Oconee County, GA Politics

Regents approve UGA farm purchase, Terry College builder

Regents' immigration policy at heart of Chester Brown issue | ajc.com So now it comes down that Board of Regents policy has adversely affected the University of Georgia recruiting of a 6 for 6 inch 345 pound Samoan athlete who so loved his scholarship offer that he tattooed it on his arm? Do you think this is going to help bring foreign students to Athens? What about the all time Georgia sack leader Richard Tarditz of France? What about offering a scholarship to North Oconee lineman Joseph Scelfo? Who is going to step up to the redneck policies of the Board of Regents? I am damn sure that Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M would offer this Chester Brown a scholarship. Why are we not keeping the best lineman in the area in quite some time go un-recruited? Didn't his dad used to coach at UGA? We need answers, not scapegoats, but it is only the Democratic legislators who are trying to do anything about our stupid and xenophobic overreaction that is costing us every day at the ...

The bookstore at Gainesville State College's Oconee County campus expanded long after I toiled thirteen hour days there during the first couple days of each semester back in the heady days of the start of Facebook when you still needed a .edu email address to get on the social networking site in say 2006. Wayne Ford of the Athens Banner-Herald wrote his typical comprehensive yet not boring history of the area and captured the flavor of the farm field without sitting in a cow pie. Most Oconee County residents have never laid eyes on the actual campus as it is just beyond the point of view off the Oconee Connector/Experiment Station Road down Bishop Farms Parkway. I am glad the Board of Regents has worked with Dr. Penny Mills of GSC~Oconee and the Oconee County Planning Commission to expand that campus. The larger long range and short range expansion plans of that campus need to center on possible back entrance or possibly exit only right on to the 441 Bypass or at least the sound ...

Lord knows I do not read the Catoosa County News newspaper on a regular basis, and could not have told you if it even was owned my Morris or just subscribes to syndication of their editorial writers. Their Atlanta writer Walter Jones takes on the powerful local legislator and chair of the House Appropriations Committee in Watkinsville Republiucan Bob Smith in his campaign to derail the Board of Regents with countless controversial Constitutional adjustments he thinks can be hammered through this remaining half session of the legislature. Good luck Representative Smith, I do not share your confidence in trying to do to the Board of Regents what Speaker of House Glen Richardson tried to do to local control of property taxes and countless "un" Fair Tax proponents have tried to do the IRS. Professing one's ignorance of the local media does not do one any favors in the eyes of the public or even your voting constituency.

State Representative Bob Smith may be exacting revenge on Oconee County resident and Board of Regents member Donald Leeburn's proclivity for controversy and fights, but that is the only reason I can fathom for trying to reign in the governing body of Georgia's schools of higher education. The Banner-Herald institutional editorial makes a strong case for Smith's grandstanding and largely impractical reaction to the fact he was last to learn about the Medical College of Georgia opening a satellite campus at the Navy School property in Normaltown on Prince Avenue. Admittedly the Board of Regents is a largely unknown and anonymous organization with a lot of power to set policy, and needs some more democratization in their governance, but Smith's bill opens up all Georgia public college students to more exploitation and less bang for their educational buck.