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SEE PAGE IB SEE PAGES 5-9B Tigers Open Region Play At Home Friday Schools Celebrate The Birthday Of Dr. Seuss Vol. 133 No. 4 24 Pages 3 Sections Wednesday MARCH 12, 2008 mainstreetnews.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 School Board Set To Unveil New CHS Design Site Plan, Architect's Rendering To Be Presented At 7:00 Monday Night Volunteer Donnie Pitonyak adjusts the Commerce Public Library’s “fund-raising train” to reflect the $120,000 donation made by the family of Dr. and Mrs. Narasimhulu Neelagaru. The library is now within $75,000 of meeting its goal. Gratitude For Library Led Dr. Neel, Family To Donate $150,000 Commerce City Council Split Votes Lead To Re-Zoning, Annexation For Councilman City Must Wait For Promised County Money For The Library That $120,000 the Jackson County Board of Commissioners voted to send to Commerce for the library’s capital fund drive? The check isn’t exactly in the mail. Jackson County sent the city $54,576 and promised the rest as the SPLOST revenue dedicated to libraries trickles in over the next four or five years, said Mayor Charles L. “Buzzie” Hardy Jr. The way the mayor sees it, Jackson County had $175,000 in library SPLOST money on hand when it voted last spring to give $120,000 to Commerce for its library expansion. Then, other libraries made requests, which the commissioners also granted. Rather than send Commerce the full amount promised ASAP as the city hoped, the county parceled out the money it had among all of the requests and issued an IOU for the rest. ‘That’s just the kind of poli tics she likes to play,” said Hardy, referring to the delay. BOC Chairman Pat Bell explained the situation in a letter to Hardy, suggesting that allocating the whole $120,000 would create cash flow prob lems and saying that histor ically, the BOC divvied up SPLOST money on a “per centage basis.” INDEX Births 1 1A Church News 1 0A Classified Ads 1-4C Calendar 3A Crime News 7-8A News Roundup 2A Obituaries 9B Opinions 4A School News 5-8B Sports 1-4B Social News .... 1 1 -1 2A WEATHER OUTLOOK THURSDAY FRIDAY Mostly sunny: Few showers: Low, 47; high, 74; Low, 54; high, 70; 10% chance rain 30% chance rain SATURDAY SUNDAY Thunderstorms: Sunny: Low, 43; high, 73; Low, 39; high, 66; 40% chance rain 10% chance rain Reservoir Levels Commerce: 698.8 (1.2 feet above full) Bear Creek: 695 (full) Rainfall this month 2.60 inches CONTACT US Phone: 706-335-2927 FAX: 70N3 87-5435 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 Because Dr. Narasimhulu Neelagaru grew up poor, the Commerce Public Library’s Building Fund is $150,000 richer. Known locally as “Dr. Neel,” the Commerce cardiologist, who is so highly regarded in his field that Georgia Baptist Hospital used to fly him in and out of that facility by helicopter, recently announced the largest donation of the library’s fund drive. The money puts the facility within $75,000 of reaching its goal to leverage state funding for a $2 million expansion. The Commerce City Council officially accepted the donation Monday night. “That’s quite a gift from Dr. Neel. We are quite indebted to him,” commented Mayor Charles L. “Buzzie” Hardy Jr. Monday night after the city council voted unani mously to accept the money. That Dr. Neel is highly regard ed professionally is due in equal parts to his zeal for learning and the availability of books in the public library in his hometown, Bellary, India. Poor in a poor country, the library was his ticket out of pov erty. “My father always said the way to get out of this situation is to have education, so education is extremely important to me,” Dr. Neel explained. And the library was a crucial part of that education. “I used to spend days, some times months, like eight hours a day, every day, six to seven days a week going to the library during the holidays, reading everything I could,” he recalled. “I owe a lot to the library. Oftentimes, the librar ian used to see me as the first one in the morning and the last one to leave.” Dr. Neel says he can still picture the librarian, “the man walking, the way he dressed. I have this picture in my mind, so clearly,” Dr. Neel he said. Anyone trying to find a connec tion between reading and educa tion need look no further than Dr. Neel. At graduation from high school, he was ranked 10th in his state, and thus given a scholar ship to the university of choice in his state. He went to the medical school in his hometown right out of high school, saving the cost of room and board by living at home. In medical school, he had the option to take an exam to come to the United States, and in 1973 he came to New York City where he did his internal medicine residency at New York Medical College, followed by a cardiology fellowship in Bridgeport, CT, after which he practiced in Wisconsin. It didn’t take long before he looked south. “I used to come to Atlanta for meetings. I liked the weather, and Wisconsin is cold and more cold,” he said. “Also, I wanted to bring my children to a small town and wanted to live in a small town.” Please Turn to Page 3A By Brandon Reed The public will get to see plans for the new Commerce High School next Monday. Superintendent Mac McCoy announced at Monday night’s meeting of the Commerce Board of Education that a called meet ing will be held on March 24 for the public unveiling of the plans City Councilman Donald Wilson got his lot and two houses rezoned and annexed Monday night on 3-2 votes that overrode the recommendations of the Commerce Planning Commission. Wilson owns two rental hous es on a single lot on Westview Drive. He sought to have them rezoned from A-2 in the county to R-l in the city so his tenants could save on water and sewer age rates and the city schools could receive tax revenue from the houses, he said. The planning commission rec ommended denial of the request because of both the size of the lot and the fact that there are two houses on one lot. Wilson left the room Monday night and did not participate in the matter. Commerce has made an offi cial request to be exempted from water restrictions forced upon 61 drought-stricken counties in Georgia. In a letter to Dr. Carol Couch, director of the Environmental Protection Division, Mayor Charles L. Hardy Jr. presented the city’s argument that since its water supply was never imper iled by the drought last fall that it should be exempted from the state level 4 requirement. “A Drought Contingency Plan was approved in November 1998 that established procedures to be followed when the reservoir reached certain pool elevations,” Hardy wrote. “This was based on the expected yield of the reser voir during low flow conditions. The drought plan was modified in November 2007 to more closely follow the EPD Level 2 and Level 4 outdoor water use guidelines. The plan activates with restric tions (Level 2) when the reservoir drops 1.0 foot from full pool, then a drop of 2.0 feet will activate mandatory restrictions (Level 4). As previously stated, during for the new facility. The meeting will be at the high school at 7 p.m. The plan is to begin construc tion on a new high school short ly after the current school year ends — on the same campus where the school is now. The project is being funded by a bond issue being repaid by the sys- Ward 4 Councilman Bob Sosebee pushed for the annexa tion of the lots and an R-3 zon ing, arguing that without taking the property in, the city risks the creation of a future “island” of un annexed property should other nearby lots be annexed. Ward 3 and Ward 5 council- men Mark Litzpatrick and Richard Massey both opposed the rezoning and annexation on the grounds that the property would not conform to the city zoning ordinance in any zoning class. Massey made a motion to accept the planning commis sion’s recommendation and deny the request. It died for lack of a second. Litzpatrick made a motion to send the matter back to the plan ning commission, but later with- this drought period the reservoir only dropped 0.8 feet.” Hardy also pointed out that the city reservoir was able to help Jefferson and Jackson County at the worst of the drought. “The city’s ability to provide water to the surrounding com munities was very evident when the City of Jefferson’s reservoir dropped critically low as well as the Bear Creek Reservoir which serves the JCWSA (Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority). The provision of water to these systems averaged 0.9 mgd. The production at the treatment plant still only reached 50 percent capacity.” Then, the mayor explained why the city wants out of the restric tions, noting that expansions of the water treatment plant and the wastewater plant since 1996 have tern’s share of the SPLOST (spe cial purpose local option sales tax) for education. Also on Monday night, the board learned that the eighth grade writing test results showed a 14-percent gain over last year. In 2007, 73 percent met or exceed ed goals, and in 2008, 87 percent met or exceeded. Seventy-eight percent of students met the goals, while 9 percent exceeded. McCoy informed the board that Please Turn to Page 5A drew the motion. Mayor Pro Tem Dusty Slater made the motion to rezone the property R-3. Sosebee seconded the motion, and with the support of Ward 1 Councilman Wayne Gholston, the council rezoned the tract to R-3. Litzpatrick and Massey voted against the motion. On the same split, the council voted 3-2 to annex the property. In the other zoning-related mat ter, the council decided to ask the planning commission to give more thought to its proposed amendment regarding utility buildings. The plan was to allow up to two utility buildings per lot in the three zoning classes with the larg est single-family lots — AR, R-l Please Turn to Page 5A Commerce Eases Water Restrictions The Commerce City Council restored the exemp tions to level four water restrictions Monday night. The action reverses a vote taken Nov. 11, 2007, at the peak of the drought. Most of the exemptions dealt with commercial use of water, and few of them actu ally came into play. But while property own ers still cannot water their yards, they can wash in newly applied herbicides and irrigate newly-installed landscape (if installed by a professional). Water may also be used in construction and for the production of sod or orna mental plants. left the city with a debt service of $13 million. Please Turn to Page 3A Mayor Asks EPD Director To Remove City From Level 4 Mayor Charles L. Hardy Jr.