An unidentified interested party has approached the Oconee County Board of Education about the possibility of purchasing 42.7 acres on U.S. 41 north of Bishop that the School Board has owned since 2007 but has never utilized.
The Board spent an hour and 45 minutes in executive session after its regular meeting on Monday (March 2) discussing the possible sale of the property as well as the Personnel Report from Superintendent Melissa Butler.
Only one candidate has qualified for each of the four Oconee County local races on the ballot on May 19, meaning the only wholly local question before voters is the referendum on renewal of the county’s Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST).
At the end of qualifying at noon on Friday, only incumbent Chuck Horton qualified for Post 2 on the Board of Commissioners, and only incumbent Amrey Harden qualified for Board of Commissioners Post 3.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners, in a 3 to 1 vote, on Tuesday night turned down a request to build a contractor’s office/showroom/warehouse building with outdoor storage on Jimmy Daniell Road at the entrance to Silver Leaf subdivision.
Oconee Medical Properties LLC, owned by Gavin Griffith and Tim Burgess, was asking the Commission to grant it a special use to build the 25,000 square foot facility without rezoning the land from its current Agricultural District (AG) classification.
Democratic State Rep. Eric Gisler began his second Town Hall meeting on Saturday with an update on legislation under consideration in the Georgia House of Representatives and a summary of his position on the legislation.
Gisler said he will vote against House Bill 1116, which is designed to eliminate local property tax for homesteaded property in 2032, because local governmental leaders in both Oconee and Clarke counties are opposed. His House District 121 includes parts of both counties.
The Oconee County Board of Education does not have any plans to add a third high school in the near future, given the current decline in enrollments in the Oconee County Schools system.
The Board is anticipating some future growth in enrollments and is monitoring the zoning and the issuance of building permits, but both high schools are under capacity and can absorb some growth.
The Georgia State Election Board last week voted to send to the Georgia Attorney General for further investigation a complaint filed against the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration about qualification for the 2024 Watkinsville Council races.
The Board took that action after former Mayor Bob Smith told the Board that three candidates wanted to run for the three Watkinsville Council seats in 2024 but did not qualify because the date of qualification had changed from past years and because the interested persons did not know of the change.
Oconee County government will lose $9.8 million in property tax revenue if the legislation being considered by the Georgia House of Representatives is approved in its current form, while each of the county’s four cities will lose between $13,504 and $306,307, and Oconee County Schools will lose a whopping $32.2 million.
For the counties, Watkinsville, and Bogart, the loss likely can be offset by reallocating some of the revenue from the county’s 1 percent Local Option Sales Tax (LOST), if the legislation being considered is modified to allow that use of LOST funds.
