The Oconee County Board of Commissioners formally approved property tax rates for the county on Tuesday night, adopting a millage rate of 6.686 for the unincorporated parts of the county and 7.626 in the county’s four cities.
The millage rates are unchanged from a year ago, but they represent a tax increase because property in the county has been assessed at a higher value this year than last, reflecting the inflationary forces in the market.
All four of the applicants who appeared before the Oconee County Planning Commission last week had a similar request.
Each had begun the rezone application to convert land now zoned for agriculture to residential use before the county changed its regulations on minimum residential lot sizes, and each wanted to follow the old regulations rather than the new ones.
Watkinsville alone among Oconee County’s four cities will hold an election this fall, with two candidates competing for the mayor of the city and two more competing for Post 2 on the City Council.
Incumbent Watkinsville Mayor Dave Shearon and Bob Smith, a real estate agent, filed paperwork last week qualifying for the mayoral contest.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners has not yet gotten around to appointing its new advisory committee on transportation.
Commission Chair John Daniell, has said, however, that its first order of business will be to review the 282-page report presented to the county by the Georgia Department of Transportation earlier this year.
MACORTS, the metropolitan planning authority for Oconee County and its neighbors, is asking the public to comment on the 2045 draft of its Metropolitan Transportation Plan that includes 13 road projects in Oconee County on the prioritized project list.
Included is a last-minute update to the plan for widening Hog Mountain Road from Butler’s Crossing to U.S. 441. The update calls for a two-lane rather than four-lane road that also will include turn lanes, sidewalks and bike lanes.
Every Oconee County School System employee–from the first-in-the-morning bus driver to the school superintendent–is now wearing an electronic alert system badge that can signal a school safety threat with three small taps of a button.
With the taps, the employee sends a signal to the school office and to the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office telling exactly who pushed the button and where that person is located.
Former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson told Oconee County Democrats on Thursday night that they didn’t have to flip Oconee County for the party to be able to beat incumbent Republican David Perdue in the U.S. Senate race in November.
All they need to do is shave three or four percent off the county margin from Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s victory over Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018, Tomlinson said.
