Oconee River.
In total, Walton and Oconee counties are spending about $9 million to mitigate damages that will be done to streams and wetlands when they are flooded for the Hard Labor Creek reservoir.
As part of the restoration and preservation process for the streams in Heritage Park, the HLC management board and the county will put covenants on the land around the streams restricting future use.
Bikers and hikers still will be allowed to ford the streams in Heritage Park, but horses will not. As a result, all horse trail crossings will have to be bridged.
The goal is to keep horse droppings out of the creek, Gentry told me.
Those same covenants also are to be placed on the streams at the LAS site, but citizens do not have access to that facility.
The streams restored at Veterans Park are north of the developed area. They must remain protected in their current state in any future development of the park. (See slide show in column at right.)
Jimmy Parker, representing the management board, told the Oconee County Board of Commissioners on May 25, 2010, that the management board was going ahead with mitigation projects even though it does not have the money to actually build the reservoir.
All construction work on the reservoir is on hold because Walton and Oconee counties cannot afford to issue more bonds, given the current lack of demand for the water the reservoir will produce.
Parker, who works for PPI Inc. of Lawrenceville and serves as a consultant to the county as well as to the HLC management board, reminded the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night that the county will need to come up with $8.6 million as its share of the costs for dam construction.
Funds from the bonds already sold are being used largely to purchase the land that will be inundated by the reservoir and for the planning process, including for permitting and mitigation.
In a letter sent to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal in March, the Hard Labor Creek management board asked for $32 million in state money to build the dam.
The Georgia General Assembly earlier this year approved Gov. Deal’s request for $300 million in funding for reservoir projects in the wake of the ruling in July of 2009 by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson that Atlanta cannot continue to draw its drinking water from Lake Lanier.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling on June 28, and it is uncertain what impact the Appeals Court's decision will have on state funding for projects such as Hard Labor Creek.
The importance of state help with Hard Labor Creek construction was underscored by comments Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis made to a joint subcommittee of the state Water Supply Task Force on May 26 in Gainesville.
Those comments were reported on by The Gainesville Times on the day of the meeting and by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an article about the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir on June 5, but they did not receive attention in the media locally.
Davis, who is not a member of the reservoir management board but was a strong proponent of Oconee County’s joining Walton County on the project, gave a particularly negative forecast of the financial problems facing the county because of the reservoir.
A summary of those comments is available on the web site of the Water Supply Task Force.
Davis was an invited speaker before a Technology Subcommittee/Finance Subcommittee joint meeting of the Water Supply Task Force at the Georgia Mountains Center in Gainesville.
According to the summary, Chairman Davis told the subcommittees that Oconee County has funded its participation in the project with Walton County through utility system revenue bonds, but “the county is now at its maximum capacity.”
“Commissioner Davis stressed that poor economic conditions have impacted local revenue projections and thus limited local government borrowing capacity,” according to the summary.
Without any water to sell from a reservoir, the counties have no way to pay off the $59 million in debt they already have assumed other than by increasing water and sewer rates on existing customers or taking the funds from general revenues of the counties.
Oconee County has increased water rates for the last three years. A new rate increase went into effect on July 1 of this year.
In the fiscal year that started on July 1, of every dollar paid by county water customers to the county, 12.5 cents will go to the Hard Labor Creek debt repayment.
In fact, until 2015, the county is only paying the interest on the $19.5 million the county has borrowed for the project. After that point, it is scheduled to start paying principal as well.
When the loan is repaid in 2038, the county will have paid $38.4 million in principal and interest.
If Judge Magnuson’s ruling had been upheld, water customers in metro-Atlanta would have been glad to have paid Walton and Oconee counties for their water. The Appeals Court decision overturning Magnuson is under appeal.
Davis expressed reservations at the May 26 meeting about state direct investment in and ownership of reservoirs such as HLC.
“Ownership may one day result in an unanticipated diversion of water, which could inhibit local economic growth,” he is quoted as saying.
Davis told the subcommittee that Oconee and Walton counties are “evaluating all available mechanisms” to get funding for the HLC project, according to the report.
The two counties even have considered a public-private partnership for the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir and may further consider that mechanism in the future, Davis said, according to the report.
Gov. Deal directed the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to convene the Water Supply Task Force to advise GEFA on water issues. One of the Task Forces assignments is to identify reservoir sites in the state.
A dam will produce a lake, which, according to the HLC web site, will enhance the quality of life of local residents, who “will gain a valuable recreational asset.”
Parker reminded the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night, however, that Oconee County will have to find another $22.4 million as its share of costs of construction of a water treatment plant and transmission facilities to get water from the reservoir to county water lines.
The Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir Management Board has seven members, four from Walton County and three from Oconee.
Oconee County Commissioner Jim Luke and Finance Director Jeff Benko are on the board, with Luke currently serving as board chairman.
Hank Huckaby, formerly the Oconee County representative in the Georgia House and now chancellor of the University System of Georgia, is the citizen representative.
Huckaby has told me on two occasions he plans to resign from the board, but the web site today still lists him as a member.
Huckaby was a strong proponent of the HLC project, and Chuck Williams, elected on July 19 in a special election to replace Huckaby, has said he will be as well.
I asked County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault and Gentry last week for access to the construction plans for the mitigation project at Heritage Park. Gentry was able to obtain an electronic set on Thursday from Precision Planning Inc. and give it to me.
I have selected out one of the maps and labeled it to provide a general overview of the trails and the work that will be done.
Gentry told me on Thursday that some bike and horse trails will have to be relocated out of the protected area around the streams once the streams are restored and designated for preservation.
Mike Riter, an expert on trails, will assist in that process, Gentry said.
Riter’s company, Trail Design Specialists of Snellville, provided the detailed maps of the bridges for the horse trails in the construction documents Gentry provided me.
Blount Construction Company Inc. of Marietta is the contractor for the Heritage Park project.
The proposed Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy sewer line project, which the Oconee County Board of Commissioners refused to approve in March, is back on the agenda for tomorrow night’s session.
The official agenda, released by County Clerk Gina Lindsey on Friday afternoon, lists the sixth item as a “Presentation of Water and Sewer Strategic Plan” by County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas and Jimmy Parker, who serves as a consultant to the county.
But County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault told me in an email exchange this morning that the presentation will be followed by a discussion of the proposed sewer project.
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| Thomas, 1/29/2011 |
“The completion of the Waste Water discussion and your questions will be the segue into the discussion and decision on whether or not to move forward on the Zoom Bait/St. Mary's sewer line,” Theriault wrote to commissioners on Friday in an email message he shared with me this morning.
“This thing has been kicked down the road for quite some time, and we really need a definitive resolution (go or no-go), as there is still a pending grant sitting out there,” Theriault’s email to the commissioners said. “If you decide to go...we will re-bid the construction project...if you decide no-go...we notify DCA that the grant will be forfeited and declined.”
Theriault was referring to a $186,711 grant the county received nearly two years ago from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs to cover part of the costs of the project.
The proposal is for a gravity-fed sewer line from Zoom Bait manufacturing plant and the St. Mary’s facility, both on Jennings Mill Road at McNutt Creek, to behind the Kohl’s store on Epps Bridge Parkway.
The sewer line would cross a piece of property owned by the Gordy family, but the value of the sewer line to that property was not discussed in the early deliberations about the project.
Total project cost has been estimated at approximately $800,000, or more than double the original projection.
On March 1, the BOC voted unanimously not to take any action on the proposed Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy sewer line project. The commissioners did not rule out moving forward with the project at some point in the future, but they did not set any firm date to reconsider the sewer line.
BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, who did not vote, spoke in favor of the project.
Work on the project would have to be completed by Oct. 5 of this year under conditions of the DCA grant unless the county were given an extension.
Theriault reminded the commissioners in his message on Friday that they had requested “prior to budget discussions” earlier this year a presentation of a water and sewer strategic plan.
Central to the discussions of the sewer line was an agreement between Oconee and Clarke counties for treatment of sewage from Oconee County by Clarke County. At present, St. Mary’s sewage is being treated in Clarke County under the agreement. Zoom Bait is on a septic system.
At several times during the discussion, commissioners had asked Thomas for precise figures on how much sewage Clarke County was handling for Oconee County and on how much of the agreed-upon treatment capacity of 25,000 gallons per day remained available. Thomas said he believed the county had used up all of its capacity.
In early February, I asked the county for a copy of the agreement between Clarke and Oconee counties spelling out the terms of the sewage treatment arrangements.
Theriault told me at that time that the county was trying to determine the status of the agreement and find a copy of the contract.
On May 18, Thomas told me that the county, through a series of meetings involving County Attorney Daniel Haygood and Clarke County officials, had identified the last contract between the two counties. Thomas provided me a copy of that contract at that time.
That contract had been agreed to on May 29 of 2003.
Thomas told me on May 18 that he and those involved in the discussion believe the contract expired in May of 2008.
“Everyone proceeded as if a contract is still in place,” Haygood told me in a telephone conversation this morning. “But really there hasn’t been anything happen since 2008 that made us ask what had happened if it expired,” he added.
Haygood said both Clarke and Oconee commissioners will have to approve a new agreement, but one issue is the matter of unused capacity.
Haygood said there is ambiguity in Oconee County records regarding how much capacity the county actually has allocated to potential future users.
Thomas wrote me in an email on May 18 that “The consensus of the individuals at the meeting was that of the original 25,000 gpd available, Oconee County had only used approximately 14,690 gpd.
“Based on our interpretation of the contracts, the 10,310 gpd remaining reverted back to ACC,” he wrote. ACC refers to Athens-Clarke County.
Chuck Williams, who last week won the runoff election for the open seat in the Georgia House of Representatives, proved to be a magnet for campaign funds in the weeks following the June 21 special election.
Williams, who will represent Oconee County and parts of three neighboring counties when the General Assembly meets next month, raised $41,046 during the four weeks between June 13, when he filed his first campaign finance statement, and July 15, when he filed his last statement.
Williams had raised $20,288 in the weeks before the June 13 statement, bringing his total for the campaign to $61,334.
That June figure included $5,908 that Williams lent himself for the campaign.
If the loan figure is removed from the total, the $55,426 Williams raised during the 10 weeks between his declaration of intent to accept campaign contributions on May 6 and July 15 compares with the $81,745 that Hank Huckaby raised during the longer period of roughly eight months from his April 21, 2010, filing of his declaration of intent to accept contributions and the end of that year.
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| Williams at candidate forum 6/30/2011 |
It also compares with the $90,360 that Bob Smith reported raising in nine months from March 31 of 2006 to the end of that year.
Huckaby and Smith raised about $10,000 per month, while Williams raised more than twice that amount.
Williams, Huckaby and Smith faced Democratic opposition in their elections, though Smith’s opponent in 2006, Becky Vaughn, was better known and better financed than the opposition faced by Williams or Huckaby.
In the just completed election, Williams got considerable help from people outside the four counties he will serve and particularly from elected officials. The district includes all of Oconee County and parts of Clarke, Morgan and Oglethorpe counties.
Williams got $23,850 from the campaign funds of other politicians, including $2,500 from House Speaker David Ralston, $2,500 from Rep. Terry England of Winder, $1,000 from Sen. Bill Cowsert, who represents Oconee County, $500 from Huckaby, and $150 from Rep. Doug McKillip in Clarke County.
People, companies and organizations from outside the four counties that contribute voters to the 113 House District contributed $36,550 to Williams’ campaign, or 65.9 percent of the total funds he raised.
That included most of the political campaign committees, but also Rayonier Operating Company from Jacksonville and General Electric from Ft. Myers, Fla, each of which contributed $500.
Dan Matthews, Williams’ opponent last week, had raised $4,411, including a loan he made to his campaign of $100, according to his finance statement of July 13.
Suzy Compere did not report raising any campaign funds in her 2010 campaign against Huckaby.
Vaughn, who ran against Smith in 2006, reported raising $32,311 in her campaign in 2006.
Huckaby was elected to fill Smith’s spot in November of 2010 after Smith announced his retirement.
The special election was called by Gov. Nathan Deal on April 29 after Huckaby announced his resignation to become chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
In the time between May 6 and the first campaign finance report on June 13, the largest contributions Williams received were for $1,000.
He had received that amount from four sources: Calvin Thomas Griffith, founder of Golden Pantry who lives outside Watkinsville; Benson’s Inc., of Bogart; ForestPAC of the Georgia Forestry Association, and the Georgia Bankers Association Political Action Committee.
Larry Benson, bakery and hotel owner, served as campaign treasurer for Williams.
Williams is a tree farmer and a member of the Georgia Forestry Association and was appointed by former Gov. Sonny Perdue to the Georgia Forestry Commission's Board of Directors
He also was founder of North Georgia Bank, which failed earlier this year, and chairman of the Georgia Bankers Association.
Williams actually filed two campaign statements on July 15. The first was filed that morning and was an amendment to the June 13 filing. It listed the same amount raised as the June 13 report.
I referenced that report in a blog I filed late in the afternoon of July 15.
But at 4:56 p.m. on that date, according to the electronic records at the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, Williams filed a second report, listing the additional contributions of $41,046.
This filing listed four contributions of $2,000 each, two of $1,500, and 11 of $1,000.
All of the $2,000 contributions were from campaign funds of politicians. These were the Larry O’Neal Campaign Fund of Warner Robins, the Committee to Elect R.M. Channell of Greensboro, the Ralston for Representative Committee of Blue Ridge, and of Friends of Jan Jones of Alpharetta.
Ralston is House Speaker. O’Neal, Channel and Jones are members of the House.
Ralston for Representative Committee also made a contribution of $500, for a total of $2,500.
Huckaby for State House, former representative Huckaby’s campaign committee, made two contributions of $250 each.
England made two contributions, one for $1,500 and another for $1,000.
Williams received a total of 32 contributions from committees of politicians, all of them after he had defeated fellow Republicans Alan Alexander and Sarah Bell in the June 21 first round of voting.
Williams received 77, or 49.7 percent, of his 155 contributions from outside the four counties that contribute voters to the 113th District.
I classified contributions based on ZIP code. ZIP codes not registered for Clarke, Morgan, Oconee or Oglethorpe counties were considered to be outside the district.
In the second July 15 report, Williams indicated he had spent $26,474 on the campaign and had the remaining $34,860 in reserve. Almost all of the spending was for signs and other advertising.
Matthews, in his July 13 report, indicated that he had spent $2,805 and had $1,605 in reserve. His spending also was mostly for signs and advertising.
Based on these amounts, Williams spent $8.41 for each of the 3,149 votes he received in the crucial runoff on July 19, and Matthews spent $1.48 for each of his 1,897.
Both candidates will have to file reports at the end of this year indicating how much additional money they received and their final spending figures.
They also will have to explain if they have paid themselves back for the loans they made to their campaigns.
Almost certainly, Williams will have funds remaining for his future political ambitions or to help other candidates with theirs.
