Only a relatively small percentage of Oconee County’s 22,765 registered voters is likely to decide whether the current sales tax of one cent on a dollar for educational projects, which expires at the end of 2012, will be extended through the end of 2017.
Early voting began on Monday, and by late afternoon today only 21 had voted, according to Carole Amos in the Oconee County elections office.
Charles Ivie is a man of few words. Dan Matthews is a man of many.
At least that was the persona the two Watkinsville mayoral candidates demonstrated in the forum organized for them on Thursday night.
Reconstruction of stream beds and trails in Heritage Park is on schedule, according to Oconee County Parks and Recreation Director John Gentry, and he expects the park to be reopened as planned in early December.
The trails have been closed since early August, when the county began a $1 million mitigation project in the park to offset stream bed destruction that will result from construction of the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir in Walton County.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday is set to fill the vacancy on the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir Management Board created back in early July when citizen member Hank Huckaby resigned to become chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
At its Sept. 27 agenda-setting meeting, the commissioners tentatively decided to replace Huckaby with Commissioner Chuck Horton, and the Board is scheduled to take final action on that decision at its regular meeting on Tuesday.
Emil Beshara, Public Works director for Oconee County, started at the top of the list of road projects presented him by the Citizen Advisory Committee for Land Use and Transportation Planning.
The Committee had spent two full meetings identifying and then ranking in terms of importance the 23 roadway projects in the county that, according to Committee Chairman Abe Abouhamdan, “could use some improvements.”
The Committee said improvements to the intersection of Union Church and Hog Mountain roads was its top priority.
Funding for the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center on Government Station Road outside Watkinsville officially comes to an end on Sept. 30, and long-term prospects for the facility are bleak at best.
Congress has not agreed on an agricultural appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012, which starts on Oct. 1.
Oconee County residents unhappy with the partition of the county in house redistricting last month should appreciate that it could have been a lot worse, Rep. Doug McKillip and Rep. Chuck Williams said Thursday night.
The “guys in the map office” wanted to split the county in half, McKillip told those who gathered at the Oconee County Republican meeting at the Civic Center in Watkinsville, but McKillip said he advised against it.
