County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner 

 I want to congratulate my staff on designing and producing our new quarterly  online county newsletter.  It will allow us to give you even more information about what your county government is doing as our employees and elected officials strive to serve you.

Please let us know if there is particular information you would like to see added to the newsletter in the future.  If you do not have a computer and want a printed version, we will have some available at my office.

Q.  I received a letter from the Georgia Dept of Transportation about widening and making US 19/129 North a four lane highway.  When will this happen?
A.  I have not seen one of the letters, but preliminary engineering for the highway has apparently begun.  The purpose is to attempt to establish a proposed centerline.  Once GDOT has that done, they will be able to arrive at a cost estimate for right-of-way and construction.  However, this project is at best a possibility in 2012 or after.  As more  information becomes available, we will pass it along.

Q.  I have heard that building is slowing down.  Do the building permits reflect that?

A. Yes, it has slowed down, particularly in spec housing.  In comparing numbers from last year to the first three months this year they are as follows:
                        Residential        Spec   
Jan-06             11                    33
Jan-07             19                      9
Feb-06             19                    27
Feb-07             13                      8
Mar-06              24                    25
Mar-07              18                      9

Q.  Why is the transfer station refusing to accept glass?
A. I have addressed this before, but the glass market changes and right now there is little demand unless you have huge quantities.  The contractor at the transfer station use to accept the glass even when he could not sell it, but we received several complaints from the public when they saw him dumping all the glass into the regular garbage trailers. So in order not to “fool” the public into thinking their glass was being recycled, we asked him not to accept it unless he was actually able to sell it.

Union County is part of a four county cooperative (North Georgia Resource Management Authority) with our recycling program and you can access their web site at www.ngrma.org. It gives further details regarding recycling of glass. 

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