Oconee Presents Confused Picture of MACORTS Priorities

Which List Did We Put That On?

Oconee County has three road projects on the list of transportation improvements to be financed in the next six years by state and federal road funds.

The three are the widening of Mars Hill road/Experiment Station road from SR 316 to Watkinsville, the widening of Simonton Bridge road from Clarke County to Watkinsville, and an extension of Daniells Bridge road with a flyover of SR Loop 10.

These are the projects county officials on Sept. 9 put on a priority list when they met with officials of Clarke and Madison counties to designate projects for state and federal funding in the next six years.

They also are the projects interested citizens can review and comment on from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park.

Anyone who attended by Sept. 29 meeting of the Board of Commissioners, however, can be excused for not fulling understand that these are the county’s top road priorities.

At that meeting, BOC Chairman Melvin Davis and Public Works Director Emil Beshara said the Simonton Bridge road and Daniells Bridge Road Extension were on the long-term, rather than short term list of projects.

Beshara also blamed confusing documents for citizen misunderstanding about Simonton Bridge road widening, though documents produced by the Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study (MACORTS) as recently as July listed the project as a four-lane widening, as did ones produced five years ago.

More recent documents simply don’t specify how wide the road will be after it is widened.

The discussion of the roadway projects came at the beginning of the Sept. 29 meeting, when Chairman Davis asked Beshara if the Simonton Bridge road widening and the Daniells Bridge Road Extension were on the list of projects for the next six years or on a list of "long-range plans" for 2020-2025.

Beshara said that it was his "understanding" they were long-range projects.

Beshara also said "no one" he has talked to wants to widen the road to four lanes but that there was some understandable confusion on the part of the public "created by the very brief descriptions of these projects" in the public documents.

The confusion on the part of Davis is particularly surprising.

At its Sept. 9 meeting, the MACORTS Policy Committee was to review and approve a draft of the Fiscal Year 2010 to 2013 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), according to the Tentative Agenda for that meeting.

Davis and citizen Frank Watson, the two Oconee County voting representatives to the Policy Committee, attended that meeting, according to Sherry Moore, a transportation planner with Athens-Clarke County and the designated contact person on MACORTS matters.

She said the Policy Committee approved the draft TIP that included the Mars Hill road, Simonton road and Daniells Bridge road projects, though she said minutes would not be released until they had been approved by the committee itself.

The first phase of the Mars Hill road project–from SR 316 to Hog Mountain road in Butler’s Crossing--is the only Tier 1 project in the county, meaning funding is expected in the fiscal years 2010 to 2013.

The remainder of the Mars Hill road project, all of the Simonton Bridge road project and the Daniells Bridge Road Extension are listed as Tier II projects, meaning they will be covered in Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015.

No money has been set aside so far for the second and third phases of the Mars Hill road widening or for the Simonton Bridge road widening, and both are designated as "long range."

But the TIP includes $50,000 for preliminary engineering of the Daniells Bridge Road Extension in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 and indicates that construction will begin in 2017.

Angela O. Whitworth from the Georgia Department of Transportation wrote BOC Chairman Davis on July 29, 2009, regarding the Daniells Bridge Road Extension project, designated CSSTP-007-00(943) in the letter.

That letter was called a Sponsor Project Notification and indicated that the county soon will receive a Project Framework Agreement. That July 29 letter was crucial when the Policy Committee decided on Sept. 9 to include the Daniells Bridge Road Extension on the list, Moore told me in a telephone conversation I had with her on Sept. 22.

I filed an open records request with the county for the letter on Sept. 27 and was given a copy Sept. 30. The letter contains notation from "MD" indicating it was to be sent to Beshara on Aug. 3.

The MACORTS TIP document indicates that Mars Hill road will be widened to four lanes and that the Daniells Bridge road extension also will be four lanes wide.

The TIP document says that the plan is to "Widen Simonton Bridge Road from SR 15 to the Clarke County line. This project would include 4-ft. bike lanes."

In the boxes for number of existing lanes and number of planned lanes, "n/a" is typed.

In the July 15, 2009, draft of the 2010-2035 MACORTS Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) update, however, the description for Simonton Bridge road was "Widen/reconstruction from 3rd St to Athens-Clarke County line to make 4-lane roadway with additional turn lanes as needed. Project will include 4-ft bicycle."

That document was on the MACORTS web site before the Sept. 9 meeting and was to be approved at that session, according to the agenda. It is still there tonight, and it contains this same description of the project.

The 2005-2030 Long Range Transportation Plan contained the same description, according to the Feb. 10, 2009, minutes of the county’s Citizen Advisory Committee for Land Use and Transportation Planning. Watson, the citizen member of the MACORTS Policy Committee, is a member of that advisory committee as well.

The Watkinsville city council voted unanimously on Aug. 12 to oppose the widening of Simonton Bridge road.

Oconee Commissioner Chuck Horton asked at the Sept. 29 meeting of the BOC if it wouldn’t be a good idea for the BOC to take the project off the list to avoid confusion.

Davis told Horton that Beshara already was engaged in discussions about the project with MACORTS. Horton didn't respond, and none of the other board members expressed an opinion.

The MACORTS Policy Committee could have dropped Simonton Bridge road from the priority list at its Sept. 9 meeting.

It put Simonton Bridge road widening (as well as the other two projects), at the top of a long list of county road projects in the northern, urbanized part of the county.

Included in the rejected projects–listed in the 2010 to 2035 long range plan and eligible for inclusion on the priority TIP list--were a widening of Daniells Bridge Road from Chestnut Hill Road to Hog Mountain road to include additional turn lanes, widening to four lanes of Hog Mountain road from Butler’s Crossing to US 441, a reconstruction and widening of Jimmy Daniell road from the Clarke County line to Virgil Langford road, construction of a bypass for SR 15 as it comes into Watkinsville south of the city, and widening of Union Church Road to four lanes from Hog Mountain road to High Shoals road.

The Mars Hill Road widening is the top unfunded priority for the county, and the county is in the process of beginning right of way acquisition for the first phase of the project. Money for right of way acquisition but not construction has been allocated by the state.

The roadway upgrade is designed to improve traffic flow and to open up more land in the county for commercial development.

No one said this at the meeting on Sept. 29, but the Simonton Bridge road widening can be seen as a continuation of the Mars Hill road project, opening up more land for development along a continuous corridor leading into Athens.

One big problem is moving that traffic through Watkinsville.

The city raised objections to the initial plans to bring the Mars Hill road/Experiment Station road widening into the city because of the disruption it would cause to the city’s existing commercial and industrial sites as well as city buildings.

The traffic also will end on Main street, which is two lanes wide and passes through the heart of Watkinsville.

The proposal to widen Simonton Bridge road from the Clarke county line to two-lane wide Third Street in Watkinsville would create similar traffic flow problems for the city.

The comments by Davis, Beshara and Horton at the Sept. 29 meeting came during the Statement and Remarks by Citizens section of the meeting. I asked the whole board to get involved in the discussion of the MACORTS priority list rather than simply let the chairman speak for the county.

Federal law requires that all urban areas over 50,000 in population engage in a Transportation Planning Process.

MACORTS is the designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for the city of Athens and Clarke County, and, since the 1980 U. S. Census, for the northern portion of Oconee County. The southernmost portion of Madison County was added in 2003.

The urbanized part of Oconee County included in MACORTS coverage is bounded by Hog Mountain Road and then loops south of Watkinsville and continues on a line south of and parallel to Barnett Shoals road to the Clarke County line.

The TIP and the LRTP are required by the federal government for the MACORTS area to receive federal and state urban transportation funding.

TIP contains all the projects that will be eligible for federal and/or state funding during the next four fiscal years, labeled as Tier 1 projects. TIP also includes a second two-year list of projects, called Tier 2 projects.

LRTP lists anticipated transportation needs for the next 20 years. All projects that make it into the TIP must have been included in the LRTP, which is updated every five years.

The MACORTS public hearing on the proposed priority list of projects on Oct. 13 at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park is part of the required process for public comment.

A meeting of the county’s Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning will follow. The committee is scheduled to continue its discussion of the future of the county courthouse.

The exchange regarding MACORTS is on my Vimeo site. The full Sept. 29 meeting is viewable on the county's Vimeo site.

Oconee BOC Agrees to Study Economic Development, Ethics

Water for Walton

In response to items put on the agenda by Commissioner John Daniell, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday night agreed to schedule a work session on how to proceed with plans to promote economic development in the county and to create a committee to study and develop a code of ethics for the county.

In addition, the board reviewed two solicitation ordinances drafted by County Attorney Daniel Haygood and decided to reject an ordinance banning solicitation on county roadways and move forward with a plan to restrict such solicitation.

The board agreed preliminarily to issue a request for proposals for utility relocation design for the widening of Mars Hill road from SR 316 to Hog Mountain road in Butler’s Crossing, accept a bid for utility relocation for the Oconee Connector Extension now under construction, and proceed with a plan to upgrade one of the county’s water wells and continue selling water to Walton County.

The agenda-setting meeting lasted about two and a half hours, ending about 9:30 p.m.

The Athens Banner-Herald provided a detailed report on the solicitation ordinance inside today’s paper.

The Oconee Enterprise also had a story today about the solicitation ordinance, though it did not indicate what action the board had taken.

The Enterprise also contained a very confusing story about the ethics and development initiatives of Daniell under the headline "Daniell pushes ethics on BOC."

Daniell, who joined the board in January, said he has been trying to understand what the county is doing to promote economic development.

He mentioned as one of those activities the work of the Oconee Athens-Clarke Joint Economic Task Force, a panel of community and business leaders that recommended in May of 2008 that the two counties work together on development. Discussions of such a collaboration have stalled.

"I kind of want to kick around and see where everybody wants to head," Daniell said. "I’d like to see us start moving in a direction to address some of these issues and put some things on the radar screen that we could attract some good companies to the area."

Following Daniell’s comments, Ed Perkins, chairman of that Task Force, came forward and urged the board to move on the recommendation that the counties work together on development.



He was followed by Chuck Williams, a member of the task force and chairman of the Oconee County Development Authority, who also recommended a collaborative strategy.

Mike Lewis, the chairman of the Oconee Chamber of Commerce, next came to the podium and made the same argument. "A regional approach is the right approach," he said.

The board agreed to schedule a work session to continue discussion on the topic.

Daniell next recommended that the board appoint a committee made up of citizens and members of the commission to look at existing ethics codes and then "make some real strong statements about where we are and how we do business here in Oconee County."

The board agreed to follow its normal procedures of advertising for citizen participants and then creating such an ethics committee.

Haygood told the board that he had two proposed ordinances regarding solicitation in county roadways. He said the county could reject the activity entirely, or it could restrict it.

Daniell said he was comfortable with banning the activity, but the other commissioners were not.
Haygood discussed in detail an ordinance that would require groups to pay $100 for a permit, which would be granted only to charitable organizations that passed a background check.

Under the proposed ordinance, solicitation would be restricted by time of day, solicitors would be required to wear reflective vests, and a designated person would have to be at the solicitation site.

Haygood was instructed to fine-tune the ordinance and bring it back to the board for future action, possibly as early as the Oct. 27 meeting.

The board decided to put on its agenda for its Oct. 6 meeting a vote to issue a request for proposals for the design of utility relocations for the Mars Hill Road widening project. Emil Beshara, county public works director, estimated that the contract will cost between $40,000 and $80,000.

The county expects to begin right of way acquisition for the roadway in about five months and take about two years to complete the process. So far, the state has not found the $19 million for actual construction of the road.

Chris Thomas, Utility Department director, presented the board with a bid by Gary’s Grading and Pipeline to do utility relocation work for the Oconee Connector Extension, also called the Jennings Mill Parkway.

The roadway, now under construction, will form a loop from SR 316 at the current Oconee Connector back to Epps Bridge Parkway near Lowe’s and is designed to open up land for commercial development.

The bid was for $489,558. The county will use unspent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue to pay for the work.

That item also will be voted on at the Oct. 6 meeting.

Thomas also asked the board to allow him to get bids for an upgrade to an existing groundwater well on Hillcrest drive between Watkinsville and the Civic Center so the county can produce a higher quality water from the well.

The county at present is selling about 500,000 gallons per day of water from its wells to Walton and wants to continue to do so to generate revenue for the Utility Department. The upgrade will help make that possible.

Thomas said he expects the bids to come in around $300,000 and that he had that amount of money in unspent SPLOST funds in his budget that can be used for this project.

Final action on this request also is set for the Oct. 6 meeting.

Upcoming Oconee Meetings Deal Wide Range of Issues

Ethics, Solicitation, a Flyover and an Unspent $4 Million

Four meetings of Oconee county governing and advisory bodies in the next two weeks should help shape county policy regarding roadway construction, the future of the courthouse in Watkinsville, ethics, economic development including collaboration with neighboring counties and restrictions on solicitation in county roadways.

The Board of Commissioners will meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night in its chambers at the courthouse in Watkinsville to deal with two issues placed on the agenda by Commissioner John Daniell–a potential ethics policy for the county and county strategy for promoting economic development.

Daniell told me tonight he wants to see if there is interest in creating a committee to develop an ethics policy for the county and wants to move forward with discussion of ways the county can promote economic development.

Included in the development discussion, he said, should be possible collaboration with Clarke County. Discussions of such a collaboration have stalled after a panel of community and business leaders recommended in May of 2008 that the two counties work together on development.

The agenda also includes a report by County Attorney Daniel Haygood on a potential solicitation ordinance for the county. The BOC asked Haygood to work on such a document at its Aug. 25 meeting and report back with recommendations after complaints about groups approaching automobiles in busy intersections in the county as part of fundraising activities.

At present, the county has no ordinance to regulate these activities.

The BOC also is scheduled to consider a request for proposals for utility relocation design for the widening of Mars Hill road from SR 316 to Hog Mountain Road in Butler’s Crossing and discuss bids for Jennings Mill Parkway utility relocations.

The board also is to hear a report form county Utility Director Chris Thomas about an upgrade to a county well and the sale of water from Oconee County to Walton County from groundwater sources.

The meeting on Tuesday is to set the agenda for the meeting on Oct. 6, so many of these issues will carry over to that meeting for action. That meeting also begins at 7 p.m. at the courthouse.

On Oct. 13 the Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study (MACORTS) has scheduled a public meeting for 5 to 7 p.m. at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park, 3500 Hog Mountain Road, to present an overview of county priorities for roadway construction in the urbanized part of the county for the next five years.

The report lists widening of Mars Hill road from SR 316 to Watkinsville, the widening of Simonton Bridge road from the county line with Clarke county to Watkinsville, and a flyover from Daniells Bridge road to the dead-end of Jennings Mill Parkway at Home Depot as the top priorities.

Watkinsville, which has no representation on MACORTS other than through BOC Chairman Melvin Davis and citizen Frank Watson from the county Citizen Advisory Committee on Land-Use and Transportation Planning, has gone on record opposing the Simonton Bridge road widening.

The MACORTS Policy Committee at its meeting on Sept. 9 adopted the three projects as the top priorities for the county. Official minutes of the meeting have not yet been released, but Sherry Moore, a transportation planner with Athens-Clarke County who is a designated contact person for MACORTS, said Davis and Watson were present at that meeting.

At the Feb. 10, 2009, meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee, the group reviewed a series of projects that it was told Chairman Davis had asked it to consider for possible elimination from the list of MACORTS projects, but the committee did not rank order any of the remaining projects–including the three on the final MACORTS list, according to the official minutes.

According to the minutes of subsequent committee meetings, it never has rank ordered or discussed further the projects on the MACORTS list.

The MACORTS rankings also have not been discussed by the BOC at any of its public meetings since the first of the year, according to the minutes of those meetings.

Following the public hearing on the MACORTS rankings of the road projects, the Land Use and Transportation Committee will meet in the same room at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park to continue its discussion of the future of the courthouse.

County Administrative Office Alan Theriault is scheduled to talk with the committee about administrative space needs for the county.

The BOC asked the Land Use and Transportation Committee back in March to consider what to do about the courthouse, and the group has held a series of meetings on the topic.

On Nov. 4, 2003, voters in the county approved a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax of one percent for a number of projects, including, according to the ballot, "the acquisition, construction, equipping and installation of expansions of the County Courthouse, the County Government Annex Building, and County Libraries."

The tax designated $4.6 million of the expected $25 million in revenue from the tax for this project.

County Finance Director Jeff Benko told the Land Use and Transportation Committee at its Sept. 8 meeting that about $4 million of that amount remains uncommitted and unspent. The tax is to expire at the end of this month, but it will be followed by another 1 percent tax to run for six years. That tax does not include any mention of the courthouse.

Benko told me in an email message on Sept. 22 that, as required by law, he will have a final report on SPLOST 2003 spending by the end of December of this year and will share it with the public and the board at that time.

In the discussions before the Land Use and Transportation Committee, Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost, who brought the board’s request for a review to the committee, frequently has referenced the case of Brian Nichols in Atlanta as one of the reasons for the need for a new courthouse.

The current courthouse does not provide the kind of security that the Nichols case illustrates is needed, Provost said. Nichols went on a killing spree in the Fulton county courthouse in Atlanta, where he was on trial for rape.

Nichols escaped from custody and murdered the judge presiding over his trial, a court reporter, a Sheriff's Deputy, and later a Federal agent.

That event was on March 11, 2005, however, or more than a year after Oconee County voters had approved the 2003 SPLOST calling for "the acquisition, construction, equipping and installation of expansions of the County Courthouse."

No one has come forward at the Land Use and Transportation Committee meetings to indicate what county officials had in mind back in 2003 when the county put the SPLOST tax initiative together.

The resolution putting the issue on the ballot was passed by the board on Sept. 2, 2003, but only Davis and Commissioner Margaret Hale from the current board were on the board at that time.

At the Sept. 8 meeting, Provost stressed that the county at present doesn’t know what its needs are and doesn’t know how to go about meeting them. He said the county should contract with an expert to help it decide these things.

Oconee Residents Can Comment on Road Plans at Oct. 13 Meeting

Widening Simonton and Adding a Flyover

Oconee County residents who want to review and offer comments on planned roadway projects in the county that are slated to receive state and federal funding in the next five years–including the proposed widening of Simonton Bridge road–will have a chance on Oct. 13.

Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study (MACORTS) has scheduled a public meeting for 5 to 7 p.m. on that date at the Community Center in Oconee Veterans Park, 3500 Hog Mountain Road.

While much of the media attention to the MACORTS proposal has been focused on the Simonton Bridge road widening to four lanes, the five-year plan also includes funding for a controversial flyover of SR Loop 10 from Daniells Bridge road to what is now called Jennings Mill parkway at Home Depot.

That flyover would be part of a loop the county wants to create, incorporating the Oconee Connector Extension now under construction and part of the current Daniells Bridge road. The goal is to stimulate further commercial development of land along the new roadway.

The MACORTS plan also includes the widening of Mars Hill road to four lanes from SR 316 to Watkinsville.

These projects–Simonton Bridge road widening, the Daniells Bridge Road Extension, and the Mars Hill road widening–are the three that county representatives to MACORTS have designated as the top priority for state and federal road funding in the urbanized northern part of the county.

MACORTS is the metropolitan planning organization for southern Madison County, Athens-Clarke County, and northern Oconee County.

The document to be reviewed and commented upon at the Oct. 13 meeting is called the Fiscal Years 2010-2013 Transportation Improvement Program and the Fiscal Years 2014-2015 Second Tier of Projects.

This documents is required by the federal government and the Georgia Department of Transportation for federal and state roadway funding.

The current document was approved by the MACORTS Policy Committee at its meeting on Sept. 9.

Representing the county at the meeting were Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis and Frank Watson, a citizen member from Oconee County, according to Sherry Moore, a transportation planner with Athens-Clarke County.

Moore, designated as the contact person by MACORTS, told me yesterday that the official minutes of the meeting have not yet been released to the public.

Davis and Watson are the two Oconee County voting members of the MACORTS Policy Committee. According to Moore, Wayne Provost, director of Strategic and Land Range Planning for Oconee County, also attended. Provost is a nonvoting member of the Policy Committee.

Moore said Watkinsville Mayor Jim Luken also was at the meeting. The Watkinsville Council voted unanimously on Aug. 12 to oppose the widening of Simonton Bridge road.

The first priority for Oconee County funding listed in the MACORTS document is the first phase of the Mars Hill road widening from SR316 to Hog Mountain road. The county is seeking $12.3 million in right of way funds for the project, which ultimately is expected to cost $53 million.

Earlier this year the state authorized the county to begin right of way acquisition for the project and promised to reimburse the county $9.8 million for property purchased.

The county is not seeking any money for the second or third phase of the Mars Hill road project in the MACORTS document, though their inclusion is a statement of county priorities.

Phase two would widen Experiment Station road from Hog Mountain road in Butler’s Crossing to US 441. The third phase would continue the widening to SR 15 in Watkinsville. Mars Hill road turns into Experiment Station road at Butler’s Crossing.

The estimated cost of phase two of the project is $9 million, while the estimated cost of phase three is $4.5 million.

The widening of Simonton Bridge road from downtown Watkinsville to the Clarke County line, a distance of 2.5 miles, is estimated to cost $4 million, but no money is sought through fiscal year 2015. Construction is labeled in the MACORTS document as "long-range."

The Daniells Bridge Road Extension is 0.7 miles in length and expected to cost $4.1 million. The county is seeking $50,000 in preliminary engineering funding for fiscal year 2015 and to begin construction in fiscal year 2017.

In December of 2008 the county promised that it would widen Daniells Bridge road from the Oconee Connector to just east of the blind curve when it approved a rezone for a commercial property at the curve. Though it said at the time the work would be completed this past summer, it has not done any work on the roadway.

Residents opposed that rezone, saying it would bring additional commercial traffic into what is now a residential neighborhood.

Following the MACORTS meeting on Oct. 13, the county’s Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning will meet in the same room to discuss plans for a new county courthouse.

County Administrator Alan Theriault is scheduled to address the citizen committee on needs of the administrative offices of the county for additional space.

Watson, who is the citizen representative to the MACORTS Policy Committee, is a member of the Land Use and Transportation committee.

Persons who cannot attend the meeting on Oct. 13 but wish to make comment on the plan can do so at the MACORTS web site.

Letters to Oconee Editor, Blogger End Up in Trash

Feeling Rejected

Meridee Williams, general manager of The Oconee Enterprise, and Johnathan McGinty, blogger and Athens Banner-Herald columnist, have this in common.

Both recently rejected my efforts to gain access to their readers.

In doing so, they underscored a key characteristic of journalism, in the old media world and in the new one.

The power of the journalists comes from their audiences.

And the journalists set the rules for access to those audiences.

On Aug. 24 Williams rejected a letter I had submitted to the Enterprise electronically on Aug. 22.

My letter criticized the editorial in the Aug. 20 edition of the paper. That editorial said the discussion by four members of the Board of Commissioners that led to a change in the reporting lines for key officials in the county was an "embarrassment" and that the passage of the ordinance changing the reporting lines by the board was "arrogant."

In my submitted letter, I referred readers to the Aug. 19 posting on this blog for a "detailed but straightforward report on the Aug. 4 Board of Commissioners meeting" at which the ordinance was passed.

Williams rejected the letter in her Aug. 24 email message to me saying "We do not provide free advertising for blogs."

Three weeks earlier, on Aug. 3, I sent an email message to McGinty, criticizing his column in the Banner-Herald on Aug. 2 and his posting on his blog, Beyond the Trestle, on Aug. 3.

In that Aug. 2 column, McGinty had said "I can only hope the Oconee County Commission shows ... good judgment by dropping its efforts to overhaul the structure of the local government in a puzzling attempt to improve communication."

On his Aug. 3 blog, McGinty wrote in response to criticism he was receiving about that column that "it's hardly fair to advance one argument up until the final minute and then, at the last second, revert to what it should have been all along and then blame me for being uninformed."

"It is fair to blame you for being uninformed," I wrote to McGinty. "You were. You were publicly. And it makes a difference. The Sunday Banner-Herald is quite a soapbox. I think you did the readers a disservice by not investing enough time to really understand the issue."

I told him to put my response on his blog.

McGinty did not put it on his blog. What he ran instead were two postings on Aug. 4. In one, he said "Judging by the five emails I've received from him in the past 24 hours, I'm obviously not on Lee Becker's good side regarding my views on Oconee County's proposed governmental restructuring."

He added that some of his critics--though he did not name me--said he was "uninformed."

An hour and a half later, McGinty posted again, adding a new comment from a reader he identified as "JW, an Oconee County resident, with an entertaining take."

"Now, I don't agree with you one bit on changing the Oconee County government," McGinty quoted the reader as saying, "but I will say this, if Lee Becker thinks you are ‘uninformed’ that probably means you're the smartest guy in the world, so congratulations!"

According to my outbox, I sent McGinty four messages from Aug. 1 to 3, and one of them was a message from another person that I forwarded.

Williams at the Enterprise, in rejecting my letter to the editor, said she would run it as an advertisement in the Aug. 27 edition of the paper–the edition I had hoped would contain my letter to the editor in the regular letters section.

In response to my request, she created a 2 column x 2.875 inch advertisement and sent it to me for my approval.

In the end, I decided it was not worth the $57.28 she said I would have had to pay to have my letter to the editor published in the paper.

McGinty stated his policy on comments in a posting he did on July 29.

He said he did not permit readers of his blog to provide comments because they take too much time to moderate. "I just don't have the time or patience," he said. People can send him email messages, he said, and he would "regularly" use them in his blog.

The Enterprise has an unaudited circulation of 4,000. McGinty told me during one of two brief personal conversations I’ve had with him that he gets about 150 visitors to his blog each day.

I would have had to pay $57.28 to have a chance to reach the 4,000 subscribers to the Enterprise, and I had no way to reach the 150 readers of McGinty’s blog unless he chose to allow it, which he did not. (McGinty recently started using Google ads, so that option does now exist.)

I have fewer visitors to this blog than McGinty has to his, and moderating the comments has not been a problem. I’ve had only a small number, and those I have received have been very civil.

Twice I’ve been criticized for mistakes I made. I thanked the critic–who was pretty direct–and corrected the errors.

I do get feedback via email. On a few occasions, I’ve encouraged those who wrote to post those comments to the blog. Some have done so.

I have set the comments option on this blog in a way that allows me to decide whether to publish them. I’ve used all sent so far, but I would not use one that contained what I viewed as a personal attack on anyone other than me.

I do not allow access to my listserv, which contains 121 names as of tonight. I send an email message to people on that list when I post to the blog, and I protect those on the list from unwanted messages. I view the list as something I’ve assembled and maintained–that is, as my list.

This blog has no advertising. I don’t pay Google for hosting it. If Google were to change the policy, however, and required me to pay, I would have to consider accepting ads. Under that circumstance, I would be competing with the Enterprise and McGinty’s Beyond the Trestle blog.

This potential competition does provide some justification for the Enterprise's decision not to allow me to reference my blog in a letter to the editor and to McGinty for not allowing me to claim he didn’t do his homework.

I also sent a letter to the editor of the Banner-Herald that suggested readers could go to my blog for additional information about the upcoming vote on the reorganization ordinance. The paper published the letter on Aug. 3.

The editors left in the reference to my blog, and even created a link to it in the online edition.

Beneath the letter, the paper used this note:

"EDITOR’S NOTE: In the interest of steering readers to varied sources of information and commentary, information about accessing blogs will be published occasionally on the Banner-Herald’s editorial page. Publishing that information does not constitute the newspapers endorsement of the content of any referenced blogs."

The Banner-Herald also has a very liberal policy on feedback. To leave a comment, readers must register, but the comments are not moderated. The tenor of those comments is quite varied. (I commented on McGinty's Aug. 2 column.)

The Enterprise web site allows readers to submit comments to the relatively few articles posted there. The comments are reviewed before they are posted.

The Oconee Leader requires reader to register before commenting on the small number of articles it posts on its web site. It also moderates comments before they are published.

Brian Brodrick moderates comments on Voice of Moderation.


Wendell Dawson does not have a comment function on his Another Voice from Oconee County, but he recommends people contact him with feedback and provides his email address.

Kate McDaniel’s A Positive Vision for Oconee County does not have a comment function, but she provides her email address and asks people to send comments.

Dan Matthews moderates comments in his Oconee County, GA Politics.

Steve Holzman moderates the comments on his Small Town Politics–North High Shoals. He has recently announced that he will not publish anonymous comments.

So while the technology has made it easier for all of us to send messages, it has not really made it any easier for someone who wants to respond to what we say to be able to do so.

That remains under the control of the organization or person who has attracted the audience in the first place. Increasingly, as journalists operate independently of media organizations, the journalists control the audiences.

The late A.J. Liebling, journalist and media critic, is famous for his observation: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

That is less true today than in the past.

What hasn’t changed is that the right of reply is guaranteed to no one.

Oconee Land Use Committee Hears Finance Options for Courthouse

Er, Make that Judicial/Administrative Facilities

County Finance Director Jeff Benko outlined to the Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning tonight five ways the county could finance new judicial and administrative facilities.

Benko said he’d expect to recommend combining several of these to complete the project.

At the request of the Board of Commissioners, the Committee is looking into ways to expand and improve the facilities currently housed at the courthouse in Watkinsville.

Committee Chairman Abe Abouhamdan said at the end of the hour-long meeting at the Community Center at Oconee Veterans Park that he thought the committee was four to five months away from being able to report back to the board.

Benko said the county could pay as it built new facilities or, as is more often the case with such projects, borrow money to finance it and build it all at once.

He said financing could be through the sale of general obligation bonds or revenue bonds. The county also could finance the project through a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SLOST), through a lease agreement, or through grants.

Voters would have to approve a general obligation bond, as they did in 2003 to build the Veterans Park. The county can use any of its revenue sources to pay off general obligation bonds.

Revenue bonds are retired by revenues from the project. Since county court and administrative facilities are not revenue generating, this is an unlikely avenue for the project, Benko acknowledged.

The 2004 SPLOST, set to retire this month, included $4.6 million for county facilities. Benko said about $4 million of that is available for the new court and administrative facilities.

The SPLOST approved in March does not have any money designated for county facilities, however, and the next new SPLOST won’t begin until 2015.

Benko said the county could ask the Association County Commissioners of Georgia to build and own new facilities. The County could lease these facilities for its use. The county has exactly this arrangement for the new jail.

Various grants are available to counties, Benko said, but he doubted the county would have much success in landing a grant for this type of project.

Benko would be the person who would advise the Board of Commissioners on financing.

“Given what I know today,” Benko said, “I’d compile various sources and combine various sources to complete this project.”



Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost recommended to the Board on March 31 that it seek proposals from qualified planning firms to assist with a long-range planning study of county judicial and administrative needs.

The board decided that a request for proposals was premature and that the public should be involved in the planning process. It asked the Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee to initiate a public study on future facility needs and issue a recommendation.

Provost prodded the committed repeatedly tonight to recommend that the county get expert help.

"We’ll have to bring in a consultant,” he said at one of those times.

Board member Bob Isaac said it was important to him that the county continue to make use of the existing courthouse in at least some way.

Benko told the board that the court functions have to remain in Watkinsville, the county seat, but administrative facilities can be elsewhere in the county.

Provost emphasized at the August meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee that it should think separately about judicial and administrative facilities.

County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault is scheduled to attend the October meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee to outline the administrative needs of the county.

Design for Mars Hill Road Includes Sidewalks and Bike Lanes

Walk or Bike to Movie, Restaurant

When the Mars Hill Road widening project is completed sometime in the future, a bicyclist should be able to ride from downtown Watkinsville to the planned Epps Bridge Centre on Epps Bridge Parkway entirely within a bike lane.

And a determined walker or runner could cover the six plus miles entirely on sidewalks.

Both bike lanes and sidewalks are part of the design for the roadway prepared by Moreland Altobelli Associates Inc. of Norcross under a design contract with the county signed more than 10 years ago.

The county approved a change order to that contract at the Board of Commissioners meeting on Sept. 1, awarding up to $142,666 for changes that will need to be made in the design.

Moreland Altobelli will be asked to update the existing plans to reflect recent property splits and mergers, new developments, and design modifications to the Mars Hill Road intersection with Daniells Bridge Road.

The firm also will have to split the project into three segments, since the county has received money only for right of way acquisition from SR 316 to Hog Mountain Road. The state has not said when it will release money for right of way acquisition for the second phase from Hog Mountain road to US 441, or the third phase from US 441 to SR 15 in Watkinsville.

The BOC on Sept. 1 also voted to issue a request for proposals for right of way acquisition services for the first phase of the project.

None of the changes that Moreland Altobelli will be asked to make will alter the basic design of the road. The new Mars Hill Road will be four lanes wide and include turn lanes and acceleration and deceleration lanes.

It also includes sidewalks and bike lanes on both sides of the road.

Dan Wilson, assistant county engineer, told me on Friday that former Public Works Director Mike Leonas was determined that sidewalks and bike lanes be part of the project. Leonas left the public works department in the summer of 2007.

The Oconee Connector Extension, which will form a loop from SR 316 at the existing Oconee Connector back to Epps Bridge Parkway at Lowe’s, will include bike lanes and sidewalks as well.

Though the developers of the proposed Epps Bridge Centre did not incorporate bike lanes into the design, they can still do so. That shopping center is expected to include an entertainment complex consisting of restaurants and a 16-screen movie theater.

Epps Bridge Parkway east of where the connector loop will intersect with it also has sidewalks and bike lanes.

The Athens Banner-Herald reported on the BOC action on Mars Hill in its Sept. 4 edition, but it incorrectly said the board had accepted a proposal from Moreland Altobelli for design of the project. The board only approved a change order in the existing contract to add the modifications needed.

The Oconee Enterprise did not mention the change order and made only passing reference to the request for proposals for right of way acquisition in its story in the Sept. 3 edition about the most recent BOC meeting.

At the Aug. 25 agenda setting meeting of the board, Emil Beshara, current public works director, outlined the board action being requested and also invited citizens to drop by the Public Works office to review the designs.

I visited the office on Friday and reviewed the Moreland Altobelli documents with Wilson.

Wilson indicated that the roadway will be built to state standards, though the section from Hog Moutain Road to SR 316 will remain a county, rather than state, roadway.

He indicated that the bike lanes will be adjacent to the regular auto lanes, rather than separated from them, meaning bikers will be competing with fast-moving automobile traffic.

The median will be grass in places and raised concrete in others, he said.

The right of way work for the three mile of roadway covered by phase one is expected to begin in five months and take about two years.

The Mars Hill widening is designed to ease traffic flow but also to open up more land for commercial development.

So far, the state has not found the $19 million for actual construction of the first phase of the road.