About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2018)
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
