About 200 people gathered in the gym at Herman C. Michael Park on Hog Mountain Road on Monday (May 25) to honor the memory of those who gave their lives in foreign wars and recognize the sacrifices of their families.
The program had been scheduled for the Veterans Memorial at the entrance to Oconee Veterans Park across the street from Herman C. Michael Park but was moved indoors because of the weather–the third year in a row the program was held indoors because of bad weather.
Oconee County Schools Finance Director Peter Adams, in his presentation on the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget on Thursday (May 21), told the Board of Education that the budget he has prepared for them includes three “significant reductions” in spending.
The budget eliminates 14 school employees, cuts the operating budget by 3.3 percent, or $431,000, and cuts $436,074 from funding provided to the Sheriff for the School Resource Officer program, he said.
Oconee County commissioners on Tuesday night, at their agenda setting meeting, gave tentative approval to spending $1.4 million on the decommissioning of the Rocky Branch Land Application System (LAS) wastewater treatment site.
The decommissioning of the 246-acre site on Rocky Branch Road should begin four to six weeks after the commissioners give final approval to the agreement at their meeting on June 2 and can be completed two months later, according to Water Resources Department Director Adam Layfield.
Oconee County voters approved renewal of the county’s Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) on Tuesday, by a lower margin than they approved the tax six years ago.
Oconee County Republican voters gave a tiny edge to Marc McMain as their choice to represent them in the state Senate District 46 race and picked Gary “Ward” Black Jr. as the preferred candidate for House District 120.
The seven candidates in competitive races in tomorrow’s election to represent Oconee County in the Georgia General Assembly entered the final weeks of the campaign in very different financial positions, according to their Campaign Contribution Disclosure Reports.
Marc McMain, one of three Republicans running for the party’s nomination for Senate District 46, was sitting on $201,023 in unused money, having spent $113,710 since the first of the year, more than three-quarters ($87,908) of that going to campaign consultant War Room Strategies.
One in five of Oconee County’s 34,013 registered voters (20.0 percent) has cast a ballot for the May 19 Party Primary and Nonpartisan elections as of the end of early voting on Friday, up from 16.7 percent at that same point four years ago.
The increase in voting compared with 2022 is largely the result of increased voting in the Democratic Party Primary. Democratic Ballots at this point make up 27.8 percent of the ballots cast.
When the Oconee County Democrats invited Oconee County Sheriff James Hale, a Republican, to speak to them last week, they asked him to talk about two issues, school safety and immigration.
Hale obliged, spending more than 50 minutes talking and answering questions about various aspects of those two topics.
