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SEE PAGE 1B SEE PAGE 6A Basketball And Wrestling To Start This Week Quilts On Display Through Dec. 20 At City Library Vol. 132 No. 42 28 Pages 3 Sections Commerce News Wednesday NOVEMBER 28, 2007 mainstreetnews.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 Council Meeting Dates Back On Normal Schedule The decision to change the dates of the Commerce City Council’s December meetings has been reversed. The council will meet as orig inally scheduled at 6:00 p.m. in City Hall Monday, Dec. 3, for its work session and Monday, Dec. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Commerce Civic Center for its regular meeting. The council had backed those meetings up a week — Dec. 10 for the work session and Dec. 17 for the regular meeting — so the city could finalize a contract for the pur chase of electricity from the new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle, for which a decision was due Jan. 1. The decision is crucial to Commerce because it will determine the amount of base load electricity the city can buy when the new reactor goes online, which is projected to be in 2015-16. The city would like to buy up to 10 megawatts of power, but is likely to be able to get around half of that. Base load power is always available; when the city’s demand for power exceeds its base load, it has to purchase power on the open market, which can be considerably more expensive. That need to push back the meetings became moot when the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia — the 50-city cooperative through which electricity is purchased — suggested that no contracts be signed regarding Vogtle until February “to give all the cities time to determine the selling price for any excess power we plan to purchase.” I N D E X Births 10A Church News 5B Classified Ads 1-4C Calendar 3A Crime News 7-8A News Roundup 2A Obituaries 9A Opinions 4A School News 8-12B Sports 1-4B Social News . . . . 10-11A WEATHER OUTLOOK THURSDAY FRIDAY Partly cloudy: Sunny: Low, 33; high, 62; Low, 37; high, 60; 10% chance rain 10% chance rain SATURDAY SUNDAY Partly cloudy: Partly cloudy: Low, 40; high, 64; Low, 50; high, 66; 10% rain chance 20% chance rain CONTACT US Phone: 706-335-2927 FAX: 706-387-5435 E-mail: news@mainstreetnews. com mark@mainstreetnews.com brandon@mainstreetnews.com teresa@mainstreetnews.com Mail: PO. Box 459, Commerce, GA 30529 Weekend Events To Open Christmas Season Parade At 3:00 On Sunday; Breakfast With Santa, Secret Santa Workshop & More Saturday With more than a week to get Thanksgiving behind it, Commerce will usher in the Christmas season this weekend, beginning with a day of events Saturday and conclud ing with what may be the largest Christmas parade in memory Sunday. The activities begin Saturday at 9:00, when the Downtown Development Authority and the Four Seasons Garden Club offer “Breakfast with Santa” from 9:00 to 11:00 at the Opera House Dance Academy, 1650 South Broad Street. Children can enjoy breakfast and have their picture made with Santa. The event is free, but there will be a minimal charge for the photos. Participating merchants will also have special items on sale in their “Hometown Holidays” Christmas promotion from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Book Signing The Rev. G. Richard Hoard will sign cop ies of his recently-re-released book, “Alone among the Living,” Saturday Dec. 1, from noon to 3:00 p.m., at Our Town Antiques, 1671 South Elm Street. Hoard’s book, which recounts the mur der of his father, former Jackson County Solicitor Floyd Hoard, by a car bomb Aug. 7, 1967 as he was about to present evidence to a grand jury, tells the story from the perspective of the author, then a 14-year-old boy. Hoard has won several writing awards, has taught literature and composition in high school and speech communications in college while serving as pastor of Oconee River Methodist Church in Bishop. Secret Santa Workshop The Secret Santa Workshop, a Christmas shopping event targeting smaller children, will take place from noon to 3:00 in the Commerce School of Dance building, 1736 North Broad Street. The event offers children a chance to shop among hundreds of potential gift items brought in by various local merchants and priced at $10 or under — most at $5 and under — just right for a child’s budget. The Pilot Club of Commerce will provide volunteers to help kids select gifts and to help them manage their money. Volunteers from Jackson Creative will assist with gift wrapping. Parents are encouraged to drop their chil dren off and pick them up later so the kids can keep gifts secret until Christmas. Call 706-335-2954 for information. Car Show While the kids are shopping, Mom and Dad can shop downtown, get a bite to eat and check out the restored automobiles Please Turn to Page 3A Two More Downtown Facade Renovations The facades of two more downtown buildings are undergoing renovation. Dills Construction Co. removed the canopy over the offices of Dr. Elaine Beck and WJJC Radio on North Elm Street Tuesday. The brick, which was sand blasted in the 1970s, will be painted, but other- wise, the fronts will be returned to their original appearance. In addition, the WJJC building is being thoroughly renovated inside. When the facade was removed, faint lettering on Beck’s building revealed “H.D. Sorrow’s Groceries/ Benson Bread" Mum's The Word Planning Panel Refuses To Take Position On Whether Variances Should Be Allowed The lot is small and it’s located at a dangerous intersection. In the end, the Commerce Planning Commission voted not to weigh in on whether to grant variances so Bhavyesh “Bob” Trivedi can put a dry cleaning establishment at the corner of Ridgeway Street and Hospital Road. The planning commission’s job is to make recommendations to the city council on zoning and land use matters. But this time, the planning panel voted 3-0 to forward the request without any recommendation to the Commerce City Council, which will make a decision at its Monday, Dec. 10, meeting at 6:30 at the Commerce Civic Center. Trivedi — through his agent, Timothy White — seeks variances on the setbacks from the roads and from the creek behind the building so he can build a struc ture large enough to house both a dry cleaning pick-up site and a yet-to-be-determined business on the lot. The lot had previously been zoned C-2 (commercial) at the request of Donald Wilson, its owner at the time. According to White, the .7-acre lot cannot be developed feasibly without some changes in the set backs, because much of the fill on the lot will have to be replaced. “To get an adequate building to offset the cost is what we’re trying to do,” he explained. White asked for an 18-foot vari ance on the Hospital Road set back and a five-foot variance on the Ridgeway Street setback. Or, he said, Trivedi could work with a 25-foot variance on the stream buffer, which is 75 feet. The lot was originally very low, but was built up with years of dumping of rock and other mate rials and it also attracted illegal dumping over the years. As a result, said White, much of the fill will have to be removed and replaced. But what concerned the plan ning commission is the small space allocated for parking — not necessarily for a pick-up/drop off dry cleaning location, but for it and whatever other business might rent the other half of the 15 by 30 building. Trivedi said he owns a chain of dry cleaning businesses, with the dry cleaning taking place at his Elberton and Athens locations, which are fed from pick-up points in other places. He said he cleans University of Georgia football coach Mark Richt’s clothing. Pam Minish, whose Leigh Street property backs up to the creek across from the site, was the only citizen to speak about the pro- Please Turn to Page 5A Rain Fills City Reservoir Thanksgiving Showers, Sunday-Monday Rain Put Commerce Lake Over Full Pool Commerce’s reservoir is full. More than full, actually. The combination of the Thanksgiving rain and a Sunday-Monday drizzle have topped off the city’s reservoir, in spite of the record drought. “It is two-tenths of an inch above full pool,” said City Manager Clarence Bryant Monday afternoon. “We got four-tenths of an inch last Thursday and it was close to full then. I guess this rain put it over,” he added. That surplus could grow as the remnants of Monday’s rain head downstream in the Grove River from its drainage basin in the Maysville-Lula-Gillsville area. The lake is located in southern Banks County on Grove Level Church Road southwest of the Atlanta Dragway. The city got permission from the Environmental Protection Division this past summer to increase the height of its outtake by a foot, which, given sufficient rain, would increase the capacity of the lake by 300 acre feet — a hefty addition to a shallow reservoir. Please Turn to Page 3A Season's Greetings Commerce turned on its Christmas lighting Thursday night in the downtown. That includes the Christmas tree and decorations in front of the J. Nolan Spear Jr. Public Safety Complex.