Roughly 10 percent of Oconee County residents are food insecure, and available providers are meeting the needs of only one in three of those people.
Some of those who are in need are not able to gain access to the services provided, and some don’t seek help because of the stigma associated with taking advantage of existing programs.
Those were the conclusions of a study of food insecurity in Oconee County relayed to the Board of Commissioners at its regular meeting on Tuesday.
Ray Smith, representing Community Works Oconee and speaking in the public comment section at the beginning of the meeting, said the report stemmed from a May 1 “listening session that brought together organizations that feed people in the county.”
Commission Chair John Daniell, who said he and the other commissioners had received the report prior to the meeting, acknowledged the 11 people present representing Community Works at the meeting and encouraged Smith to come forward to speak to summarize the report.
Prior to the regular meeting on Tuesday, the Board held the second of its required public hearings on the proposed property tax millage rates for the coming year. No citizen came forward to speak at the hearing.
After a public hearing on a zoning request, the Board approved a request by the developers of Research Quarter on Virgil Langford Road east of the Oconee Connector to increase the square footage of the commercial park, reconfigure the lots, and change the concept plan to include, among other things, a hospital.
The Board also approved a policy specifying how neighborhoods can use a list of specified traffic calming devices and authorized a $2 million grant application for road improvements at the planned Dawson Park on Rocky Branch Road.
Community Works Report
Smith told the Board that the May 1 listening session involved Area Churches Serving Together (ACTS), Extra Special People (ESP), Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, Oconee County Schools, Athens Area Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program, and Oconee Presbyterian Church.
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| Smith Before Board 8/4/2026 |
According to the report, the Oconee County Senior Center also was present, and Oconee Area Resource Council (OARC) provided information. Smith said OARC was not able to attend the listening session.
According to the report, ACTS serves 140 to 200 clients each month, ESP serves 900 families each month, and the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia distributes food to about 1,200 people each month.
Oconee County Schools serves 251 students and provides food for the ACTS Food Pantry, the Oconee County Senior Center, through its Meals on Wheels program, deliver daily meals to 33 seniors and people with disabilities, and OARC serves 276 Oconee students through its Food for Kids program during the school year and 989 families during the summer.
OARC also serves 29 senior citizens with a monthly bag or box of food and fresh vegetables in summer and fall through a partnership with the Master Gardeners Program.
Oconee Presbyterian Church operates a self-serve food bank, and the number of people served in not known, according to the Community Works report.
Smith told the Board on Tuesday that “this is a really good network of different organizations” working to address food insecurity.
Nature Of Problem
Smith said that while “roughly 10 percent of Oconee residents are food insecure, and we’re at best able to provide assistance to about one in three of these people. That data comes from a few different organizations. It's available in the report.”
The report says that the 3 percent figure comes from the counts of people being served now, and the 10 percent figure comes from projections from those providers.
“So why do we have that gap between the need and what's actually being provided?” Smith asked.
“There's two big categories,” he responded to his question. “That's access and stigma.”
“In Oconee, we have a particular problem where the cost of living is relatively high, while the eligibility for programs is not necessarily determined based on the cost of living or the income of the local area,” Smith said. “So there are a significant number of people that are falling in that gap.”
“We heard from some local school officials that many parents won't sign their kids up for free and reduced lunch because even though they qualify,” Smith said.
He said there is a “stigma of being on that program, particularly in a county like Oconee where wealth is very much on display>
“They don't want their kids to feel the shame of needing access to that food, and they don't want the other kids to bully them,” he said.
“We know that food insecurity is already something that the Commission is aware of and is working very hard on,” Smith said.
Smith said one area where the county could help is communicating about existing services and helping to coordinate among the groups in the county.
“These groups know each other, but there's not currently a periodic meeting,” Smith said. “We provided the first one of these, and we're happy to provide that service in the future.”
“It would be great to have county buy-in,” Smith said.
Community Works Oconee is an outgrowth of the Oconee County Democratic Party, but it is open to anyone in the community, and Smith did not mention anything about the Party at the meeting on Tuesday.
Smith also did not mention that he is the Democratic Party nominee for Senate District 46, which includes all of Oconee County, in the Nov. 3 election. He was a participant in the May 1 Community Works listening session.
Commission Response
Commissioner Chuck Horton said after Smith gave he report that he has served on the Board of Directors of OARC and the county contributes $20,000 annually to that organization for it to “do with it as they need to do.”
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| Horton 8/4/2026 |
“So I would just say that we have been supportive in trying to get funds to at least that organization,” Horton said.
Daniell, in an email message on Wednesday (8/5/2026) said that the Fiscal Year 2027 county budget includes $20,000 for OARC, $20,000 for ESP, and $518,322 for the Oconee County Senior Center.
In addition, the county provides in kind funding for ACTS, he said.
Meals on Wheels receives funding from the state as a Federal pass through, Daniell said, and the county supports the Senior Center, which operates that program.
In an Aug. 4 email response to Terry Thompson, who is chair of Oconee Works and who sent the report to Daniell and the other commissioners, Daniell said “We appreciate your willingness to offer time, energy and resources to support our community. Participating to help others is the foundation to keep Oconee County special.”
Daniell said he county has “open lines of communications” with the organizations that participated in the May 1 listening session held by Oconee Works.
“Providing your time and financial resources to any of these organizations is the best way to assist Oconee County in meeting the needs of our neighbors,” he wrote.
The May 1 meeting took place at the Oconee County Library. Retired University of Georgia education professor Margaret Holt moderated.
Research Quarter Rezone
Ken Beall of Beall and Company, representing Burgess Jennings Mills Land LLC, was one of two who spoke at the public hearing on the Research Quarter rezone on Tuesday.
Burgess Jennings Mill Land LLC, with Tim Burgess and John Gavin Griffeth as property owners, originally rezoned the 22.6 acres that make up Research Quarter from agriculture use to B-2 (Highway Business District) in 2019.
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| Beall Before Commission 8/4/2026 |
Beall on Tuesday was asking the Board to approve a modified concept plan for the commercial development between Virgil Langford Road and SR Loop 10 east of the Oconee Connector to increase the allowed square footage from 174,500 square feet to 250,000 square feet.
“We're now requesting more than 175,000 square feet,” Beall told the commissioners, “because the demand for the project has greatly exceeded the owner's expectations of what they envisioned originally when the project was planned.”
The new concept plan shows 11 buildings, four of which already are constructed and three of which are currently in the permitting stage.
The four completed buildings are the two-story Goddard School daycare facility and three one-story medical office buildings.
The three buildings in the permitting stage at the Oconee County Planning and Code Enforcement Office are a four-story hotel and two one-story retail shopping center buildings.
The remaining four buildings listed on the concept plan are two three-story medical office buildings, a coffee shop, and a three-story hospital.
Wellstar Health System Inc. of Marietta owns the three lots on which the hospital is shown in the concept plan.
Origins Research Parkway LLC of Watkinsville owns a lot on which a three-story medical office is shown, and Jennings Mill Land LLC or another similarly named LLC own the remaining properties.
Justin Greer followed Beall to the podium on Tuesday asking that his client be allowed to go forward with development of the Origins Research Parkway LLC property independent of permitting limitations placed on Burgess Jennings Mill Land LLC.
The owner is “really close to being ready” to submit plans for the building to the county, Greer said, and he should not have to delay based on the schedule for the larger project.
The Board unanimously approved the request by Greer as part of the overall approval of the Burgess Jennings Mill Land LLC request.
Dawson Park
Kirouac, in a memo to the Board before the meeting, said that design work for the Dawson Park at the Land Application System site on Rocky Branch Road is underway.
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| Kirouac 8/4/2026 |
The concept plan shows three points of access: a primary roundabout towards the southern part of the site, a roundabout located at Plantation Drive, and a right-in right-out access at the center of the site.
The county plans to bid the initial park grading this fall, Kirouac said.
The road improvements, to be called the Rocky Branch Corridor Improvements, would be covered by a separate bid package, he said.
Kirouac asked the Board to authorize application for $2 million grant from the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank (GTIB) for the improvements. The grant go through the State Roads and Tollways Authority (SRTA).
At present, funding is to come from the 2021 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. Total cost is estimated at $5.4 million.
“So the request here before you in resolution form,” Kirouac said at the meeting on Tuesday, “is just authorizing me to submit the grant to SRTA and the GTIB for the amount of $2 million that would go toward the entrance to Dawson Park.”
The Board approved the resolution without discussion.
Calming Policy
At its agenda setting meeting on July 28, the Board gave tentative approval to a policy developed by Kirouac in response to citizen requests for ways to reduce the speed of traffic in their subdivisions.
The policy lists 13 calming measures the county could use, including speed feedback signs, high visibility crosswalks, center lane narrowing, traffic circles, and textured pavement.
According to the policy, “Traffic calming devices will only be considered on streets classified as local, residential streets.”
The Board would have the power to “authorize the placement of a traffic calming device and shall have the authority to remove any traffic calming device as seen necessary.”
To have a traffic calming device installed, representatives of at least 75 percent of the lots in the subdivision must sign a petition asking for the device, according to the policy.
The neighborhood will be responsible for the cost of engineering and construction of the device, according to the policy. A special tax district may be created to allow the neighborhood to pay the county for these costs.
The Board approved the policy without discussion on Tuesday.
Tax Hearing
Chairman Daniell provided a summary of the proposed property tax millage rates for 2026 at the beginning of the public hearing on Tuesday, as he did at the first hearing on July 28.
The county is proposing a millage rate of 5.154 for the incorporated parts of the county, which is the same as this year, and which is 0.17 mills more than the rollback rate, and thus is a tax increase.
For the unincorporated parts of the county, the proposed rate is 4.124, down from 4.184 this year and 0.79 mills less than the rollback rate.
The final hearing will be on Aug. 25. The Board will vote on adoption of the millage rates following that hearing.
Video
The video below is of the entire Aug. 4 regular meeting of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners. I recorded the video, which is on my Vimeo channel.
The video begins with the hearing on the millage rates.
Smith came to the podium at 4:49 in the video.
Kirouac explained the application for funds for the entrances to Dawson Park at 13:43 in the video.
The hearing on the Research Quarter rezone begins at 14:46 in the video.
The traffic calming policy was on the consent agenda, which was approved without discussion at the meeting on Tuesday.
Note: My wife, Ann Hollifield, participated in the May 1 meeting of Community Works and was present at the meeting on Tuesday as part of the Community Works delegation.
I am a driver for the Meals on Wheels Program, having volunteered through Community Works, but I have not been involved in any other activities of the organization.
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