Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin Davis is asking his fellow Board members on Tuesday night to spend up to $115,000 to create a connection between Old Mars Hill Road and the new Mars Hill Road now under reconstruction.
The change will benefit a landowner who asked Davis to alter the road design, according to email messages among county officials.
The Oconee County Animal Shelter is holding a petfest on Saturday at Heritage Park in the south of the county to raise money to support the Shelter’s adoption program.
The event will include pony rides and face painting for children, food and crafts for the adults, and low cost rabies vaccines and microchipping for the pets.
About 40 people showed up last Thursday night at a meeting in Veterans Park to learn about county plans for development of Oconee County’s Mars Hill Road corridor, and none gave evidence of being there because of happiness with how things are going as the two-lane road is widened to four lanes.
Bill Ross, hired by the county as a consultant, told the residents as the meeting got underway that he wanted to hear from them, but he also said the meeting would last only an hour.
Oconee County is scheduled to hold a meeting at 7 p.m. tomorrow night to allow the public to react to preliminary findings regarding a possible overlay district for the Mars Hill Road corridor.
The meeting, to be held at the Community Center in Veterans Park on Hog Mountain Road, is a sequel to a session held on July 23, where about 20 attendees got an introduction to the process for creation of a district.
The Oconee Leader, which ceased publication on May 15, is relaunching, with the first edition to be delivered to driveways and distribution stands around the county on Thursday.
The paper will be owned by the Athens Banner-Herald, according to an Aug. 2 post on Facebook by former Leader owner Rob Peecher.
Even though the Oconee County Calls Creek wastewater plant stopped producing solids at least a year ago, the county continued to pay a company for hauling those solids to a landfill through at least the end of April of this year, according to financial records of the county’s Utility Department.
Solids, also referred to as sludge, are removed from the raw sewage in a wastewater plant as part of the treatment process and then disposed of, generally at a landfill.
Oconee County Administrative Officer Jeff Benko raised concerns about the build up of solids at the county’s Calls Creek wastewater treatment plant at least five days before problems at the plant were exposed by a citizen and nearly four weeks before consultant Bob Sheldon said solids at the plant had reached a critical stage.
Utility Department Director Chris Thomas reassured Benko that “I think everything is ok as far as sludge goes” at the plant.
