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Recreation Seasons Begin The Commerce Parks and Recreation Department’s base ball and softball seasons got under way Saturday. Teams are pictured preparing for the opening ceremony. See Page 1B Vol. 133 No. 7 26 Pages 3 Sections Wednesday APRIL 2, 2008 mainstreetnews.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 Compromise Seems Likely On New School Superintendent Says New Plan Will Satisfy Concerns About The Gymnasium "WMy,*'F T 1 L l3 -s 7 j a, WJ5!fU<isp A compromise in the mini furor over the design of the new Commerce High School may be in the works. Superintendent of Schools Dr. James E. “Mac” McCoy told the Commerce High School Council Monday night that offi cials “are very close to working out a compro mise everybody would be happy with.” McCoy was one of about 10 people, including students and parents, who sat in as the school council dis cussed the issue, listed their com plaints or concerns and offered ideas they thought would resolve the issue. At issue is the gymnasium. The original plan called for the con tractor to build a new gym to completion, then demolish the existing gym and begin construc tion of the main facility. At the last minute, that plan changed as the Mac McCoy D E X Births 7B Church News 5B Classified Ads 1-4C Calendar . . . 3A Crime News . 7-8A News Roundup 2A Obituaries. . . 6B Opinions. . . . 4-5A School News. . . . .9-1 1A Sports 1-4B Social News . 7-8 B WEATHER OUTLOOK THURSDAY FRIDAY Showers: Scattered T-storms: Low, 59; high, 74; Low, 59; high, 74; 50% chance rain 50% chance rain SATURDAY SUNDAY Thunderstorms: Mostly sunny: Low, 48; high, 59; Low, 48; high, 72; 40% chance rain 10% chance rain Reservoir Levels Commerce: 699.5 (1.9 feet above full) Bear Creek: 695 (full) Rainfall In March 5.2 inches CONTACT US Phone: 706-335-2927 FAX: 70G3 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 architects told the school board it could save up to $1.5 million by demolishing the gym and building the school all at once. The problem was that the school would be without a gym for 12 to 24 months in the new scheme. “The board did hear (the complaints),” McCoy said. “They lis tened and they asked me to try to make things work.” There had been speculation that the school council would draft a letter to the board of education opposing the plan. Instead, on a motion by Joe Leffew, the council voted 4-0 to have member Dr. Carlton Allen draft a letter to the board support ing McCoy’s efforts and insisting that the board “involve the people from this point forward.” The first portion of the meeting was devoted to members’ con cerns, which appeared to be split between the architects and the issue with the gym. But member Joe Leffew went so far as to draw a schematic for a new, larger school he said would require no demolition of any exist ing structures, mostly by building on the back side of the school property, and could be built in a single phase. _ Commerce High School Council members (clockwise from front) Dr. Carlton Allen, Kay Haugen, Donnie Drew, Sonny Austin, Joe Leffew and Bill Sims discuss a schematic for a school layout created by Leffew. The group ultimately voted to send a letter to the school board sup porting Superintendent James “Mac” McCoy’s efforts to reach a compromise and asking the board to seek public input throughout the rest of the process. “Can you do it without disturb ing the students?” Leffew asked. “I say, yes you can, without disturb ing the students or the faculty or the staff or the facility. Yeah we can, we can build it on the back and on the side and have a much bigger school than is currently planned ... faster, cheaper and bet ter than what is currently on the plan.” Allen pressed McCoy on wheth er the architects offered any other scenarios, and the superintendent replied that the company took input from teachers and followed a board mandate “not to build something that in 50 years will look like it was built around some thing else.” Allen asked why other architec tural firms were not considered, and McCoy replied, “Money,” say ing they did not stay within the board’s budget with their propos als. That exchange led Allen and Chairman Bill Sims to both sug gest that the school system had been “baited” with a promise of a school within a budget, only to later be told that it would take a rearrangement of the construction process to meet that budget. “My real concern with the firm based on their presentation was that they did not seem well-pre pared,” Allen said. Leffew had made a similar observation. Sims agreed, saying that during the March 24 presentation to the school board, the architect pre sented nothing done to scale. Sims also told McCoy that had the public been told the school board needed more money to build the school, the board could have passed a larger bond issue. “You could have asked for $25 or $30 million and they would have voted for it,” he said. “I do feel like I’ve been bait ed,” he added. “We were told one thing, then given another.” Lormer BOE member Keith Massey criticized the school board for its failure to work with city officials for a joint bond issue to build “the kind of facility we want,” and said it was time for the BOE to get over its political differences with the city council. He also suggested that the design should have been more “green,” or environmentally friendly. Massey faulted the design for taking up part of the CHS practice field, which could bump some rec reation teams to another site. Jennifer Sanders expressed the opinion that the board and its architects “haven’t looked at all the angles, and they’re telling us there are no other options.” She called the loss of a gym for one to two years “a major disruption to a lot of lives.” Members voting for Leffew’s motion included Sims, Leffew, Allen and Sonny Austin. Members Kay Haugen and Donnie Drew, both employed at CHS, abstained. Lor his part, McCoy said he found the meeting helpful. “I think it was important for the group to understand that the board heard their concerns and is working toward a solu tion,” he said later. “The issue is displacement of the kids, and I think we have a solution to that.” Hudgens: Amendment To Kill Auto Tax Not Likely To Survive Measure Would Cost Jackson County School System $2 Million Annually > c Local school officials are breath ing a little easier this week as a proposal to eliminate the ad valor em tax on automobiles appears to have stalled. “Appears” is the key word. The proposal is now in a House-Senate conference committee “log-jammed” between House and Senate negotiators, according to Sen. Ralph Hudgens (R-Hull). As of Monday afternoon, no one knew what, if anything, might actually come out of the committee. “They’re trying to Ralph Hudgens come up with some kind of tax relief program, but I don’t think that’s (auto tax elimination) is what they’ll end up with,” Hudgens said. By the time the bill got to the Senate, Hudgens said, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle had “stripped out” the provisions calling for a repeal of the auto tax and replaced it with reductions of the state income tax. “Right now, we’re at a log jam on what we’re going to do,” the sena tor stated. Hudgens said he favored eliminating the auto tax, but pro posed that it be done via a state income tax credit. “I wanted for every one who got a tag to go ahead and pay the county for the ad valorem tax, then when they file on the Georgia income tax, they would get a credit,” he said, scenario would have That offered some advantages over the original bill. Lirst, said Hudgens, local governments and boards of education would have gotten their revenue without having to depend upon the state for reim bursement — a stumbling block in the original proposal. Second, one of the criticisms of the plan was that people in the “underground” (illegal) economy who do not pay income taxes would also get the break, something Hudgens’ pro posal would have avoided. The General Assembly has until midnight Lriday to resolve the matter. Regardless of the outcome, Hudgens knows how he’ll vote. “If it’s a tax reduction, I’m going to vote for it,” he declared. Schools Hugely Affected The elimination of the auto tax would hammer local school sys tems. Commerce Linance Director Steve McKown said that accord ing to the 2007 tax digest, removal of the auto tax would cost the Commerce School System about $250,000 a year. Multiply that by eight for the Jackson County Board of Education, according to Tax Commissioner Don Elrod. Based on the 2007 tax digest, the county school system stood to collect $2,077,476 this past year from taxes on vehicles. Even half that — assuming a two- year phase-in as called for in the Please Turn to Page 3A like Commerce, Basin Group Wants Out Of Drought Plan With two out of three of its indicators showing the drought in decline, the Upper Oconee River Basin Water Authority has joined other local jurisdictions in trying to get out from under Georgia’s drought management plan. Meeting last Wednesday, the authority voted to ask the Environmental Protection Division to drop the four-county area from the 61 counties where water usage is being dictated by Gov. Sonny Perdue and the EPD. It expects an answer by April 15. The authority wants to operate under its own drought manage ment plan — which would put the four counties at a level 2 status, requiring a five-percent reduction in water usage. That management plan, officials note, was approved by the EPD. Currently it is under the state plan at a level four and the governor’s mandate to reduce usage by 10 percent. A level two status would allow homeowners to resume watering their yards and washing cars on an odd-even-day basis. The city of Commerce has made a similar request. The decision is an outgrowth of a March 25 meeting among water system operators and EPD officials in Braselton at which local offi cials were able to present their cases individually to the EPD. There, said Gary Dodd, manager of the authority’s Operations Committee, EPD officials confirmed that the 61-county area was created by a line “arbitrarily drawn” by the EPD based on the levels of lakes Lanier and Allatoona. The group was promised that if it made its request in writing by April 1, the EPD would provide an answer by April 15. “A lot of cities and counties are requesting to be removed,” Dodd told the authority. Dodd also said that the EPD concedes that the basin authority’s Please Turn to Page 3A