Oconee and Walton County Officials Waiting to See if State Budget Includes Reservoir Program

Hard Labor Creek Dam at Stake

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UPDATE 4/12/2011: The Atlanta Business Chronicle has reported that the budget presented to and approved by the House and Senate today includes the $46 million requested by Gov. Nathan Deal for reservoir and water projects.

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Oconee and Walton county officials, who put forward a request to Gov. Nathan Deal last month asking for a $32 million grant to fund construction of the dam for the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir in Walton County, are now waiting to see if the reservoir program makes it into the state 2012 budget.

Though the legislature is supposed to end its 40-day session on Thursday, details of the state’s budget still are not public.

Hank Huckaby, who represents the 113th House District, told me in a telephone conversation on Friday that he expects the governor’s request for $46 million in reservoir funds to be in the budget.

Huckaby said he plans to support the request and expects it to pass both houses.

Huckaby is serving as one of Deal’s floor leaders in the House.

In a letter Oconee and Walton officials sent to Deal dated March 18, the two counties asked for $12 million in fiscal year 2012, $16 million in fiscal year 2013, and $4 million in fiscal year 2014 for the reservoir.

Luke at BOC 4/11/2011

The letter was signed by Jim Luke, Oconee County commissioner and chairman of the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir Management Board, Melvin Davis, chairman of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, Kevin Little, chairman of the Walton County Board of Commissioners, and Timmy Shelnutt, chairman of the Walton County Water and Sewage Authority.

Jimmy Parker, vice president of Precision Planning Inc. of Lawrenceville, told me last week that the $32 million requested from the state would allow the two counties to build the dam, but they would still need another $79.2 million to build the water treatment plant and transmission pipes as well as cover other expenses of the project.

PPI is the project manager for the reservoir.

The total cost for the first phase of the reservoir has been estimated at $170,200, and the two counties have contributed $59 million. Oconee County has sold bonds for $19.5 million for the project.

The total estimated cost of the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir project, including piping of water from the Apalachee River to increase its volume, is estimated at $350 million.

The counties have stopped construction work on the dam because of a lack of money to complete the project and lack of current demand for the water it would provide.

The governor has proposed that the state sell $46 million in bonds to create a fund for reservoir development and create a fund of $300 million over the next four years for that purpose.

Huckaby said it is his understanding the bonds would be retired through general revenue of the state.

Huckaby is from Oconee County and is the county’s citizen representative on the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir Management Board.

All of Oconee County falls in the 113th District, which also includes parts of Clarke, Morgan and Oglethorpe counties.

The letter sent by Luke and the others to Deal had been approved by the Board at its Feb. 15 meeting, according to Huckaby and Parker. The official minutes have not been released.

In the letter, the officials note that the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir “would have the most significant and immediate impact in providing additional water supply capacity for the Northeast Georgia Region.”

The letter continues:

“As the fate of metro Atlanta’s water supply remains in jeopardy due to the 2012 Federal court deadline for withdrawals from the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier, the proximity of the Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir Project to the metro region....would provide much needed ‘security’ in meeting critical future water supply needs for the entire region.”

Huckaby said the issue of interbasin transfers of water is “touchy” in the legislature because it pits downstream water interests against upstream demands.

The Hard Labor Creek Reservoir is in the Oconee River basin and metro Atlanta is not, so transfer of water to Atlanta from Hard Labor Creek Reservoir would be an interbasin transfer.

If the legislature does authorize Deal’s reservoir program, the state will have to develop criteria for allocating the money to applicants such as Oconee and Walton counties, according to Huckaby.

“There are a lot of issues still to be resolved,” he said.

Tiny City of Bishop Puts Most Expensive Project on Oconee County T-SPLOST List

A Bypass at That

Tiny Bishop won the Oconee County T-SPLOST list sweepstakes.

With only 224 residents, the smallest of the county’s four cities landed a project worth $175 million on the list the county submitted for possible inclusion as part of the August 2012 referendum on a regional transportation sales tax increase.

That $175 million project–the widening of U.S. 441 to four lanes in the southern part of the county with a bypass of Bishop–accounts for nearly half of the total $370 million in projects submitted by the county at the end of the month to the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The Oconee list is for regional projects to be covered by the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, and it has to be merged with similar requests for regional projects from the other 11 counties in the Northeast Georgia region.

Whether the Bishop project survives the NEGRC and GDOT review process and then the political negotiations to create the final list for voter approval is quite another matter. The widening of U.S. 441 was stricken from and then reinserted on the Oconee County list at the last minute.

Oconee County joins Barrow, Clarke, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Jasper, Madison, Morgan, Newton, Oglethorpe and Walton counties to form the district.

Oconee submitted a regional list on March 30 containing eight capital projects, 12 safety improvement projects, and six projects inside the cities. Included were three projects for Watkinsville, two for Bogart and the Bishop project.

North High Shoals did not submit a project.

The total cost of the 26 Oconee County and city regional projects was $369,809,398.

The state is projecting that the one-cent-on-a-dollar transportation sales tax, if it is approved by voters in the 12-county Northeast Georgia region, will generate between $957,978,000 (low estimate) and $1,024,753,000 (base estimate) between 2013 and 2022.

But only 75 percent of those funds are to be allocated to regional projects of the sort on the Oconee County list. The remaining 25 percent is to be allocated to counties using a formula based on road miles.

Oconee officials have estimated the county would get more than $1 million through this direct allocation.

The 26 Oconee County projects would absorb 48.1 percent of the base estimate of $768,564,750.00 for regional projects and 51.5 percent of the low estimate of $718,483,500.

Obviously, Oconee County, with only 6.8 percent of the registered voters in the 12-county region, is unlikely to see its full list of 26 projects make the final project list for the tax.

The Athens Banner-Herald reported on April 4 that the 12 counties have submitted more than 150 projects that would cost about $2 billion to complete, or more than 2.5 times the money likely to be available.

The decision on which regional projects from the 12 counties get on the list will be made by the Northeast Georgia Regional Roundtable, made up the chairman of the commission in each county and one mayor from each county.

Oconee BOC Chairman Melvin Davis and Watkinsville Mayor Joe Walter represent Oconee County.

The executive committee of the Roundtable will make the first screening, and Davis was elected to that group at a meeting held in Oconee County on Dec. 7 of last year.

Projects that survive the review might well be those that appeal to voters in the most populous counties, and Oconee County is at an advantage if that is the case.

SR 316 and U.S. 441 both serve Athens-Clarke County, the largest county in the region with 18.7 percent of the registered voters.

Three of Oconee’s projects are grade-separated interchanges on SR 316, which links Athens to Atlanta. These would be at the Oconee Connector Extension, Jimmy Daniell Road, and at a new roadway to Bogart that would intersect SR 316 between McNutt Creek Road and Pete Dickens Road. The total cost estimate for the three is $85 million.

The widening of U.S. 441 would provided upgraded access between Athens-Clarke and Morgan, Newton and Jasper counties in the southwest of the transportation district. Newton is the second most populous of the 12 counties in the district.

It also is possible the Roundtable might try to pick popular projects in each of the counties. Oconee’s top project was the widening of Mars Hill Road from SR 316 to Watkinsville. Cost for that project is $66.6 million.

A committee made up of Davis, Wayne Provost, director of strategic and long-range planning for Oconee County, County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault, and Public Works Director Emil Beshara created the first list of projects that was presented to the BOC on March 1.

At its March 29 meeting, the BOC added the two interchange upgrades on SR 316 but struck the U.S. 441 widening.

Provost, after that decision was made, said the city of Bishop might not be happy with the exclusion of the U.S. 441 project.

Provost suggested, and Davis agreed, that Bishop should be given a chance to make a last-minute submission.

According to Theriault, Bishop added the project back to the list before it was sent to the state on March 30.

If included on the final list submitted to voters by the Regional Roundtable and then approved by voters in the referendum, each of the 224 citizens of Bishop would have brought the county $781,250 in road tax money.

That would be quite a reward for insisting on getting a project onto the county's T-SPLOST list.

Closing of Campbell Research Center Could Change Character of Oconee County

End Could Be This Week

The J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center in Oconee County is caught in the middle of the budget crisis in Washington.

If the federal government closes down on Friday, the Center, as a federal agency, must close.

If the House and the Senate reach agreement and President Barack Obama agrees but the agreement does not put sufficient money in the budget for continuation of the Natural Resource Conservation Center, it could be forced to shut down immediately.

The long-term prospects are equally gloomy. Unless Congress overrules President Obama and increases funding for the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service, the 1,100-acre Campbell Center will end its operation on Oct. 1.

The 25 Campbell Center employees have been dealing with the uncertainty for the last several months.

“Uncertainty is the hardest thing for the staff,” Dwight Fisher, research leader at the Center, told me in a telephone conversation Wednesday evening. “I want to tell them something certain and I can’t.”

While the impact of the closing of the Campbell Center will affect the staff most dramatically, across time all of Oconee County could be impacted by its closing.

Should I be worried?



The 1,107 acres held for the Center makes up a little less than 1 percent of the total acreage in the county.

But just fewer than 610 of those acres are in the middle of the most densely settled part of the county east of Butler’s Crossing and north of Watkinsville.

And 245 of those acres are across Hog Mountain Road from the Civic Center, which is the part of the county undergoing the most rapid change before the current economic downturn hit.

Only 253 of the acres are in the southern, largely agricultural part of the county.

The existence of surplus commercial and residential land in the county makes it unlikely the Campbell Center land will become shopping centers and subdivisions very soon.

A seven-acre tract of land at the corner of Daniells Bridge Road and Hog Mountain Road–nearly surrounded by the USDA land–was rezoned for office park and business use in September of 2005 and remains undeveloped. The property is listed for sale at present.

The long-term impact of the closing of the agriculture research center is another matter.

Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis wrote in his County Talk column on March 3 that the USDA land “adds a rural feel to the Oconee County area. I for one would certainly like to see it kept that way.”

Davis told me when I met with him in his office the next day that he had talked with staff of Sen. Saxby Chambliss about the importance of the Campbell Center to Oconee County. He sent me an email message the next day saying that he had forgotten to tell me he also had talked with staff of Sen. Johnny Isakson about the Center.

The Center has been operating on a Agriculture Research Service budget allocation of $2.9 million per year, according to Fisher. Those funds have been supplemented by grant monies, he added.

Since Oct. 1 of last year, when the current fiscal year began, the Center has been operating as if it would get $2.9 million again this year, Fisher said. Congress is still trying to agree on this year’s budget, six months into the fiscal year.

Oconee Patch broke the story of the proposed closing of the Campbell Center on Feb. 18.

It followed on Feb. 24 with a second story about the uncertainty created for the workers at the Center by the possible closing.

The Athens Banner-Herald had a story that same day.

The Oconee Leader followed with a story the next day.

The acreage making up the Campbell Center is spread around the county, is generally unmarked, and is odd shaped, making it difficult for citizens of the county to know what will be affected.

None of those stories contained maps or property descriptions.

Fisher provided me with aerial photographs. I’ve labeled the roadways and included the photographs here.

I’ve also matched the photographs with the county’s tax records and maps.

The North Unit consists of four tax parcels totaling 276 acres. It is north of Hog Mountain Road and mostly between Daniells Bridge Road and Welbrook Road.

North Unit

The East Unit is mostly south of Hog Mountain Road, though it does include a spur north of that road along Cliff Dawson Road. It consists of 333 acres and includes the headquarters of the Campbell Center at the intersection of Government Station Road and Experiment Station Road.

East Unit

The East Unit is mostly northeast of Experiment Station Road, except for a 15-acre parcel between the entrance to Gainesville State College Oconee Campus and U.S. 441 Bypass.

The West Unit is on Hog Mountain Road North of the Civic Center. It straddles Burr Harris Road and runs through to Mars Hill Road. It consists of 245 acres.

The South Unit is on Colham Ferry Road south of Coventry Road. It is made up of 253 acres.

West Unit

According to the tax records, the total property is valued at $15.7 million.

Research at the Campell Center focuses on “natural resource conservation,” Fisher told me. Much of the work is designed to “develop methods to restore topsoil.”

Fisher said the Center has been awarded a $250,000 federal grant to look at crop rotation techniques for organic grain crops, and he and had hoped to launch that on the West Unit this year. No pesticides have been applied there for five years, he said.

The research being done at the Center is important for Oconee County and the region, he said.

“There are so many reasons why local products are better” than imported ones, he said, and the research at the Center focuses on local crops, soils and techniques.

South Unit

The Center also is home to a cattle herd, now consisting of 300 cows and approximately 300 calves.

The cattle are a very common sight for those who drive along Hog Mountain Road.

The herd, Fisher said, technically is owned by the University of Georgia. When cattle are sold, the money goes into an account in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, he said.

Dean J. Scott Angle of the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and a resident of Oconee County, confirmed that arrangement.

If the Campbell Center closes, the cattle will be broken up.

The UGA 90-acre Horticulture Farm on Hog Mountain Road abuts the East Unit of the Campbell Center.

Angle told me in a telephone conversation on Friday that the University is interested in the Campell Center land if the Center closes and the land becomes available.

“We would like to continue to use the land in the way it has been used,” he said.

If the federal government decides to close the Oconee research center, the land would become available to federal and then state agencies before it would be sold to the public, Fisher said.

The agriculture college also operates its Plant Sciences Farm on 524 acres on Hog Mountain Road and Snows Mill Road across from North Oconee High School.

The UGA College of Veterinary Medicine has a 209-acre farm on Rose Creek Drive in the southern part of the county.

The University System of Georgia also has 109 acres on Astondale Road, south of the Veterinary Medicine farm, that is used as the Equestrian Complex by the UGA Athletics Department.

While working on this story I heard from two sources, one in development and the other associated indirectly with the university, that the Plant Science Farm is on the market.

I asked Dean Angle about that rumor, and he said “I cannot comment on that.”

He also told me he was the person at the university who could tell me if the rumor was correct.

I asked him when he might be able to comment.

“Hopefully some time this year,” he said.

That property is assessed at $6.9 million.

Fisher assumed the job as research leader at the Campbell Center in February of 2009, just after the Center learned it would survive the last threat to its existence. It had been slated to close at the beginning of the budget year in October of 2008.

“Next year will be our 75th anniversary,” Fisher told me when I talked with him last week. “I don’t want to be the last research leader.”

Pictures from Four Units 4/2/2011

Oconee Commissioners Add and Subtract Projects from T-SPLOST List

Loop 10 Flyover Scuttled

The Oconee County Board of Commissioners tonight made significant changes to the list of projects the county will send forward for potential inclusion in the 2012 Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum.

The Board eliminated the Daniells Bridge Road Extension and flyover of SR Loop 10 entirely after protest from citizens in the area, scratched the widening of US 441 in the south of the county, and added three new projects to the list of capital projects.

Added to the capital project list were an entrance to Gainesville State College from the U.S. 441 Bypass of Watkinsville on an extension of Bishop Farms Parkway, which now is the only access to the college.

Also added were the upgrade of two interchanges on SR 316, one at Jimmy Daniell Road and the other at McNutt Creek Road. The upgraded SR 316 interchanges would be grade separated, meaning they would include a bridge.

Already on the list was a grade separated upgrade of the SR 316 interchange at the Oconee Connector.

The top three projects on the list remain the three phases of the widening of Mars Hill Road from SR 316 to Watkinsville.

The Oconee Connector interchange is ranked fourth, followed by the widening of Jimmy Daniell Road, the entrance to Gainesville State College and the Jimmy Daniell and McNutt Creek Road interchanges.

The list now goes to the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Transportation for review.

Commissioners Chuck Horton and Margaret Hale took the lead in eliminating the Daniells Bridge Road Extension, saying they were responding to feedback from people in the neighborhood who opposed the project.

Three persons, including me, spoke at the meeting tonight about that project and asked that it be eliminated or expanded to include significant additional improvements to the existing Daniells Bridge Road.

The proposed extension would have been four lanes wide and would have deposited traffic on a two-lane Daniells Bridge Road.

The county has said it cannot widen Daniells Bridge Road from Chestnut Hill Road to the Oconee Connector to four lane in the existing right of way.

Commissioner John Daniell said that while he agreed to pull the project from the list, that did not mean that the flyover would not be built at some point in the future. It is part of the county’s commitment to expand the commercial hub at the SR Loop 10 and SR 316 interchange, he said.

Commissioner Jim Luke was the advocate for addition of the SR 316 interchanges. He said he felt everyone in the county agreed that the roadway needs to be upgraded for safety reasons.

BOC Chairman Melvin Davis had added the Gainesville College interchange to the list via an email message he sent to the other commissioners on March 23.

The original list had been created by Davis, county Administrative Officer Alan Theriault, Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost, and Public Works Director Emil Beshara and had been presented to the BOC on March 1.

Davis and the three other administrators also had created a list of nine additional project, labeled as Safety Improvement Projects, for that same meeting.

Tonight Beshara and Provost gave the Board a revised list with three additional projects, the widening and reconstruction of Daniells Bridge Road from Chestnut Hill Road to Hog Mountain Road, the widening of Union Church Road, and upgrades to 10 rail crossings in the county.

That list was approved by the BOC without alteration.

The three projects of the city of Watkinsville, an extension of Simonton Bridge Road to route traffic around downtown, sidewalks for Simonton Bridge Road and sidewalks for Harden Hill Road, also were forwarded to NEGRC and GDOT.

Two last minute additions to the list from Bogart also were passed forward. They are for improvements to the Burson Avenue and Atlanta Highway interchange and widening of Osceola Avenue.

After the review by the regional commission and GDOT, the Oconee list will go to a regional roundtable, which will merge the requests with those of the 11 other counties in the regional transportation district.

It also will pare down the lists to reflect projected revenue from the tax.

The other counties are Barrow, Clarke, Jackson, Walton, Greene, Jasper, Morgan, Newton, Elbert, Madison and Oglethrope.

In August of 2012, voters in those 12 counties will be asked to approve an increase in sales tax of one penny on the dollar to fund the list of transportation projects agreed upon by the roundtable.

The tax, if approved by the majority of voters in the district, will run for 10 years.

Oconee County Commissioners Make Share the Road Signage Decision Via Email

A Meeting by “Virtual Means”

Oconee County will place Share the Road signs on Simonton Bridge, Barnett Shoals and Colham Ferry roads following a decision by the Board of Commissioners made last month through an email exchange.

The Board decided in that exchange to allow County Administrative Officer Alan Theriault to handle a request by the Oconee County Cycling Organization that the signs be placed on the roads rather than take a formal vote on the request at a public meeting.

Theriault sent out his email message to the five commissioners at 6:19 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 4, asking them to “let me know your thoughts on how you wish to proceed” on the road signage.

Commissioner John Daniell wrote back a few minutes later saying “I don’t support the adding of the signage at this time. If I am the lone no, then feel free to move forward administratively.”

Beshara at Meeting March 8

Commissioner Jim Luke wrote back on the next afternoon, saying “I think our roadways are becoming cluttered with all the signs that we have installed.” If Public Works Director Emil Beshara did not object to the new signs, Luke said, “I say go ahead with a limited number.”

Chairman Melvin Davis sent Theriault an email message on the following Monday, saying “I am OK with the administrative approval of the signage installation” so long as the signs were paid for by the bikers.

Commissioner Margaret Hale wrote the next morning, Feb. 8, saying “I am good with administrative.”

The email correspondence, which I requested from the county in an open records request, does not contain any response from Commissioner Chuck Horton to Theriault’s Feb. 4 email.

Horton told me over the phone on Saturday that he “had a conversation with Alan face-to-face” and told Theriault the way he proposed to handle the signs was “OK with me.”

On Feb. 22, Theriault sent an email to Richard McSpadden, who had requested that the county put up the signs.

Theriault wrote that the BOC is “in agreement that handling this administratively is a far better course of action than the bureaucracy of a formal vote in a meeting.”

He told McSpadden the county was ready to go forward with installation of the signs.

Theriault sent an email message to the BOC members on Feb. 25 indicating that the county was working out the “final details” of installation of the signs.

Beshara told me in an email message he sent me March. 24 that he has ordered the signs for the road and some of them have come in. He is waiting on the remaining signs before he begins installation.

Beshara already has placed the signs on New High Shoals Road–the fourth road for which the Oconee County Cycling Organization requested the signs in a letter it sent to BOC Chairman Melvin Davis in July of 2010.

In that letter McSpadden, representing OCCO, said, at the suggestion of Davis and Horton, he was asking that his letter be sent to the Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning for review and a recommendation “to the Board of Commissioners.”

That Committee began its review of the issue at its Sept. 14 meeting and returned to it at its meeting on Nov. 9.

At that meeting, the Committee voted unanimously “to recommend to the Board of Commissioners that the road signs be placed as requested, with OCCO paying for the signs,” according to the minutes of that meeting.

But the matter never made it to the BOC.

And when the Athens Banner-Herald wrote on March 1 that the signs would “sprout along Colham Ferry Road,” it didn’t explain how or when that decision was made.

Georgia’s Open and Public Meetings Law, last overhauled in 1999, doesn’t deal with the type of email exchange the BOC engaged in to reach a decision about the Share the Road signs.

It simply defines a meeting as “the gathering of a quorum of the members of the governing body.” All such meetings must be advertised in advance, open to the public, include an advance agenda and result in official minutes.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens’ proposed rewrite of that law, which is stuck in the Georgia House of Representatives at present, also did not address the issue.

The Association County Commissioners of Georgia, however, in its review of the Georgia Open Meetings and Open Records Laws, states on page 7 that boards of commissioners cannot hold a meeting over the telephone.

The document cities a 2001 Georgia Court of Appeals case in which the court wrote on page 3 that, “In this digital age, we recognize that meetings may be held in ways that were not contemplated when the (Georgia Open Meetings) Act was initially drafted.”

The court further wrote that a meeting “within the definition of the Act may be conducted by written, telephonic, electronic, wireless or other virtual means.”

Since it is a meeting as covered by the Act, it would have to be publicized in advance, open to the public, have an agenda and result in minutes.

Oconee BOC Chairman Davis is the First Vice President of ACCG.

Oconee County Commissioners Scheduled to Review T-SPLOST Project List

Clarke, Newton, Walton and Barrow Key

The Oconee County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to review at its agenda-setting meeting Tuesday night possible transportation projects to be included in a new sales tax referendum to go before voters in August of 2012.

Included on the list are seven major construction projects and nine smaller projects selected by Board Chairman Melvin Davis and three county administrators and three projects submitted by Watkinsville.

As of the end of the day on Friday, the deadline for the cities to submit their lists, Bishop, Bogart and North High Shoals had not submitted any projects, according to Alan Theriault, county administrative officer.

The BOC Tuesday night could modify the list, decide not to send forward any projects or even decide that Oconee County doesn’t want to participate in the T-SPLOST initiative.

Opting out of the tax, which would add 1 cent to the existing 7-cents-on-a-dollar sales tax already in place, is rather unlikely.

Wayne Provost, director of strategic and long-range planning for the county, told the Commissioners on March 1 that the county will get double the money from the state for its road projects compared to today if the tax is approved.

He also said the county will be penalized by reduced state funding for local roads if it doesn’t seek the tax or if voters don’t approve it.

Oconee County cannot act alone. The decision on participation in the referendum must be made in collaboration with the 11 other counties that form the special tax district for the referendum.

If the county is successful in getting some of the projects from the list it submits on the approved project list for the referendum, those would be funded by the sales tax, which, according to state estimates, will generate $1.5 billion in tax revenue each year.

Oconee County is lumped with Barrow, Clarke, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Jasper, Madison, Morgan, Newton, Oglethorpe and Walton counties for purposes of the tax project.

All of those counties must agree on the final list to submit to voters, and a majority of voters in the 12-county district must approve in the August 2012 referendum for the tax to go into effect.

Completed Loop

The Oconee County list, with or without submissions from the four cities in the county, must be submitted to the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission by March 30. The list will be reviewed by the Regional Commission and then by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The Executive Committee of what is called the Northeast Georgia Regional Roundtable will view the lists submitted by the 12 counties, match them with the expected revenue from the tax, and create the final list to be submitted back to the Roundtable and then to the voters.

The projects on the list approved by the Roundtable will be the ones to be funded by 75 percent of the tax revenue. The remaining 25 percent will be returned to the counties and cities for transportation projects, based on a formula reflecting road miles.

BOC Chairman Melvin Davis and Watkinsville Mayor Walter are on the regional Roundtable.

Davis is one of five members of that group elected to the Executive Committee at a meeting held on Dec. 7 of last year.

The other four are Hunter Bicknell from Jackson County, Kevin Little from Walton County, Kathy Morgan from Newton County and Billy Pittard from Oglethorpe County.

All five are commission chairs. At the Dec. 7 meeting, Bicknell was elected chair of the Executive Committee.

The Georgia House Transportation Committee has named two additional members of the executive committee (Rep. Tom McCall, Elbert County, and Rep. Len Walker, Walton County), and the Senate Transportation Committee has named one (Sen. Frank Ginn, Madison County). These three members are nonvoting.

The meeting on Tuesday night will be the second opportunity for Oconee County citizens to voice their opinions about the proposed list. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in the courthouse in Watkinsville.

Citizens were given a chance to speak at the March 8 meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee after that Committee reviewed the list. It did not take any formal action on the proposed projects.

After the Northeast Roundtable Executive Committee creates its short list, but before the Roundtable takes a final vote, citizens will have two additional chances to comment on the list, according to the minutes of the Dec. 7 meeting. The details of the scheduling of those citizen meetings are not final.

The list of major projects created by Chairman Davis and the county administrators consists of the widening of Mars Hill Road and Experiment Station Road from SR 316 to Watkinsville (three phases), construction of a grade-separated interchange for SR 316 and the Oconee Connector, the widening of Jimmy Daniel Road from Mars Hill Road to the Clarke County line, the construction of an extension of Daniells Bridge Road with a flyover of SR 10 Loop, and the widening and reconstruction of US 441 to four lanes from the Watkinsville bypass to the Madison bypass.

The smaller projects, called safety improvement projects, are for Astondale Road, Barnett Shoals Road, Bob Godfrey Road, Clotfelter Road, Colham Ferry Road, Hodges Mill Road, Salem Road, Simonton Bridge Road, and Mars Hill/RockyBranch/Virgil Langford roads.

Mayor Walter told me, and Theriault confirmed, that Watkinsville is asking that three projects be added to the list.

The top Watkinsville project, Walter said, is a Simonton Bridge Connector, which would skirt downtown Watkinsville from the intersection of Experiment Station Road and Main Street to Simonton Bridge Road.

The second project is for a sidewalk on Harden Hill Road from New High Shoals Road to Main Street, and the third is a sidewalk on Simonton Bridge Road from Main Street to the city limits. These latter two would fall under the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Area, Walter said.

At the Oconee County Land Use Committee meeting on March 8, citizens were presented only with the County list, and several voiced concern about the design of the Mars Hill Road widening and about the Daniells Bridge Road flyover.

The project description for the Daniells Bridge Road Extension calls for construction of an new road from just north of the Chestnut Hill Road intersection with Daniells Bridge Road to Jennings Mill Parkway, at Home Depot, across SR 10 Loop.

The new roadway would be four lanes wide, but it would intersect with and put traffic on the existing Daniells Bridge Road, which is only two lanes wide at that point.

County Director of Public Works Emil Beshara and Provost told the citizens at the March 8 meeting that the county would need to make improvements to Daniells Bridge Road should the project be funded, though those improvements are not included in the project description.

The Daniells Bridge Road Extension is listed as a $10 million project. Beshara said at the March 8 meeting he estimates the additional work needed to upgrade Daniells Bridge Road would cost another $20 million.

According to the project description Provost provided to the Land Use and Transportation Planning Committee, the Daniells Bridge Road Extension would relieve traffic from the SR 316 Loop 10 interchange and the SR 316 and Oconee Connector intersection “by providing an alternate route” to and from Watkinsville.

That route would be Daniells Bridge Road.

Beshara said at the March 8 meeting that traffic might be allowed to enter and leave SR Loop 10 at the flyover, adding additional traffic to Daniells Bridge Extension and to Daniells Bridge Road itself.

Daniells Bridge Road is three lanes wide from its intersection with the Oconee Connector to Founders Grove Boulevard, but it is only two lanes wide from that point to where it ends at Hog Mountain Road.

The county envisions the Daniells Bridge Road Extension as part of a commercial loop roadway around the SR 316 and Loop 10 interchange.

The northern part of that loop is currently under construction and is designed to open up additional land behind Lowe’s and Wal-Mart for commercial development.

That part of the project is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

In December of 2008, when the BOC rezoned property in the blind curve on Daniells Bridge Road just west of the proposed terminus of the Daniells Bridge Road Extension, Beshara told the Commission that the county did not have sufficient right of way to make Daniells Bridge Road four lanes wide through the blind curve.

He said that the better strategy would be to build a new roadway south of the existing road. That would require acquisition of property and cost $20 million, he acknowledged at the March 8 meeting.

The county has never released a map of such a road. The only one it has released (above) shows an upgraded Daniells Bridge Road following its existing path.

Four major subdivisions depend on Daniells Bridge Road for access: Founders Grove (and Settlers Ridge), with about 120 lots, Welbrook Farms (115 lots), Birchmore Hills (80 lots) and Lake Wellbrook (115 lots). All are largely built out.

Additional, smaller subdivisions are on Chestnut Hill Road and along Daniells Bridge Road.

I live in Welbrook Farms and was one of those who spoke at the March 8 meeting suggesting that the county either drop the Daniells Bridge Road Extension from its list or expand the project to fully upgrade Daniells Bridge Road.

Procedures for creation of the list of T-SPLOST projects are specified in House Bill 277, called the Transportation Investment Action, passed by the General Assembly last year and signed into law by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue in June.

Rep. Bob Smith and Sen. Bill Cowsert, representing Oconee County, voted for the bill.

The tax will apply to food and beverages, but it will not apply to fuel for motor vehicles or for off-road farm equipment. It also will not be placed on sale of jet fuel and the sale of energy for manufacturing.

If approved, the tax would start in 2013 and run for 10 years.

The sales tax was selected over an increase in the gas tax in part because people are driving more fuel efficient cars, carpooling and using mass transit, making the gas tax inadequate revenue source, according to the state web site created to explain the tax.

As of March 1, 2011, according to the Georgia Secretary of State records, 310,744 active voters were registered in the 12 counties that make up the Northeast Georgia T-SPLOST tax district.

Of those, only 6.8 percent are in Oconee County.

Clarke Count has 18.7 percent of the voters, followed by Newton with 17.9 percent, Walton with 15.5 percent and Barrow with 11.1 percent. In total, 63.2 percent of the active registered voters are from those four counties.
While Oconee County voters will have relatively limited impact on the vote outcome, they will pay the tax when they shop at home or in other counties in the district, if voters in the district approve it.

If it gets some projects from the county onto the list presented to voters, more of those tax dollars will come back to the county than if it does not.

That is why the list the BOC will review on Tuesday night is so important.

Oconee County Commissioners Approve One More Gas Station and Convenience Store for SR 316

Competition by Tree Clustering

After a four-month delay, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners on March 1 cleared the way for the county to get another gas station and convenience store.

This one—slated to be a RaceTrac--will be at the intersection of Mars Hill Road and U.S. 78, diagonal to an existing BP Station. Both the existing BP and the proposed new RaceTrac are just a short distance from the U.S. 78 intersection with SR 316.

The BOC actually approved the rezone for the gas station and convenience store at its regular meeting on Nov. 2, but the approved plans did not fit the 2.4-acre lot and could not work unless the county set aside a zoning rule.

The developers wanted to reduce the buffer between the property and the adjoining property on Mars Hill Road, zoned for agriculture, from 50 feet to 13 feet.

Insert RaceTrac on right, as
Mars Hill Road meets U.S. 78.

The concept plan submitted with the rezone shows parking and a driveway extending into the 50-foot buffer.

Jon Williams of Williams & Associates, representing RaceTrac Petroleum, Inc., asked the Board in November to approve the rezone, even though it didn’t fit zoning rules, but to table action on a variance request to allow the intrusion into the buffer.

Williams said he was “contractually obligated to continue with the rezone” request and was asking the Board to help him by dealing with the rezone even though he did not have a resolution to the variance issue.

The BOC went along with Williams’ request.

The Commission was scheduled to take up that variance request at its meetings in December. Williams again asked for and got a postponement.

The same thing happened in January and February.

On Feb. 15, Troy W. Porterfield Jr. of Monroe, who owns the adjoining 20-acre plot at 4060 Mars Hill Road, sent the county a letter saying he had met with the applicants “and reviewed their plans.”

He said he didn’t need any buffer at all between the incompatible rezones, and that is what the BOC approved on March 1.

The November BOC vote changed the zoning for the 2.4-acre lot from Industrial to B-2, or Highway Business District.

The property is owned by Southeastern PVC Pipe Mfg., Inc. Kenneth Orkin is named as the representative of Southeastern PVC Pipe Mfg. in the rezone submittal.

Orkin, of Marietta, is the CEO of Southeastern PVC Pipe Mfg. Inc., according to the Georgia Secretary of State corporation database.

The lot has never been developed, according to planning documents, and is wooded. It is a separated parcel of what is often referred to as the Orkin Tract. The bulk of that 384-acre tract, considered a prime development site in the area, lies north of SR 316 and west of U.S. 78.

The proposed convenience store will be 7,600 square feet in size and have a brick façade, according to the plans submitted by Williams.

The gas station will have 18 fueling positions under a canopy.

The property is proposed to have entrances on both Mars Hill Road and U.S. 78.

In addition to the buffer variance, Williams also wanted to reduce the number of required trees on the developed site and to cluster them, rather than spread them across the green space on the property.

Williams wrote in planning documents that the change was “to allow for enhanced visibility of an upscale commercial development.”

Williams was allowed by the BOC to cluster his trees, but not reduce their number. Commissioner Chuck Horton voted against the tree variance request but for the rezone.

Commissioner John Daniell recused himself from all the votes on the project, including the repeated tabling of the buffer variance request, because the company he works for, Boswell Oil, does business with RaceTrac.

As recently as June of 2009, the BOC dealt with a similar problem of a planned gas station and convenience store that did not fit the lot for which it was proposed.

QuikTrip was before the BOC with its plans to build a gas station and convenience store on a 1.3-acre lot at the intersection of Mars Hill Road, the Oconee Connector and Daniells Bridge Road.

That station and store are three miles from the proposed RaceTrac and also just off SR 316.

QuikTrip asked for—and got—permission to put some of its parking spaces in the 30-foot setbacks from the Oconee Connector ansd Daniells Bridge Road.

QuikTrip also said it needed to have fewer trees and have them clustered so drivers on could see the facility.

The BOC said the station could not reduce the number of trees and could not cluster them.

QuikTrip has generated a lot of traffic despite the trees and how they are planted.

By the end of the year, according to the schedule Williams submitted with the rezone application, RaceTrac will join QuikTrip in the heavily gas-stationed and convenience-stored area around SR 316.

RaceTrac will have the advantage of clustered trees--quite a plus, according to Williams--in its competition for the attention of potential customers.