Oconee County, GA Politics

Why would we want a grocery store in the midst of the busiest traffic thoroughfare in Oconee County? This is what you get when the more narrow minded members of the Oconee County Planning Commission continues to drive our economic engine into the ground. Sure the zoning and planning may actually conform to the prospect of such a project, but for once does the neighborhood have anything to say about what stores get rammed down their throats? Bruce MacPherson, Bill Yarborough and George Rodrigues are the three members of the Planning Commission who vote with some regularity against moronic development in our community, and kudos to them for doing that. Someone trying to win an insurmountable write in campaign might consider such populist issues to propel their campaign, For those who do not know the background, there are plans afoot to build a grocery store shopping center somewhere near LaVista Road and Highway 441 here in Oconee County. This is near both the campus of Athens Academy a...

Esteemed Watkinsville City Council member and public relations professional Brian Brodrick wrote an interesting letter to the Editor of the Athens Banner-Herald earlier this week deriding the tactics employed by Athens FAQ in their battle against the location of NBAF at the intersection of Whitehall and Milledge. He did have a valid point about the proximity of the State Botanical Gardens, and I would hope that they would never be disturbed. For proper perspective, be sure to click on the links to the original letter and the comments, but please ignore the meaningless attacks on Brodrick and his family. They deserve much better than that. A much more damning and downright frightening indictment of the governmental tactics of lies, deceit, distortion, secrecy and clandestine meetings is written by the Associated Press here . My main complaint again is that the infrastructure and roads are not ready for the construction traffic. Have you ever lived down wind from any animal facility ...

The following shows the email exchange between Tim Bryant of NewsTalk 1340 WGAU AM in Athens and the Kathy Prescott and Grady Thrasher of Athens FAQ (who are opposed to the NBAF coming to Athens. While opposed to NBAF in principal because of lack of infrastructure and roads specifically to the area at Milledge and Whitehall, I do not blame Bryant for not wanting to let the opponents of NBAF carry on with copious follow up questions. While the NBAF opponents may have completely legitimate arguments and relevant follow-up questions, they do themselves no favors by making enemies in the media. I doubt that Thrasher and Prescott will be back on Bryant's four day a week interview program anytime soon. The following is from their email release of the back and forth between Bryant, Prescott and Thrasher, along with some folks in North Carolina. Convoluted would be a polite assessment of this clusterf*ck. Dear All, Thanks to all of you that have signed the petition. And to all of you that ...

This was sent to me by an attorney who knows what she is talking about: I strongly and wholeheartedly oppose the siting of the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility in Athens. Please come out to the meeting on Wednesday, February 13th at 7pm at the Presbyterian Student Center on Lumpkin Street. Kathy Prescott and Grady Thrasher of FAQ will be there to hand out some information my law firm has gathered to help you understand why having this compound in our town is a very, very bad idea. Hillary Clinton won't have it on Plum Island because that's too close to where people live. And Plum Island is a mile and a half off Long Island, with no pedestrian connections. Don't let the federal government play around with foreign incurable diseases in the heart of our Classic City. No amount of money is worth that risk. (And, you know, the way our university and local officials are acting you'd actually think there was a lot of money coming in from this proposed bio-terror lab...

The proposed location for this facility might as well be in Oconee County, as it will be a stone's throw away on the far too narrow streets of Milledge Avenue and Whitehall/Simonton Bridge. I still maintain the infrastructure is such that they - Dept. of Homeland Security - will choose one of the other sites, but here is your chance to chip in with your two cents worth of input: The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will hold a public scoping session on the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) this Thursday, Sept. 20 at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education as part of the public involvement requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the DHS Web site, the purposes of the meeting are to: • collect input on the scope and content of the NBAF Environmental Impact Statement, and • provide a better understanding of the proposed action and the federal agencies involved. Those interested in providing comments must pre-register, either ...