The Oconee County Board of Commissioners will hold its official public hearing tomorrow night on a variance request by the estate of Dave R. Knowlton for a piece of property in the busy intersection of Daniells Bridge Road and the Oconee Connector.
Citizens who are in favor of or opposed to the requested waiver or modification of requirements regarding buffers on the property will have a chance to speak.
A sewage pump station tucked behind a shopping center on Epps Bridge Parkway is playing a key role in a controversy that threatens to cut off water and sewage services to residents of Pinewood Estates South mobile home park in Oconee County.
The pump, or lift, station, doesn’t even serve the residents of the mobile home park, though it lies between the shopping center and the park.
Oconee County Commissioner John Daniell plans to ask his colleagues tomorrow night to begin the process of changing the enabling legislation that defines the government structure in the county.
Daniell’s goals are limited.
The mayoral race in Watkinsville produced a higher voter turnout for Oconee County’s Educational Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum than would have been the case without it, an analysis of precinct votes for the Nov. 8 election indicates.
Overall, 10.1 percent of the county’s eligible voters cast a ballot on the education tax, putting the turnout just behind the 10.2 percent figure when the county voted on a general SPLOST issue in November of 2003. That year, as this, no other county-wide or state issues were on the ballot.
Both Houses of Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed late last week an agriculture appropriations bill for the current fiscal year that presumes the closing of the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center outside Watkinsville.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture confirmed today that plans are underway for the closing of the Agricultural Research Service facility but refused to provide any details about when or how that will take place.
Oconee County Utility Department Director Chris Thomas said he is a bit concerned about a “show cause” hearing he is scheduled to conduct at 10 a.m. tomorrow in his office in the Government Annex on Greensboro Road in Watkinsville.
“There is a lot of interest in this,” he told me yesterday. He reminded me that his office isn’t very large.
A joint House-Senate Conference Committee last night agreed on an agricultural funding bill that makes closure of the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center outside Watkinsville nearly certain and provides for conveyance of its property to a land grant institution such as the University of Georgia.
The bill includes less money for the Agriculture Research Service, of which the Campbell Center is part, than President Barack Obama requested.
