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Index News 2,3,5,9 Obituaries 3 Opinion 4 Around the County 6 Calendar 8 Sheriff's Report 10 Legals 10 Sports 11-12 Inside Catcher Abby Jones is the only senior on this year's OCHS softball team, but she's sur rounded by experience on the girls basketball team. ... Page 12 To start your subscription or to donate to The Oglethorpe Echo, see Page 11 The Oglethorpe Echo Volume 149, Number 41 July 13, 2023 ■ Oglethorpe County, Georgia $1 LANDEN TODD/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO Paul Thiel, who graduated from Oglethorpe County High School, steps into the role of director of operations for the school system. Thiel moves Longtime school # - employee is first into new role director of operations Sheriff is investigating antisemitic notes in bags By Julianne Akers The Oglethorpe Echo Lexington’s Bob Henkel was on his morning walk where Old Stephens Road becomes Gilmer Street on July 4, when he saw the first bag. “Then, I turned left onto Boggs Street, and I saw another one there. And then as I wandered up and down Church Street, I saw them over there as well,” he said. Small bags filled with graphics resem bling antisemitic symbols and links to websites related to white supremacy have been scattered throughout driveways and yards in Oglethorpe County this month. The bags contain paper printed with phrases like “It’s okay to be white,” and were filled with wood pellets, which Oglethorpe County Sheriff David Gabri el said he thinks were used to weigh them down. The other side of the note includes the name of a group: Aryan Freedom Net work, a neo-Nazi group based in Texas, and a website URL. It was thought the baggies were filled with rat poison, but the contents proved to be wood pellets. Gabriel added that lit tering is the only charge his office would be able to give the disseminators of the bags. “It’s just the topic of it. It’s concern ing,” he said. “We want to find out what’s See ANTISEMITIC, Page 2 SUBMITTED PHOTO Bags filled with hate messages and weighed down by wood pellets have been found in driveways around Lexing ton and other parts of the county. By McCain Bracewell The Oglethorpe Echo Paul Thiel describes himself as a technol ogy specialist, farmer and philosopher. He works for Oglethorpe County Schools in the day, tends to his family’s cattle on TLC Ranch in Colbert in the afternoons and enjoys studying new technologies, educa tional research, philosophy and trends in the cattle industry in his freetime. “And then I pretty much go to bed and I wake up the next day,” he said. Thiel’s mother, Corrine Thiel, owns the ranch. They moved there in 1991 from Mi ami Beach. “People always ask me what (TLC) stands for, but it all depends on the time of day,” Thiel said. “It could be tough luck charlie or tender love and care or Thiels Limousin Cattle.” Thiel, who attended Oglethorpe County High School and has worked for Oglethorpe County Schools since 2004, is moving into a new role as the director of operations for the Inside Zachary Holtzclaw is Oglethorpe County School System's new direc tor of transportation. ... Page 2 school system. He will oversee the maintenance, tech nology, custodial, transportation and finance departments within the school system as the director of operations. Thiel will report di rectly to Superintendent Beverley Levine. “That’s the joke, right? Somebody will manage special education and someone will manage instruction and I’m going to man age everything else,” Thiel said. “We’ll see how that goes.” He earned his undergraduate degree in early childhood education and a master’s degree in instructional technology from the University of Georgia. He said he was among one of the first technology special ists in 1998. He taught in Athens-Clarke County for six years before moving to Oglethorpe County in 2004. Thiel was the technology coordinator after the previous coordinator retired last April. The idea for the new position started af ter the central office flooded last December. Thiel said Levine realized she didn’t have a point person to handle crises like that. There was no one to address communication be tween the insurance company, the mainte nance crew and the custodial crew. The board approved the new position, but Levine had full charge over who she appointed. The board was informed Thiel would take the position in the May 23 per sonnel report. Thiel said Levine offered him the posi tion, but he turned it down at first. There were several people who applied and inter viewed for the position, but those applicants See THIEL, Page 2 Broadband installation slowly expanding By Julianne Akers The Oglethorpe Echo Broadband internet installation in Oglethorpe County — deriving from the $7.9 million in funds Spectrum received in January — is in the “very early stages of engineering,” said Oglethorpe County Dis trict 4 Commissioner Will Brown, who is chair of the Economic Development Au thority. Spectrum received the funds — in part nership with the county — from Georgia’s Capital Projects Fund Grant Program to provide broadband internet to 2,972 loca tions in Oglethorpe County, 55% of which is without broadband. “If anybody sees a Charter/Spectrum vehicle around looking at telephone poles and whatnot, they’re trying to map out ev erything, determine all the costs, figure out how they’re gonna bring the wire to every body’s house...,” Brown said. He said Spectrum hasn’t given the coun ty a specific date when the project will be complete, but he expects that it will be near the deadline of Dec. 31, 2026. “They're not sure which other coun ty they're gonna start on, or what the plan exactly is. They've got other projects in the county that were awarded to them via RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund),” Brown said. “That’s a FCC program. So they have to weed some of those in there, too.” Brown reminds residents that commu nities across Georgia received funds from this grant, meaning it might take a while for installation to begin. “It's not just Oglethorpe, it's the whole state that got a lot of funding. So they're stretched pretty thin, I'm sure,” he said. “We told them (Spectrum) that we'll do whatever we can to speed up the process and not hesitate to reach out to the county. We'll do what we can.” Coverage areas He said the locations were determined by the Georgia Technology Authority, and “all the bidders for that grant had to bid based on the fact that they would supply to every single one of those locations.” “The majority of this will cover the south and west sides of the county,” Brown said. “So that top northeast quadrant of the county is more sparse, and won't be as covered in this particular grant.” Future expansion Residents might have also seen Ki netic by Windstream trucks around the See BROADBAND, Page 5 DINK NESMITH/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO Arthur Burt works in a Kinetic by Wind- stream truck in Oglethorpe County earlier this month. Kinetic workers are installing optical fiber in Crawford and Lexington. PROPERTIES A DIVISION OF UNITED COUNTRY REAL ESTATE '■ - - Thinking of Selling a Home, Farm or Land? Give us a call for a free market analysis of what your property could bring! 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