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.
