Georgia House District 121 Rep. Eric Gisler began his ninth Town Hall Meeting at the Bishop Community Center last week saying it would be a little different from the others he had held.
Gisler said “he decided to blur the lines a little bit” between receiving feedback as a representative and receiving feedback as a candidate running for reelection.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night turned down a request by Celebration Village Athens that would have allowed it to build and occupy self-standing housing units before it completed the assisted living and memory care components of the Assisted Living Community.
Active Senior Concepts, developer of the 61.7-acre complex on the Oconee Connector across from Home Depot, was proposing to contract for assisted living services to operate out of the social club prior to completion of the assisted living and memory care building.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of my first post to Oconee County Observations.
I posted only 15 stories in those final four months of 2006, and that number grew only to 26 in all of 2007.
Houston Gaines, the only candidate with opposition in November speaking at the Oconee County Republican Party meeting on Monday (8/24/2026), devoted most of his opening comments to attacks on Democrats running for office in New Jersey and Michigan, across the state, and for Georgia House Districts 120 and 121.
“These folks are radical,” he said of Democrats. “This is not the difference of just a couple of issues on the ballot. The difference between the two parties couldn't be couldn't be further.”
Vikram Bharadwaj, Democratic Party field organizer for Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties, in a meeting with Oconee County Democrats earlier this month, emphasized the importance of making personal contact with voters leading up to the Nov. 3 election.
Democrats Eric Gisler, Susanna Karatassos, and Ray Smith, seeking to represent Oconee County in the Georgia General Assembly, have fewer resources to spend on advertising than their Republican counterparts.
Jeff Wilkes, speaking on behalf of the citizen group Save South Oconee, asked Oconee County commissioners on Tuesday night to help with a series of questions Wilkes said have not been answered about the proposed truck bypass to link SR 15 with U.S. 441 south of Watkinsville.
Even after the hour-long meeting the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) held last week with the Commissioners and other government leaders, Wilkes said, he and others in the county still don’t know why a route within the city boundary is not being considered.
The previously announced closure of access to SR 316 at Jimmy Daniell Road and resulting detour is scheduled to begin on Sept. 14 and remain in place for approximately six months, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has announced.
The intersection of Meriweather Drive and Jimmy Daniell Road also will be closed, GDOT has said. Previous discussion of the closure and detour did not include that feature.
