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L2J OUR REGION
Shannon Casas | Editor in Chief
770-718-3417 | news@gainesvilletimes.com
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia
Thursday, November 1,2018
REACH scholars descend on UNG today
BY JOSHUA SILAVENT
jsilavent@gainesvilletimes.com
Laura Vinson, 20, only dreamed
of attending college. Now, she’s the
spokeswoman for a scholarship
program that serves low-income
students matriculating from high
school to college or university.
“I always knew I’d have to work
to go to college, or take out student
loans,” she said. “So, it was kind of
like a dream rather than an actual
reality.”
Vinson’s father is disabled and
unable to work. She also has an
older sister who has been one of her
biggest influences in life.
“But as far as support
goes, we didn’t have any
one outside our immediate
family to help,” she said.
When she applied for
the Realizing Educational
Achievement Can Happen
Georgia Scholarship, or
REACH, things began to
change.
“I didn’t take it seriously
at first,” she said, adding that her
father encouraged her to apply.
Vinson was awarded a $10,000
college scholarship, which was
matched by UNG for a total of
$20,000, and she is on pace to
receive an associate’s degree in
sociology next spring.
“A lot of my worries
went away,” Vinson said.
The program was
launched in 2012 as part
of Gov. Nathan Deal’s
Complete College Georgia
initiative.
Students are selected for
the program as they move
from middle to high school.
They must maintain a 2.5 grade
point average in core courses, have
a clean discipline and strong atten
dance record, and remain free of
drugs and crime. Students receive
$2,500 per year for up to four years
and colleges and universities can
REACH scholars
conference
What: More than 100 10th- to
12th-graders will meet to
explore career opportunities
by connecting with area
businesses
When: 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
today
Where: University of North
Georgia, Gainesville campus
match those funds.
Now, Vinson, a 2017 graduate
of Rabun County High, serves as
the spokeswoman for the REACH
scholars program. And she’ll be
sharing her story and experience
with more than 100 high school
recipients at the UNG Gainesville
campus on Nov. 1, the first confer
ence of its kind.
At the conference, students will
have the opportunity to explore
careers by connecting with local
businesses, learning about the
demands and skills necessary for
these jobs.
“So, to be a vessel of some sort
for some of these students to learn
more about the REACH scholar
ship and have someone to talk to,
it’s definitely an eye-opener and it’s
kind of the reason why I wanted to
study sociology,” Vinson said.
Vinson
AUSTIN STEELE I The Times
Water flows along in Flat Creek on Tuesday, Oct. 30. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the city worked
together to clean up 1,762 linear feet of stream in Flat Creek.
CREEK
■ Continued from 1A
here two years ago, or just one year
ago, this bank right here was straight
up and down right there,” Micah
Wiggins with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers said at the creek Tuesday.
“... The sediment, instead of eroding,
is starting to deposit at the bottom
of the bank, and that’s a really good
thing.”
Flat Creek’s six-mile path through
both the city and Hall County is
surrounded by several industrial
developments.
Both in Gainesville and nation
wide, much industrial development
came before environmental regula
tions such as the Clean Water Act.
Now, pollution levels in Flat Creek
and Lake Lanier are regularly
monitored.
“We had a lot of development that
we weren’t regulating, so we had a
lot of storm runoff and streams that
got eroded and washed out,” Wiggins
said. “We saw that, and a lot of state
and local governments, especially
Georgia, said we’ve got to do some
thing about this.”
But because the stream is in an
urban area, runoff, litter and pol
lution still makes its way into the
water, and erosion can become a
problem.
“What happens with urban
streams, is after a rain, it gets a lot
of flow, and that erodes the banks....
The stream provides a lot of ecologi
cal services,” MacGregor said. “If
those high flows erode the stream,
then those ecological services are
not being provided by the stream.”
The creek has been the focus of
several previous cleanup efforts.
A litter trap installed in 2015 along
Old Flowery Branch Road stops trash
before it goes farther downstream
into Lake Lanier. In 2015, an old fire
pond that had served the Gainesville
Mill off Marler Street and Georgia
Avenue was drained, and crews
cleaned up the stream around Han
cock and Georgia avenues.
The next step for the current proj
ect is tree planting along the creek.
A federal grant is helping pay for
the project, and the city’s contribu
tion is expected to be about $834,000,
MacGregor said.
Libertarian could trigger runoff
in tight Georgia governor’s race
Woman in opioid
conspiracy case
gets 57 months
BY NICK WATSON
nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com
A woman accused of exchanging a sexual relationship with a
doctor for prescription pills was sentenced last week in federal
court.
Rhonda Haugland was sentenced to 57
months in prison after pleading guilty to con
spiracy to possess with intent to distribute
oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone and
alprazolam. According to the terms of her
sentence, she will receive residential drug
treatment while incarcerated.
When contacted for comment, Haugland’s
attorney Sarah Timmers deferred to the
court record.
In a sentencing memorandum filed Oct. 12, Timmers and
Haugland told the court Haugland developed a “pill popping
habit” roughly five years ago.
“She is one of many Americans caught up in the current and
widespread opioid crises,” according to the memorandum.
Joseph Burton, 73, Haugland and six others were indicted
on conspiracy charges in February. Prosecutors say Burton,
who had a medical expert consulting business but didn’t see
patients, wrote more than 1,500 prescriptions from July 2015
to August 2017 without a legitimate medical purpose.
Burton, a former medical examiner, was sentenced to serve
eight years in prison.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Haugland and two
other women “engaged in a sexual relationship with Dr. Bur
ton in exchange for prescriptions in their names, as well as the
names of others.”
“(Haugland and two others) would fill their prescriptions
and sell the pills, and then obtain more prescriptions from Bur
ton for other people, who paid them for getting the prescrip
tions. Dr. Burton also supplied the co-defendants with blank
prescriptions and instructed them on how to fill them out,”
according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Timmers wrote Haugland’s “late-in-life criminal history,
particularly starting in 2014,” her diagnosis of severe opioid
use disorder and her conviction in the case were “all sad
examples of an individual caught in the wrath of an opioid
addiction.”
Following her prison time, Haugland will be on supervised
release for three years.
Once Burton knew the Drug Enforcement Administration
was investigating him, he tried to falsify records, prosecutors
said.
Burton pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to illegally dis
tribute drugs. Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Elea
nor Ross for a 14-year sentence, while Burton’s attorney asked
for less than four years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Haugland
SOUTH HALL
JOHN BAZEMORE I Associated Press
Libertarian candidate for Georgia Governor Ted Metz
gestures before a debate in Atlanta, Oct. 23.
BY RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press
SAVANNAH — Ted
Metz may not get many
votes in the Georgia gov
ernor’s race, but the Liber
tarian candidate is on the
ballot, raising the possibil
ity that no one else will get
to declare victory on Elec
tion Day either.
Republican Brian Kemp
and Democrat Stacey
Abrams are in the home
stretch of a closely watched
race to succeed term-
limited GOP Gov. Nathan
Deal, and polls have consis
tently shown the rivals run
ning neck and neck.
Metz’s third-party cam
paign has attracted scant
attention, but he could still
play a defining role in Tues
day’s outcome. If the vote
margin between Kemp and
Abrams is close enough,
even a small percentage
of votes for Metz could
force the two major party
contenders into a month of
overtime culminating in a
runoff election Dec. 4.
That’s because Georgia
requires candidates to get
more than 50 percent of the
vote to win an election.
“The reason why you
have to take it seriously
is we expect the margin is
going to be so close between
Kemp and Abrams,” said
Andra Gillespie, a political
science professor at Emory
University in Atlanta. “It’s
probably going to be the
closest we’ve seen in a long
while.”
Libertarians have been
on the ballot for every
Georgia governor’s election
since 1998, taking between
2 and 4 percent of the vote,
but no fall governor’s race
has ever required a runoff.
Runoffs in other state
wide races have been rare,
too. The last was in 2008,
when Republican Sen.
Saxby Chambliss barely
missed a November vic
tory with 49.8 percent of
the vote. Libertarian Allen
Buckley received 3.4 per
cent. Chambliss easily won
re-election in the Decem
ber runoff.
Metz, 60, is a retired
insurance agent and finan
cial planner whose cam
paign largely has revolved
around promoting indus
trial hemp. During a recent
televised debate, he urged
voters to help him deny
Kemp or Abrams an out
right victory on Election
Day.
“This is going to be a
runoff, anyway,” Metz
said. “If you’re tired of the
two-party system and the
two-party tyranny of the oli
garchs running the planet,
then a vote for me is a pro
test vote to show them that
you’re sick and tired of the
same old stuff.”
Both parties are send
ing their highest-ranking
motivators to Georgia in
the campaign’s final days.
President Donald Trump
will hold a rally Sunday
with Kemp, who’s also
lined up a three-city tour
Thursday with Vice Presi
dent Mike Pence. Former
President Barack Obama
will visit Atlanta on Friday
to fire up Democrats for
Abrams.
“The fact they’re all
coming here shows that
both sides see this as very
much up for grabs,” said
Charles Bullock, a politi
cal science professor at the
University of Georgia.
At open house, public can learn
about multi-use trail plans
Community members can
learn more about plans for
multi-use trails in Gainesville
and South Hall at an open house
meeting Thursday.
The Gainesville-Hall Metro
politan Planning Organization
received a federal grant in 2017
to fund trail studies to look at pos
sible routes.
Britt Storck of Atlanta-based
Alta Planning and Design, which
Gainesville and
South Hall trail
studies open
house
When: 5-7 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 1
Where: Spout Springs
Library, 6488 Spout
Springs Road,
Flowery Branch
was hired for the studies, said
earlier this month that the project team will spend October
and November gathering more input before finalizing the
plans.
Megan Reed
SENTENCE
■ Continued from 1A
was 13 when the relationship
started, Lt. Scott Ware said at
the time.
The dates listed in the
December indictment fall
mostly in 2014 except for the
harassing communications
charge, in which Mata was
accused of texting the girl
repeatedly in April 2017. The
jury found Mata not guilty on
that charge.
Fuller said child abuse
cases are “so damaging
because the issue for the
child is so very complicated, ”
affecting the psyche at a criti
cal age.
“Leave here at least know
ing that the court believed
every word you said with
no exception,” Fuller said
addressing the victim and
her family.
DRIVER
■ Continued from 1A
community.”
The new building, costing $3.5
million, will have 18 customer
service counters — compared to
10 in the current building. Also,
the lobby will be able to seat 75.
The old center will be used
until the new building is up and
running, then it will be torn
down, Moore said.
Also, a new commercial
vehicle testing course will be
added to the property, which is
off Queen City Parkway/Ga. 60
and near Lee Gilmer Memorial
Airport.
Deal spoke about the rising
need for truck drivers, especially
stemming from the success of
the Port of Savannah, which is
undergoing a deepening to make
room for larger cargo ships.
Rendering
of a new
Department
of Driver
Services
customer
licensing
center.
AUSTIN STEELE
The Times
