Oconee County citizens get their first chance tomorrow (Monday) night to review the nearly-completed work of the 29-member citizen Stakeholders Committee, which has worked in collaboration with the county consultants to draft a 2018 Comprehensive Plan.
Based on citizen input at the meeting tomorrow, the consultants are scheduled to make changes to the document to be discussed at a final meeting of the Stakeholders Committee in early March.
Oconee County Library Friends will direct funds raised through its winter used book sale from Feb. 8 to 10 to support of the summer reading program at the Oconee County Library on Experiment Station Road in Watkinsville.
Rebecca Ballard, children’s specialist at the library, said children experience a “summer slump” in reading when school is not in session, and the summer reading program is designed to address that.
Twenty-eight people turned out at the Oconee County Library in Watkinsville on last Sunday’s rainy afternoon to exchange nonpartisan conversation with the goals of getting to know each other and of building community.
The sponsors, the Oconee Progressives and Oconee Democrats, had reached out across party lines with their invitations, and they were successful.
Two weeks after asking Oconee County citizens if they want to include wastewater reuse in the county’s yet-to-be completed Water and Wastewater Master Plan, Oconee County Water Resources Department Director Wayne Haynie asked the Board of Commissioners last (Tuesday) night to spend $1 million for that purpose.
The commissioners took the request under advisement, with Board Chair John Daniell saying it will be on the agenda at the meeting on Feb. 6 to allow for more citizen input on the request.
In a reversal of plans, Oconee County Administrator Justin Kirouac tomorrow (Tuesday) night will open up discussion with the Board of Commissioners of a possible revision to the county’s Landscape and Buffers section of its Unified Development Code.
Citizens called for action on the code revision at a Town Hall Meeting last week, but Board of Commissioners Chair John Daniell said consideration of changes to the Unified Development Code would not take place until after the county completed work on its Comprehensive Plan this spring.
A sometimes testy meeting ended with applause on Wednesday night for Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman John Daniell and Commissioner Chuck Horton, who spent more than 80 minutes taking questions from and interacting with citizens opposed to county plans for treatment of wastewater.
“I hear everybody talking,” Daniell said near the end of the meeting, “I think we’re already addressing what you’re saying. We’re trying to look at alternatives. There is no plan etched in stone.”
Oconee County school administrators will ask the Board of Education next month to approve spending $2.2 million to replace the natural turf in the system’s two high school stadiums and replace the synthetic tracks around the two fields.
The move to synthetic from natural turf is to accommodate increased use of the fields for football, soccer and lacrosse.
