Council Passes County Operation Budget

The Oconee County Council on Tuesday by a vote of 3-2 passed, on its third reading, the 2016-2017 county operations budget without the 1.5 mill hike in the property tax rate that had passed a previous vote. Council members Joel Thrift and Reg Dexter cast the dissenting votes. The $44.3 million operations budget will go into effect July 1. Before the final vote, the budget was amended on the initiative of Council member Edda Cammick to include an additional part-time county magistrate requested by Chief Magistrate Todd Simmons last week at a hearing on the budget. Simmons told Council members that the county’s drug problem and the resulting growing numbers of arrests were overwhelming the county’s current three magistrates whose courts also attend to such matters as warrants and civil matters. The majority members who approved the budget on third reading − Council members Cammick and Wayne McCall and Council chairman Paul Cain − all expressed a desire for a balanced budget without a tax hike.

In other business, the council on Tuesday also approved the execution of an agreement with One Tone Telecom of Seneca to least the county’s approximately 240-mile broadband fiber network for up to 20 years.