County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

Q.  How important is it for our citizens to “shop at home”?
A.  It is more important than ever.  All of our businesses are suffering from the slow economy.  Our county sales tax receipts are also taking a hit for the same reason.  We should all carefully consider the cost of driving to go shopping in another area and make every effort to support our own Union County located and/or owned businesses where possible.  Money spent in the immediate area stays and circulates to many individuals and helps provide and maintain local jobs.

Q. Who gets the sales tax from automobile sales?
A. That is a very good question.  Automobile sales is one of the few items that no matter where they are purchased, the county where the automobile is registered (tag purchase) receives the sales tax.   Also, if you purchase products outside of the county that are then delivered to Union County, the company should pay the sales tax to Union County.

Q. I was glad to see that many of the campaign signs were removed after the election.  Why are some signs still up?
A.  The candidates who were unsuccessful in the primary election did an excellent job of promptly removing their signs, which was very much appreciated.  Unfortunately, all the elections are not yet over until November.  Those remaining signs, including mine, will remain until election day on November 4th.   There are no ordinances against campaign signs because the legislature controls this function.

Q.  Who determines which roads get paved?
A.   Primarily the road department.  They develop the “request for paving” list and get all the additional information available on the roads. This information includes how much maintenance is required on a regular basis, is the road wide enough without extensive grading,  do we have adequate right-of-way, what is the density of homes and is it a school bus route. We then ride these individual roads, have a final discussion of all important points and together we make a final decision on paving priorities. Who lives on the road plays absolutely no role in determining those priorities.

Q. You have paved several roads in Suches this year which do not serve many homes. How can you justify paving those roads?
A.  First, Suches is a completely different situation than the Blairsville side of the mountain.  Their low population density would not justify many of their roads being paved. However, they deserve their roads to be comparable to those on this side of the mountain. We work with the road department employees in Suches and determine which roads give the most maintenance problems and try to address them in this manner. 

Q. You paved a road in Suches that does not have any permanent residents living on it. Why was it paved?
A. First, we do generally give priority to roads with permanent residences, however; in this case, this is a very steep road and the amount of maintenance and gravel necessary to maintain it is tremendous.  In the case of Suches, we are also trying to pave all the county roads along Hwy 180, which we hope to complete this year.  Then we will no longer be required to bring our motor grader along this section of the county.   Beginning next year, we will try to complete some of the gravel roads along Hwy 60 so that in just a few years we will not have many gravel roads remaining in Suches.  This will eliminate a lot of future maintenance costs for the county.

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