Government Annex Renovation Stalls at Oconee County BOC Meeting

“Brilliant” Idea on Hold

Plans to renovate the Oconee County Government Annex building on SR 15 on the south side of Watkinsville stalled tonight after County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault announced the latest cost estimate of $1.324 million.

The Board of Commissioners delayed making a final decision and decided instead to put the item on the agenda for the Nov. 2 meeting.

Commissioners Chuck Horton and Jim Luke spoke against going forward on the project.

John Daniell said he remained in favor of the plan. Commissioner Margaret Hale said she still wanted to explore some options before making the final decision and argued for the postponement of a decision.

If Hale joins with Daniell at the Nov. 2 meeting in favor of the project, as she indicated she might, and Horton and Luke voted against, BOC Chairman Melvin Davis would break the tie.

He indicated tonight he is opposed to going forward with the renovation.

The county has been considering a major renovation of the Government Annex since it was proposed in May by county Finance Director Jeff Benko as a way of saving money as the county tried to balance its budget in the face of revenue shortfalls.

The idea was to move the Planning Department, Code Enforcement and other offices out of the Courthouse Annex, across Main street from the courthouse in downtown Watkinsville, to the Annex and to cancel the lease on the Courthouse Annex.

The Government Annex now houses the Utility Department, Public Works and the Fire Department. It also is used by the United States Department of Agriculture and Athens Technical College adult education program.

At a public meeting on the renovation on Sept. 21, the commissioners looked at three separate plans for the renovation of the Government Annex, with the most expensive running to just less than $1.9 million.

Theriault said the $1.3 million version scaled back on expenses by eliminating roof repairs, a brick facade and covered entrance, and simplifying internal office structure. The cost estimate does include the cost of moving, of renting temporary office trailers and of furniture.

The plan includes space for adult education but not for the USDA.

Theriault said he had met with each of the commissioners individually over the last week and a half to discuss the renovation options.

The reduced plans and cost were not enough to satisfy Horton, who spoke first after Theriault summarized the new proposal.

“I think it is trying to do the right thing,” Horton said, but said he thought it wasn’t going to accomplish what the county wanted.

Davis next seized the opportunity to speak and said while he agreed that consolidation of the county departments in one location made sense, he was not sure the Government Annex was the right place.

“I think the final location of this concept deserves further study,” he said.

The county also has been considering building a new judicial facility, estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $20 million. A pubic hearing on that plan was held Oct. 19.

Commissioner Luke said he has been opposed to the renovation of the Government Annex from the beginning and that his position had not changed.

Daniell said he “can count to three most of the time, and I can see where this is going” but he was “very discouraged” with the decision. He called the original idea “brilliant” and said he was “really disappointed” with the apparent decision.

Hale said she wanted more information about a possible reduction in the lease price of the Courthouse Annex, referred to as the Dolvin Property, and about an increase in the amount of money the USDA might be willing to pay for its space.

She said she could be in favor of the proposal if all the pieces fell into place.

Oconee County to Get Local News Site as AOL Rolls Out Patch.com

Friday News on Friday

The Oconee County media scene will have a new player come the first of the year if AOL launches the hyperlocal web site for Watkinsville it has in the plans.

Perry Parks, a Georgia regional editor for AOL’s Patch.com project, said he expects to hire a professional editor for Watkinsville and Oconee County next month. That editor will be in charge of Oconee County exclusively and will have a budget to hire stringers to help with local coverage.

That coverage, according to Parks, will include Oconee County government, schools, sports, culture and politics. Patch.com will have a dedicated web site for Oconee County that also will serve as a portal or one-stop gateway for other news sites and blogs in the county, he said.

Parks is even closer to having a staff person operating in Athens/Clarke County and is in the process of hiring staff for other counties in the state.

AOL is rolling out web Patch.com around the country and announced on Aug. 17 that it plans to hire 500 professional journalists in 20 states this year. Patch.com had 100 web sites operational at the time.

Patch.com now has about 300 sites up and has a goal of 500 sites by the end of the year, Parks said.

AOL is trying to move away from its historical roots as an Internet service provide to become a content provider.

“We are not trying to view ourselves as a competitor” of the county’s two weeklies, Parks said. “We want to be another voice. There is plenty of room in Watkinsville.”

Parks, who has taught at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and worked as a professional journalist, lives in Oconee County.

He said his goal is to hire someone to be Oconee County editor who will live in Oconee County and work out of the home.

The first assignment of the editor is to build a comprehensive directory of county businesses and governmental offices. The directory will contain copy produced by the editor and those working for her or him, but businesses will be able to pay for additional, premium listings.

This directory is the backbone of the local Patch.com sites and is expected to bring traffic to the sites, which also will contain advertising separate from the directory as well as the other news content.

Neither of the two weeklies, The Oconee Enterprise and The Oconee Leader, has a full-service web site, and both papers give priority to their print products.

The Enterprise has an unaudited circulation of 4,000. The Leader is a free, total market circulation product, with the post office delivering to each of the roughly 9,000 households in the county.

The daily Athens Banner-Herald also has an insert in the Wednesday edition of the paper dedicated to Oconee County.

“Our overriding philosophy is that if we have more voices competing it will increase the engagement throughout the county,” Parks said. “We will do well if everyone does well.”

Parks said Patch.com will take advantage of its ability to gets its news online quickly. “If news happens on Friday night, we will be able to report it on Friday night.”

Not everyone thinks AOL’s strategy is a winner. Reuters quoted a number of skeptics last week in a summary story it wrote on the company’s plans for Patch.com.

Newspaper companies also have had trouble converting from their business model involving the printed product.

Patch.com will be operating without the expenses of an ink-on-paper operation and without any of the newspaper assumptions about how to go about the business.

“What we are starting is not a newspaper,” Parks said. “It is a web only site.” The product will be entirely focused on the local community, he added, and will be professionally staffed.

Two Oconee County BOE Candidates Differ on Assessment of School Board and Schools

Nature of Change the Issue

Carter Strickland and Mark Thomas are offering Oconee County voters distinctive choices for the Board of Education Post 2 position on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Strickland is critical of the current board, saying it needs to do a better job of listening to the citizens of the county and communicating back to those citizens.

Thomas says he does not have criticisms of the board.

Thomas says the county has “one of the top school systems in the state of Georgia” and the Board of Education must provide support, “thereby assuring our continual improvement.”

Strickland says “the BOE and the county must admit that we do have problems” and the BOE should “strive to be the best school system in the country, not just northeast Georgia.”

Strickland says the BOE should sell immediately the 6.7 acres on North Main street it bought for $900,000 on Dec. 7, 2009–“if there is anyone willing to pay the $900K the taxpayers were forced to pay for it.”

Thomas says: “We need to be good stewards of the assets we have” and, prior to making any decisions about use of the assets, “the school board should accurately assess our current and future needs.”

Thomas, who defeated incumbent Mack Guest in the July 20 Republican primary, says “That the people of Oconee County were obviously in favor of making a change in the membership of the school board” when they selected him.

Strickland agrees that voters tossed out Guest “because they clearly wanted a change.” Strickland adds: “By electing me they have a chance to make that change.”

Despite these and other differences, the candidates have similarities.

Both are self-employed, Thomas as owner of Mark Thomas Enterprises, Inc., a grading and electrical contractor, and Strickland as CEO of OurVarsity, a nationwide distributor of media content management systems.

Both have children in the Oconee County school system.

Neither of them mentions party as a reason to vote for them. Strickland, in fact, considered running as an independent before he filed as a Democrat in April.

Thomas is 50. Strickland is 40.

The man selected on Nov. 2 will be joining a school board made up of three other men and one woman.

Strickland and Thomas appeared together in two candidate forums in June, organized by the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce and by citizens groups.

And the race was featured in stories in the Athens Banner-Herald and The Oconee Leader this past week.

By 4:55 p.m. on Friday, only 1,804 of the county’s 22,606 registered voters had cast their ballots. Early voting ends at 5 p.m. this Friday.

On Monday evening, I sent to both of the candidates a list of 10 questions, asking them to provide answers to be posted on my blog.

I received the responses from Strickland on Thursday and from Thomas on Friday.

I have uploaded the answers by Strickland and Thomas to my Oconee County Observations Box.net site. I formatted the responses but otherwise did no editing.

Thomas added some additional information about himself at the end of the form, and I left the information as he had provided it.

The responses show the differences between Thomas and Strickland highlighted above and some of the similarities.

Strickland has moderated some of his responses from the candidate forums.

At the June 3 forum organized by the Chamber of Commerce, in response to a question about Superintendent John Jackson, Strickland said “if we can get rid of him without having to pay him, let’s get rid of him.”

Thomas said Jackson had a contract and the county did not need a situation where someone was being paid and not working.

And at the June 9 candidate forum , the candidates were asked to comment on “turnover and turmoil in the Oconee County School System in the last two years.”

Thomas said some turnover, at least, was routine, but Strickland said “some of the things that have been done brought me to a boil, and that is why I’m here.”

In response to an invitation from the Board of Education to all the candidates who had filed for either Post 2 or Post 3, Strickland had applied for the then-open Post 5 position. He was the only one who did so.

He subsequently was rejected, the board solicited other applicants, and Wayne Bagley was selected.

Incumbent Post 3 member Kim Argo was the only candidate to file for that slot and will be on the November ballot unopposed.

Thomas has raised $6,437 for his campaign, which included the primary battle with Guest, and spent $5,630, most of it on signs and advertising with the two local weeklies.

Strickland has not raised any money, but he has spent $637 on yard signs, his only campaign expense.

In response to my question about criticism of Superintendent Jackson, Strickland said his “job is not to criticize what has happened in the past but to bring something new to the table.”

“Oconee County needs a visionary who is politically astute, understands how to network and has a strong business background,” he wrote. “We need a person who can look 15 years into the future, understand where we need to be at that date and then has the gumption and skills to take us to that place.”

“I will not become a school board member with preconceived opinions about the performance of the school superintendent or other personnel,” Thomas wrote in his response. “I will evaluate the performance of the staff objectively and address each issue based on the facts presented.”

Thomas responded to a question about the unique characteristics, talents and perspectives he would bring to the Board by saying that he is “willing to listen to ideas and solutions from parents, teachers, administrators, support personnel, students, local citizens, and local organizations...I will communicate, cooperate, and coordinate with my colleagues.”

Strickland said he would bring outside perspectives to the board. “I have lived beyond our borders. I know what is being accomplished in other school systems,” he said. “And I know our school system is capable of achieving those great and many things if we have the right leadership.”

Thomas said voters should select him on Nov. 2 because “I have a deep interest in our school system... I am a life long resident and my family has been in Oconee County for several generations.”

“The students, teachers, administrators and parents have created a legacy of excellence in our schools,” Thomas continued. “The school board serves as a steward of that legacy. Let us preserve this tradition of excellence by voting for me.”

“The public should vote for me because the current board doesn’t want me in there,” Strickland said in response to the same question.

“I’m different. I’m new. I’m transparent. I’m not afraid to admit when I am wrong. I’m in this for you and your kids.”

Oconee Citizen Committee Gets Few Questions from Citizens about Its Courthouse Recommendation

Gets Praise from Officials for Hard Work

The Oconee County Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee got only a handful of questions tonight from the audience of about 30 that turned out to view a presentation justifying the recommendation that the county start planning now to build a judicial facility separate from the existing courthouse.

Included in the audience were a host of elected officials, including the three superior court judges, the probate court judge, the sheriff, Board of Commission Chairman Melvin Davis, Commissioners Chuck Horton and Jim Luke, and a number of county employees.

Sheriff Scott Berry, joined by the judges, argued that the current courthouse is both unsafe and inadequate for current judicial needs.

“There is a fundamental fairness, a fundament dignity that goes with being in the courthouse,” Berry said, and the current crowded facilities threaten those things.

The committee has recommended that the county build the new judicial facility near the current jail on Experiment Station road and renovate the current courthouse for administrative functions at an estimated cost of $20 to $22 million.

The goal, according to the committee presentation, would be to have the project completed in approximately 10 years.

Committee Chairman Abe Abouhamdan began the discussion of the work of the committee tonight before turning to county Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost.

Provost, who served as a resource person for the citizen committee, gave a 19-minute PowerPoint presentation, during which he noted that a number of uncertainties surround the committee proposal.

Among those is the effect of the economy on county resources and decisions now being made by the Board of Commissioners about how to renovate the Government Annex Building on SR 15 south of Watkinsville.

The BOC held a public hearing on Sept. 21 on the Government Annex renovation that ended inconclusively as the commissioners disagreed on the proposals before them.

The Sept. 21 meeting, attended by about 40 persons, was held at the Civic Center, as was the meeting tonight.

George Rodrigues, from Watkinsville and that city’s representative on the county Planning Commission, asked the committee how frequently the courthouse gets crowded as a result of the court dates, since that was mentioned as a justification for the construction of a new facility.

Sheriff Berry said there are times when five courtrooms are being used at once.

Citizen Sarah Bell asked what the committee had learned from other counties that had recently built new courthouse facilities.

She was told that mostly the counties were happy with what they had done.

Citizen Tammy Gilland asked how the other counties had funded the construction of these new facilities. The answer again was varied, with some using sales tax revenues and others leasing the facility from the Association County Commissioners of Georgia.

All but two of the 14-members of the Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee showed up for the meeting tonight, which lasted an hour.

Chairman Abe Abouhamdan had admonished the committee members at the Sept. 14 meeting for their poor record of attendance during the year and a half that it has been considering the courthouse space issue.

Missing tonight were members Diane Border and Chris Herring, who also missed many of those meetings.

BOC Chairman Davis, Commissioner Horton and Sheriff Berry were among those thanking the committee tonight for its hard work on the courthouse issue.

“I appreciate the work you have done,” Berry said. “I want to thank you for being diligent.”

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The complete video of this meeting is now available on the Oconee County Observations Vimeo site.

Citizen Group Initiated Discussion on Policy for Oconee County Web Site

CACOCWS Launched

The self-appointed Citizen Advisory Committee on the Oconee County Web Site (CACOCWS) decided tonight to break into four subcommittees to gather information before meeting again to discuss web site policy options and content.

Dan Matthews will examine what the county Parks and Recreation Department has done to develop its site, linked to the county main site but quite different stylistically from it.

Matthews also will examine how the Planning Department is using the existing county site to provide information to the public about planning issues before those issues come before the Planning Commission and the Board of Commissioners.

Tony Glenn will gather information on what the four incorporated areas of the county are doing with their web sites as well as how the Sheriff’s Office and the Board of Education use their sites.

Sarah Bell and I will attempt to gather information on the history of the county web site, the amount of money that is being invested in it, how it is managed, and what other kinds of resources the county has to support information technology.

Dan McDaniel will explore governmental web sites, with particular emphasis on those in Georgia, in an effort to find those that might serve as models for Oconee County. He also will help the committee develop ways to communicate internally and externally as it goes about its business.

The five of us met tonight for an hour at Jittery Joe’s in Watkinsville to outline issues we would like to explore and to develop ways to go about exploring them. We started our discussion at 7 p.m.

Two committee members, Oconee County Commissioner Margaret Hale and Kate McDaniel, could not attend because of last-minute changes in their schedules.

The committee is an outgrowth of an announcement I made at the Board of Commissioners meeting on May 4 that I was organizing a citizen committee to make policy recommendations for the county’s web site.

I asked the commissioners to join me, and Hale agreed. I also asked the chairpersons of the Democratic and Republican parties in the county to make nominations, and they did. I sought volunteers in a posting I made on this blog on Aug. 29. Finally, I asked the committee members to nominate a seventh member.

At the meeting tonight, we identified the following list of issues:

1. How might the county web site be used to make public announcements on issues of importance to citizens? What would the county need to do to maintain an archive of such announcements?

2. What is needed to make the site fully and easily searchable?

3. What types of public records might be made available through the web site?

4. What types of court records might be accessible?

5. What types of election and campaign records might be stored for electronic access?

6. Should there be a unified template for all county web sites, or should some of the departments develop sites that have their own style, characteristics and features?

7. What types of recreational information would be most helpful, how might it be organized, and how might the site link to other records on sports and recreational organizations in the county?

8. What kinds of opportunities might citizens be given to respond to or even contribute to the web site?

9. What policy should be created regarding government responsibility in providing information?

10. What kinds of links should be featured on the county cite? Should the site create an easy interface with sites of the four incorporated areas, the Board of Education, or the other elected officials in the county?

11. What can be done to provide for online applications for such things as building permits?

12. What needs to be done to provide the proper levels of security for the county site?

In launching the discussion, I said the committee needed to recognize that the county has very limited resources at present and that some recommendations might not be able to to be realized until county revenues recover.

The committee decided to create the subcommittees as a means of gathering information to further discussion of the issues on the list. The next meeting will be scheduled once the subcommittees have done their initial work.

The committee decided to encourage public participation in the discussion of these issues by creating a web site.

Information on access to that site will be provided here as soon as it is available.

Oconee Farmers Market Postpones Closing

A Tree-O of Four

The Oconee Farmers Market, originally scheduled to close this weekend after the Oconee Chamber Fall Festival, will remain open through the first part of November, depending on weather and what vendors have available, according to Debbie Beese, acting market manager.

Vendors will set up this weekend in the market’s usual space behind the Eagle Tavern, and they will be joined by vendors for the Chamber Fall Festival, now in its 37th year.

The Fall Festival will run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Red Oak Tree-o, a local band that played at the market earlier this summer, will be appearing again this weekend.

At its Sept. 25 appearance (pictured), the Tree-O had four members.

Gilland, Guest, Huckaby Top Fundraisers Among Oconee County Candidates

Compere Form a No Show

Tammy Gilland raised and spent more than $13,000 in her unsuccessful attempt to unseat Margaret Hale in the July 20 Oconee County Republican primary, according to finance records filed by the Sept. 30 deadline in the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration office.

Hale raised and spent just less than $8,000.

Hale got 52 percent of the vote to Gilland’s 48 percent.

Mark Thomas raised just less than $6,500 in his successful race to become the Republican nominee for Post 2 on the Board of Education. Thomas spent all but $800 of the money he raised.

Mack Guest, the incumbent Post 2 BOE member, raised $6,800 and spent about $1,000 more than that in his unsuccessful attempt to be the Republican nominee.

Thomas got 71 percent of the vote to Guest’s 29 percent.

Carter Strickland, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for the BOE Post 2 position, spent a little more than $600, but he did not report raising any money.

In the race for the House District 113 seat in the Georgia General Assembly, Hank Huckaby raised more than $114,000 and spent just less than $64,000 in his successful campaign for the Republican nomination, according to records filed with the State Ethics Commission.

Kirk Shook raised nearly $16,000 and spent nearly all of it, and Tommy Malcom raised $9,000 and spent that amount. Both also were attempting to secure the Republican nomination to replace Bob Smith, who is retiring.

Huckaby is facing Democrat Suzy Compere on the Nov. 2 ballot. Compere reported in her June 30 filing that she had not raised or spent any money on her campaign.

The State Election Commissioner web site does not show a report for Compere for the Sept. 30 period, though the grace period for filing the report ended Thursday. Candidates filing before Oct. 14 will pay a $25 late fee, and candidates filing after that date will pay an additional $50 late fee.

Oconee lies entirely within the 113th District, which also includes parts of Clarke, Morgan and Oglethorpe counties.

Huckaby received 51 percent of the votes in the July 20 primary to 30 percent for Malcom and 19 percent for Shook.

The Sept. 30 filings are cumulative, covering the entire first half of this year.

Most of the money raised and spent had been reported in the June 30 statements for the candidates for the Oconee County offices as well as for the candidates for the 113th House seat.

Huckaby was the only candidate who really added significantly to his totals in the three months after that filing. He picked up an additional $19,000.

The 2010 races saw considerably more spending than in those same races two years earlier.

In 2008, Hale had raised $6,300 and spent most of that by the Sept. 30 filing deadline. Her opponent in the Republican primary, Esther Porter, had raised $3,600 and spent all of it by Sept. 30.

In 2008, Guest had raised $3,400 and spent $4,600 by the Sept. 30 filing period. His opponent, Ryan House, had raised and spent $1,850.

Smith ran unopposed for the 113th House seat in 2008 in both the primary and the general election.