The Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study (MACORTS) Policy Committee this morning took the first step toward reactivating the construction of a bypass of Bishop and the four-laning of U.S. 441 from Watkinsville to the Apalachee River.
The project now goes to the public comment stage, with a key meeting to be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Feb. 24 in the Community Center at Oconee Veterans Park.
Oconee County Clerk Jane Greathouse this morning announced four Board of Commissioners work sessions for the last two weeks of the month covering a range of topics, including the widening of Daniells Bridge Road and the construction of the Daniells Bridge Road extension and flyover of SR Loop 10.
The commissioners decided at the end of two days of planning meetings last month to hold a series of work sessions, but they had not been scheduled until today.
Caterpillar has created 932 of the 1,300 jobs it has promised to generate at its local plant, according to a report filed on Jan. 29 by Rick Waller, chairman of the Oconee County Industrial Development Authority, with the state agency that is overseeing the project.
The 932 jobs are more than double the 364 that Waller reported Caterpillar had created in a similar report a year ago.
Oconee County collected more tax revenue in December of 2014 from its Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax than it has in any month since the tax began in October of 2009.
The December collections were up 13.1 percent from December of 2013, representing the second month in a row in which growth compared with a year ago was at that level. SPLOST revenues in November were up 13.0 percent from November of 2013.
After more than two hour of presentations by staff, of discussions, and of comments by citizens, the vast majority of them asking that the two project framework agreements for road work on Daniells Bridge Road be rejected, Oconee County commissioners last night delayed making a decision yet again.
Instead the commissioners agreed to revisit in 60 days the question of whether to widen Daniells Bridge Road in some fashion and to build an extension of Daniells Bridge Road that would fly over SR Loop 10 to connect with the stub of the Oconee Connector that ends at Home Depot.
Tom Kittle, who really is at the center of the Daniells Bridge Road extension and flyover, made his case for this project and the related widening of the road in a straightforward fashion at the Oconee County Board of Commissioners meeting last Tuesday.
These two projects, in his view, will facilitate the flow of traffic from outside of Watkinsville to Epps Bridge Parkway, thereby relieving existing congestion at the Oconee Connector, and will open up additional land, including land he owns, for development.
The fight and arrest on a charge of underage possession of alcohol early in the morning of Jan. 4 at Athens Ridge, the student housing complex on Old Macon Highway, was an exception, a review of records of the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office shows.
Going back to when the townhouse complex opened at the beginning of the academic year in August, records show only one other incident that clearly involved alcohol. That event also was this year, on the morning of Jan. 1.
