Construction work on Mars Hill Road is scheduled to begin next week, according to a press release issued this afternoon by the Gainesville office of the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Crews are to start delivering equipment and materials to the site at the beginning of the week, and clearing along Mars Hill Road in advance of construction will start Wednesday at State Route 316, weather permitting.
Oconee County officials–at the request of Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis–met last week with commercial real estate broker Jamie Boswell and one of his clients to discuss a possible change in the plans for the widening of Mars Hill Road.
Boswell and his client, Maxie Price, wanted to discuss a cut in the median to provide access to property Price owns once the roadway is widened.
Boswell, in addition to being a commercial realtor, is the local representative to the state Transportation Board, which oversees the administration of construction contracts, including the one let in July for the widening of Mars Hill Road from SR 316 to Butler’s Crossing.
Oconee County is paying nearly $110,000 as the county’s share of the cost of repairing Orkin Drive, the main entranceway to the Caterpillar plant on the east side of Bogart.
The roadway failed shortly after the two counties accepted responsibility for it in August and September of 2013, and it was partially closed and rebuilt at the end of last year. Total cost of repair was just less than $220,000, with Athens-Clarke County and Oconee County splitting the expenses.
In the organizational chart the Oconee County Board of Commissioners passed in August of 2009–over the objection of Chairman Melvin Davis–the county’s economic development director reports to county Administrative Officer Jeff Benko.
Benko, in turn, reports to all five members of the Board of Commissioners.
Republicans Favored
Oconee County voters approved by large margins the sale of liquor by the drink in restaurants throughout the county and its cities and continuation of the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for another six years.
Unofficial results show 65.4 percent of those who cast ballots approving of liquor by the drink, and 65.1 percent approving of SPLOST.
The Oconee County Industrial Development Authority has entered into a contract to sell Andrew Clyde of Clyde Armory 18 acres south of SR 316 so Clyde can build a shooting range on the site.
Clyde will need to get a change in zoning for the land, now classified for agricultural use, before he can build the shooting range.
More people voted in the three weeks of early voting in Oconee County than voted in the primaries in the county in May.
A total of 5,482 voters cast their ballots by the end of the day today, the final day of early voting. The early voters represent 24.4 percent of the 22,498 active registered voters in the county.
