Oconee County Commissioners took another step on Tuesday to put a referendum for a new 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax on the ballot in November.
Commissioners tentatively decided to ask the Board of Elections and Registration at its regular meeting next week to vote to officially respond to the request from the commissioners to put the referendum for the new sales tax on the Nov. 2 ballot.
Oconee County Schools will open on Aug. 4 with all in-person instruction.
As was the case last year, masks will not be required, but those students who choose to wear a mask are “welcome to do so.”
COVID-19 vaccinations also are not required for employees or students.
More than half of the absentee ballots received in Oconee County in the Nov. 3, 2020, election were deposited in the drop box in front of the Elections and Registration Office opposite the Courthouse in downtown Watkinsville.
Of the ballots received after early voting ended, 60.1 percent were via the secure drop box in the front of the elections office.
Of the ballots received before early voting started, half came in via the drop box.
The Northeast Health District added 411 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ending on Friday and two new confirmed death attributed to the disease. One of the deaths was in Clarke County.
The 411 added cases of COVID-19 and two deaths compare with the 245 new cases and no confirmed death added in the week ending July 16.
The average of 58.7 new cases per day for the week ending on Friday compares with the average of 35.0 new cases per day for the week ending on July 16.
The Oconee County Planning Commission told the Board of Commissioners on Monday that it thinks building a drive-through fast food restaurant on a tiny piece of property on Hog Mountain Road across from RaceTrac is a bad idea.
The property actually fronts on the stub of what was Hog Mountain Road before it was re-engineered to meet the widened U.S. 441, and traffic would have to cross that stub before reaching or leaving the restaurant.
County planners showed a complicated set of modifications to the roadway that would be needed to make the plan work.
The Judicial Workload Assessment Committee of the Judicial Council of Georgia voted on Friday to recommend to the full Council that Oconee County not be allowed to split from Clarke County in the Western Judicial Circuit.
The Workload Assessment Committee was responding to a Feb. 12 request from Marcus Wiedower and Houston Gaines, who represent both Oconee County and Clarke County in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The pair were requesting that the Judicial Council do what is known as a “circuit boundary study” to determine if the current configuration of the Circuit could be changed.
The Federal Railroad Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation have chosen a route for high speed rail linking Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., that passes through Athens, rejecting two alternate routes that bypassed the area.
The proposed 274-mile route will be fully separated from the existing roadway and railroad transportation systems, and it will be on a new dedicated right of way for most of its distance.
The route does not pass through Oconee County, but the inclusion of Athens as a “station opportunity” would provide potential rail links for the area with downtown Atlanta and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
