Oconee County, GA Politics

Watkinsville and Oconee County historic sites [Vinnie Williams, Oconee Enterprise, 9/27/07, p. A3] are not drawing tourists because their destruction is being encouraged by those who should be fighting tooth and nail to save these special places. Word gets around quickly and the public wants no part of it. The guilty parties are developers who don’t care and their supporters in the city and county governments. Those folks seemly have no vision of what should be protected, how to do it, and what the public really wants. Are they deaf? The gateway charm at the intersection of Barnett Shoals Road and Main Street in Watkinsville has been replaced by some out-of-scale ‘thing’ which comes close to a spaghetti western stage set. The wonderfully wide sidewalks in downtown Watkinsville have been replaced by parking spaces. Now the sidewalks are so narrow that two people can’t pass each other without turning sideways. Who thought that improvement up? And then, there are those unfortunate t...

Slowly but surely the Creekside development of the cross section of Oconee, Oglethorpe and Clarke county in the Old Barnett (Shoals) Estates area inches forward, with cameras, traffic counters, surveying, et cetera near the old country club called Green Acres. Bill Paul and some supporters spoke with the Athens Banner-Herald reporter. The area in question is one of the last quaint quarters of the county, with even a few mailing addresses of that area of Oconee County called Arnoldsville. Paul's properties are on both sides of the county line for Clarke and Oconee if memory serves me correctly. He has done an amazing job restoring some old structures and an even better job organizing opposition to the proposed development. Meanwhile the Oconee County Democratic Committee continues to chug along almost unnoticed in their regular monthly meetings in the mainstream media of the three local newspapers. I suppose I can take discredit for that slip-up. I need to let them all know the n...