Controversial Oconee County Sewer Line Could Become Part of Larger Sewer System

Size of Line an Issue

The possibility that the proposed Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s sewer line could become a key part of a larger North Oconee gravity fed sewer system running along McNutt Creek in the future played a major role in the decision last week of County Administrator Alan Theriault to ask for a delay in a decision on the proposed sewer project.

Theriault made the request to the Board of Commissioners at its Feb. 8 meeting after he received a request from County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas that the decision be postponed.

The BOC accepted Theriault’s and Thomas’ recommendations and is scheduled to take up the sewer project again at its March 1 meeting.


Chris Thomas

In the meantime, Thomas will review the implications for the overall cost and feasibility of the project of an email message he received from Jimmy Parker of Precision Planning Inc. of Lawrenceville suggesting that the Zoom Bait/St. Mary's sewer line be increased in size to accommodate future needs.

Specifically, Parker, who is a frequent consultant to the county on sewage and water projects, said the county should consider increasing the size of the proposed Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s sewage line from 12 to 18 inches in diameter.

If the county expands the line to 18 inches and, in the future, adds a line of the same capacity along McNutt Creek back to Jimmy Daniel Road, the county could eliminate two pump stations along existing lines, Parker said.

Those stations are used to pump sewage to the county’s Rocky Branch Road sewage treatment facility.

The county relies heavily on pump, or lift stations, which are expensive to operate and often stink.

In asking for the delay in BOC action, Thomas told Theriault in an email message late in the day on Feb. 4 that he needed more time to verify the estimates of cost savings from such a plan.

When Theriault went before the BOC on Feb. 8 recommending a postponement of action on a request that the county request bids for the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s sewage line, he said only that a delay would allow the county more time to resolve issues about the line.

Theriault made reference to documents he had given to the BOC members justifying that decision.

I requested copies of the documents Theriault gave to the BOC. He gave them to me on Feb. 10.

Included was the correspondence from Parker to Thomas regarding the capacity of the sewer line and a map of the proposed line along McNutt Creek.

I met with Thomas on Feb. 11 to review that map and compare it with a larger map showing sewage lines throughout the county.

McNutt Creek starts in Oconee County and becomes a border with Athens-Clarke County as it flows to the Middle Oconee River.

A future sewage line, Thomas said, could incorporate parts of an existing line in the county that flows from Bogart and is partially gravity fed.

The Athens Banner-Herald mistakenly reported on Feb. 10 that the proposed Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s sewer line includes a lift station.

The proposed sewer line has been envisioned as gravity fed from its inception. Until now, however, the line has not been discussed as part of a larger sewage plan for the northern part of the county.

The Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s project was first approved by the county on May 26 of 2009. The initial cost estimate was $373,422. The cost was estimated at $773,000 last summer, based on bids that have expired.

The increase in the size of the pipe could make the cost go higher.

The project initially was presented as designed to provide sewage treatment capacity to two existing businesses, Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s Health Care System, both on Jennings Mill Road at McNutt Creek.

It subsequently was discussed, particularly by BOC Chairman Melvin Davis, as a project designed to foster development in the area behind Kohl’s and WalMart on Epps Bridge Parkway.

That shift in purpose has been controversial with the other four commissioners.

Oconee County Land Use Committee Prefers New Word in Resolution on Biking and Walking Plan

Going from Three to Four

To “adopt,” to “endorse” or to “recognize”?

That was the question before the Oconee County Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning last week as it considered what action to recommend to the Board of Commissioners regarding the Northeast Georgia Plan for Bicycling and Walking.

How about to “acknowledge”?

After lengthy discussion at its regular meeting on Feb. 8, the Committee voted 9-2 to recommend to the BOC that it “acknowledge” the statewide plan when the issue comes before it for consideration in the next few months.

The Northeast Georgia Plan for Bicycling and Walking was developed by the staff of the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission in collaboration with its Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force and is designed to increase the safety and prevalence of walking and bicycling.

The biking and walking plan is advisory, regardless of what language the BOC uses in reference to it. NEGRC has no enforcement authority.

The Land Use Committee took up the issue at its regular February meeting after having decided back in November that it needed more time to decide what word the BOC should use when it considers the NEGRC plan.

The Committee cancelled its December meeting because of the holidays and its January meeting because of the snow and ice storm.

Debate about the proper word to suggest to the BOC again occupied the Feb. 8 meeting, according to the draft minutes and to Angela Helwig, the county staff member who serves as recording secretary for the Committee.

I could not attend the meeting because it overlapped the Board of Commissioners meeting that same night. Helwig gave me the minutes shortly after she had prepared them last Thursday afternoon.

She told me–and the minutes confirm–that I was not the only citizen who missed the Land Use Committee meeting. In fact, no citizens (other than Committee members) and no journalists were in attendance.

NEGRC included two sample endorsement resolutions as part of the appendix to the bicycling and walking plan.

In one, Oconee County would endorse the plan. In another, the county would adopt the plan.

Wayne Provost, director of Strategic and Long-Range Planning for Oconee County, offered the Committee a third resolution back in November.

Rather than endorse or adopt the plan, Provost suggested the county merely recognize the plan.

Provost’s rewrite also modified a reference in the NEGRC resolution to a “need to promote non-motorized transportation options to improve air quality and public health.”

Provost’s resolution said instead that the county “recognizes the potential for non-motorized transportation options to improve air quality and public health.”

According to the draft minutes, Committee member Chris Herring suggested that the BOC should not respond to the NEGRC other than to thank it for its work, but Committee Chairman Abe Abouhamdan pushed for action on the proposed resolutions.

James Morris was the Committee member who suggested that Provost’s resolution be modified to replace “recognize” with “acknowledge.”

According to the draft minutes, he said the county can “amend or upgrade the status” of the plan in the future “after considering the input of Oconee County citizens.”

Following the vote, Herring said he wanted Provost’s resolution forwarded to the BOC along with the Committee’s revision.

Provost told the group that the BOC already had copies of the two NEGRC resolutions and his, so the new one with the switch from “recognize” to “acknowledge” would simply be a fourth.

Oconee County Board of Commissioners Delays Action on Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s Sewer Line

New Issues Emerge

In a surprise move, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners tonight tabled discussion of the controversial Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s sewer line until its March 1 meeting.

The public was given little indication of the reason for the postponement of action other than that issues still needed to be resolved.

Following the meeting, however, Alan Theriault, administrative officer for the county, told me that the county needed to review the size of the sewer pipe for the project, the location of the proposed line, and the cost savings to the county of using gravity feed versus pump stations for its lines.

Theriault’s comments indicate that almost all of the assumptions behind the project now are being reviewed and reconsidered.

The project was first approved by the county more than 20 months ago–on May 26 of 2009–and has increased in cost from $373,422 to $773,000 since then.

It also has changed from a project designed to help two existing businesses on Jennings Mill Road, Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s Health Care System, to a project designed to foster development in the area behind Kohl’s and WalMart on Epps Bridge Parkway.

And it has changed from a project with full BOC support–the vote in May 2009 to go forward with the project was unanimous–to a project pushed by BOC Chairman Melvin Davis but challenged by the other four commissioners.

It also may be that the county will have to negotiate with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs over a $186,711 grant the county received from the state to cover part of the proposed costs for the sewer line.

Work on the sewer line is supposed to be finished by October of this year under the terms of that grant.

According to the agenda for tonight’s meeting, the BOC was supposed to decide whether to request bids for the project, since bids received from an earlier request have expired.

A similar request had been on the agenda of the Jan. 4 meeting, but the BOC delayed action pending further discussion of easements.

Theriault was the one who recommended to the commissioners tonight that they delay action on the sewer project.

Theriault reported to the body that efforts on the part of the county to negotiate with the owners of the 114-acre tract behind Kohl’s and WalMart on terms of easements for the sewer project had failed. The property is owned by the Gordy Family.

The Gordy Family had asked that 50,000 gallons per day of sewer capacity be held for it for five years and that the county pay them $1,000 in legal fees as a condition for granting an easement across their property for the sewer line.

The commissioners were unhappy with the 5-year request, since most property owners only get one year to accept sewage capacity set aside for them.

Theriault also said that County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas late on Friday of last week “received preliminary planning and engineering information dealing with lift station elimination and economic development in the Jimmy Daniel and Epps Bridge commercial corridor.”

He said that he expected by March 1 these issues would be resolved and the Board could decide what to do with the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s/Gordy sewer project.

Failure of North Georgia Bank Has Effects Throughout Oconee County

Only One Bank Standing

The failure of North Georgia Bank on Friday cut deep into the political, commercial and social fabric of Oconee County.

Bank President Charles E. “Chuck” Williams is president of the county’s Industrial Development Authority, having been appointed to that body by the Board of Commissioners.

Kenneth Mann, vice president of the bank, was the 2010 chairman of the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce.

The bank has made contributions to numerous charitable organizations in the county since it opened its doors 11 years ago, including to the Farm-City Tour of the Chamber of Commerce, Watkinsville-based Extra Special People and the Oconee County Senior Center.

While depositors’ funds were transferred intact to BankSouth, which took over North Georgia Bank, the 28 employees are not guaranteed a job, and the bank’s investors could well lose everything.

The bank was founded by Williams and Kenneth Beall, James Bowers Jr., Patricia Ivy, Don Norris, Edwin Thaxton, and Harry B. Thompson, all of whom invested in the bank.

All served on the initial Board of Directors and continued to serve, with one exception, in that capacity until the bank’s closing.

Beall is a landscape architect and land planner who has been involved in most of the major development projects in the county over the last 10 years.

Bowers is a stockbroker and financial advisor.

Ivy is a prominent real estate and development agent and served with Williams on the county’s Development Authority.

Norris, who passed way in 2009, was an insurance adjuster and member of the BOC. He was not replaced on the board of directors.

Thaxton is in real estate and development.

Thompson is an equipment distributor.

North Georgia Bank was owned by North Georgia Bancorp, with Williams as the registered agent and the CEO, according to the Georgia Secretary of State database.

Before opening the bank, Williams and his fellow founders made a public stock offering, and many members of the Oconee County community invested.

Former BOC Chairman Wendell Dawson reported yesterday on his blog, Another Voice from Oconee County, that he was one of them, having invested $5,000 in the bank.

While the bank is connected to the community in many ways, its face has most often been that of Williams.

Born in 1955, Williams grew up in Watkinsville, graduated from Oconee County High School and the University of Georgia, and began his career in south Georgia as an agricultural management and loan specialist.

Williams worked in Atlanta and Greensboro in banking before returning to Oconee County in 1999 to launch North Georgia Bank, which opened its doors on April 17, 2000.

In March of 2010, then Gov. Sonny Purdue appointed Williams to the Georgia Forestry Commission board.

In June, he took over as chairman of the Georgia Bankers Association.

Locally, Williams has been active in the Chamber of Commerce and in local politics, particularly when development has been at issue.

In 2007, when BOC Chairman Melvin Davis needed support with the Board of Commissioners for the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir project in Walton County, Williams joined Oconee State Bank President Amry Harden in urging the BOC to join Walton County.

It did, with Davis breaking the 2-2 tie vote among the other commissioners.

Davis is Williams’ vice-chairman on the Industrial Development Authority.

At a Town Hall Meeting the BOC held on development in June, Williams spoke several times, once raising a question about the equity of the county’s Future Development Map, which makes it less likely land in the south of the county will be opened up for development.

Williams lives at 2410 Old Watson Springs Road in the southern part of the county, though he said he, personally, was not unhappy with the development map.

In late 2009, Williams and his brother, a former member of the Board of Education, sold to the school board land in Watkinsville for a future school system headquarter in a transaction that subsequently became controversial in the community.

And Williams stepped forward in the Spring of 2010 as an advocate for the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences when the university was facing budget cuts and had targeted the agriculture college.

Oconee State Bank, founded in the 1960s, is the only Oconee County bank standing now that the state Department of Banking and Finance stepped in at 6 p.m. on Friday and closed North Georgia Bank.

North Georgia Bank’s main office was at 7911 Macon Highway, just west of Hog Mountain Road. The bank opened a second office several years ago on Epps Bridge Parkway at Timothy Road.

At the closing on Friday, the state turned North Georgia Bank over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as receiver.

The FDIC immediately sold North Georgia Bank to BankSouth of Greensboro in neighboring Greene County.

Banking is a regulated business in Georgia and other states, and the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance has as its mission the promotion of “safe, sound, competitive financial services in Georgia through innovative, responsive regulation and supervision.”

The failure of North Georgia Bank probably was not much of a surprise to those in the know.

Shareholders had been notified of problems at least as early as January of 2009.

On July 14, 2009, the bank had entered into an agreement with the FDIC and the Banking Commissioner of Georgia not to grant dividends, take on increased debt or purchase shares of its stock without prior approval.

The Street, a financial news and services web site, had the bank listed on its Bank Watch List of undercapitalized institutions.

And The Oconee Enterprise had a front-page story last week indicating that North Georgia Bank had returned funds to potential new investors after its effort to raise additional capital last year failed to produce a sufficient response.

But only insiders knew of the timing.

The Georgia Department of and Finance does not give any public notice before a financial institution is closed.

State and federal agents came to the bank’s two offices at 6 p.m. closing time on Friday. According to David Barr, press agent for the FDIC, a press release about the action was put out 15 minutes later.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Oconee Enterprise and the Athens Banner-Herald had the stories on their web sites about 15 minutes after the release went out.

The FDIC reported that North Georgia Bank had approximately $153.2 million in assets and $139.7 in deposits as of the end of 2010.

BankSouth will purchase all of the deposits, except those from some deposit brokers and those placed over the Internet.

BankSouth also agreed to purchase $123.9 million of the assets, including all of the loans.

The FDIC and BankSouth entered in a “loss-share transaction” in which BankSouth will assume some, but not all, of the loss if the loans are not repaid.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the FDIC of the closure of North Georgia Bank will be $35.2 million.

According to the FDIC, all shares of North Georgia Bank were owned by its holding company, North Georgia Bancorp, Inc. The holding company was not part of the transfer to BankSouth.

Stockholders are fourth and last in line for receiving claims on the bank’s assets.

Proposed Oconee County Sewer Line Gives Something Not Requested and Not Needed

In 2004/5 At Least

Zoom Bait on Jennings Mill Road does not have a sewer hookup and relies on its septic system to treat its waste water.

When it asked the county for a rezone in 2004 so it could expand its warehouse space, Zoom Bait didn’t ask the county for any sewer services, saying they were unnecessary for the expansion.

St. Mary’s Highland Hills, Inc., Zoom’s neighbor on Jennings Mill Road, asked for a change in zoning in 2005 so it could expand its retirement community by adding a hospice and an Alzheimer’s and dementia center.

The county approved the zoning change, and in 2008 the county granted St. Mary’s 5,100 gallons per day in additional sewage treatment capacity for the two new units.

After the design was finished, the county reduced that amount to 1,700 gallons per day to reflect projected needs from the actual facility to be built.

That 1,700 was in addition to the 7,500 already assigned to St. Mary’s for the retirement community.

Both the new capacity allocation and the original 7,500 capacity allocation came from the 25,000 gallons per day in sewage treatment capacity that Oconee County obtained from Clarke County by contract back in 1994.

That contract continues in perpetuity.

Of the 25,000 in capacity Oconee County bought from Clarke County back in 1994, the county currently is using about 15,000 gallons on an average day, Utility Department Director Chris Thomas told me.

That usage peaks at about 19,000 gallons per day, leaving 6,000 in excess capacity.

According to Thomas, Zoom Bait needs 4,580 in sewage treatment capacity to replace its septic system, or 1,420 less than the excess capacity.

And Zoom Bait’s need is only 1,180 more gallons per day than the 3,400 allocated to St. Mary’s on Dec. 22, 2008, and subsequently reduced to 1,700.

The problem, according to Thomas, is that at least some of that excess capacity already has been allocated to other potential future users.

And Clarke County has said it cannot handle addition effluent.

On Tuesday, the Board of Commissioners is scheduled to decide whether to go forward with construction of a new $773,000 sewer line that would provide sewage services to Zoom Bait for the first time and duplicate the sewage services currently provided to St. Mary’s.

BOC Chairman Melvin Davis is a big proponent of the project, but the other four commissioners have expressed reservations, saying it is not clear if the project is designed for Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s or for the owner and future developer of an 114-acre tract that the line will cross after it leaves Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s.

The 114-acre property already has access to a sewer line, but the new line would not require the developer to pay for expensive pump stations to get the sewage from future businesses on the site to the existing line.

The county’s experience with these pumps has been negative. They are costly to maintain and often stink.

Chairman Davis, in his weekly column in the Jan. 27 edition of The Oconee Enterprise, focused on the value of the new sewer line for future commercial development, including of the 114-acre tract owned by the Gordy Family and, according to the county, under option to Atlanta developer Frank Bishop.

That column appeared on the county’s web site the following day.

The Georgia Department of Community Affairs has given the county a grant of $186,711 to cover part of the proposed costs for the sewer line.

The county told the state it needed the grant and sewer line to keep Zoom Bait, which manufactures artificial fishing lures, from leaving the county and to help St. Mary’s operate within its “financial means.”

The county said Zoom and St. Mary’s provide jobs for low or moderate income employees and will hire additional low-to-moderate income employees once the sewer service is in place.

The focus on low and moderate income jobs made it more likely the county would obtain funds from the state, which administers monies from the federal Economic Development and Employment Incentive Program.

In the proposal, the county did not hide the fact that the proposed sewer line would cross the 114-acre undeveloped tract. It only said it was proposing the project to help Zoom Bait and St. Mary’s and that no development plans for the 114-acre parcel were before the county.

I called the Department of Community Affairs office on Jan. 28 to ask if the state cared about the county’s current focus on the benefit of the sewer line to the developer of the 114-acre tract.

Brock Smith, who is handling the Oconee County grant, told me that the state does not care.

“If the funds were awarded to the local government, they are local government funds,” he said. The county does have to meet the program criteria spelled out in the grant, he said.

Smith cautioned that he was new to the job, had not read the application and knew nothing about the controversy over it.

I reviewed the 2004 rezone application of Zoom Bait and the 2005 rezone application of St. Mary’s on file in the Planning Department of the county to learn about sewer capacity requests and allocations.

The BOC has the Zoom Bait/St. Mary’s project on the agenda for the Feb. 8 meeting because the Board would not approve at the Jan. 4 meeting a request by Oconee County Economic Development Director Rusty Haygood and Thomas that the county put the sewer line out to bid.

At that meeting, Haygood and Thomas reported on their efforts to get the owners of the property the proposed line will cross to donate easements for the line.

The value of the easements was put at $600 in the case of Zoom Bait, $19,640 from St. Mary’s, and $84,910 for the Gordy Property. The county would have to pay the Gordy representatives $1,000 in legal fees.

Nothing was said at that meeting about the easement for a fourth property owned by the city of Athens.

When I met with Thomas in his office on Jan. 28, he told me that Oconee County will have to pay Athens between $500 and $600 for that easement.

Thomas told me that when he and Haygood estimated the total cost of the project at $773,000 in July of last year, they were including rough estimates of the amount that the county would have to pay for easements.

The $773,000 projection was based on a bid for the construction work of $642,767 that has expired, making it impossible to know the current best estimate of project costs.

The county proposes to pay for the costs of the sewer line not covered by the state grant from sales tax revenues previously unallocated.

+++

In an earlier version of this story, I reported that the rezone for the expansion of Zoom Bait was in 2005. The Board of Commissioners approved the rezone on Nov. 2, 2004. I apologize for the error, which is corrected in the text above.

Oconee County Citizen Committee Pushes Forward With Examination of County Web Activities

Inquiries of Sheriff, BOE, Watkinsville

The Citizen Advisory Committee on the Oconee County Web site decided at its meeting tonight to push ahead with efforts to document investments by county government entities in web operations.

County Commissioner Margaret Hale, a member of the Committee, agreed to ask County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault to help her catalogue the amount of time spent by staff in the county’s various departments with the existing county web operation.

She also said she would ask County Finance Director Jeff Benko to identify any information technology expenditures in departmental budgets.

And Hale said she would ask Sheriff Scott Berry to talk with her about the web activities of his office.

Committee member Kate McDaniel agreed to talk with representatives of the county school system to get an understanding of how the schools are using the web to communicate to school constituencies.

Tony Glenn will examine how Watkinsville manages its web site, and Dan McDaniel will investigate how other cities and counties in the state are using the web.

Dan Matthews will talk with representatives of the County Parks and Recreation Department to better understand their decision to create a stand-alone web site linked to the county’s main page.

Sarah Bell and I will try to learn how the offices of the probate judge, tax commissioner and clerk of courts manage their web operations.

This was the second meeting of the self-appointed citizen advisory committee, and all seven members attended the hour-long session at the county library in Watkinsville.

Since the gathering of the group in October, subcommittees have had several meetings to gain an understanding of how the county web site operates.

The county currently leases space for the web site at a cost of $240 per year and has one person devoting about a third of her time to its maintenance, according to Theriault, who met with Bell and me on Nov. 5.

Theriault estimated that the county is spending between $10,000 and $12,000 at present on this visible part of its web operation.

Departments contribute to the web site, however, and he said no one had ever documented how much staff time is being committed to web activities.

The county is restricted in what it can do with the site at present because of the tight budget, Theriault said.

Bell and I summarized our meeting with Theriault at the start of the meeting tonight.

We were followed by committee member Dan Matthews, who reported on information he gained on the Parks and Recreation Department and on the Planning Department. Matthews said both departments reported investing considerable staff time in the web.

Dan McDaniel and Kate McDaniel said they were told by the county’s Information Technology Director Paula Nedza that the county would need between $20,000 and $45,000 for a more robust web site.

Glenn reported that Bogart and Bishop do not have a presence on the web, and that North High Shoals has a small site. Watkinsville, the largest city in the county, has a more sophisticated operation, he said.

I assembled the Committee last summer after discovering that the county had no policy for deciding what goes on to the web site. The other six members of the Committee responded to my call for others in the county interested in the web and its potential for the government in the county.

The Committee tonight decided to meet again next month to continue its discussion. The date set for that meeting is March 22.

Oconee County Farmers Market Board Anxious to Launch 2011 Season

First Street Available

The Board of Directors of Oconee County’s Farmers Market, ready to launch the 2011 season, chose a new president tonight, decided to meet with vendors next month, and agreed to move forward with an application for grant money to hire a full-time manager.

Last year’s market launched on May 8, and the Board is considering an even earlier start date for this year, if vendors indicate at the meeting in February that they will have things to sell in late April or early May.

Last year (below) the market, held on Saturdays, remained open until the end of October.

Russ Page, one of the original organizers of the Farmers Market, told the Board that Watkinsville has agreed to close First Street behind Eagle Tavern to allow new vendors to join the market.

The Board had discussed moving out of Watkinsville because the market has expanded and the space available behind the Tavern no longer is adequate.

The market launched in 2004 in the front yard of Eagle Tavern but moved to the rear of the Tavern in 2009 to allow for more vendors and because the county sodded the grass in front of the historic tavern.

Page was selected as president of the Board of Directors at the meeting tonight, replacing Karl Berg, who has decided to step away from his work on the Market. Cindy Norris was selected to be vice president, and Debbie Beese and Jamie Swedberg were selected again as treasurer and secretary, respectively.

Other members of the Board are Amy Shane, Tim Walker and I. The Board did not have an official vice president before the meeting tonight.

Beese told the Board , meeting at her house outside Watkinsville, that the organization has grown enough that “we need a full-time market manager.”

The group agreed to make an application to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for grant funds for that purpose. If successful, Oconee Farmers Market would hire someone for six or seven months to take on that task.

In the meantime, the Board members agreed to spread responsibilities of a manager among themselves.

The Board also agreed to move forward with new signage for the market and to explore various promotional and marketing strategies.

Included is the possibility of T-shirts and tote bags that would carry a marketing message for the market.

The Farmers Market is a nonprofit organization, and vendors pay 5 percent of their sales to support its work.