Oconee County Finance Director Melissa Braswell on Tuesday night presented to the Board of Commissioners and the public an $85.5 million total budget for the county for Fiscal Year 2027, up 2.1 percent from the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
Included is a $49.0 million General Fund Budget, up 7.2 percent from the $45.7 million General Fund Budget adopted last June for the current Fiscal Year.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night officially and unanimously asked the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to slow down its planning for a truck route linking SR 15 and U.S. 441 south of Watkinsville.
The request came in the form of a resolution passed by the Board after a crowd of a just more than 100 gathered in the Commission Chamber of the county Administrative Building in anticipation of Board action on GDOT’s stated plans for a bypass.
Oconee County Republican Party Chair Kathy Hurley invited five office seekers to her final "Cavalcade of Candidates" last week, as early voting was just getting underway, but only Kate Patterson was an unknown to the group.
Patterson, who is on the Party Primary Ballot as the nominee for Post 2 on the Oconee County Board of Education, is running unopposed in the May 19 election.
Based on data gathered by the Georgia Department of Transportation as part of its Traffic Monitoring Program, the volume of traffic flowing through downtown Watkinsville on Main Street decreased from 2019 through 2024, the most recent year for which counts are available.
This is true based on actual counts from a monitoring location at the center of Watkinsville and on projections from those counts.
After six days of early voting for the May 19 Party Primary and Nonpartisan elections, 1,277 of Oconee County 34,515 registered voters have cast a ballot, a just slightly higher percentage than had cast a ballot after six days of early voting in the May 2022 elections .
Another 41 voters have returned a mail ballot, bringing the total number of voters who have cast a ballot by the end of the day on Saturday to 1,318, or 3.8 percent of the total eligible voters.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners has put on its agenda for its meeting next Tuesday (May 5) discussion of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) plans for a truck bypass linking SR 15 and U.S. 441 south of Watkinsville.
The Board took this action at its Agenda Setting meeting on Tuesday (April 28) after citizens appeared before the Board asking it to oppose the current plans, which include three alternate routes for the bypass, none of which follows existing roadways and all of which would cut through undeveloped properties and farmland.
Oconee County Schools collected less than $1 million from its Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST) in February, the first time collections dropped below the $1 million benchmark since February of last year and the first time collections have fallen below those from the same month a year earlier since December of 2023.
In January, collections had been up by 6.2 percent from January of 2025, and collections had been up by more than 2 percent over the month a year earlier every month since November of 2024.
