October 10,
2010
Notes from the Board of
Commissioners Meeting-
October 7th
Thursday night was the
first monthly BOC meeting. Not being a surprise to
anyone since it happens at most every meeting, items were again
added to the agenda and passed 3-2 without much information
being presented to the public. Without any
knowledge of what is on the agenda, people can’t make plans to
attend. Open meetings laws state that the public
should know what is on the agenda far enough in advance that they can
plan to attend. Adding items at the beginning of
the meeting does not give people that opportunity. So
not only has the people’s opportunity to comment on agenda items
before discussion and vote been taken away, so has their right to even
know what is on the agenda. There
have been several votes by the BOC that nothing can be added to the
agenda, but it happens anyway.
District 3 commissioner wanted the Local
Agriculture Protection Guide added to the agenda and it was,
and the vote was 3-2 to do so. The County Manager
admitted he did not put this item on the agenda because there is no
information on it and he felt like there was not much community
support; something required for the grant. He
stated he spoke to the person, Nina Kelly from NE Georgia Regional
Commission (NEGRC), who proposed this grant. She
could not tell the County Manager anything about how it will be run and
who is going to do it since it is in the planning stages. They
are trying to get counties interested in coming on board and being a
guinea pig or pilot county. As the county manager
was trying to advise the BOC to let another county be the first and see
if it works out well, then Jasper County can join in, a motion was made
and District 1, 2 and 3 commissioners voted for it with the
commissioners from district 4 and 5 voting against this. These
two voted no on the grounds of no information available and not wanting
to vote on something in the dark not knowing how it would affect our
county. If you want to let the NEGRC know how you
feel about this you can call them at 706-369-5650.
If our own commissioners won’t listen to us,
maybe NEGRC will.
An interesting item on the
agenda was a Special Event Permit ordinance.
This is something which was brought before the BOC
without them having asked for such an ordinance. District
4 commissioner asked how this proposal was initiated and was told that
it is something proposed by the Code Enforcement Officer. This
ordinance basically states that if any event is held which will have 20
or more people attending you will have to pay $100.00 for a permit.
This will include any gathering held in your
backyard or anywhere else. The proposal contained
other rules such as the person having the event must provide security
and cleaning crew. This means if you have a family
get together and you have more than 20 people there you will have to
get a permit, have the sheriff’s department or local police on
hand and make sure you clean everything up when it is over even if it
is in your own yard. The BOC asked a lot of
questions such as what about churches, what about family gatherings at
your house, and things like that. There
weren’t answers for many of the questions and it seemed obvious
that the BOC was not in favor. Instead of just
saying no, they passed the ordinance back to the P&Z board to
handle.
The BOC had a good bit of discussion over some road
situations. First there was the payment for
Jackson Lake Rd. out of the SPLOST fund. This was a
no-no and the District 1 commissioner said he caught the $140,000 check
and had it stopped. There have been many
votes about Jackson Lake Rd and SPLOST and the final vote was the money
would have to come out of the general fund since there were 10 promised
SPLOST roads to start with. The capital
improvements account and the contingency account were both mentioned.
District 4 commissioner repeated that they had to do
what the original motion said or take another vote. No
new vote was taken.
Next there was discussion
about paying Larry Kaiser of CIS for his engineering services
with the Striping Grant. At a previous
meeting the Public Works director said the job was not done well.
At this meeting, he said the signage work (all those
new signs sticking at intersections along with old signs) had been
completed that day. He also said 27 miles of road
had been striped and that was all that would be done. District
4 commissioner said that is not what was said when the grant was
presented, but found out the contract said something different than
what was presented. The grant was for $400,000 and
the county is still waiting on an $80,000 reimbursement. The
PW director said he thought the county got its money’s worth so
the BOC voted to release the check to CIS.
Finally, after approving
the bids to do Hodges Farm Rd., Feldspar Rd., and E. Bullard Rd. with
SPLOST money 4-1 (District 3 commissioner opposed), there was
talk of it being time to think about putting through another SPLOST to
pay for road work. This will be an interesting vote
as the current SPLOST money won’t be enough to pay for the 10
promised roads and this SPLOST money is always trying to be changed to
cover pet projects by two commissioners. Are you
interested in passing another 1% sales tax for roads?
One item that
provoked a lot of talk was the Chamber of Commerce requesting the BOC
to allow them to put the deer head trophy wall on the courthouse
steps during the deer festival. The BOC did
not seem too happy over this idea and felt that the courthouse steps
were not large enough and that many citizens might be offended with a
bunch of deer heads hanging there. They passed a
motion saying a banner could be put across the front of the court
house, but did not include the deer head trophy wall.
