The three members of the Oconee County Board of Education who attended the public hearing on Monday evening on the proposed 9.8 percent increase in property taxes for Oconee County Schools got an earful.
The increase is “incomprehensible,” “unconscionable,” “ridiculous, absolutely absurd,” “a tax grab,” “nuts,” in the words of the 12 speakers at the 38-minute-long session.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, over the objection of its Republican Party representative, voted on Monday to accept the petitions of Melissa Eagling and Ryan Repetske to run as Independents for the Board of Education in November.
Director of Elections and Registration Rebecca Anglin said Eagling and Repetske had met the requirement that each get 1,425 signatures of voters on petitions asking that they be placed on the ballot.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration will meet at 11 a.m. on Monday to review a report on the verification of signatures by voters asking to put Ryan Repetske and Melissa Eagling on the ballot as Independent in November.
The Board will then vote to accept or reject the petitions from Repetske and Eagling, seeking to run for the Board of Education, according to Oconee County Director of Elections and Registration Rebecca Anglin. Anglin chairs the Board.
Anglin said on Friday that she and her staff completed signature verifications on both of the submitted petitions about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.
The Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported on Friday that area hospitals had 33 COVID-19 patients, the same number as on Friday of last week.
The number of ICU beds in use was 70, down from 72 a week earlier, and the number of adult ventilators in use was 26, down from 29 a week ago.
The Oconee County Board of Education will hold the first two of three public hearings on Monday on what amounts to a 9.8 percent increase in property taxes for operation of Oconee County Schools in the coming year.
The Board in June adopted a budget for the Fiscal Year that began on July 1 based on lowering the millage rate for schools from 16.5 to 16.25.
Because of the inflationary growth in the assessment of property in the county, however, the Board would have had to have dropped the rate to 14.8 to have avoided a real increase in property taxes for county residents.
Residents of Oconee Crossing subdivision told the Oconee County Planning Commission on Monday evening that they are not opposed to a proposed shopping center at the edge of their neighborhood.
They said they have expected development of the acreage between their neighborhood and Stripling’s General Store at the corner of Hog Mountain Road and U.S. 78.
The Oconee Crossing residents knew the approved rezone plans for their neighborhood called for commercial development on that land, a representative of the neighborhood association told the Planning Commission.
What they object to about the current plans, the representative said, is the change from a B-1 General Business District Zoning to a B-2 Highway Business District Zoning for a portion of the property.
Oconee County commissioners are scheduled to adopt on Aug. 2 new millage rates for the unincorporated and incorporated parts of the county that are 0.7 points lower than the current rates.
When the Board of Commissioners adopted its Fiscal Year 2023 Budget on June 7, Board Chair John Daniell said he expected to be able to propose a millage rate reduction for 2022 to offset inflationary market growth in property value.
