About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 14, 2022)
Wednesday, December 14,2022 dawsonnews.com I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I 5A Jersey Mike’s Subs officially opens store in Dawson County Erica Jones Dawson County News Dawson County Chamber of Commerce members and Jersey Mike's own ers and staff cut ribbon for new business during its soft opening on Dec. 6. By Erica Jones ejones@dawsonnews.com As of Wednesday Dec. 7, the new Dawson County location of Jersey Mike’s Subs is officially open for business. The fast-casual sand wich franchise serves jumbo subs with all types of cold cuts and top pings. It is the 14th store opened by owner Danny Rosales, who said that he fell in love with the county when he was in Dawson for a visit. “I fell in love with the area coming up to visit my son’s race team up here, so we’re excited to come up here,” Danny Rosales said. His daughter Alexis Rosales, who is the res taurant’s director of operations, said that she and her father are both incredibly excited to finally open their newest location in Dawson County. “It’s been a long time coming,” Alexis Rosales said. “We love the area and we’re very excited to be here.” One thing that’s very important to their restau- rant’s leadership, she said, is making sure that they are truly a part of the community and giv ing back as much as they can. “We want to get involved as much as pos sible in every community we have a store in,” Alexis Rosales said. “We want to give as much as we can to the communi ty.” One way they’re doing this right off the bat, she said, is offering free sub cards from Dec. 7 through Dec. 11 for those who make a mini mum $3 donation to local nonprofit No One Alone, which provides shelter, safety and sup port services to victims of domestic violence and their children. The res taurant’s goal is to raise $2000 for the nonprofit. “We want to give a minimum of $2000, so no matter what we come up with we’ll cover the difference,” Danny Rosales said. In the future, they plan to continue giving back to the community through fundraisers and other ways. The Dawson County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting for Jersey Mike’s on Dec. 6 during the store’s soft opening. Before official ly cutting the ribbon, Dawson County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mandy Power welcomed the Rosales family and their staff to the area, expressing her excite ment to have the new restaurant finally open. “We have heard excite ment about this since the day the signs went up so we are very excited,” Power said. “We know that you will feel very warm and welcomed here in Dawsonville.” Jersey Mike’s is locat ed at 145 Forest Boulevard Suite 425, in the Dawson Crossroads shopping center, and is open every day from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Dawson County transfer station to stop accepting recyclables on Dec. 30 File Photo by Julia Hansen jhansen@dawsonnews.com Dawson County’s transfer station on Burt Creek Road will no lon ger accept recyclable items as of Dec. 30, 2022. The change comes after the Board of Commissioners voted on Dec. 1 to deny a contract to renew the station’s waste management ser vices. In August, the board authorized $350,000 for the first round of fixes to the transfer station to repair its building and retrofit the facility with a pull-in and drop-off recycling system, simi lar to Pickens County. With the new system, Dawson County custom ers will have separate areas to dispose of household trash and place recyclables. Bins or divided compactors would bear signage showing what is and isn’t acceptable. BOC Chairman Billy Thurmond suggested nixing the proposed con tract to “temporarily halt” the recycling and “save money until we get the other system up and running.” There is no estimated timeline on when those renovations are expected to be complete and recy- cling can resume, according to a Dawson County Government Facebook post. During the BOC’s Dec.l voting session, Interim county manager Vickie Neikirk shared with the board that “over 90 percent” of recycla ble materials collected are eventually thrown away and not recycled due to contamination. “What’s the point?”, District 2 Commissioner Chris Gaines asked about continuing recy cling services at the time. “I’m all for consis tency in offering some thing to the citizens who want to participate in that...but that’s a lot of waste.” Thurmond noted that the county has to pay a recycling charge to haul the materials and then a landfill charge to dump them when they’re con taminated. In an email to DCN, Purchasing Manager Melissa Hawk shared transfer station statistics showing that the hauling fees for waste loads had risen from $105.90 to $325 per haul, with an additional container rental fee of $150 that wasn’t charged in previ ous years. The overall costs for disposal of tainted mate rials would have risen from $3,797 to $7,501.90, a difference of $3,704, if the county had accepted the waste contract, Hawk said. Dawson County’s total recycling costs as of Nov. 23 were $31,774.70. The new pricing for 2023 would have been “roughly between $73,245.60 and $90,022.80 annually if continued at the same tonnage,” Hawk added. “Before, it was a lot of money and now, it’s ridiculous,” District 4 Commissioner Emory Dooley said about the cost. “It’s grown expo nentially from when it first started.” Multiple commission ers noted that since most of the loads transported do end up being contam inated, it’s not profitable for the waste servicer to keep hauling. Thurmond added that any money made from the recyclables would’ve served as an offset, but with the high contami nation rate, there’s been no offset for the disposal costs. Dawson County resi dents visiting the trans fer station before Dec. 30 can help by going to the EPA’s website to review how to prepare recyclables ahead of a trip there. Start earning with Bank OZK today! O/ /O 3.51 8 month CD or IRA CD Special 4.00% 13 month CD or IRA CD Special 4.10 O/ /o APY* 18 month CD or IRA CD Special Visit our Dawsonville location or open an account online at ozk.com.** <> Bank OZK ozk.com I Member FDIC ’Annual Percentage Yield (APY) effective as of the publication date. Offer applies to new CDs only. $1,000 minimum deposit to open and is required to earn stated APY. Penalty for early withdrawal. IRA CD is subject to eligibility requirements. Offer not available to Public Funds, brokers, dealers and other financial institutions. Fees could reduce earnings. Offer subject to change without notice. Offer good at location in Dawsonville, GA only. **IRA CD must be opened in person and cannot be opened online. Dawson County considering some changes to handbook By Julia Hansen jhansen@dawsonnews.com Dawson County employees were again on outgoing District 3 Commissioner Tim Satterfield’s mind when he spoke to his Board of Commissioners colleagues on Dec. 1. “Once you lose people that’ve been here a while, it affects the whole county with operations of the county,” Satterfield said during the BOC’s Dec. 1 work session. On Dec. 15, the board will vote on handbook changes to allow for struc tured merit and longevity increase opportunities for Dawson County employ ees that, if approved, would go into effect on Jan. 1. Under the new policies, employees would be eligi ble for merit and/or lon gevity increases upon reaching their first anni versary working with Dawson County. As opposed to a cost-of-living adjustment, this type of pay increase would be staggered since employees each have different hire dates. The board’s Dec. 1 dis cussion follows their November approval of $1 million for merit increases in the FY2023 budget and September approval of a 5% COLA to address the impact of inflation on workers. These conversa tions also come at a time when fewer people are applying for local govern ment jobs across the United States. Satterfield clarified that voting on the handbook policy would not affect what the board has already budgeted for merit increas es. He also championed county employees for being able to help save money in their depart ments and put funds back into the overall fund bal ance. Commissioners dis cussed having two differ ent increase ranges based on evaluations that would be conducted around the time of employees’ hire anniversaries. Like Satterfield, BOC Chairman Billy Thurmond also supported the idea of congruent merit and lon gevity increases. “A true merit system is based on when you were hired,” Thurmond said. “Plus it’s a benefit to all those people who have to do the evaluations.” The board chairman elaborated on the impor tance of longtime employ ees and how their presence can translate into better services for county citi zens, pointing in particular to the 3% longevity raise 20-plus-year county employees could get under the new rules. “You’re going to spend more than three percent on that recruitment phase, I can tell you right now. Plus, you’re not going to have any of that experi ence you just lost,” Thurmond said. “In a way, you’d be making money right here by keeping somebody.” Satterfield likewise pointed to month-over- month increases in local tax collections and the fact that the county’s only pay ing about 84% of what’s allocated to payroll now. That’s compared to hav ing employees cover vacant shifts, which he said can lead to spending more on overtime. “A lot of this stuff, if you look at it on the large scale [and] if you could get these critical positions filled...with things like this right here,” said Satterfield, “you’re actual ly going to save some money in the long run.” District 2 Commissioner Chris Gaines expressed a more reserved response. “Today, the funding looks good, and we have a lot of good revenue coming in. I think a lot of it is our sales tax revenue is artifi cially inflated due to infla tionary increases that’s short lived,” said Gaines, “so we’ve just got to keep in mind [that] this is a long term commitment.” Thurmond admitted that especially considering times like the 2008 reces sion, the “economy itself’ would dictate implementa tion of these policies. “It might say it in the handbook, but that can be changed as well when you’re in a bad situation,” Thurmond said. “So you kind of, for lack of a better term, you play with the hand you’re dealt with at that particular time.” Before Dec. 15, the com missioners will wait on additional figures that show how their suggested lon gevity increases far when looking at other county governments. It was also suggested to keep in language about either an increase or paid time off if an increase is not available, or perhaps to base the raises on annual revenue. “We’ll have to budget every year and adjust the schedule,” Gaines added.
