Oconee Posts Water Signs to Help Confused Citizens

Sign: Outdoor Watering Allowed



The signs that the Oconee County Utility Department has posted in a small number of subdivisions around the county might seem like an attempt to promote water use, but Utility Department Director Chris Thomas said the intent is quite different.

People in the county are confused about when they are allowed to water, he said, and the Utility Department put up signs this week in four subdivisions and last week in four others to help clarify the rules.

The white signs read: Outdoor Watering Allowed One Day a Week, Call OCUD for Your Scheduled Day." The sign lists the Oconee County Utility Department phone number and web address for the county.

When Thomas appeared before the Board of Commissioners on June 24 to announce the lifting of the outdoor water ban, he said the county would use the last digit of the address to determine when watering was allowed.

The county subsequently found that 90 percent of the addresses in the county ended in either zero or one, so it needed a new system, and the county started using the second to the last digit of the address to determine when people can water.

"With our system, it is a little confusing as to when your day is," Thomas said. "So a lot of people are going by Athens’ schedule, which goes on your last number versus our system, which goes on the first number of the last two numbers."

I told Thomas when I talked to him by telephone Wednesday I thought the sign suggested the county was actually encouraging people to water one day a week.

"We’re producing and selling a fairly decent amount of water," Thomas said. "We’re not necessarily encouraging people to water. What we’re encouraging people to do is, if you’re going to water, try to do it on the schedule that’s there."

Thomas said the Utility Department has been getting two or three calls a week from people complaining about their neighbors watering off schedule. The Department then has to send someone out with a notice, and that is "bad for us."

Thomas said people have been "really good" about following the rules. "When we went to one day a week, it wasn’t like everybody was trying to cheat the system and irrigate, irrigate, irrigate. We didn’t see a large increase."

According to data released by the county recently, the Utility Department saw a significant decrease in water use after restrictions went into place late last summer. In August of 2007, the average demand for water in the county was 4.44 million gallons per day. In December demand was 1.37 MGD, and in May it was 1.79 MGD. That figure had increased only to 2.09 MGD in the first two weeks of June, after the restrictions were eased.

The Utility Department operates as an Enterprise Fund, meaning it is supposed to cover its costs by selling water and treating sewage.

According to Thomas, the signs went up this week in Oconee Crossing, Founders Grove, Lane Creek and Welbrook Farms. I live in Welbrook Farms, and I noticed the sign at the end of the day on Monday.

Thomas said the signs were in Boulder Springs, Oak Lake, Meridian and Christian Lake last week.

Ultimately, the plan is to distribute the signs in all the neighborhoods of the county, according to Thomas. The department only printed six or eight signs, he said. "We didn’t want to spend a lot of money."

Thomas said that people need to check the county web site or call the Utility Department every week before they turn their sprinklers on to make sure the rules have not changed.

The front page of the county web site doesn’t contain the information, however, or even a direct link to it. Rather, a user has to click on "Public Notices" and then on "Water Restrictions as of June 30, 2008" to get to the restrictions themselves and the watering schedule.

According to a story in the Athens Banner-Herald on Tuesday, the Bear Creek Reservoir, from which the Oconee County Utility Department draws most of its water, was 3.6 inches higher this week than at this time a year ago.

Clarke County has had to start drawing from Bear Creek, however, because the flow in the Middle Oconee River, from which it normally gets its water, is so low.

State Climatologist David Stooksbury is quoted in the article as saying even significant rainfall from Tropical Storm Fay would provide only limited relief.

Alcohol and Oconee July 2008 Elections

It Probably Wasn't the Beer or Wine


At its August 5 meeting, the incumbent Oconee County Board of Commissioners dealt with an old issue that the new Board of Commissioners almost certainly will deal with repeatedly after it takes office in January.

The Board turned down a rezone and a special use request that would have allowed more development in the southern part of the county.

Don Norris, tossed out by voters at the July 15 Republican primary, supported the rezone. Jim Luke, whose margin of victory over his challenger on July 15 was 207 votes, admitted he was wavering before voting against the rezone.

Commissioner Margaret Hale missed the meeting, but Chuck Horton, who handily pushed back a challenge on July 15 by pro-growth advocate Mike Maxey, was rock solid in his opposition to both requests, saying he wanted to protect the southern part of the county.

Travis Marshall had asked to rezone 51 acres on State Route 15 from agricultural use to residential. Joy Clark wanted to convert a single-family residence on 6 acres on Colham Ferry Road from a single family residence to a group personal care home. The full meeting is viewable online.

Exactly what Oconee County voters were trying to tell the Commissioners to do on issues such as this in their vote on July 15 is impossible to know exactly.

What is clear is that most people didn’t vote. Chairman Melvin Davis, who won by only 100 votes, has seized on that fact, saying this might mean that people were happy with his policies. All one can say with certainty about the 63 percent of the registered voters who did not show up on July 15 is that they were willing to let those who did vote decide the outcome.

And those voters did provide some hints about their intentions. An analysis of the precinct-level election outcomes suggests that voting was structured in part on the evaluation of incumbents, Davis, Norris and Luke as an incumbent team. Davis and Luke survived, though by small margins.

The analysis also suggests that the vote by Davis, Norris and Luke for an ordinance allowing for the sale of beer and wine in the county wasn’t so important.

The precincts that gave support to Davis were also the ones that gave support to Luke and Norris, and those precincts that supported one of their opponents supported the others.

The precincts that voted most strongly against the alcohol initiative on the ballot in 2002, however, were no more likely to be those that voted against Davis, Norris and Luke than the other precincts.

Horton and Hale, who criticized Davis openly in the run-up to the July 15 election, enjoyed support that cut across precincts in ways that differed from the patterns of support and opposition for Davis, Luke and Norris and the patterns of the 2002 alcohol vote.

Precinct analysis is a far from perfect way of understanding individual voting decisions. In the language of social science, inferring individual-level behavior based on aggregate data can lead to an "ecological falacy."

Precincts are geographic divisions of the county, however, and homogeneity or similarity within a precinct is almost certainly greater than it is across all 13 of them. For this reason, treating a precinct as an identifiable entity makes sense. Similarities in outcomes across the precincts can illustrate patterns that can provide insights into the election outcome.

I treated each of those 13 precincts, shown on this labeled precinct map, as units. I also treated the absentee ballots and ballots cast before the election as a cluster, giving me 14 units for analysis. Click on the image to make it larger, or go to my companion website for another version and for all the charts below.

Chart 1 plots the proportion of votes for Sarah Bell, who challenged Melvin Davis for the Chairman position, and the proportion of votes for Johnny Pritchett, who ran against Luke, across the 13 precincts and the absentee ballot cluster. A proportion is the same as a percentage, except it is divided by 100.

The chart shows that Farmington and Antioch precincts supported both Bell and Pritchett, and Malcolm Bridge and Athens Academy opposed both. Farmington and Antioch are the two most southern and least developed parts of the county, and Malcolm Bridge and Athens Academy are two of the most urbanized precincts. Pritchett, who is mayor of Bishop, did much better in the Bishop precinct than did Bell.

Chart 2 plots out the votes for Sarah Bell and John Daniell, who defeated Don Norris. Farmington and Antioch supported Bell and Daniell, and Athens Academy and Malcolm Bridge opposed both. Bishop gave more support to Daniell than to Bell.

One way to summarize these relationships is with a correlation coefficient, which ranges from +1 to 0 and then -1, with +1 meaning a strong positive match of the data and -1 a strong negative match of the data. Coefficients of 0 mean there is no match, and values fall along the continuum.

In Chart 3, by way of illustration, I show the vote for Chairman Davis, as a proportion of the total vote, compared with the vote for Sarah Bell, the challenger. Because the vote for one is the opposite of the vote for the other (in proportions), the relationship is shown as negative. In those precincts that voted strongly for Davis proportionately, the vote for Bell was, of necessity, small. The data shown in this chart produce a correlation coefficient of -1.

I have simplified some things here statistically, such as the way I’m treating the gaps between the data points along the lines and the starting points of the lines. The goal is to reduce the data to make it easy to see patterns if they exist.

Chart 3 also shows that Bell’s support was not limited to the southern part of the county. Both Annex and City Hall, where she got a majority of the votes, are precincts based in Watkinsville.

The correlation coefficient for the relationship between the vote for Bell and Pritchett in Chart 1 is .83, and the coefficient for the relationship between the vote for Bell and the vote for Daniell in Chart 2 also is .83. In other words, these are nearly as strong–but in the opposite direction–as the relationship between the vote of Bell and Davis.

The correlation between the vote for Bell and the vote for Hale is .64 (Chart 4), and the coefficient for the vote for Bell and Horton is only .25 (Chart 5). The coefficient for the votes for Bell and Esther Porter, Hale’s opponent, was -.64, and the correlation between the vote for Bell and Mike Maxey, Horton’s opponent, was -.25.

Horton’s and Hale’s vote correlated .48, and the relationship is shown in Chart 6. Both won, but the did so in somewhat different ways.

The county changed the configuration of its precincts between 2002, when voters turned down an initiative to allow the sale of liquor by the drink, and the 2008 primary. One precinct was eliminated, but five precincts (Antioch, Farmington, Bishop, Dark Corner, and Bogart) were unchanged. Another five (Annex/Watkinsville East, Colham Ferry/Flatrock, High Shoals, Athens Academy/Friendship, and City Hall/Watkinsville West) changed only slightly, though the names changed in four of the five precincts.

I used the five unchanged and the five slightly changed precincts, plus the absentee and advance ballots, as 11 units to look at the vote patterns for the 2002 election and the July 15 primary.

Chart 7 shows the plot for the Bell vote in 2008 and a vote against the 2002 liquor issue. The correlation coefficient is only .27. For the Pritchett vote, the correlation was .22. For Daniell, it was .32. For Hale, it was .06. For Horton, it actually was a -.49, meaning there was a slight tendency for the precincts that voted against the liquor initiative to vote for Horton. Horton and Hale voted against the beer and wine ordinance when it came before the BOC.

In sum, knowing how a precinct voted in 2002 on the liquor initiative tells you little to nothing about how that precinct voted in 2008 in the race for the five BOC positions.

Bell’s vote at the precinct level was correlated .64 with the vote of Ed Carson for coroner in the July 15 primary and .50 in the Aug. 5 runoff. Carson ended up winning in the runoff.

Bell’s vote was correlated .82 at the precinct level with the vote for Ryan House on the Board of Education, but it basically was uncorrelated with the vote in any of the other BOE races.

I also looked at the impact of political party affiliation on the July 15 BOC races. The July 15 BOC contest was within a Republican primary, but, in Georgia, we do not register by party, and we are able to ask for either the Republican or Democratic ballot at any given primary election.
On July 15, with the local contests on the Republic side of the ballot, only 91 percent of the voters asked for the Republican ballot.

In February, however, we had a very competitive presidential primary in both parties, and 66 percent of the people in the county asked for the Republic ballot and 34 percent asked for the Democratic ballot. The percentages varied across the 13 precincts, with 59 percent of the voters in City Hall precinct asking for the Republic ballot and 76 percent of those in North Oconee precinct asking for the Republican ballot.

The proportion of voters asking for the Democratic or Republican ballot in the competitive February presidential primary was unpredictive of the vote across precincts on July 15 for any of the BOC candidates except Horton.

Horton did better in those precincts with more Democrats, based on the February presidential primary vote, than he did in those with more Republicans. The coefficient, however, was only .65, meaning the relationship was not overly strong.

In the school board race, all five of the successful candidates had their names listed first on the ballot, where candidates appeared alphabetically by last name. Chairman David Weeks ran unopposed, so his selection was unaffected by the order of listing.

Political scientists have found evidence in a variety of races that some voters tend to pick the first name listed on a ballot. This suggests a certain carelessness or indifference on the part of voters to the election process.

The evidence for an order effect in the July 15 voting, however, is not strong. Since the ballots were the same across all precincts, the vote in one precinct should be highly correlated with vote in another if order of listing was the key determinant of vote.

The correlation coefficient for the vote of Mack Guest with Kim Argo, both listed first and running for Posts 2 and 3 respectively, was only .12. The correlation between the vote for Guest and for Michael Hunter, listed first for Post 4, was actually -.22, and the correlation between the vote for Guest and Tom Breedlove, listed first for Post 5, was -.25.

Argo’s vote proportions by precinct correlated only .18 with those of Hunter. Hunter’s vote proportions correlated not at all (.00) with those of Breedlove.

Guest was the only incumbent on the Board of Education ballot. The ballot identified incumbents for all of the races. Bell’s vote proportions correlated -.82 with the proportion of votes for Guest. For Pritchett, the correlation with the vote for Guest was -.80, and for Daniell, it was -.89. Daniell and Guest both won, but they got their support from different precincts in the county (Chart 8).

If there is a message in the precinct data generally, it is of an anti-incumbent pattern of voting, though the only incumbent who lost was Don Norris. Davis explicitly argued he had managed growth well, and Norris has rarely voted against a rezone. In the campaign, Luke enjoyed the support of the development community.

Horton and Hale, the two BOC incumbents who won by big margins, did not enjoy support of much of the development community. During the campaign, they argued for more caution in development of the county.

The two votes at the BOC meeting on August 5 to protect the southern part of the county from development seemed to reflect the citizen concern with overdevelopment.

Of all the candidates who were successful in the July 15 primary, only Board of Education candidate Breedlove has Democratic opposition in November. Breedlove and Rich Clark face off then for the Post 4 school board seat.

Breedlove is a partner in Williams & Associates Land Planners, which represents developers in the county, and Clark is survey specialist at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.

Oconee Coroner Runoff Outcome Not Simple

More than a Mayberry Effect

Ed Carson defeated Cathleen Quillian-Carr in the Oconee County Republican primary runoff on Tuesday, and Quillian-Carr ended up with the same percentage of votes–46–she got in the July 15 three-way primary.

Despite what The Oconee Enterprise reported this week, however, Carson didn’t win simply by getting the votes of July 15 third place finisher Bill Mayberry.

Only 2,228 people voted in the Aug. 5 runoff, or 63 percent fewer than the 5,978 who voted in the coroner race on July 15. Carson received only 1,200 votes on Tuesday, compared with 1,028 for Quillian-Carr.

On July 15, Carson received 2,129 votes, Quillian-Carr received 2,759, and Mayberry 1,090.

"If the raw numbers alone are an indication," Enterprise reporter Blake Giles wrote in the Aug. 7 edition of the paper, "all of Mayberry’s supporters swung over to Carson."

It is hard to know what "raw numbers" indicate, but it is extremely unlikely that all of Mayberry’s supporters voted for Carson, for that would mean that all but 110 of Carson’s July 15 voters stayed home.

An examination of the distribution of votes in the July 15 and Aug. 5 races across the county’s 13 precincts shows a much more complex story.

In eight of the 13 precincts, Quillian-Carr actually received a higher percentage of the vote in the Aug. 5 race than she did on July 15. There’s no obvious geographic clustering of those eight precincts.

In half of those precincts, the decline in turnout was greater than the overall figure of 63 percent, and in half it was more.

Quillian-Carr was endorsed by incumbent Coroner John Simpson and incumbent Sheriff Scott Berry. Her posters also appeared on many lots owned by developers. Yet she ran strongly in many of the precincts where Sarah Bell, challenger for the Board of Commissioners Chair position, also ran strongly on July 15.

In the large Athens Academy precinct, however, Quillian-Carr got 56 percent of the vote in the three-way race on July 15 and 59 percent on August 5. Bell got only 40 percent of the vote in that precinct against incumbent BOC Chair Melvin Davis on July 15. Davis won overall by only 100 votes.

In the end, about all that can be said about the Aug. 5 election outcome is that Carson won because more of the people who turned out to vote that day wanted him to be coroner. No one is able to say why or how Carson got the extra 172 votes.

While only about one in three of those who voted in the Oconee County Republican primary cared enough about the coroner race to come back in the runoff, those who voted in the July 15 Oconee County Democratic primary were showing considerably more interest in that party’s runoff.

In the July 15 primary, 614 Oconee citizens voted in the five-way race for the party’s U.S. Senate nominee, and 349, or a ratio of six in 10, voted on Aug. 5 for the two-way race between Vernon Jones and Jim Martin. (Registered voters who did not vote in either primary on July 15 were eligible to vote on Aug. 5.)

Martin won locally, as he did statewide, and will face incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss in November.

For Ed Carson, the contest for coroner if over. Oconee Democrats have come up with only one candidate for county offices.

In November, Rich Clark will compete with Tom Breedlove for Post 5 on the county’s Board of Education.

Rocky Branch Construction on Oconee BOC Agenda

Deciding Who Is At Risk

The Oconee County Board of Commissioners will be asked on Tuesday night to approve Southern Champion Construction, Inc., as the construction manager for the upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant.

The request is scheduled to be made of the Commissioners by Chris Thomas, county Utility Department director, or his representative.

A selection team made up of Thomas, Utility Department Assistant Director John Hatcher, Emil Beshara, director of the county’s Public Works Department, and Jimmy Parker and Jim Sunta of Precision Planning, Inc., selected Southern Champion from among eight original and three short-listed bidders.

The Utility Department will ask the BOC to authorize it to request a cost proposal from and initiate contract negotiation with Southern so that Southern would become Construction Manager at Risk for the $8-10 million upgrade of the Rocky Branch plant, according to a report Thomas wrote to BOC Chairman Melvin Davis on July 28.

Construction Manager at Risk requires the construction manager to deliver the project at a guaranteed maximum price.

Bidding for the construction manager was conducted secretly, and the county has not yet released any of the bids. According to procedures the county is following, county administrators claim the county does not have to release any of the bids until after the BOC has voted on them.

Using this same secret bidding procedure, the County on March 4 selected HSF Engineering of Snellville to design the plant.

The county did change the nature of the committee that reviewed the bids in this most recent round of bidding.

In the November Request for Proposals for a company to provide engineering design and support for the sewage plant upgrade, the County BOC appointed a Selection Committee to evaluate the proposals.

The April Request for Qualifications merely stated that a Review Team would evaluate the bids.

In both cases, however, the Selection Committee/Review Team was doing its work on behalf of the BOC.

On that basis, I asked the state Attorney General earlier this year to require the county to follow the requirements of the open meetings law of Georgia.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Stefan Ritter refused to require the county to follow those procedures.

According to the documents produced by the county in soliciting the bids for the Construction Manager at Risk, the county expects to begin construction on the Rocky Branch upgrade in October and complete the project in January of 2010.

Jeff Benko, director of finance for the county, gave me documents on Friday that showed that the Utility Department had revenue of $6.6 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007.

The Utility Department projected its 2007-2008 revenue to be $7.1 million, but by the end of March of 2008, it had taken in only $4.6 million. If the rate of revenue for those first nine months held for the next three, the department would have ended the fiscal year with only $6.1 million in revenue, or a million less than projected.

The Utility Department also spent less, since, under the water restrictions in place, it not only sold less water but it also bought less water to sell. In fiscal year 2007, however, the department had revenue in excess of expenses of $608,794, while in the first nine months of fiscal year 2008 it has revenue in excess of expenses of $386,132.

Projected out, that would suggest revenue in excess of expenses of $514,842.

For fiscal year 2009, however, the county has set the Utility Department revenue figure at less than $6.5 million, or $188,951 less than for fiscal year 2007.

How these changes in the budgeting affect thinking about the immediate need for and financing of the Rocky Branch upgrade has not been publicly discussed.

The huge mixed commercial and residential Parkside project, which seems to be going nowhere, had been touted as a source of income for the Utility Department. The county said it would sell reuse quality water from the Rocky Branch plant for lawn watering to the more than 800 single-family homes in Parkside. The development–between Mars Hill and Hog Mountain roads--also was expected to make a heavy demand for water and sewer services.

If the 1 million gallons per day of water treated by Rocky Branch isn’t reused for irrigation, it will be discharged into Barber Creek. Given the existence of the drought and that the county has promised to produce a very high quality water, discharge into the creek could be a plus–if everything works as planned.

On June 24, Hatcher from the Utility Department appeared before the BOC and indicated that the Review Team had met and selected three bidders from among the eight submitted. The meeting of the Review Team was not public.

The BOC authorized the Review Team to interview representatives from Southern Champion, P.F. Moon and Company and Crowder Construction Company. None of the firms has been further identified. Hatcher told the BOC on June 24 all had Georgia offices.

On July 27 I sent an e-mail message to Alan Theriault, county administrative officer, telling him I was "interested in reviewing bids for the construction of the Rocky Branch upgrade" and asked him to "advise me on the status of the review and what is available to the public for review at this time?"

Theriault told me after the BOC meeting on Tuesday of this week that he would have materials for me to review on Friday.

On Friday, Theriault gave me a copy of the July 28 report by Thomas to Davis, a summary evaluation sheet, and copies of e-mail correspondence among the member of the Review Team.

In an e-mail message of July 21 to Sunta, Parker and Beshara, Hatcher said that he and Thomas had contacted other municipalities that used Southern Champion and P.F. Moon.

Hatcher wrote that "it is clear that both firms are capable of doing the work but the experience of Southern Champion constructing this specific type of wastewater plant is more extensive and recent."

The e-mail further said: "Both the number of plants built and the fact that they have just finished a project for the city of Winder gives them (Southern) an advantage in determining the best possible price which is our second criterion."

Hatcher said that Moon has "not built a plant similar to that which has been proposed."

Oconee Coroner Candidates To Meet in Runoff

Incumbent to Leave "Office"

Oconee County voters are being asked to go to the polls again on August 5 to select someone for an office that most people probably know little and care even less about.

Because none of the three candidates for coroner in the July 15 Republican primary received a majority of votes, the two top candidates–Cathleen Quillian-Carr and Ed Carson–are in a runoff on August 5.

No candidates filed to run as a Democrat or an independent, so the August 5 vote will determine who will serve as coroner for the next four years.

The coroner is responsible for determining the cause of death when a person dies as a result of violence, suicide or an accident. The coroner also must determine the cause and manner of death if someone dies unattended.

So the most common encounter the average citizen has with a coroner is if a loved one dies unexpectedly at home.

The coroner asks questions of the bereaved and examines the death scene, so a good coroner knows what to investigate and how to talk with people, usually under very difficult circumstances.

The coroner also has to work with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to determine if an autopsy needs to be performed. Any autopsy will be done by medical examiners at GBI, not the coroner.

Coroners can be viewed as heads of a small, local, governmental department. The county Board of Commissioners provides the funds to run the department and provides office space, though incumbent Oconee County Coroner John Simpson operates out of his personal office.

In Georgia, coroners are elected except in a few counties that have abolished the position in favor of an appointed medical examiner.

Each coroner must have at least one deputy.

When the election began in June, incumbent Coroner Simpson, who is stepping down, had two deputies, Carson and Quillian-Carr.

Simpson endorsed Quillian-Carr, who has been a deputy since 2007, and in the middle of June he dismissed Carson, who had been his deputy for 10 years.

In early July Simpson appointed Bryan Hooper, a chiropractor, as the new second deputy.

Hooper also is the campaign treasurer for Quillian-Carr.

The main issues in the election seem to be the needed qualification of the coroner and the actions of Simpson.

Quillian-Carr has said the county needs a physician who has practice and training in how to deal with patients. Carson says the county needs someone trained in death scene investigations.

Simpson’s endorsement of Quillian-Carr, dismissal of Carson and selection of Hooper as his new deputy have raised questions about Simpson’s judgment.

With Quillian-Carr the favored deputy in the campaign, Carson openly questioned how Simpson ran the office of coroner in such settings as the candidate forum organized by local citizen groups on June 2.

Carson said when he received a letter from Simpson on June 18 informing him he had been dismissed Simpson complained about recent statements Carson had made and said that Carson needed to learn "not to bite the hand that feeds you."

Quillian-Carr, 43, is a doctor of osteopathy with a family practice in Oconee County.

Carson, 45, is an emergency medical technician at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Quillian-Carr got 2,759 votes in the July 15 primary, and Carson got 2,129. Former coroner Bill Mayberry got 1,090 votes. Mayberry has endorsed Carson, so a shift of Mayberry’s votes to Carson would be enough to give him the election.

But a simple shift of that sort is unlikely. In fact, it is unlikely anything like the 5,978 voters who cast a ballot for coroner on July 15 will return to the polls on August 5. All of these voters are eligible to vote, as are registered voters who did not vote on July 15. Voters who selected the Democratic ballot on July 15 cannot vote in the coroner runoff election.

Sheriff Scott Berry has endorsed Quillian-Carr, but it is hard to know if that will help or hurt her. Not everyone loves Berry. The sheriff and the coroner must work together at death scenes, and the coroner serves as sheriff in the case of a vacancy until the probate court judge appoints a replacement sheriff.

Neither candidate raised or spent much money during the first month of the campaign.

According to the Campaign Contribution Disclosure Report filed by Quillian-Carr on June 27, she raised $724, all from donations of under $101, and spent $461 for campaign materials.

Hooper, the chiropractor appointed deputy coroner a few days later, signed the report.

Carson raised $2,810, including a $775 loan he made to his campaign. He raised $785 in donations of less than $101 each and $1,250 in five donations between $200 and $300. He spent $2,086 on advertising and signs.

I sent both candidates a list of seven questions on July 25. Quillian-Carr responded later that same day, and Carson responded the next.

The unedited responses of the two candidates are available here.

Carson said voters should pick him on Aug. 5 because of his experience as an investigator of death scenes. He said the major change he would make as coroner is to set up an office for the coroner and do more of the work himself so he would need only one deputy.

Quillian-Carr said voters should pick her as the next coroner because of her leadership skills and her compassion. She said she also would set up an office for the coroner.

I asked the candidates to review the 2007-8 and 2008-9 budgets for the coroner office. Quillian-Carr said she would talk to Simpson to get the information needed and gave the most detailed response. Carson said he had turned in all his files when he was relieved of his duties and had to guess about some of the figures.

According to Quillian-Carr, the total budget for the coroner office in 2007-8 was $25,347, and the total requested for the office for 2008-9 was $20,847. The coroner was paid $4,507 last year and will be paid $5,997 this year.

Carson said he felt he actually could spend less than the amount budgeted for 2008-9 since he would only have one deputy. Deputy coroners are paid $175 for each call they make.

The amounts of money spent in the last fiscal year and budged for this are not large, but the money comes from taxpayers.

That alone should be an incentive for voting.

Another is what happens when citizens do not vote.

Oconee County Board of Commission Chairman Melvin Davis, who beat challenger Sarah Bell by only 100 votes on July 15, is quoted in the July 24 issue of The Oconee Leader as minimizing the challenge because only 34 percent of the registered voters turned out.

Some of those people stayed home because they thought "everything is going okay," Davis is quoted as saying. "Its hard to read any kind of mandate, whether you won by a large margin or a close margin."

In the July 15 election for School board, all of the candidates listed first received the majority, suggesting that voters were not being too thoughtful in their choices.

This is true despite the fact that much of our taxes is controlled by the Board of Education. At the Board of Commissioners meeting last night, the tax rate was set at 17.5 mills (one tenth of a cent per assessed property value) to fund Oconee County schools and only 6.7 mills to fund county government–including the coroner’s office.

As long as the coroner is selected directly by the electorate rather than appointed by other elected officials, it makes sense for all of us to get involved in the choice.

The Athens Banner-Herald and The Oconee Leader have run stories providing additional background on the race.

A video of the candidate forum is on the web. I, by the way, was the moderator. The Chamber of Commerce did not include the coroner candidates in either of its two candidate forums.

Both candidates were interviewed by WGAU’s Tim Bryant today. The interviews can be listened to or downloaded at the WGAU web site.

Former Oconee County Board of Commission Chairman Wendell Dawson also offers comments about the race on his web site posting today.

Not voting on August 5 only means that someone else is going to make the choice.

It makes more sense to consider which of the two candidates will do the better job of providing the services required of the office and to turn out to vote before the polls close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

Oconee County Commission Election Revisited

Sign of a Big Mandate or a Big Tent?

It may be a bit unfair to Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis to take too seriously his comment to Athens Banner-Herald reporter Adam Thompson on the night of the election.

According to the story in the next day’s paper, Davis told Thompson that Tuesday's election showed most Oconee residents are pleased with the quality of life provided them during Davis' eight years in office.

Davis, Thompson reported, said residents wanted quality growth and services, good decision-making, leadership and action. "And I think that's what has been provided," Thompson quoted Davis as saying.

No doubt Davis was more focused on his victory than on the margin of victory, and he may have been a bit more reflective even a few hours later.

The fact is that had Sarah Bell been able to move 51 votes from Davis’ column to hers, or picked up 101 additional new votes, she would be chairing the new commission, not Davis.

The fact is that as of June 30, Davis had spent $17,375 trying to get reelected, while Bell had spent $6,129 trying to unseat. Davis, as incumbent, received vast amounts of free exposure; Bell received almost none.

The fact also is that the two commissioners most critical of Davis’ leadership in the last year, Post 3 Commissioner Margaret Hale and Post 4 Commissioner Chuck Horton, easily beat out challengers who espoused pro-development positions similar to those of Davis. Hale beat Esther Porter 71% to 29%, while Horton beat Mike Maxey 59% to 41%.

Davis’ most loyal supporter or the Commission, Don Norris, was soundly beaten by John Daniell, 57% to 43%. And Post 1 Commissioner Jim Luke, who has often been critical of Davis but aligned himself with the pro-growth slate during the election, beat out Johnny Pritchett by 207 votes, the narrowest margin in the Commission races other than that of Davis over Bell.

No one officially used the designation, but there was something very much like a Citizen Ticket and a Chamber of Commerce Ticket in the campaign. The Citizen Ticket challenged the benefits of the rapid development experienced in recent years, and the Chamber Ticket said development, particularly commercial development, needs to be even more rapid.

The Citizen Ticket got three slots by wide margins, and the Chamber Ticket got two, by slight margins.

Of course, this analysis is simplistic. Norris also was carrying with him a record of voting on zoning issues when many people felt he should have recused himself. Post 4 candidate Maxey also was challenged for his voting as a member of the Planning Commission. Post 3 challenger Porter had difficulty answering questions about her stand on some key issues and literally took a vacation in the middle of the campaign.

And, in fact, only about a third of the registered voters in the county actually turned out.

So a claim that the majority of citizens voted on a single issue–development–and tossed out the development crowd is simplistic. Davis’ claim that he got something of a mandate to do in the next four years what he has done for the past eight seems to be at least as wrong.

The comment Davis made about a mandate, however, is consistent with Davis’ style. To put it simply, he does not hear things very well.

For months, Horton, Hale and Luke–in that order of loudness–have been complaining that Davis does not share enough information with them for them to be effective in their jobs as commissioners. Davis refused then and during the campaign to acknowledge there is a problem.

Davis hires and fires the department heads in the county, and the pattern is for the department heads to give information to the other Commissioners only if and when Davis approves. I’ve been told this independently and repeatedly by Hale, Horton and Luke. And I’ve certainly observed first-hand how difficult it is to get information from the County.

Davis one time required me to fill out an open records request to get a copy of the minutes of a Board of Commissioners meeting! (Now recent ones are available on the county web site.)

The Board of Commissioners can force Davis’ hand by refusing to vote unless it has the information it wants. It has been reluctant to do this. Horton and Hale have told me they haven’t had the three votes they needed.

So if the election on Tuesday night did anything, it has called the bluff of the Commission. With Norris gone and Daniell added, the Commission is now in a position to assert its power. It should now be much harder for Davis to control the Commission and much easier for the Commission to play the role of an independent check on the strong Commission Chairman.

The Commission also is likely to be more feisty because half of its members are up for reelection in only two years. At the request of the Board of Commissioners, voters last year staggered the terms of the Commissioners.

Hale and Daniell won shortened terms that will expire in 2010. It is easy to imagine that some people who lost power on the Commission are plotting to retake it in two short years.

Which raises another possible interpretation of the election outcome on Tuesday: "Old Oconee," at least for the moment, lost some of its control of the County.

Last Sunday I posted a story on the upcoming election on this blog, and within an hour I got a comment back from someone who thought the posting was overly critical of Mike Maxey.

Because I use StatCounter to monitor traffic on the blog, I know by the computer IP address that the writer has visited before and sent back critical comments defending Mike Maxey in the past. The writer hasn’t signed a name, so I don’t know the actual identity of the writer.

"Anonymous" took me to task for an error I had made and said it was because I’m not an Oconee native.

I had used MapQuest to locate the residence of each of the candidates running for the Board of Commissioners so I could indicate in which part of the county the candidate lived. I next went to a printed map and, where appropriate, named the subdivision in the posting.

In the case of Chuck Horton, I made a mistake. I placed Horton in Great Oaks rather than Hickory Hill subdivision. The two subdivisions are next to each other off Simonton Bridge Road east of Watkinsville. Horton lives on Ramblewood Place, which is at the front of Hickory Hill and much closer to the name "Great Oaks" on the county map I was using than it is to the name "Hickory Hill."

As far as I can recall, in the 11 years I’ve lived in the County, I have been in Hickory Hill subdivision one time, and it was not to visit Chuck Horton.

Here’s what "Anonymous" had to say:

"It is a shame that you do not have a clue where the candidate that you support lives. I would probably suggest that the rest of this article is filled with inaccurate information. All of this talk and you still do not realize that you have no credibility because you have no Oconee natives onboard with you. Your group and the others that so called sponsored the "tree hugger" forum are a bunch of transplants that are trying to change things to your liking. Until you get credibility, it is not going to work because the majority of the people in the community think you are a joke. You will see on election day that all of this has fallen on educated ears that have better things to listen to."

I thanked "Anonymous" for the correction and fixed the name of the subdivision. The beauty of the web is that I get feedback. I hate making errors, but I am really pleased when I can fix any I’ve made.

I hope one conclusion that we all can reach from the Tuesday election is that elections are not just for "Old Oconee," and everyone has a right and a responsibility to participate in Oconee County matters, whether the person has lived here since birth, for "only" 11 years, or even for only 11 days.

The county is big enough for all of us, and we’ll do a lot better if we are open to input from everyone.

Oconee Election Campaign Comes to Close

Build Your Own Scorecard

I probably don’t need to remind readers to vote on Tuesday. The county is littered with reminders of the election. Not only will Tuesday give us a chance to exercise our right to select our county leaders, but it will be step toward cleaning up the litter of the signs.

Please encourage every eligible member of your household to vote, and bring along as many of your neighbors as possible.

The decisions made by the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education affect our lives in many ways, from the taxes we pay to the quality of our schools and of our roads, and even what we can eat and drink in restaurants. The candidates this year have presented some dramatic differences in terms of how they approach these important matters.

It is quite possible several of the races will be decided by small numbers of votes. In 2004, Chuck Horton defeated W.E. Wilkes for Post #4 on the Board of Commissioners by 62 votes, and Jim Luke defeated Johnny Pritchett by 135 votes in the Post 1 contest. In the August runoff, Don Norris defeated Liz Headley for Post #2 by 130 votes.

In the 2004 July election, 6,122 people voted, or 40% of the 15,190 registered voters. This year, the county had 20,264 registered voters for the February 5 presidential primary, and 49% of them voted, compared with 23% for the March 2 presidential primary in 2004. So it is likely the number of voters on Tuesday will be higher than last year.

In the July primary in 2004, 85% of the participating voters selected the Republican ballot. That year, the only Democratic contest of note was for the U.S. Senate. The situation is much the same this year, so it seems reasonable to expect that about 85% of the votes cast on Tuesday will be with the Republican ballot. Since we don’t have party registration in Georgia, voters can select whatever ballot they want on election day.

In the February presidential primary this year, 66% of the ballots cast were in the Republican primary, and 34% were in the Democratic primary, but in 2004, only 29% of the ballots cast were with the Republican ballot, and 71% were in the Democratic primary.

The final voting choices each of us makes in an election can be the outcome of a complex weighting of assessments of the candidates and their stands on issues. My list of important issues is not likely to be exactly the same as yours. And my assessment of the better candidate on any give issue is not likely to be exactly the same as yours either.

With that in mind, I’m presenting a summary scorecard below of actual votes of those candidates for the Board of Commissioners with voting records on issues that I have been involved with over the last several years. Many of the issues are related to preservation of Barber Creek and neighborhoods, such as mine (Welbrook Farms), that lie on the Creek. I’ve also summarized a few characteristics of all of the candidates from the public record.

I’ve not listed promises made by the candidates who are not currently in office, with one exception. That exception is the previously reported pledge of candidates to work with Friends of Barber Creek on independent monitoring of Barber Creek. In a previous posting I listed sources of information on the candidates that voters can consult.

I hope you find this scorecard of value.

Stormwater Ordinance

In August of 2006, Oconee County passed a stormwater ordinance at the request of the State Environment Protection Division. The ordinance passed required developers throughout the county to implement procedures to protect the streams in the county from runoff. The final ordinance was very similar to model legislation offered by the state.

After a public hearing on the original ordinance, incumbent Chairman Melvin Davis instructed his staff to rewrite the ordinance so that it would apply only to the urbanized area of the county. He took this action even though no public opposition to the draft ordinance had been voiced at the public hearing.

At a July 17, 2006, Planning Commission meeting, I and others urged the Planning Commission to reject the weakened ordinance. The Planning Commission voted 6-2 not to recommend that the Board of Commissioners approve the weakened ordinance.

Voting in the minority that night was Mike Maxey, then and now a member of the Planning Commission and now running for Post 4 Commissioner.

The Board of Commissioners amended the ordinance to make its requirements apply to the whole county and approved it on August 1, 2006. Voting for the stricter ordinance were Jim Luke, now seeking reelection to Post 1, Don Norris, nowseeking reelection to Post 2, Margaret Hale, now seeking reelection to Post 3, and Chuck Horton, now seeking reelection to Post 4 and being opposed by Maxey.

Rocky Branch Engineering

Last summer, the county began advertising for bids for engineering and design work for the proposed Rocky Branch sewage plant expansion, which will result in the discharge of 1 million gallons per day of treated sewage water into Barber Creek. On March 4 of this year, the Board of Commissioners awarded the contract.

Staff who report to Melvin Davis worked behind the scenes in the months before the March 4 vote to bring forward a design for the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant that would have produced a lower quality water than originally announced. They also opposed creation of holding ponds for effluent that could be used in the times of flooding.

Commissioners Luke, Hale and Horton publicly spoke out during Commission meetings for the tougher standards and, with Commissioner Norris, voted to accept the final design that guaranteed the higher quality water and included the holding ponds.

Independent Monitoring of Rocky Branch

On June 10 of this year, on behalf of the Board of Directors of Friends of Barber Creek, I sent the following question via email to all of the 10 candidates seeking to be elected to the BOC:

Friends of Barber Creek is pleased that the design for the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant will guarantee water treated to a very high standard and will allow the county to hold water in times of flooding. Now we need help from the BOC in setting up an independent monitoring system. Will you commit to working with Friends of Barber Creek to this end?

Sarah Bell, running for the Chair of the Board of Commissioners, Johnny Pritchett, running for the Post 1 slot, John Daniell, seeking the Post 2 seat, incumbent Post 3 Commissioner Margaret Hale, and Incumbent Post 4 Commissioner Chuck Horton all said they would commit to work with Friends of Barber Creek. Incumbent Chairman Melvin Davis, Incumbent Commissioner Jim Luke, Incumbent Commissioner Don Norris, Post 3 candidate Esther Porter and Post 4 candidate Mike Maxey did not.

Openness in Government

On December 7, 2007, the Board of Commissioners held a meeting in Madison, Georgia, at which the Rocky Branch upgrade, a proposed beer and wine ordinance, and a number of other important issues were discussed.

Though Chairman Melvin Davis had scheduled the meeting three weeks earlier, no public notice was given, as is required by law, until less than 24 hours before the meeting was to be held. Davis is responsible for these public notices, and he has apologized and blamed the staff for not giving the minimum 24-hour notice. But he has never apologized for not giving notice when the meeting was first scheduled three weeks in advance, for holding the meeting in a place distant from the county and in a setting–a small meeting room for which meals were catered–that would have made it difficult for citizens to participate even had they known of its existence. Davis again blamed his staff for the error on notice at the June 2 Candidate Forum and said he would hold meetings out of the county again in the future.

Incumbent Commissioners Jim Luke (Post 1), Margaret Hale (Post 3), and Chuck Horton (Post 3) criticized Davis at the time for not giving proper notice. Incumbent Commissioner Don Norris (Post 2) defended him.

Davis also instructed his staff to conduct bidding for Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant using a procedure that allowed the county to close the procedures to the citizens. Commissioners Hale and Horton criticized Davis at Commission meetings for this decision, and Commissioner Luke asked Davis to open the bidding meetings up to members of the Commission. Davis agreed.

Rezone on Daniells Bridge

At the May 1, 2007, Board of Commissioners meeting, a large number of citizens presented an even larger number of petitions in opposition to the rezoning of nine acres on Daniells Bridge Road. Landscape Architect and Land Planner Ken Beall asked the Board to rezone the property for construction of a business center just east of a blind curve on the road in an area that is now residential. The citizens in opposition were from Founders Grove, Settlers Ridge, Birchmore Hills, Welbrook Farms, Lake Wellbrook and other smaller neighborhoods.

Commissioner Don Norris (Post 2) recused himself because of an unstated conflict of interest. Commissioners Jim Luke (Post 1), Margaret Hale (Post 3), and Chuck Horton (Post 4) voted against the rezone.

On April 16, 2007, the Planning Commission had reviewed the same application. Citizens also had spoken in opposition and presented petitions. Mike Maxey, a member of the Planning Commission and now running for Post 4 Commissioner, made the motion to recommend approval of the rezone application to the Board of Commissioners. The motion passed 8-1.

Beer and Wine

In the summer of 2007, in response to pressure from the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce, the county scheduled two hearings on a proposed beer and wine ordinance for the county. Following the hearing, Chairman Melvin Davis refused to indicate how he would vote, and the Commission’s other four members were split 2-2, meaning Davis would have to break the tie for an ordinance to pass. In December, Davis included the ordinance on the agenda for the meeting he scheduled of the Board without proper notice in Madison. In early 2008, Davis stated publicly that he would vote in favor of the ordinance, and on April 8, 2008, the BOC voted 3-2 to pass the ordinance, with Post 1 Commissioner Jim Luke and Post 2 Commissioner Don Norris voting in favor, and Post 3 Commissioner Margaret Hale and Post 4 Commissioner Chuck Horton voting against. Chairman Davis broke the tie by voting in favor of beer and wine sales at restaurants.

The ordinance allows restaurants in the county to sell beer and wine with food. There is no provision for enforcement of this restriction. The ordinance also creates districts that run like fingers along major roads in the county and that likely will have be adjusted frequently by the Commission. The area along Daniells Bridge Road where the BOC voted down the rezone on May 1, 2007, has now been declared "wet," as are parts of the USDA farms on Hog Mountain Road and a piece of property on the corner of Hog Mountain Road and Daniells Bridge Road that has been rezoned for commercial development. In both cases, these properties abut residential neighborhoods.

Hard Labor Creek

On Sept. 4, 2007, the Board of Commissioners voted to become a minority partner with Walton County on a reservoir on Hard Labor Creek. The vote was 3-2, with Post 1 Commissioner Jim Luke and Post 2 Commissioner Don Norris voting in favor, and Post 3 Commissioner Margaret Hale and Post 4 Commissioner Chuck Horton voting against. Chairman Melvin Davis broke the tie by voting in favor of the partnership.

The reservoir is designed not to meet the needs of current residents and commercial properties in the county but the needs of those residents, commercial and industrial users who come to the county in the future. The county is growing at less than 3% per year, but projections of a much higher rate were used to justify the reservoir. In fact, the rate used is based on the expectation that the population will double in population by 2015–an extremely unlikely occurrence. The county also projected that water revenues will increase at 8% per year to pay off the bonds, and that level of growth is extremely unlikely as well.

Unless the state provides some funding–and the county is now seeking state funds–the reservoir is likely to be a serious burden on taxpayers in the county in the future. But state funding will come at a cost. The reservoir will have to be designated as regional, which means that water from the Apalachee River likely will be diverted to feed Atlanta’s needs. Oconee County gave up a permit to withdraw water from the Apalachee for its own needs when it partnered with Walton County on Hard Labor Creek. The Hard Labor Creek project also involves an interbasin transfer of water, since much of the water is not returned to the Oconee River basin for reuse.

Occupations and Where They Live

Chair

Sarah Bell, 53, instructor, Gainesville State College, lives in Indian Hills subdivision off Hog Mountain Road near Butler’s Crossing.

Melvin Davis, 67, retired district director for state agriculture extension and finishing his eighth year as Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, lives on Oliver Bridge Road off SR 15 southeast of Watkinsville.

Post 1

Johnny Pritchell, 58, part-time fire inspector, Walton County and former Oconee County Commissioner, lives on U.S. 441 in Bishop.

Jim Luke, 59, owner, Luke Hardware in Athens and Butler’s Crossing and finishing his fourth year as Post 1 Commissioner, lives on Meriweather Drive in Jennings Mill.

Post 2

Don Norris, 71, adjuster for Custard Insurance, member of the Board of Directors of North Georgia Bank, and completing his 20th year on the Board of Commissioners, lives off Jimmy Daniel Road near Jennings Mill.

John Daniell, 41, vice president of operators for Boswell Oil Company, lives on Elder Road near North High Shoals.

Post 3

Esther Porter, 67, president, American Building Products, lives in Summit Grove subdivision off SR 15 north of Watkinsville.

Margaret Hale, 46, administrative specialist, University of Georgia libraries, and completing her eighth year as Post 3 Commissioner, lives on Salem Road just south of Farmington.

Post 4

Mike Maxey, 41, owner, M&P Grading Contractors, lives off Elder Road near North High Shoals.

Chuck Horton, 53, retired University of Georgia police chief and completing his fourth year as Post 4 Commissioner, lives in Hickory Hill subdivision off Simonton Bridge Road east of Watkinsville.

If you want to see my scorecard for the candidates, click here.