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SEE PAGE IB Wrestlers Gear Up For Area Tournament Jackson Leads League In Teen Births — Page 5A County Elementary Schools May Drop ABCs — Page 12A Realtor Stays Optimistic About Opportunities — Page 6A Planning Director Fired, No Reason Given — Page 6A Vol. 132 No. 53 28 Pages 3 Sections Wednesday FEBRUARY 13, 2008 mainstreetnews.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 Barbecue Restaurant Eyes Downtown DDA To Lease Off-Street Parking Spaces For Restaurant's Smoker BOC Dedicates 12 Hours To Write Mission, Vision Statements The Jackson County Board of Commissioners will meet for 12 hours in March to figure out what its mission should be and how it should view the future. The commissioners’ goal is to develop a mission and vision statement. The “retreat” will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday March 18, and from 8:30 a.m. to noon Wednesday March 19. The commissioners will meet at the Hurricane Shoals Conference Center and Museum in Jefferson. Action taken by the Commerce City Council Monday night is expected to help bring a barbe cue restaurant to a long-vacant South Broad Street building. The council voted to deed part of the parking lot between the civic center and the cul tural center to the Downtown Development Authority which plans to lease one to two parking spaces to the restaurant for the location of a smoker. “It’s a really good exchange to lose one to two off-street parking places to get a new restaurant downtown,” said councilman Bob Sosebee, who also chairs the DDA. The potential owner plans to open at the 1682 South Broad Street building owned by Bob Yarbray, who renovated the build ing years ago with the idea of opening a restaurant but never opened it. Yarbray and his wife live in an apartment over the restaurant. Mark Fitzpatrick made the motion to deed the property to the DDA. Mayor Charles L. Hardy Jr. expressed the opinion that the restaurant deal is all but com pleted . “He’s ready to open. He wants to get going,” the mayor said. Hasco Craver has been work ing with the restaurant owner and with Yarbray for several weeks as they’ve hammered out the details. A sign in the win dow of the building advertises a “turnkey lease,” meaning that the building is equipped and ready to utilized for food service. “A lease has not been signed yet,” cautioned Craver. “He has expressed great interest in want ing to secure the facility.” In a related matter, the coun cil heard Sosebee plea for the renovation of the parking lot that would serve the store. He pointed out that the city has planned for a number of years to make improvements and said it is time “to put it back on the front burner.” “We can’t ask our business own ers to put back doors on their businesses and park back there if it’s not safe and well-lighted,” he said. Walgreens Gets OK To Cut Trees In other business Monday night, the council agreed to let Walgreens cut down 41 trees on its future store site, located at the corner of Homer Road and North Broad Street, ranging from six-inch pines to a huge oak near the Pittman House. A number of pecan trees will also be removed. Under the city’s tree ordinance, the developer is required to plant Please Turn to Page 3A No New Houses For Second Straight Month The Commerce Department of Building Inspection did not issue a single permit for a house during January. In fact, it didn’t issue a per mit for the construction of any new buildings in either December or January. The department issued per mits for two additions or alter ations to houses — valued at $73,300; and permitted four additions to commercial build ings worth only $34,765. The $108,465 in permitted construction compared to $600,000 worth of work per mitted during January 2007. INDEX Births 6B Church News 1 0A Classified Ads 1-6C Calendar 3A Crime News 7-8A News Roundup 2A Obituaries 1 1A Opinions 4-5A School News 8-10B Sports 1-3B Social News 6-8B WEATHER OUTLOOK THURSDAY Sunny: Low, 33; high, 58; 20% chance rain SATURDAY j Few showers: Low, 46; high, 58; 30% chance rain Reservoir Levels Commerce: 698.4 (.8 feet above full) Bear Creek: 695 (full) Rainfall this month .9 inches CONTACT US Phone: 706-335-2927 FAX: 70N387-5435 E-mail: news@mainstreetnews.com ma rk@ma i n streetnews. com brandon@mainstreetnews.com teresa@mainstreetnews.com Mail: P.O. Box 459, Commerce, GA 30529 FRIDAY Partly cloudy: Low, 43; high, 65; 20% chance rain SUNDAY Thunderstorms: Low, 37; high, 55; 60% chance rain Getting Ready Drought or no drought, Commerce gardener Ron Craven will have a full garden. Pictured hoeing a row of collard greens, Craven and his wife, Jacqui, are already growing plants for the Commerce Public Library’s annual spring plant swap and sale Saturday, March 22, to benefit the library’s building fund. Also on that day, they’ll host a seminar on gardening in a drought, also at the library. Drought Response Jackson Set To Ease Level Four Water Restrictions As of Thursday morning, water restrictions for Jackson County will be lessened slightly, and by April 1 county residents can expect to be allowed to undertake limited irrigation of landscaping. The Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority was due to meet this (Wednesday) evening after its regular meeting Thursday was cancelled due to schedul ing conflicts. Restoring the level four exemptions in the authority’s drought management plan was on the agenda. The authority’s members agreed at their work session Feb. 7 that restoration of the exemptions, most of which affect construction, should be restored since the Bear Creek Reservoir is full and the river supplying it has sufficient water to replace all withdrawals. The authority, facing the possi bility that the Bear Creek reservoir was failing, voted last October to eliminate most of the exemptions, including use of water for soil compaction, in construction, on newly-installed landscaping, by garden centers and other uses. The only exemptions retained at the time were for hydro-seeding, for car washes (if they cut con sumption by 50 percent) and for mixing mortar. At that time, the reservoir was 14 feet low and the North Oconee River a trickle. Times have changed, Gov. Sonny Perdue Use Exemptions To Be Restored The following exceptions to the level four drought response plan have been reinstated and these uses of outside water are now per mitted: • newly-installed landscap ing for 30 days after instal lation • use during the installation of irrigation systems • sod producers • ornamental growers •fruit and vegetable grow ers • retail garden centers • hydro-seeding • power washing • at construction sites •the production of food and fiber • car washes •watering in of pesticides and herbicides on turf has even stated that — if the local water supplier agrees — swimming pools may be filled and some yard watering is allowed. “What the situation will be later in the summer, we don’t know,” cautioned authority vice chair- Please Turn to Page 3A Commerce Seeks Way Out Of State's Drought Management Commerce wants out of the state’s drought emergency plan. Specifically, city officials want the Environmental Protection Division to remove the Savannah River Basin — of which Commerce is a part — from the 61 counties whose water use is being managed by the EPD. “We want to write a request and give them a history of our sys tem,” said City Manager Clarence Bryant. “We will probably discuss this with the other governments in the Savannah River Basin and see if we can’t get a joint letter on behalf of the basin.” The way the city looks at the situation is that its reservoir was largely unaffected by the drought — and that the Savannah River Basin as a whole escaped the worst of what is now considered Georgia’s worst drought. Its reservoir did fall a foot, but at the time, the city’s drought man agement plan did not call for any action until the reservoir reached two feet below full pool. However, by mandate of the EPD and Gov. Sonny Perdue, Commerce was forced to limit water usage just like areas much more severely affected. The city supplied up to two mil lion gallons a day this past fall to Jackson County, much of it going to Jefferson, whose reser voir ran dry. It also provided water to Banks Crossing and Maysville. With the winter rains filling both the Jefferson and Bear Creek res ervoirs, those sales have fallen off, and the continued restrictions on use are further hurting the city’s bottom line. While Perdue eased some restrictions on the outdoor use of water — filling of swimming pools will be allowed starting April 1, limited hand-watering of existing landscapes is permissible and the irrigation of newly-installed land scapes is now exempted from the state’s level four mandates — suppliers must still meet the governor’s 10 percent reduction in water use. Commerce has yet to meet that target. Local restrictions — that may, as in Commerce and Jackson County, be more restrictive than the state’s — are still in force until the local utilities remove them. Meanwhile, the city’s director of water and sewer operations confirmed that for the second month, Commerce failed to meet the 10 percent target reduction. For December, the city managed almost a nine-percent reduction, but for January, sales were cut by only five percent, said Bryan Please Turn to Page 3A