Smiling is a Nice Thing
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners tonight decided to move forward with its scheduled budget submittal plans for fiscal year 2010 but with a higher level of involvement of the commissioners compared with the past.
The Board approved a motion to accept the submittal plan given it by Finance Director Jeff Benko with the stipulation that the commissioners could join in the discussions as they progressed.
Benko meets with the department heads as well as with the constitutional officers such as the sheriff to discuss budget requests in the process of preparing the county’s budget.
Commissioner John Daniell, who just joined the Board last month, initially suggested a more formal procedure in which the commission would create committees made up of at least two commission members to help develop the budget.
He made that request after being told at the Jan. 27 BOC meeting by Board Chairman Melvin Davis that the Board does not have a committee that deals with finances. "Mr. Benko, Mr. Theriault and myself" handle that, Davis said. Theriault is the county administrative officer.
Control over county affairs has been an ongoing issue with the Board. Davis chairs the commission but he also is the full-time administrator of the county. The other four commissioners serve in part-time positions.
Commissioner Chuck Horton said he favored more involvement of the commissioners in the budget, but he said he was not interested in getting involved in the day-to-day running of the county.
Chairman Davis only smiled at the comment.
In other action tonight, the Board approved a request by state Representative Robert Smith for a change in his plans for development of 12 acres of land in Porter Creek subdivision off Barnett Shoals road outside Watkinsville.
Smith developed the subdivision on part of what he said was the family farm. He came before the Board to ask for a change in his concept plan for the subdivision so he could split the 12 acres into six lots.
Three residents of the subdivision spoke against the change at the meeting, claiming that it would produce lots not of the same character as the others in the subdivision. After similar protests at the Planning Commission on Jan. 20, that body recommended against the change Smith was proposing.
Smith offered the BOC a different configuration for the development, reducing the number of lots from six to five. The Board approved that change.
Commissioner Horton spoke against the switch in the plans and was alone in voting against it, saying that he did not feel it was appropriate to approve a change that was offered at the last minute and was not formally part of the request.
County Attorney Daniel Haygood reminder the Board that it had done the same thing on Jan. 6 when it rezoned property on U.S. 441 for an office park with a concept plan when the developer had asked for a shopping center.
Horton made the motion to make the swap in zoning that night.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Oconee BOC Vote Misreported
"Whoa" in Dictionary, But Not in Transcript
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 27 decided to move forward with the study of the feasibility of a local Transfer of Development Rights program, but it would be hard for readers of the local newspapers to know that.
Under the headline “Commissioners say no to TDR funding” The Oconee Enterprise reported in its Jan. 29 edition that the “board said, ‘Whoa’” to a request that it hire a consultant to help move the TDR program along.
The Athens Banner-Herald on that same day reported that the “commissioners this week stopped short of spending money on developing a transfer-of-development rights program for the county, though they remained open to the idea.”
The Oconee Leader did not report on the commission meeting at all in its Jan. 29 edition.
What the Board did at its meeting on Jan. 27, as I reported on my blog on Jan. 28, was vote to issue a request for proposals (RFP) for a consultant who would study how a TDR program could be implemented in the county.
The Board did not vote to spend the money on the consultant. The usual procedure is to get the bids and make a decision about moving forward based on those bids.
Here is the motion, formulated by BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, that the Board approved at its meeting:
“To authorize the (TDR Study) Committee to come up with a detailed scope of services for the RFP to get a competitive quote to present to you (the Board).”
The County put the video of the meeting on its Vimeo site on Jan. 31. I had made an audio recording of the meeting, and I transcribed it the day the Enterprise and Banner-Herald stories appeared to make sure what I had written was correct.
The transcription shows that the conversation took several turns, with the Commissioners initially quite cautious about how to respond to the unanimous recommendation of the 16-member citizen Committee. Once Finance Director Jeff Benko told them there was money in the budget for the study, they became more positive.
According to the traditions of journalism, words that appear within quotation marks in a news story are supposed to be the exact words as spoken by the person to whom they are attributed.
The transcription shows, of course, that no one said “Whoa” at the meeting, and perhaps the Enterprise was simply taking a little license at that point.
The transcription also shows that the Board did not vote to “come up with the scope of the work,” as the paper reported, though that is pretty close to the final language of the motion.
The Board did not add, as the paper reported, that “The BOC is making no commitment.”
Commissioner John Daniell said that, and Commissioner Chuck Horton agreed. All they were stating is standard procedure.
The Enterprise reporter, publisher Vinnie Williams, was sitting in the second row at the meeting, just in front of me. Williams, may or may not have written the headline over the story, which is clearly wrong.
The transcription does show that Williams took considerable liberty in presentation of the direct quotes in the story.
The paper also reported that the Transfer of Development Rights Study Committee has 10 members. I confirmed through a telephone conversation on Jan. 30 with Wayne Provost, Strategic and Long-Range Planning director, that none of the 16 members originally appointed to the committee and listed on the county’s web site had resigned.
The county’s free circulation weekly, the Leader, has a closing deadline for stories that is nearly a week before the paper appears in mailboxes. It rarely covers meetings as a result.
The lead front-page news story in the Leader’s Jan. 29 edition was about the appointment of John Jackson as superintendent of Oconee County schools. The Banner-Herald reported that story in its edition of Jan. 23.
The story about the BOC vote on the TDR report in the Banner-Herald on Jan. 29 was only three paragraphs long and appeared beneath the financial markets reports in the paper on page A6.
The paper’s Oconee County reporter, Adam Thompson, did not attend the Jan. 27 meeting. The story quotes Commissioner Jim Luke as the source of its information.
As the transcript shows, Luke was initially very cautious about going forward with the TDR study, but he shifted and made one of the strongest statements in favor of the motion.
“I think I’m going to change my mind and suggest that we just go on and ask for a quote on services and plan on moving forward unless we discover something in that process that we don’t like,” he said.
The vote to do just that was approved unanimously.
A TDR program, if enacted, would establish development rights for areas of the county that are not now developed and allow the owners of those rights to sell them to developers in other designated areas of the county.
When the owners sell their development rights, they would have to put a restrictive clause on their property stating that it could not be developed in the future.
The developers who purchase the development rights from the "sending" areas would be able to use them in the "receiving" areas for such things as more intensive development, priority access to water and sewage capacity or development prohibited by current zoning regulations in the county.
News coverage of the county in local newspapers is not likely to get much better in this economic crisis. The Banner-Herald reported on Jan. 28 that it is cutting 15 jobs, including from the newsroom. Reporter Thompson will be covering Madison County as well as Oconee County as a result.
The good news is that every citizen can be a journalist, and the citizen journalism move around the country is becoming quite strong.
The Knight Citizen News Network has just releasee a handbook to help citizen journalists know how to gain access to government records and meetings. It is just one of many resources on the site available to citizens who wish to be journalists.
Oconee County already has quite a number of citizen journalists. I’ve prepared this list of those I know of.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 27 decided to move forward with the study of the feasibility of a local Transfer of Development Rights program, but it would be hard for readers of the local newspapers to know that.
Under the headline “Commissioners say no to TDR funding” The Oconee Enterprise reported in its Jan. 29 edition that the “board said, ‘Whoa’” to a request that it hire a consultant to help move the TDR program along.
The Athens Banner-Herald on that same day reported that the “commissioners this week stopped short of spending money on developing a transfer-of-development rights program for the county, though they remained open to the idea.”
The Oconee Leader did not report on the commission meeting at all in its Jan. 29 edition.
What the Board did at its meeting on Jan. 27, as I reported on my blog on Jan. 28, was vote to issue a request for proposals (RFP) for a consultant who would study how a TDR program could be implemented in the county.
The Board did not vote to spend the money on the consultant. The usual procedure is to get the bids and make a decision about moving forward based on those bids.
Here is the motion, formulated by BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, that the Board approved at its meeting:
“To authorize the (TDR Study) Committee to come up with a detailed scope of services for the RFP to get a competitive quote to present to you (the Board).”
The County put the video of the meeting on its Vimeo site on Jan. 31. I had made an audio recording of the meeting, and I transcribed it the day the Enterprise and Banner-Herald stories appeared to make sure what I had written was correct.
The transcription shows that the conversation took several turns, with the Commissioners initially quite cautious about how to respond to the unanimous recommendation of the 16-member citizen Committee. Once Finance Director Jeff Benko told them there was money in the budget for the study, they became more positive.
According to the traditions of journalism, words that appear within quotation marks in a news story are supposed to be the exact words as spoken by the person to whom they are attributed.
The transcription shows, of course, that no one said “Whoa” at the meeting, and perhaps the Enterprise was simply taking a little license at that point.
The transcription also shows that the Board did not vote to “come up with the scope of the work,” as the paper reported, though that is pretty close to the final language of the motion.
The Board did not add, as the paper reported, that “The BOC is making no commitment.”
Commissioner John Daniell said that, and Commissioner Chuck Horton agreed. All they were stating is standard procedure.
The Enterprise reporter, publisher Vinnie Williams, was sitting in the second row at the meeting, just in front of me. Williams, may or may not have written the headline over the story, which is clearly wrong.
The transcription does show that Williams took considerable liberty in presentation of the direct quotes in the story.
The paper also reported that the Transfer of Development Rights Study Committee has 10 members. I confirmed through a telephone conversation on Jan. 30 with Wayne Provost, Strategic and Long-Range Planning director, that none of the 16 members originally appointed to the committee and listed on the county’s web site had resigned.
The county’s free circulation weekly, the Leader, has a closing deadline for stories that is nearly a week before the paper appears in mailboxes. It rarely covers meetings as a result.
The lead front-page news story in the Leader’s Jan. 29 edition was about the appointment of John Jackson as superintendent of Oconee County schools. The Banner-Herald reported that story in its edition of Jan. 23.
The story about the BOC vote on the TDR report in the Banner-Herald on Jan. 29 was only three paragraphs long and appeared beneath the financial markets reports in the paper on page A6.
The paper’s Oconee County reporter, Adam Thompson, did not attend the Jan. 27 meeting. The story quotes Commissioner Jim Luke as the source of its information.
As the transcript shows, Luke was initially very cautious about going forward with the TDR study, but he shifted and made one of the strongest statements in favor of the motion.
“I think I’m going to change my mind and suggest that we just go on and ask for a quote on services and plan on moving forward unless we discover something in that process that we don’t like,” he said.
The vote to do just that was approved unanimously.
A TDR program, if enacted, would establish development rights for areas of the county that are not now developed and allow the owners of those rights to sell them to developers in other designated areas of the county.
When the owners sell their development rights, they would have to put a restrictive clause on their property stating that it could not be developed in the future.
The developers who purchase the development rights from the "sending" areas would be able to use them in the "receiving" areas for such things as more intensive development, priority access to water and sewage capacity or development prohibited by current zoning regulations in the county.
News coverage of the county in local newspapers is not likely to get much better in this economic crisis. The Banner-Herald reported on Jan. 28 that it is cutting 15 jobs, including from the newsroom. Reporter Thompson will be covering Madison County as well as Oconee County as a result.
The good news is that every citizen can be a journalist, and the citizen journalism move around the country is becoming quite strong.
The Knight Citizen News Network has just releasee a handbook to help citizen journalists know how to gain access to government records and meetings. It is just one of many resources on the site available to citizens who wish to be journalists.
Oconee County already has quite a number of citizen journalists. I’ve prepared this list of those I know of.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Oconee Moves Forward on TDR Program
If Prompted, I’d Say...
Following the unanimous recommendation of the 16-member citizen Transfer of Development Rights Study Committee, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners Tuesday night voted to issue a request for proposals for a consultant to study how a TDR program could be implemented in the county.
A TDR program, if enacted, would establish development rights for areas of the county, most likely in the south, that are not now developed and allow the owners of those rights to sell them to developers in other designated areas of the county, most likely in the north.
The developers who purchase the development rights from the "sending" areas would be able to use them in the "receiving" areas for such things as more intensive development, priority access to water and sewage capacity or development prohibited by current zoning regulations in the county.
Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost, who worked with the citizen committee and presented its report to the Board, emphasized that the precise rights of those who own undeveloped land would need to be established after careful study.
How the developer could use those rights also would have to be determined. As an example, he said, the county could decide to allow developers to use purchased development rights to build residential units above commercial properties, which is not now possible in the county.
"It is just a tool," committee member Wayne Jordan told the Board, "and there are other tools. It would be a tool in the kit to give us some generally desired balance between economic development and preservation of our farmland, of open spaces, of green spaces, historic landmarks, our natural resources, that we do want to preserve."
Despite the presentation by Provost, Jordan and several other committee members, including Russ Page and Albert Hale, all of whom urged immediate action, the Board expressed caution, citing Provost’s estimation that the needed follow-up study would cost between $30,000 and $50,000.
When county Finance Director Jeff Benko said there was money in the current budget to cover the costs of the study, the Board decided quickly to instruct Provost to prepare a scope of work statement that would become part of the request for proposals.
Earlier in the meeting the Board heard Melissa Peppers of accounting firm Treadwell, Tamplin and Company present the Fiscal Year 2008 Report.
At that end of her presentation, BOC Chairman Melvin Davis prompted Peppers to provide a simple summary of her findings.
"As an auditor, give us a general feeling about how you feel about Oconee County’s fiscal responsibility as effective June 30, 2008," Davis said.
"As of June 30, 2008, you were in a very strong position," Peppers said. "As we know, sales taxes will be down. We have questions about the overall effects of the economy. You have a fund balance which will allow you more opportunities than a lot of your surrounding counties."
Finance Director Benko followed this comment with a report on the most recent receipts for sales taxes collected in the county, and his report was more encouraging. Though receipts overall for the first seven months of the fiscal year are down from the first seven months of last year, in January the county received $13,115 more than it received in the same month a year ago.
The January disbursement actually represents tax receipts from November of 2008, and Benko said he found that encouraging.
Chief Tax Appraiser Allen Skinner next came before the Board to explain his work and offer his estimation of the likely change in real property value in the county. As property value goes up, county revenue increases, unless tax rates are decreased.
Skinner said he estimates that the value of real property–not including auto or personal property–in the county will increase but by less than one percent in 2008-2009. That compares with a 9 percent increase last year and a 17 percent increase the year before.
Skinner indicated that the state sets standards on what kinds of sales he can use to assess fair market value, excluding foreclosures and other types of sales, such as exchanges within a family.
In 2008, he said, 636 residences sold in the county, but he could classify only 318 of those as fair market sales. Of the 636 sales, 84 were foreclosures.
Commissioners Margaret Hale, Chuck Horton and Jim Luke were suspicious, arguing that the real value should be more reflective of what is actually happening in the market. Skinner’s response was that state low does not allow him to do that.
John Gentry, director of Parks and Recreation, also presented the Board on Tuesday night with a plan to create equestrian trails at Heritage park on U.S. 441. The Board put off a decision.
Russ Page
Commissioners John Daniell and Chuck Horton
Following the unanimous recommendation of the 16-member citizen Transfer of Development Rights Study Committee, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners Tuesday night voted to issue a request for proposals for a consultant to study how a TDR program could be implemented in the county.
A TDR program, if enacted, would establish development rights for areas of the county, most likely in the south, that are not now developed and allow the owners of those rights to sell them to developers in other designated areas of the county, most likely in the north.
The developers who purchase the development rights from the "sending" areas would be able to use them in the "receiving" areas for such things as more intensive development, priority access to water and sewage capacity or development prohibited by current zoning regulations in the county.
Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost, who worked with the citizen committee and presented its report to the Board, emphasized that the precise rights of those who own undeveloped land would need to be established after careful study.
How the developer could use those rights also would have to be determined. As an example, he said, the county could decide to allow developers to use purchased development rights to build residential units above commercial properties, which is not now possible in the county.
"It is just a tool," committee member Wayne Jordan told the Board, "and there are other tools. It would be a tool in the kit to give us some generally desired balance between economic development and preservation of our farmland, of open spaces, of green spaces, historic landmarks, our natural resources, that we do want to preserve."
Despite the presentation by Provost, Jordan and several other committee members, including Russ Page and Albert Hale, all of whom urged immediate action, the Board expressed caution, citing Provost’s estimation that the needed follow-up study would cost between $30,000 and $50,000.
When county Finance Director Jeff Benko said there was money in the current budget to cover the costs of the study, the Board decided quickly to instruct Provost to prepare a scope of work statement that would become part of the request for proposals.
Earlier in the meeting the Board heard Melissa Peppers of accounting firm Treadwell, Tamplin and Company present the Fiscal Year 2008 Report.
At that end of her presentation, BOC Chairman Melvin Davis prompted Peppers to provide a simple summary of her findings.
"As an auditor, give us a general feeling about how you feel about Oconee County’s fiscal responsibility as effective June 30, 2008," Davis said.
"As of June 30, 2008, you were in a very strong position," Peppers said. "As we know, sales taxes will be down. We have questions about the overall effects of the economy. You have a fund balance which will allow you more opportunities than a lot of your surrounding counties."
Finance Director Benko followed this comment with a report on the most recent receipts for sales taxes collected in the county, and his report was more encouraging. Though receipts overall for the first seven months of the fiscal year are down from the first seven months of last year, in January the county received $13,115 more than it received in the same month a year ago.
The January disbursement actually represents tax receipts from November of 2008, and Benko said he found that encouraging.
Chief Tax Appraiser Allen Skinner next came before the Board to explain his work and offer his estimation of the likely change in real property value in the county. As property value goes up, county revenue increases, unless tax rates are decreased.
Skinner said he estimates that the value of real property–not including auto or personal property–in the county will increase but by less than one percent in 2008-2009. That compares with a 9 percent increase last year and a 17 percent increase the year before.
Skinner indicated that the state sets standards on what kinds of sales he can use to assess fair market value, excluding foreclosures and other types of sales, such as exchanges within a family.
In 2008, he said, 636 residences sold in the county, but he could classify only 318 of those as fair market sales. Of the 636 sales, 84 were foreclosures.
Commissioners Margaret Hale, Chuck Horton and Jim Luke were suspicious, arguing that the real value should be more reflective of what is actually happening in the market. Skinner’s response was that state low does not allow him to do that.
John Gentry, director of Parks and Recreation, also presented the Board on Tuesday night with a plan to create equestrian trails at Heritage park on U.S. 441. The Board put off a decision.
Russ Page
Commissioners John Daniell and Chuck Horton
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Oconee County Meeting to Focus on Finances
It's the Numbers
Financial reports, which should give some indication of the impact of the national financial crisis on the county, dominate the agenda for the Tuesday meeting of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners.
Melissa Peters from accounting firm Treadwell, Tamplin and Company is scheduled to discuss the Fiscal Year 2008 Audit Report with the Board.
County Finance Director Jeff Benko is to present the county Fiscal Year 2009 six-month financial report and the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Submittal Plan.
County Chief Tax Appraiser Allen Skinner is scheduled to give the Board an update on his work.
In addition, the Board is scheduled to receive the final report of an ad hoc committee studying the Transfer of Development Rights and to discuss the possibility of equestrian trails at Heritage Park on U.S. 441 in the south of the county.
County Clerk Gina Lindsey released the agenda for the meeting–officially the Board’s agenda setting session--on Friday.
Finance Director Benko told me on Friday he expects to have the state figures for sales tax collection in Oconee County from December before the meeting.
The figures for the last year have not been good. Revenues for four of the last six months and seven of the last 12 months have been down.
Even the first half of fiscal year 2008 (July through December of 2007) was not good, with four of those months producing tax revenue lower than the same month a year earlier.
For fiscal year 2008, Oconee County collected $49,178 less from the Local Option Sales Tax and $69,995 less in the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. Both are for one cent on the dollar of spending, but LOST has more exemptions than SPLOST.
The pattern of growth year-to-year had been steady for both taxes back to 1999, so the downturn in fiscal year 2008, if not reversed, could produce real problems for the county.
Voters in March of this year will be asked to approve a new SPLOST of one cent on the dollar, and the county has projected that, across six years, the tax will generate $40 million in revenue, or an average of $6.7 million per year, or nearly $1.2 million more than the tax produced in fiscal year 2008.
The county recently has approved two new, large, commercial projects, one on Epps Bridge Parkway and the other on U.S. 78, but neither is under construction, and both are years away from build-out.
The county will have to cover lost revenue for SPLOST and LOST with property taxes, or it will have to cut back on services and capital expenditures.
The county already is struggling with the possible loss of state funding for homestead exemption grants. Gov. Sonny Perdue cut $428 million for the current fiscal year from the state budget and the same amount from fiscal year 2010. Unless the legislature reversed the governor and funds these grants, Oconee County and other counties around the state will have to figure out how to make up the differences.
The problem is particularly difficult for this current fiscal year, since Oconee Countyhomeowners already have received their property tax bills and the county has based its budget on what property owners will pay plus the state contribution.
The state exempts from state, county and school taxes $2,000 of the 40 percent assessed value of residences as a way of reducing the property tax burden for homeowners.
Homeowners can expect to get bills for between $200 and $300 if the county does not get the state reimbursement for this exemption and cannot cut its current budget accordingly.
It is a relatively small amount, but the county also learned this week that it is going to have to spend an additional $30,000 as its part of the boat dock for Bear Creek Reservoir. The full county expenditure is expected to be about $60,000, Jeff Benko told me on Friday, and the county had been expecting the state to pick up about half that amount.
These circumstances make voter approval of the SPLOST tax at the March 17 election all the more important.
Voters in the county have a good record of approving this tax. In 1999, 75 percent of the voters who turned out approved the tax, and 82 percent approved the current SPLOST in 2003. In 2006, 79 percent of Oconee voters who went to the polls approved a five-year tax of one cent on the dollar for educational purposes.
All of these were approved in special elections, when relatively few voters go to the polls. Only 1,696 people voted on the current SPLOST when it was approved in 2003.
Currently there are 21,579 registered voters in Oconee County, and at the general election in November 17,208 voted.
Its no accident that these issues are put on the ballot when few people go to the polls.
Political scientist Changhoon Jung studied SPLOST votes in Georgia that took place from 1985 to 1997 and found that the lower the voter turnout rate, the higher the likelihood that a SPLOST referendum will pass.
Jung, formerly at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, is now at Auburn University.
The financial crisis, of course, makes it difficult to offer predictions based on what Oconee County voters or voters around the state did in different circumstances.
Melvin Davis, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, reassured citizens in his column in The Oconee Enterprise of Jan. 8, 2009, that "Oconee County is in excellent financial shape at this point in time."
He said that he believed the county will "weather our current economic situation" but that the county "must continue to carefully analyze current data."
Tuesday night’s agenda should offer the rest of the commissioners and citizens a chance to review some of those current data.
Davis, left, County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault at BOC SPLOST meeting of Nov. 20, 2008.
Financial reports, which should give some indication of the impact of the national financial crisis on the county, dominate the agenda for the Tuesday meeting of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners.
Melissa Peters from accounting firm Treadwell, Tamplin and Company is scheduled to discuss the Fiscal Year 2008 Audit Report with the Board.
County Finance Director Jeff Benko is to present the county Fiscal Year 2009 six-month financial report and the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Submittal Plan.
County Chief Tax Appraiser Allen Skinner is scheduled to give the Board an update on his work.
In addition, the Board is scheduled to receive the final report of an ad hoc committee studying the Transfer of Development Rights and to discuss the possibility of equestrian trails at Heritage Park on U.S. 441 in the south of the county.
County Clerk Gina Lindsey released the agenda for the meeting–officially the Board’s agenda setting session--on Friday.
Finance Director Benko told me on Friday he expects to have the state figures for sales tax collection in Oconee County from December before the meeting.
The figures for the last year have not been good. Revenues for four of the last six months and seven of the last 12 months have been down.
Even the first half of fiscal year 2008 (July through December of 2007) was not good, with four of those months producing tax revenue lower than the same month a year earlier.
For fiscal year 2008, Oconee County collected $49,178 less from the Local Option Sales Tax and $69,995 less in the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. Both are for one cent on the dollar of spending, but LOST has more exemptions than SPLOST.
The pattern of growth year-to-year had been steady for both taxes back to 1999, so the downturn in fiscal year 2008, if not reversed, could produce real problems for the county.
Voters in March of this year will be asked to approve a new SPLOST of one cent on the dollar, and the county has projected that, across six years, the tax will generate $40 million in revenue, or an average of $6.7 million per year, or nearly $1.2 million more than the tax produced in fiscal year 2008.
The county recently has approved two new, large, commercial projects, one on Epps Bridge Parkway and the other on U.S. 78, but neither is under construction, and both are years away from build-out.
The county will have to cover lost revenue for SPLOST and LOST with property taxes, or it will have to cut back on services and capital expenditures.
The county already is struggling with the possible loss of state funding for homestead exemption grants. Gov. Sonny Perdue cut $428 million for the current fiscal year from the state budget and the same amount from fiscal year 2010. Unless the legislature reversed the governor and funds these grants, Oconee County and other counties around the state will have to figure out how to make up the differences.
The problem is particularly difficult for this current fiscal year, since Oconee Countyhomeowners already have received their property tax bills and the county has based its budget on what property owners will pay plus the state contribution.
The state exempts from state, county and school taxes $2,000 of the 40 percent assessed value of residences as a way of reducing the property tax burden for homeowners.
Homeowners can expect to get bills for between $200 and $300 if the county does not get the state reimbursement for this exemption and cannot cut its current budget accordingly.
It is a relatively small amount, but the county also learned this week that it is going to have to spend an additional $30,000 as its part of the boat dock for Bear Creek Reservoir. The full county expenditure is expected to be about $60,000, Jeff Benko told me on Friday, and the county had been expecting the state to pick up about half that amount.
These circumstances make voter approval of the SPLOST tax at the March 17 election all the more important.
Voters in the county have a good record of approving this tax. In 1999, 75 percent of the voters who turned out approved the tax, and 82 percent approved the current SPLOST in 2003. In 2006, 79 percent of Oconee voters who went to the polls approved a five-year tax of one cent on the dollar for educational purposes.
All of these were approved in special elections, when relatively few voters go to the polls. Only 1,696 people voted on the current SPLOST when it was approved in 2003.
Currently there are 21,579 registered voters in Oconee County, and at the general election in November 17,208 voted.
Its no accident that these issues are put on the ballot when few people go to the polls.
Political scientist Changhoon Jung studied SPLOST votes in Georgia that took place from 1985 to 1997 and found that the lower the voter turnout rate, the higher the likelihood that a SPLOST referendum will pass.
Jung, formerly at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, is now at Auburn University.
The financial crisis, of course, makes it difficult to offer predictions based on what Oconee County voters or voters around the state did in different circumstances.
Melvin Davis, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, reassured citizens in his column in The Oconee Enterprise of Jan. 8, 2009, that "Oconee County is in excellent financial shape at this point in time."
He said that he believed the county will "weather our current economic situation" but that the county "must continue to carefully analyze current data."
Tuesday night’s agenda should offer the rest of the commissioners and citizens a chance to review some of those current data.
Davis, left, County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault at BOC SPLOST meeting of Nov. 20, 2008.Thursday, January 22, 2009
Oconee's Epps Bridge Centre Gets Federal Permit
Piping and Filling OK with Corps
Another piece fell into place on Tuesday for the developer of the proposed $76 million Epps Bridge Centre on Epps Bridge Parkway when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted a permit for piping and filling of streams and wetlands on the site.
The Georgia Environment Protection Division still must grant a variance for developer Frank Bishop of Atlanta to allow him to disturb the 25 foot buffer on the half mile of streams on the site.
Bishop also is waiting for the Georgia Department of Transportation to issue contracts for construction of the Oconee Connector Extension, which will provide access to the shopping mall.
The state rejected bids that were submitted in December and will accept new bids in March.
When the Oconee County Board of Commissioners approved the requested rezone for Epps Bridge Centre in Oct. 7, it stipulated that the county will not grant any permits for the project until the state had let contracts on the roadway project.
The Corps of Engineers has not yet posted its decision on the permit application on its web site, but Billy Birdwell, chief of Public Affairs for the Savannah District of the Corps, told me in an e-mail message today that he had checked with the Regulatory Division and that the permit was issued on Jan. 20.
In the application for the permit filed in late December of 2008, Bishop asked for permission to pipe 2,678 feet of perennial streams and fill 1.06 acres of wetlands and ephemeral drainages of wetlands.
To offset this destruction of the streams and wetlands on the Oconee site, Bishop proposed to restore streams and wetlands on property he purchased and converted to a mitigation bank off State Route 15 north of Greensboro in Greene County.
Construction of the mitigation bank in Greene County also required a permit, and the Corps issued that permit on June 6, 2008.
Bishop told Oconee County officials he passed over land in Oconee County for the mitigation because it was more costly. Two mitigation banks are now being created in Oconee County.
Although the Georgia Environmental Protection Division requires that the applicant must have a Corps permit before it can grant a variance for the buffer, it issued an advisory and solicited public comment on the Bishop application on Dec. 18, 2008.
Among the local individuals and groups that submitted comments and asked for a public hearing were the Upper Oconee Watershed Network and Georgia River Network.
"In order to meet water quality standards, the construction site should be redesigned to retain more of the natural areas and to include adequate sediment and stormwater ponds to improve water quality before stormwater exits the property and enters the McNutt Creek," April Ingle, executive director of the Georgia River Network, wrote in her letter.
The proposes shopping mall is designed to include a movie theater, restaurants and large and small retail space, including for major anchors.
Another piece fell into place on Tuesday for the developer of the proposed $76 million Epps Bridge Centre on Epps Bridge Parkway when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted a permit for piping and filling of streams and wetlands on the site.
The Georgia Environment Protection Division still must grant a variance for developer Frank Bishop of Atlanta to allow him to disturb the 25 foot buffer on the half mile of streams on the site.
Bishop also is waiting for the Georgia Department of Transportation to issue contracts for construction of the Oconee Connector Extension, which will provide access to the shopping mall.
The state rejected bids that were submitted in December and will accept new bids in March.
When the Oconee County Board of Commissioners approved the requested rezone for Epps Bridge Centre in Oct. 7, it stipulated that the county will not grant any permits for the project until the state had let contracts on the roadway project.
The Corps of Engineers has not yet posted its decision on the permit application on its web site, but Billy Birdwell, chief of Public Affairs for the Savannah District of the Corps, told me in an e-mail message today that he had checked with the Regulatory Division and that the permit was issued on Jan. 20.
In the application for the permit filed in late December of 2008, Bishop asked for permission to pipe 2,678 feet of perennial streams and fill 1.06 acres of wetlands and ephemeral drainages of wetlands.
To offset this destruction of the streams and wetlands on the Oconee site, Bishop proposed to restore streams and wetlands on property he purchased and converted to a mitigation bank off State Route 15 north of Greensboro in Greene County.
Construction of the mitigation bank in Greene County also required a permit, and the Corps issued that permit on June 6, 2008.
Bishop told Oconee County officials he passed over land in Oconee County for the mitigation because it was more costly. Two mitigation banks are now being created in Oconee County.
Although the Georgia Environmental Protection Division requires that the applicant must have a Corps permit before it can grant a variance for the buffer, it issued an advisory and solicited public comment on the Bishop application on Dec. 18, 2008.
Among the local individuals and groups that submitted comments and asked for a public hearing were the Upper Oconee Watershed Network and Georgia River Network.
"In order to meet water quality standards, the construction site should be redesigned to retain more of the natural areas and to include adequate sediment and stormwater ponds to improve water quality before stormwater exits the property and enters the McNutt Creek," April Ingle, executive director of the Georgia River Network, wrote in her letter.
The proposes shopping mall is designed to include a movie theater, restaurants and large and small retail space, including for major anchors.
A stream on the site; photo scanned from the application.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Oconee County and Its Citizens
Naysayers, Tongues, Dogs and Fleas
Just-retired Oconee County Commissioner Don Norris used a recent interview with Athens Banner-Herald reporter Adam Thompson to complain about citizens he called "naysayers," singling out me and Citizens for Oconee’s Future President Charles Baugh.
"It’s gotten very complicated to conduct the county’s business anymore," Norris said. "Especially, you know, with the open records requests and everything of that nature."
The interview appears on a blog Thompson filed on the newspaper web site on Jan. 16. Thompson reported that he transcribed parts of an hour and a half long interview with Norris he did in preparation for a story on Norris’ retirement.
An open records request is the way set forth in Georgia law for citizens to ask formally for information from local and state governments. Both Baugh and I have used this procedure frequently to obtain information from Oconee County. The County even requires citizens to file open records requests to view minutes of local meetings.
The Oconee Enterprise, the private weekly newspaper that carries the legal advertisements for the county and usually reflects the county’s point of view, also voiced its complaints about citizens in an editorial in the paper on Jan. 15.
While most of those speaking out at two recent rezone requests before the Board of Commissioners on Jan. 6 were "civilized and cordial," the paper’s editorial said, they contrasted with those speaking at "many earlier hearings that the BOC has held" where "free speech flowered at its ugliest" and citizens were "more like thugs using brass knuckles on their tongues."
Because the county has now started making video recordings of its meetings–after Baugh, Russ Page, Tony Glenn and I said we would make and post the recordings ourselves if the county did not do it–citizens can judge for themselves whether presenters have abused their rights to free speech at recent rezone hearings.
Citizens spoke at hearings before the BOC on Oct. 7, Dec. 2, and Jan. 6, and all of those meetings are on the county’s web site.
Oconee County is going through a transition. It is less homogeneous than in the past, and there is a tension between "old" Oconee, represented by people with deep roots in the county, such as former Commissioner Norris, and people who have moved into the new subdivisions concentrated around the northern part of the county.
Rezone disagreements often pit the interests of "old" Oconee, which wants to do things on its terms, as in the past, and the interests of people in the subdivisions, where some also want to have a say in how things are changed and do not necessarily want to follow the old rules.
The rezone request voted on by the Board on Dec. 2 illustrates the conflict well. It will put another office building on Daniells Bridge Road in what is now a residential neighborhood.
The way the decision was made shows the arms-length distance the county government tries to keep from its citizens.
The property that was rezoned is owned by Dorothy N. Anglin and Delores N. Lance. According to the deed, the property earlier belonged George F. Norris and Sarah D. Norris, distant relatives of former Commissioner Norris.
On April 3, 2007, the BOC decided to approve the rezone of two separate properties on Daniells Bridge Road for another office park and for the SpringHill Suites by Marriott hotel now under construction.
At that April 3 meeting, the BOC required the two developers to agree to work with the county on design and upgrade of the roadway.
On May 1, 2007, one of the developers was back before the Board, seeking to develop another office park on 9 acres further down Daniells Bridge Road–just east of the blind curve in the roadway.
Once again, the planning staff recommended that the developer agree to work with the county on design and upgrade of the roadway.
This time, however, after strong protest from neighbors who said the office park was a safety hazard and would adversely affect the residential character of the area, the Board voted to turn down the rezone.
Just after the Board rejected the Daniells Bridge Road rezone for the office park, Commissioner Chuck Horton told me that the rezone was likely to come up again and that I and others in the area affected by the rezone should be prepared for that eventuality.
As a result, on May 24, 2007, I sent an e-mail message to Alan Therialt, administrative officer of the county, informing him that my neighbors and I wanted to be involved "in discussions about the upgrade of Daniells Bridge Road" that were taking place between the county and the developers.
Theriault wrote me back via e-mail on May 31 saying such involvement was unlikely. He copied the e-mail to all five of the members of the Board of Commissioners.
"While we may ask that the project developers involve or allow citizen input into their design, we cannot force them to do so," Theriault said. The developer has to meet state and national standards, he said, and need not respond to the desires of citizens.
Theriault did say he would "be more than happy to inquire on your behalf" about the willingness of the developers to talk with citizens "and will advise you accordingly."
Theriault also said that if the Board of Commissioners decided to undertake upgrades to Daniells Bridge Road beyond that which would be required of the developers, "we would of course welcome input from residents in the area."
That was the last I or any of my neighbors heard about Daniells Bridge Road from Theriault or anyone else in county government.
On May 24, 2007–the same day I wrote Theriault--Dorothy N. Anglin, James L. Lance Sr. and James L. Lance Jr. filed suit in Oconee County Superior Court, claiming the county had acted unconstitutionally in denying the rezone and asking the court to overturn the BOC decision. James L. Lance Sr. and James L. Lance Jr. are co-executors of the estate of Delores N. Lance.
More than a year later, on Oct. 7, 2008, the county prepared a consent order to settle the suit and to proceed to grant the rezone requested by the property owners.
How, when and why that decision was made remains unknown to the public. The Board of Commissioners meets with County Attorney Daniel Haygood in secret sessions, and records of those sessions are never released to the public. Haygood, however, would not have moved forward with a settlement without Board acquiescence or approval.
It would have been easy for members of the Board to have contacted concerned citizens to explain the decision to settle the suit, either before the Oct. 7 consent order or after.
Commissioners Margaret Hale, Horton and Jim Luke had met with the Welbrook Farms Home Owners Association on April 30, 2007, to learn of the concern of citizens in that neighborhood. I was president of the HOA at that time. The association voted that night to ask the BOC to deny the rezone.
Board Chairman Melvin Davis also had met with several neighbors and me on the site of the rezone before the Board vote.
In addition, the county had in its files the signed petitions of more than 400 citizens, many of them from Welbrook Farms, Lake Wellbrook, Birchmore Hills, Settlers Ridge, Founders Grove, and Chestnut Glen, which are near the rezone site.
Welbrook Farms has a website that lists the association officers. It is easily found through an Internet search.
Citizens learned of the settlement not from their elected officials but via the legally required announcements of the public hearings on the rezone. The legal advertisement for the hearing appeared in the The Oconee Enterprise on Oct. 2, 2008, and signs appeared on the rezone site at approximately the same time.
At the Oct. 20 hearing before the Planning Commission, I and neighbor Ralph Johnson informed the Commission that the neighborhood remained opposed to the rezone. Horton from the Board of Commissioners was there.
Fifteen citizens, again including me, appeared at the legally scheduled hearing on Nov. 4, 2008-- election night--only to learn that the Board, at the initiation of Commissioner Horton, had decided not to hold the hearing.
Instead, the Board decided to ask Emil Beshara, director of Public Works for the county, to come back to the Board on Nov. 25 with plans for improvements in Daniells Bridge Road.
Beshara presented the Board at the Nov. 25 meeting three such designs for a $400,000 widening of Daniells Bridge Road from the Anglin and Lance property to the intersection of Daniells Bridge Road and Mars Hill Road. No citizens had been consulted.
At the rescheduled hearing on Dec. 2, the Board finally allowed citizens to speak. None spoke in favor of the rezone, but seven spoke in opposition, and one of those turned in petitions signed by 384 persons asking the Board to turn down the rezone.
It did just the opposite.
Oconee County has a Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation that meets monthly. In theory, it provides the County with citizen feedback on transportation issues, such as improvements to Daniells Bridge Road.
The minutes of the Committee back through January of 2006 show that the Committee never discussed improvements to Daniells Bridge Road from the Anglin and Lance property to the Mars Hill Road intersection.
At its meeting of Jan. 9, 2007, the Committee did discuss, at the initiation of then County Public Works Director Mike Leonas, the proposed Daniells Bridge Road flyover to Home Depot, an improvement to the east of the Anglin and Lance property that the county has acknowledged is at least 10 years away.
Had Beshara or anyone else decided to involve the Land Use and Transportation Committee in deliberations about the proposed settlement of the Anglin and Lance case or planned improvements in Daniells Bridge Road from the site to Mars Hill Road, they would have reached affected citizens.
Bob Isaac and James Morris are two of the 12 citizens members of that committee. Both live in Welbrook Farms. Both signed the petition turned in on Dec. 2 opposing the rezone.
The Land Use and Transportation Committee is but one of six permanent committees on which citizens can serve. Others deal with such issues as development, recreation and cultural affairs.
The Board appoints members to these committees after advertising for applications. Candidates fill out a form and appear before the Board at one of its regular meetings for an interview.
The Board then goes into closed sessions to talk about the applicants. When it returns, it simply announces the winners, and that is that. No public announcement is ever made of what the Board considered in making its decision.
It is clear, however, that at least some members of the Board are far from passive in getting people to apply.
Isaac and Morris–very able individuals–were professional associates of Chairman Davis when he was an extension agent for the University of Georgia.
In October of 2007, I applied for a seat on the Oconee Development Authority. Another candidate was Steve Hollis, the CEO of Power Partners Inc. of Athens and a resident of Oconee County.
Three times Hollis missed his chance to be interviewed by the Board, and the Board kept putting off its decision. Then, on Nov. 6, 2007, he finally showed up and began his interview with these words: "It is an honor to be asked to serve."
The Board went into executive session that night and appointed Hollis to the Development Authority.
The Board also appoints ad hoc committees to deal with issues that arise. Last fall an Impact Fee Study Committee reported to the Board. It didn’t reach agreement on whether fees should be enacted, and the Board decided to take no action.
Another ad hoc committee has reported favorably on the feasibility of a Transfer of Development Rights program, and the BOC will be asked to act on that soon.
The Board of Commissioners schedules a time for citizen comments at each of its two monthly meetings. Specific rules apply, such as one allowing the Chairman to "terminate discussion of any item or statement at any time it is deemed irrelevant or repetitious."
The time for citizens to talk is near the end of the session, and the Commissioners seldom appear to be paying much attention to what is said.
The public hearings on rezones are required by law, and for these as well the Board has a tightly regulated policy restricting the amount time for comments and how they are to be presented. Chairman Davis reads the rules to the audience at the start of each such hearing.
The Board postpones these publicly scheduled hearings without notice, and citizens who turned out to speak, as was the case on Nov. 4, are simply left hanging.
The Oct. 7 hearing on the Epps Bridge Centre in Epps Bridge parkway had been scheduled for a month earlier and postponed at the last minute without prior announcement. Citizens were in attendance and planning to speak at the originally scheduled hearing.
The Jan. 6 BOC meeting involved two public hearings, and one of those had been scheduled earlier and postponed. It was for a shopping center on U.S. 441 at LaVista Road, and the number of people who turned out in opposition on Jan. 6 was so great that about half were not even able to get into the meeting chambers.
Without any advance warning to those who came to speak, the Board switched the rezone request and approved an office park for the property, though none had been requested. The citizens never had a chance to indicate how they felt about that swap or even see any plans for what an office park on the site might look like.
For the last four years, citizens in the county have closely monitored county plans for an upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant. The upgrade called for discharging treated sewage water into Barber Creek, which flows through many residential neighborhoods in the northern part of the county.
I and others formed a group called Friends of Barber Creek to help keep people informed about this issue and to help organize a public hearing before the state Environment Protection Division on the discharge permit.
The group is legally registered with the Georgia Secretary of State, has officially listed officers and operates a web site.
On Nov. 14, without any prior notice to officers of Friends of Barber Creek or other concerned citizens, County Clerk Gina Lindsey sent out an official announcement that the BOC would hold a work session at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 "to discuss options for the expansion of wastewater treatment capacity."
The Board met in the Grand Jury Room at the Oconee County Courthouse, which is small and has space for only a few citizens. It did not make a video recording of the session. Russ Page, who is an advocate for farmland protection, did record it, however, and I’ve uploaded it to my Vimeo site.
The Board voted to put on hold everything it had discussed for more than four years regarding the Rocky Branch plant and decided instead to expand the operation of the Calls Creek plant outside Watkinsville. Citizens who live along Calls Creek also had no notice of the change.
At the same meeting, the Board put its final touches on its plans for the upcoming Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue allocations. Citizens will be asked to approve or disapprove the tax on March 17.
The county had held two public hearings on the allocation of funds for SPLOST earlier, but citizens at the meetings were presented a list of priorities of the county departments and the Sheriff’s office at the beginning of the meetings. Only once representatives of those units spoke were citizens allowed to indicate what they thought should be included in the SPLOST funding.
Farmland advocate Page asked for $1 million for farmland protection and $1 million for historic preservation. He got half his request for farmland protection and an uncertain amount for historical preservation.
Oconee County Commissioners rarely explain their votes at the public meetings either before or after they make them. Citizens are not given copies of documents they are reviewing, and those documents generally are not shown on the projector in the room, though the commissioners often view them on computers screens at their desktops.
At rezone hearings, most, but not all, of the rezone documents are presented via the projector, but once citizens have made their comments, the Commissioners mostly talk with staff and the developer about their concerns. Rarely is there even reference made to the comments of the citizens.
The five commissioners are all elected at large, so none of them has any particular connection to citizens in specific sections of the county. They also seem to subscribe to the view that citizens have a chance to vote on them every four years and once elected they have the power to make decisions largely without seeking out citizen input.
The media could serve as an advocate for citizens. Many journalists like to talk about themselves as the watchdog of government and the representative of the public interest.
Now-retired University of Minnesota Journalism Professor Phil Tichenor, an expert on the relationship between the media and the community, has found, however, that the media in small towns are more likely to be supporters than critics of the local government and power structure.
The Enterprise is a case in point.
In fiscal year 2007-2008, the Enterprise received $28,563 for subscriptions, legal advertisements and other public notices it ran for the county, according to documents provided to me by the county in response to an open records request I filed. The year before, the county paid the paper $21,874.
The spending is not clearly delineated in the documents I received, but it appears that most of it is for general notices in the paper, rather than required legal advertising. For example, the Utility Department paid the paper $3,276 in calendar year 2007, much of it for display advertisements about water use restrictions.
Publisher Vinnie Williams reported in her column in the Jan. 8, 2009, issue of the paper that the Enterprise had 12 employees on the payroll, including two reporters and an editor. The two reporters were hired after completing their college studies last spring, the paper reported at the time.
My own research on the journalism labor force shows that the median starting salary for entry-level reporters hired at weeklies around the country last year was $26,900.
The county’s payments to the Enterprise, in other words, would cover a major part of the salary of one of those two reporters–depending on what they actually are paid–but it is only a small part of the overall budget of the paper. Yet the county does have options for its advertising, and it is unlikely the Enterprise would like the county to exercise them.
The treatment the county receives in the Enterprise reflects that.
The paper has begun offering BOC Chairman Davis a weekly column so he can tout what he sees as the achievements of the county. The sheriff also has a column.
Just below the editorial in the Jan. 15 issue of the paper (with the odd simile about tongues wearing brass knuckles), Davis explained how the county decides which roads to pave. He also used the column to make a pitch for the March 17 SPLOST vote.
In the editorial above the column, the paper sang its praises of Davis and his fellow commissioners. "Never have we been as proud of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners...as we were last Tuesday evening," the editorial said.
The reference was to the meeting at which the Board swapped the shopping center for an unrequested office park and approved another massive shopping center that citizens said was going to create traffic problems and noise and light pollution for their neighborhood.
The Enterprise in that same editorial said it was proud of the county’s citizens who attended those hearings. The citizens were not critics of the county. Rather, they were "committed, concerned, articulate" and "cordial."
That, it seems, is what citizens in Oconee County are supposed to be–quiet until called upon, and then respectful.
Former Commission Don Norris, in his interview with Banner-Herald reporter Adam Thompson, said the critics were simply "naysayers," but he acknowledge the group was made up of others in addition to Charlie Baugh and me.
"That goes with the job," he told Thompson. "A dog’s going to pick up fleas."
Just-retired Oconee County Commissioner Don Norris used a recent interview with Athens Banner-Herald reporter Adam Thompson to complain about citizens he called "naysayers," singling out me and Citizens for Oconee’s Future President Charles Baugh.
"It’s gotten very complicated to conduct the county’s business anymore," Norris said. "Especially, you know, with the open records requests and everything of that nature."
The interview appears on a blog Thompson filed on the newspaper web site on Jan. 16. Thompson reported that he transcribed parts of an hour and a half long interview with Norris he did in preparation for a story on Norris’ retirement.
An open records request is the way set forth in Georgia law for citizens to ask formally for information from local and state governments. Both Baugh and I have used this procedure frequently to obtain information from Oconee County. The County even requires citizens to file open records requests to view minutes of local meetings.
The Oconee Enterprise, the private weekly newspaper that carries the legal advertisements for the county and usually reflects the county’s point of view, also voiced its complaints about citizens in an editorial in the paper on Jan. 15.
While most of those speaking out at two recent rezone requests before the Board of Commissioners on Jan. 6 were "civilized and cordial," the paper’s editorial said, they contrasted with those speaking at "many earlier hearings that the BOC has held" where "free speech flowered at its ugliest" and citizens were "more like thugs using brass knuckles on their tongues."
Because the county has now started making video recordings of its meetings–after Baugh, Russ Page, Tony Glenn and I said we would make and post the recordings ourselves if the county did not do it–citizens can judge for themselves whether presenters have abused their rights to free speech at recent rezone hearings.
Citizens spoke at hearings before the BOC on Oct. 7, Dec. 2, and Jan. 6, and all of those meetings are on the county’s web site.
Oconee County is going through a transition. It is less homogeneous than in the past, and there is a tension between "old" Oconee, represented by people with deep roots in the county, such as former Commissioner Norris, and people who have moved into the new subdivisions concentrated around the northern part of the county.
Rezone disagreements often pit the interests of "old" Oconee, which wants to do things on its terms, as in the past, and the interests of people in the subdivisions, where some also want to have a say in how things are changed and do not necessarily want to follow the old rules.
The rezone request voted on by the Board on Dec. 2 illustrates the conflict well. It will put another office building on Daniells Bridge Road in what is now a residential neighborhood.
The way the decision was made shows the arms-length distance the county government tries to keep from its citizens.
The property that was rezoned is owned by Dorothy N. Anglin and Delores N. Lance. According to the deed, the property earlier belonged George F. Norris and Sarah D. Norris, distant relatives of former Commissioner Norris.
On April 3, 2007, the BOC decided to approve the rezone of two separate properties on Daniells Bridge Road for another office park and for the SpringHill Suites by Marriott hotel now under construction.
At that April 3 meeting, the BOC required the two developers to agree to work with the county on design and upgrade of the roadway.
On May 1, 2007, one of the developers was back before the Board, seeking to develop another office park on 9 acres further down Daniells Bridge Road–just east of the blind curve in the roadway.
Once again, the planning staff recommended that the developer agree to work with the county on design and upgrade of the roadway.
This time, however, after strong protest from neighbors who said the office park was a safety hazard and would adversely affect the residential character of the area, the Board voted to turn down the rezone.
Just after the Board rejected the Daniells Bridge Road rezone for the office park, Commissioner Chuck Horton told me that the rezone was likely to come up again and that I and others in the area affected by the rezone should be prepared for that eventuality.
As a result, on May 24, 2007, I sent an e-mail message to Alan Therialt, administrative officer of the county, informing him that my neighbors and I wanted to be involved "in discussions about the upgrade of Daniells Bridge Road" that were taking place between the county and the developers.
Theriault wrote me back via e-mail on May 31 saying such involvement was unlikely. He copied the e-mail to all five of the members of the Board of Commissioners.
"While we may ask that the project developers involve or allow citizen input into their design, we cannot force them to do so," Theriault said. The developer has to meet state and national standards, he said, and need not respond to the desires of citizens.
Theriault did say he would "be more than happy to inquire on your behalf" about the willingness of the developers to talk with citizens "and will advise you accordingly."
Theriault also said that if the Board of Commissioners decided to undertake upgrades to Daniells Bridge Road beyond that which would be required of the developers, "we would of course welcome input from residents in the area."
That was the last I or any of my neighbors heard about Daniells Bridge Road from Theriault or anyone else in county government.
On May 24, 2007–the same day I wrote Theriault--Dorothy N. Anglin, James L. Lance Sr. and James L. Lance Jr. filed suit in Oconee County Superior Court, claiming the county had acted unconstitutionally in denying the rezone and asking the court to overturn the BOC decision. James L. Lance Sr. and James L. Lance Jr. are co-executors of the estate of Delores N. Lance.
More than a year later, on Oct. 7, 2008, the county prepared a consent order to settle the suit and to proceed to grant the rezone requested by the property owners.
How, when and why that decision was made remains unknown to the public. The Board of Commissioners meets with County Attorney Daniel Haygood in secret sessions, and records of those sessions are never released to the public. Haygood, however, would not have moved forward with a settlement without Board acquiescence or approval.
It would have been easy for members of the Board to have contacted concerned citizens to explain the decision to settle the suit, either before the Oct. 7 consent order or after.
Commissioners Margaret Hale, Horton and Jim Luke had met with the Welbrook Farms Home Owners Association on April 30, 2007, to learn of the concern of citizens in that neighborhood. I was president of the HOA at that time. The association voted that night to ask the BOC to deny the rezone.
Board Chairman Melvin Davis also had met with several neighbors and me on the site of the rezone before the Board vote.
In addition, the county had in its files the signed petitions of more than 400 citizens, many of them from Welbrook Farms, Lake Wellbrook, Birchmore Hills, Settlers Ridge, Founders Grove, and Chestnut Glen, which are near the rezone site.
Welbrook Farms has a website that lists the association officers. It is easily found through an Internet search.
Citizens learned of the settlement not from their elected officials but via the legally required announcements of the public hearings on the rezone. The legal advertisement for the hearing appeared in the The Oconee Enterprise on Oct. 2, 2008, and signs appeared on the rezone site at approximately the same time.
At the Oct. 20 hearing before the Planning Commission, I and neighbor Ralph Johnson informed the Commission that the neighborhood remained opposed to the rezone. Horton from the Board of Commissioners was there.
Fifteen citizens, again including me, appeared at the legally scheduled hearing on Nov. 4, 2008-- election night--only to learn that the Board, at the initiation of Commissioner Horton, had decided not to hold the hearing.
Instead, the Board decided to ask Emil Beshara, director of Public Works for the county, to come back to the Board on Nov. 25 with plans for improvements in Daniells Bridge Road.
Beshara presented the Board at the Nov. 25 meeting three such designs for a $400,000 widening of Daniells Bridge Road from the Anglin and Lance property to the intersection of Daniells Bridge Road and Mars Hill Road. No citizens had been consulted.
At the rescheduled hearing on Dec. 2, the Board finally allowed citizens to speak. None spoke in favor of the rezone, but seven spoke in opposition, and one of those turned in petitions signed by 384 persons asking the Board to turn down the rezone.
It did just the opposite.
Oconee County has a Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation that meets monthly. In theory, it provides the County with citizen feedback on transportation issues, such as improvements to Daniells Bridge Road.
The minutes of the Committee back through January of 2006 show that the Committee never discussed improvements to Daniells Bridge Road from the Anglin and Lance property to the Mars Hill Road intersection.
At its meeting of Jan. 9, 2007, the Committee did discuss, at the initiation of then County Public Works Director Mike Leonas, the proposed Daniells Bridge Road flyover to Home Depot, an improvement to the east of the Anglin and Lance property that the county has acknowledged is at least 10 years away.
Had Beshara or anyone else decided to involve the Land Use and Transportation Committee in deliberations about the proposed settlement of the Anglin and Lance case or planned improvements in Daniells Bridge Road from the site to Mars Hill Road, they would have reached affected citizens.
Bob Isaac and James Morris are two of the 12 citizens members of that committee. Both live in Welbrook Farms. Both signed the petition turned in on Dec. 2 opposing the rezone.
The Land Use and Transportation Committee is but one of six permanent committees on which citizens can serve. Others deal with such issues as development, recreation and cultural affairs.
The Board appoints members to these committees after advertising for applications. Candidates fill out a form and appear before the Board at one of its regular meetings for an interview.
The Board then goes into closed sessions to talk about the applicants. When it returns, it simply announces the winners, and that is that. No public announcement is ever made of what the Board considered in making its decision.
It is clear, however, that at least some members of the Board are far from passive in getting people to apply.
Isaac and Morris–very able individuals–were professional associates of Chairman Davis when he was an extension agent for the University of Georgia.
In October of 2007, I applied for a seat on the Oconee Development Authority. Another candidate was Steve Hollis, the CEO of Power Partners Inc. of Athens and a resident of Oconee County.
Three times Hollis missed his chance to be interviewed by the Board, and the Board kept putting off its decision. Then, on Nov. 6, 2007, he finally showed up and began his interview with these words: "It is an honor to be asked to serve."
The Board went into executive session that night and appointed Hollis to the Development Authority.
The Board also appoints ad hoc committees to deal with issues that arise. Last fall an Impact Fee Study Committee reported to the Board. It didn’t reach agreement on whether fees should be enacted, and the Board decided to take no action.
Another ad hoc committee has reported favorably on the feasibility of a Transfer of Development Rights program, and the BOC will be asked to act on that soon.
The Board of Commissioners schedules a time for citizen comments at each of its two monthly meetings. Specific rules apply, such as one allowing the Chairman to "terminate discussion of any item or statement at any time it is deemed irrelevant or repetitious."
The time for citizens to talk is near the end of the session, and the Commissioners seldom appear to be paying much attention to what is said.
The public hearings on rezones are required by law, and for these as well the Board has a tightly regulated policy restricting the amount time for comments and how they are to be presented. Chairman Davis reads the rules to the audience at the start of each such hearing.
The Board postpones these publicly scheduled hearings without notice, and citizens who turned out to speak, as was the case on Nov. 4, are simply left hanging.
The Oct. 7 hearing on the Epps Bridge Centre in Epps Bridge parkway had been scheduled for a month earlier and postponed at the last minute without prior announcement. Citizens were in attendance and planning to speak at the originally scheduled hearing.
The Jan. 6 BOC meeting involved two public hearings, and one of those had been scheduled earlier and postponed. It was for a shopping center on U.S. 441 at LaVista Road, and the number of people who turned out in opposition on Jan. 6 was so great that about half were not even able to get into the meeting chambers.
Without any advance warning to those who came to speak, the Board switched the rezone request and approved an office park for the property, though none had been requested. The citizens never had a chance to indicate how they felt about that swap or even see any plans for what an office park on the site might look like.
For the last four years, citizens in the county have closely monitored county plans for an upgrade of the Rocky Branch sewage treatment plant. The upgrade called for discharging treated sewage water into Barber Creek, which flows through many residential neighborhoods in the northern part of the county.
I and others formed a group called Friends of Barber Creek to help keep people informed about this issue and to help organize a public hearing before the state Environment Protection Division on the discharge permit.
The group is legally registered with the Georgia Secretary of State, has officially listed officers and operates a web site.
On Nov. 14, without any prior notice to officers of Friends of Barber Creek or other concerned citizens, County Clerk Gina Lindsey sent out an official announcement that the BOC would hold a work session at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 "to discuss options for the expansion of wastewater treatment capacity."
The Board met in the Grand Jury Room at the Oconee County Courthouse, which is small and has space for only a few citizens. It did not make a video recording of the session. Russ Page, who is an advocate for farmland protection, did record it, however, and I’ve uploaded it to my Vimeo site.
The Board voted to put on hold everything it had discussed for more than four years regarding the Rocky Branch plant and decided instead to expand the operation of the Calls Creek plant outside Watkinsville. Citizens who live along Calls Creek also had no notice of the change.
At the same meeting, the Board put its final touches on its plans for the upcoming Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue allocations. Citizens will be asked to approve or disapprove the tax on March 17.
The county had held two public hearings on the allocation of funds for SPLOST earlier, but citizens at the meetings were presented a list of priorities of the county departments and the Sheriff’s office at the beginning of the meetings. Only once representatives of those units spoke were citizens allowed to indicate what they thought should be included in the SPLOST funding.
Farmland advocate Page asked for $1 million for farmland protection and $1 million for historic preservation. He got half his request for farmland protection and an uncertain amount for historical preservation.
Oconee County Commissioners rarely explain their votes at the public meetings either before or after they make them. Citizens are not given copies of documents they are reviewing, and those documents generally are not shown on the projector in the room, though the commissioners often view them on computers screens at their desktops.
At rezone hearings, most, but not all, of the rezone documents are presented via the projector, but once citizens have made their comments, the Commissioners mostly talk with staff and the developer about their concerns. Rarely is there even reference made to the comments of the citizens.
The five commissioners are all elected at large, so none of them has any particular connection to citizens in specific sections of the county. They also seem to subscribe to the view that citizens have a chance to vote on them every four years and once elected they have the power to make decisions largely without seeking out citizen input.
The media could serve as an advocate for citizens. Many journalists like to talk about themselves as the watchdog of government and the representative of the public interest.
Now-retired University of Minnesota Journalism Professor Phil Tichenor, an expert on the relationship between the media and the community, has found, however, that the media in small towns are more likely to be supporters than critics of the local government and power structure.
The Enterprise is a case in point.
In fiscal year 2007-2008, the Enterprise received $28,563 for subscriptions, legal advertisements and other public notices it ran for the county, according to documents provided to me by the county in response to an open records request I filed. The year before, the county paid the paper $21,874.
The spending is not clearly delineated in the documents I received, but it appears that most of it is for general notices in the paper, rather than required legal advertising. For example, the Utility Department paid the paper $3,276 in calendar year 2007, much of it for display advertisements about water use restrictions.
Publisher Vinnie Williams reported in her column in the Jan. 8, 2009, issue of the paper that the Enterprise had 12 employees on the payroll, including two reporters and an editor. The two reporters were hired after completing their college studies last spring, the paper reported at the time.
My own research on the journalism labor force shows that the median starting salary for entry-level reporters hired at weeklies around the country last year was $26,900.
The county’s payments to the Enterprise, in other words, would cover a major part of the salary of one of those two reporters–depending on what they actually are paid–but it is only a small part of the overall budget of the paper. Yet the county does have options for its advertising, and it is unlikely the Enterprise would like the county to exercise them.
The treatment the county receives in the Enterprise reflects that.
The paper has begun offering BOC Chairman Davis a weekly column so he can tout what he sees as the achievements of the county. The sheriff also has a column.
Just below the editorial in the Jan. 15 issue of the paper (with the odd simile about tongues wearing brass knuckles), Davis explained how the county decides which roads to pave. He also used the column to make a pitch for the March 17 SPLOST vote.
In the editorial above the column, the paper sang its praises of Davis and his fellow commissioners. "Never have we been as proud of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners...as we were last Tuesday evening," the editorial said.
The reference was to the meeting at which the Board swapped the shopping center for an unrequested office park and approved another massive shopping center that citizens said was going to create traffic problems and noise and light pollution for their neighborhood.
The Enterprise in that same editorial said it was proud of the county’s citizens who attended those hearings. The citizens were not critics of the county. Rather, they were "committed, concerned, articulate" and "cordial."
That, it seems, is what citizens in Oconee County are supposed to be–quiet until called upon, and then respectful.
Former Commission Don Norris, in his interview with Banner-Herald reporter Adam Thompson, said the critics were simply "naysayers," but he acknowledge the group was made up of others in addition to Charlie Baugh and me.
"That goes with the job," he told Thompson. "A dog’s going to pick up fleas."
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Oconee Superintendent Finalists Want Conversations with County Government
Same Team, Said One; Share Costs, Said Another
Each of the two finalists for the job of superintendent of Oconee County schools told the approximately 150 persons who turned out to meet and hear the pair respond to citizen questions at North Oconee High School on Tuesday night that he wants to work closely with county government officials if selected.
Interim Superintendent John Jackson said he already is in discussion with county Administrative Officer Alan Theriault and Finance Director Jeff Benko about an administrative building to be shared by the school system and the county and he hopes to move those discussions along if selected.
Banks County Superintendent Chris Erwin, the second finalist, said "we are all in this together" and that the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education can collaborate to improve education for the county.
Jackson said there are opportunities for the county and the schools to do joint purchasing of such things as fuel to save costs.
Erwin said it is important for the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education to work as one team, not two teams "working against each other" or even working separately. He said the two boards need to have "critical conversations" about a variety of things, including zoning, and about expectations for the future of the county.
Erwin and Jackson fielded questions asked by Board of Education Chairman David Weeks that covered a wide range of topics. Weeks said the questions all were submitted by citizens, including one question he said he viewed as a "knock" on the Board.
The questioner wanted to know if the candidates are concerned about the turnover in the superintendent position in the county. Both answered that they are.
Former Superintendent Tom Dohrmann stepped down at the end of last school year under pressure from the Board of Education. Dohrmann was appointed superintendent of the Oconee system only in May of 2005.
The session lasted for just less than an hour and included questions on budget cuts, evaluation of school staff and of teachers, technology needs, and the appeal of the position. Each candidate was asked to talk about his qualifications for the job.
I arrived at the session a few minutes after it started and took a seat at the rear. I’ve uploaded a video recording I made of the session, minus the first question and two in the middle when I was changing the battery in the camera. The video quality is poor, as the clip above indicates, but the audio is adequate.
The full video is on my Vimeo site.
Today’s Athens Banner-Herald also contains coverage of the forum, and the paper’s web site has audio recordings of selections of answers to three of the questions posed by Weeks.
Interested citizens can go to the school system web site to express opinions on the forum and the candidates.
Weeks said the Board plans to make a decision on the next superintendent in February.
Each of the two finalists for the job of superintendent of Oconee County schools told the approximately 150 persons who turned out to meet and hear the pair respond to citizen questions at North Oconee High School on Tuesday night that he wants to work closely with county government officials if selected.
Interim Superintendent John Jackson said he already is in discussion with county Administrative Officer Alan Theriault and Finance Director Jeff Benko about an administrative building to be shared by the school system and the county and he hopes to move those discussions along if selected.
Banks County Superintendent Chris Erwin, the second finalist, said "we are all in this together" and that the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education can collaborate to improve education for the county.
Jackson said there are opportunities for the county and the schools to do joint purchasing of such things as fuel to save costs.
Erwin said it is important for the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education to work as one team, not two teams "working against each other" or even working separately. He said the two boards need to have "critical conversations" about a variety of things, including zoning, and about expectations for the future of the county.
Erwin and Jackson fielded questions asked by Board of Education Chairman David Weeks that covered a wide range of topics. Weeks said the questions all were submitted by citizens, including one question he said he viewed as a "knock" on the Board.
The questioner wanted to know if the candidates are concerned about the turnover in the superintendent position in the county. Both answered that they are.
Former Superintendent Tom Dohrmann stepped down at the end of last school year under pressure from the Board of Education. Dohrmann was appointed superintendent of the Oconee system only in May of 2005.
The session lasted for just less than an hour and included questions on budget cuts, evaluation of school staff and of teachers, technology needs, and the appeal of the position. Each candidate was asked to talk about his qualifications for the job.
I arrived at the session a few minutes after it started and took a seat at the rear. I’ve uploaded a video recording I made of the session, minus the first question and two in the middle when I was changing the battery in the camera. The video quality is poor, as the clip above indicates, but the audio is adequate.
The full video is on my Vimeo site.
Today’s Athens Banner-Herald also contains coverage of the forum, and the paper’s web site has audio recordings of selections of answers to three of the questions posed by Weeks.
Interested citizens can go to the school system web site to express opinions on the forum and the candidates.
Weeks said the Board plans to make a decision on the next superintendent in February.
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