The industrial development authorities of Oconee and Athens-Clarke counties in early 2012 granted two no-bid contracts totaling $870,079 to Williams and Associates land planners of Oconee County for engineering services for the Caterpillar project.
Georgia law requires bidding for construction projects, but not for the professional services provided by Williams and Associates, according to Oconee County Attorney Daniel Haygood.
Chief Superior Court Judge David Sweat wants a $25 million judicial facility added to the list of projects to be funded by Oconee County’s 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.
Oconee County Coroner Ed Carson wants $55,000 for a transport van.
These two requests bracket $100.2 million in requests that will be summarized in a public hearing with the Oconee County Board of Commissioners that will start at 6 p.m. on Monday at the Civic Center on Hog Mountain Road.
During 2013, Caterpillar created 364 of the 1,400 full-time jobs it has said it eventually will have at its newly-opened manufacturing plant on the Oconee County and Clarke County border just east of Bogart.
That figure comes from a report Rick Waller, chairman of the Oconee County Industrial Development Authority, filed on Jan. 30 with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs OneGeorgia Authority.
Architect Robert Smith got a warm reception Sunday afternoon from the 35 people who turned out for his second presentation of his plan for a revitalized downtown Watkinsville centered around the existing courthouse and a new, nearby government building.
The crowd twice applauded enthusiastically and thanked Smith for coming forward with his vision for the county seat.
The first phase of the Mars Hill Road widening project will take three years to complete, significantly disrupt traffic in the process, cost the county up to $4 million on top of state costs, and increase the volume of water in Barber Creek and its tributaries.
This is what Emil Beshara, director of the Oconee County Public Works Department, told the county’s Citizen Advisory Committee on Land Use and Transportation Planning last month.
Editorial control of the Oconee Patch web site, moved in August to Athens, has shifted again, this time to metropolitan Atlanta.
As part of a major restructuring of Patch, about two-thirds of the editorial staff members nationally have lost their jobs, according to media blogger Jim Romenesko, who has a record of breaking inside stories about Patch.
While the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce provided Epps Bridge Centre developer Frank Bishop the platform to go public with his campaign for liquor by the drink in the county, the Chamber has taken a much weaker stand itself.
Bishop, the keynote speaker at the Chamber’s Banquet and Annual Meeting last Thursday night, asked the Board of Commissioners to put the issue on the ballot and the public to vote to allow restaurants to sell liquor.
