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Water
Wise
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COMMUNITY SURVEY
Jackson County
GREENSPACE
The Jackson
County Greenspace Steering Committee seeks input that would better
prepare the Committee for developing the Jackson County Greenspace
Plan. Please take a moment to answer four questions and return
them on the form provided here.
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OPINIONS
Jackson County opinion page
SPORTS
SEE THIS WEEK'S PIGSKIN PICKERS!
Tigers Hope To Give Warren County Eagles Reason To Scream
There's nothing like the home-field advantage in a big game,
and that's what the Commerce Tigers will enjoy Friday night when
they host the Warren County Screaming Eagles in the first round
of the Class A football playoffs.
Time for JHS rebuilding to pay off
"I'm so excited, I just can't wait until Saturday."
With those words, Jefferson guard Buzz Wehunt accurately reflected
the thoughts of the entire Jefferson basketball program. For
the past two seasons, the Dragons have enlisted the help of this
year's tremendously athletic junior class in rebuilding both
the girls' and boys' basketball teams.
Girls' and boys' basketball teams look to seniors to lead
promising seasons
Talent, experience and leadership will all head up the Banks
County Leopard and Lady Leopard basketball teams this year.
Combined, the two teams bring 12 seniors to the court. Senior
experience coupled with the youthful aggressiveness of rising
underclassman should mix for an effective season for both teams.
Neighborhood News...
MADISON COUNTY
Drug counseling program up in the air as Martin continues
fight for credibility
The saga surrounding a proposed drug counseling program in the
county continued Monday. Jess Martin and his wife Anna stood
before the county commissioners trying to convince the group
that Martin is a respectable man and should be allowed to run
the proposed Adolescent Addiction Prevention Program and Aftercare
Services (AADAPP).
DFACS workers face long hours, tough choices
Donnie Morgan spent half a day recently crawling under all the
bridges along or near Hwy. 72 in Madison County on a tip that
an indigent family with kids might be living under one of them.
News from
BANKS COUNTY
Alto zoning ordinance in the works
The Alto City Council took the first steps
in developing a zoning ordinance last week at its first Development
Authority meeting.
Under the guidance of Larry Sparks, of the Georgia Mountains
Regional Development Center, council members Jerry Terrell, Susan
Wade, Carol Gulley and Audrey Turner got a glimpse of what lies
ahead in determining Alto's future.
Parents air complaints about BCHS band director to BOE
A series of parental complaints were aired Monday night against
Banks County High School band director Rebecca Smith. The complaints
were made to the Banks County Board of Education during its monthly
meeting. Smith was not in attendance.
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Showing His Colors
Tyler Gamble, 7, showed his colors during
a recent Commerce Tiger football game. He watched much of the
Commerce-Jefferson game from along the fence on the Commerce
sideline.
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UPDATE
New BOC
members to interview
applicants for interim county manager
The newly-elected members of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners
are already at work and they want to make sure an interim county
manager is in place by Jan. 1.
The new board, led by chairman Harold Fletcher, met the past
two Fridays and plan to hold all-day meetings through the remainder
of this year.
Fletcher appeared before the current BOC Thursday afternoon to
ask the board to advertise for an interim county manager to handle
day-to-day operations until the position is filled permanently
next year.
"We want to be very deliberate in our process in securing
a permanent one, so we're going to follow this course of action,"
Fletcher said.
Fletcher asked the board to send the applications to his post
office box and said the new BOC members would conduct interviews
and make a recommendation on the interim manager. BOC chairman
Jerry Waddell said the current board would hire the person recommended
by Fletcher and the new commissioners.
"We want to assist you in any way that we can," Waddell
said. "...You pick somebody and we'll be glad to hire that
person."
UPDATE
BOC seeks
court order for probate office records
The Jackson County Board of Commissioners agreed Thursday night
for county attorney Lane Fitzpatrick to seek a court order to
get probate judge Margaret Deadwyler to release financial records
for her office.
The board agreed to give Deadwyler two weeks to produce the records
before filing the court action.
BOC chairman Jerry Waddell said that the required financial records
have not been submitted to the county since 1997. He said they
were also not given to the auditor.
"We'd like to have access to them since part of that money
is Jackson County money," Waddell said.
Deadwyler is allowed by state law to keep $7,500 from fees collected
each year as personal compensation. All fees collected over $7,500
must go to the county. Waddell said earlier that the county hasn't
received any fees from these funds since 1999.
Commissioner Pat Bell made the motion to delay taking any action
for two weeks.
"Give her time to respond," she said. "She's been
busy with the election."
Jackson County
man suspect in serial rape cases in Athens
A Jackson County man is being held in
the Clarke County Jail as a suspect in three rapes in Athens
in recent month.
Sylvester Deon Collins, 21, is expected to be charged with three
counts of rape, two counts of false imprisonment, one count of
aggravated sodomy, one count of criminal attempt to commit aggravated
sodomy, one count of possession of a firearm during the commission
of a crime. The charges stem from three sexual assaults that
took place in Athens on July 30, 2000; Aug. 27, 2000; and Oct.
22, 2000. Law enforcement officers say physical evidence from
Collins has linked him to all three crimes.
The break in the case came after an arrest of Collins on Wednesday,
Nov. 15, by uniform patrol officers of the Athens-Clarke County
Police Department. He was implicated in an aggravated assault
that day, according to a release from he police department.
The charges against Collins will be filed by the Joint Rape Task
Force, which is comprised of Athens-Clarke Police Department
investigators, University of Georgia investigators and Georgia
Bureau of Investigation agents.
Collins is a deserter from the United States Armed Forces.
Planning board
to hear new landfill bid
Carnesville company seeks to locate 'demolition landfill'
in North Jackson area
Another proposal to locate a construction and demolition landfill
in Jackson County is slated to go before the planning commission
next month.
Earth Resource is requesting a conditional use permit to locate
the landfill in the North Jackson area. The request will go before
the Jackson County Planning Commission when it meets at 7 p.m.
on Thursday, Dec. 14. It will then go to the board of commissioners
for action at its January meeting.
This is the second request to go before the county this year
seeking a permit for a C&D landfill. The earlier request
was from another company and was denied by the BOC.
The latest request is to locate a landfill on 94.48 acres on
Lanier Road that is zoned I-2. According to the application for
a permit, the landfill would accept no household garbage or waste.
"A large 200-foot vegetative buffer will assure no impact
on neighboring property," the application reads. "Construction
demolition is odorless...The development of the construction
demolition landfill is necessary given recent trends in residential
development of subdivisions in Jackson County. The development
creates inert waste which must be safely disposed of."
A letter from the company's attorney, L. Robert Lovett of Macon,
also indicates a possible lawsuit if the request is denied by
the county.
"The Jackson County Planning Commission, nor the Jackson
County Board of Commissioners has the discretionary authority
to deny the permit once it is shown that the subject property
meets all the criteria set forth in the Jackson County zoning
ordinance for the grant of a conditional use permit," the
letter states.
A construction demolition site is legally defined as "waste
building materials and rubble resulting from construction, remodeling,
repair and demolition operations of pavements, houses, commercial
buildings and other structures." It includes waste, wood,
bricks, metal, concrete, wall board, paper, cardboard and inert
waste landfill materials. These types of landfills are permitted
and regulated by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division's
solid waste branch.
Emil Beshara, who was elected last week to represent the North
Jackson area on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, has
already reviewed the proposal and has outlined numerous concerns.
He said that granting a conditional use permit for the landfill
would violate the county zoning code and the policy and intent
of the comprehensive land use plan.
"It is obviously the intent of the law to locate C&D
landfills along major county roads or state roads, not on gravel
roads or secondary county roads," he said. "...The
only reason this property is even being considered is because
it is large enough to host an economically viable C&D landfill
and because it is already zoned I-2 (the zoning classification
containing landfills)."
Beshara said the property should be zoned agriculture. He said
it was apparently given the industrial zoning because of a private
airstrip that has been located on the property for many years.
"When Jackson County first instituted zoning, the property
was placed in the M-I category only because of the airstrip,"
he said. "When the county zoning code was recently amended,
the zoning was changed to I-2, again only because of the airstrip
feature of the property. The airstrip has not been used for two
decades, and is not currently in a usable condition. Jackson
County could reasonably allow the zoning of this property to
fall back to an agricultural classification without a significant
detrimental affect to the property owner."
Tax Rate Cut for
Commerce
Commerce taxpayers can expect a 1.8 to 2-mill tax rollback when
their property tax bills arrive late this year.
The exact amount of the rollback will depend on three factors.
First, it depends on the final tax digest. The preliminary digest
shows Commerce with 22 percent growth over last year. The final
tax digest may be different.
Second, city officials plan to expand the Freeport exemption
offered to certain industries for goods in inventory. The current
level is 20 percent, but at Monday night's city council meeting,
the consensus appeared to be to raise it to 100 percent. City
manager Clarence Bryant offered figures for raising Freeport
to 80 percent and for increasing it to 100 percent. The result
is a difference of .29 mills.
The third thing affecting the rollback is whether the city council
keeps its one-mill levy for city operations or rolls it back.
Bryant's scenarios proposed keeping the one-mill levy, but Councilman
Bob Sosebee argued for a rollback.
"I don't like the idea of it being thrown up that we're
having a tax increase for fifteen or twenty thousand dollars,"
Sosebee complained. He pointed out that to maintain the one-mill
city levy, the council would have to hold three public hearings
under new state law.
"Rather than have three hearings, I'd prefer to roll back
the tax," he commented.
The Commerce Board of Education, by keeping spending for the
school year at the same level as last year ($1,609,875), guarantees
that taxpayers will get a rollback to offset some of the higher
assessments sent out by Jackson County.
DIGEST GROWTH
The figures Bryant showed Monday night indicated growth in all
but one area in the tax digest.
While there are likely some errors (mobile home digest, for example),
Bryant said he believes that the preliminary digest will not
change by more than five to eight percent.
Florida ballot
flap similar to Jackson in '84
The ballot recount controversy in Florida over the outcome of
the presidential race may seem like deja vu all over again for
some Jackson County citizens.
The issues of ballots being mispunched, manual recounts and court
suits all hark back to a similar situation that happened in Jackson
County in 1984. That year, a young Stan Evans challenged incumbent
sheriff Neal Ward during the Democratic Primary. When the ballots
were counted the night of August 14, 1984, Evans had won a stunning
upset over Ward by a thin margin of 204 votes. Nearly 6,000 votes
were cast in that election.
But in the days following the vote, Ward filed suit in Jackson
County Superior Court claiming that there had been ballot "irregularities."
The crux of his complaint revolved around where some voters had
punched their ballots, with Ward claiming that voters were confused
by where his name appeared on the ballot.
That year, Jackson County was using a punch card system similar
to the one used in Florida. Voters put each ballot card into
a small punch machine and aligned the punch lever with a name
on the ballot. If voters punched two names, the vote in that
race was ignored by the counting computer. If voters mispunched
above or below a name, those votes were not counted.
In the 1984 sheriff's contest, Ward's name appeared below Evans'
at the bottom of one ballot card. But although that race was
the last on that side of the ballot card, there was one empty
line below Ward's name. It was that line that Ward contended
had caused voter confusion.
On Sept. 7, 1984, a visiting judge heard the case with both sides
bringing witnesses to the stand. To sort out the issue, the judge
ordered that the ballot boxes be opened and that each ballot
be counted manually for the sheriff's race, setting aside the
ballots where a punch appeared below Ward's name or where a punch
appeared above Evans' name.
As in the situation in Florida now, counters sat around tables
in the courtroom in 1984 as the recount proceeded. In the end,
201 punches were found below Ward's name on the ballot, but 23
punches were found above Evans' name. Neither number would have
changed the outcome of the election so the judge ruled in favor
of Evans and declared him the winner.
Ward appealed his lawsuit, but to no avail. He was again defeated
by Evans in 1988 and Evans has gone on to win every election
since then, this year by a whopping margin of over 70 percent.
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UPDATE
Ken Mize
named warden
Ken Mize was appointed as warden of the Jackson County Correctional
Institute by the Jackson County Board of Commissioners Thursday
night.
Mize has been serving on an interim basis for several weeks.
In other business at Thursday's meeting, the BOC:
·reappointed Shirley Turner and David Riley to the Jackson
County Board of Adjustors.
·agreed to sell 0.186 of an acre for $1,235 to The Jackson
Herald.
·tabled a request from the county firemen's association
to deed 8.03 acres for a fire burn building and training facility.
The building is to be constructed with funds from the special
purpose local option sales tax. The request was tabled in order
for county attorney Lane Fitzpatrick to look into the legality
of the county deeding money to the association.
·agreed to transfer the lease for state court probation
services from DMS to Sentinel.
·approved a resolution to apply for state funds through
the greenspace program.
·agreed to file condemnation proceedings on Michael Berger
for property on Savage Road.
·agreed to share expenses with Banks and Barrow counties
for a juvenile judge for the Piedmont Judicial Circuit.
·agreed to close a county bank account for the inmate
store fund, which has less than $15 in it; agreed to get county
credit cards for all department heads and the five new BOC members;
and agreed to transfer the signature on the recreation department
bank account from John Hoos to Ricky Sanders.
Commerce Schools
To Start Earlier In Fall
The Commerce City School System has joined what seems to be the
trend of northeast Georgia schools by approving a calendar for
2001-2002 that starts and ends the school year early.
The Commerce Board of Education presented a calendar proposal
at Thursday night's work session and approved it at Monday night's
regular meeting that will have students reporting to school August
8 and finishing out the school year May 17.
Under the new calendar, teachers will report for pre-planning
August 2; Christmas holidays will begin for students on December
18, and on December 20 for teachers, following an in-service
day on the 19th; second semester will begin January 2; spring
break will be the first week in April; and holidays such as Martin
Luther King Day and President's Day will remain intact.
When given a vote on the calendar, the school system's teachers
approved it 80 to 30, superintendent Larry White told the BOE
Thursday. A parent advisory group also had a chance to review
the calendar, he said.
"This would give teachers two extra weeks to prepare for
standardized tests," White said.
TESTING PREPARATION AT CES
During Thursday's work session at Commerce Elementary School,
principal Kim Savage updated the board on preparations the school
is making for the new Stanford Nine test to be given in the spring.
The Stanford Nine, a standardized test, will take the place of
the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) this year, with testing
scheduled for March and April.
Savage told the board that since the test objectives have been
unavailable from the state, CES has purchased them so teachers
will know general areas their students will be tested on. The
school also purchased the test for all grade levels, first through
fifth, as well as a sample battery kit.
Because the school is starting from scratch on supplies for this
new test, Savage said CES spent some $4,000 on testing materials
and supplies, about double what it would take to get updated
materials for the ITBS.
"We've done everything we know we can do to prepare for
it," Savage said.
Commissioners reschedule
meeting
The Jackson County Board of Commissioners has rescheduled its
November meeting.
The work session will begin at 3 p.m. Thursday with the regular
meeting to immediately follow. The BOC usually holds its work
session on the first Tuesday of the month and its regular meeting
on the second Tuesday of the month.
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