The Oconee County Board of Commissioners Tuesday night is scheduled to review water and wastewater treatment project priorities for the county as part of a proposed 2013-2014 Water and Sewer Improvements Plan.
Included will be a sewage line that could serve Zoom Bait, St. Mary’s Health Care and the Gordy tract, this time as part of a larger project providing sewage services in the northwestern part of the county, including Bogart.
In his first formal campaign presentation in incumbent Congressman Paul Broun’s home county, challenger Stephen Simpson tonight said Broun is not representing those who elected him and is absent when important business is being conducted in the country.
“We need someone who genuinely cares about his country and his constituents,” Simpson told about 30 persons attending an Oconee County Republican Party meeting. Simpson said Broun “is out of touch” with those who elected him.
Oconee County has a reputation as a bastion of conservative Republicanism.
WGAU newsman Tim Bryant even referred to the county as “Tea Party heaven” in an interview he did on his Newsmakers program on Dec. 15.
But the characterization misses some subtleties about political sentiment in the county, a survey conducted by students in a graduate research methods class in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia shows.
While many Oconee County registered voters have not yet decided how they will vote on the Transportations Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that will be on the ballot next summer, those who have already decided are split on the issue.
Voters are much more concerned about economic issues, including unemployment and the collapse of the local housing market, than they are about traffic or transportation issues.
Oconee County Administrative Office Alan Theriault did not answer one question that was central to the concerns of Pinewood Estates South residents when the residents met with county officials at the Civic Center on Dec. 12.
Would the county close down the mobile home park on Jan. 13, when it proposed to cut off water and sewer services to the residents there, one resident asked.
Oconee County Attorney Daniel Haygood has prepared a three-page “synthesis” of the county’s enabling legislation as a starting point for continued discussions Tuesday evening by the Board of Commissioners of changes in those documents.
Haygood boiled down legislation passed by the Georgia General Assembly for the county since 1917. He broke his summary into 12 “sections” that establish a “board of commissioners of roads and revenues” for the county and specify how it operates.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has not made any decision yet on disposal of the land from the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center outside Watkinsville and isn’t likely to do so until after the first of the year, a spokesperson in the department told me on Monday.
The Campell Center is one of nine facilities around the country the Agricultural Research Service is closing completely, Sandy Miller Hayes, director of information for the ARS in Beltsville, Md., told me in phone conversation on Monday. Another will be closed in part.
