Newspaper Page Text
SEE PAGE IB
SEE PAGE 12A
Lady Eagles
Soccer Squad
Wins 2 Games
CMS 8th Grade
Reading Scores
Are Up Again
Vol. 131
No. 6
24 Pages
2 Sections
The
www.CommerceNewsTODAY.com
ine
Commerce News
50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875
Wednesday
MARCH 25, 2009
Stonewall's
Is Moving
To Braselton
Commerce’s loss is
Braselton’s gain.
In what he described as
“a tough business decision,”
owner Ronnie Jones is relo
cating Stonewalls BBQ to
Braselton.
The restaurant’s last day
will be Friday. It will open
in a strip shopping center
at 6702 Hwy. 53, Braselton,
Monday, April 6.
The original plan, said
Jones, was to run restau
rants in both locations.
“Two weeks ago, this was a
‘growing decision,’” he said.
The plan was to acquire
the equipment left when
Hickory Wind BBQ closed,
but that changed when the
owner sold it to someone
else.
“When the equipment fell
through, we had to make a
decision,” Jones said. “This
wasn’t a decision that came
lightly to us.”
Contributing to the deci
sion were the upcoming
expiration of his lease on
South Broad Street and the
pending renewal of his per
mit from the Department of
Please Turn to Page 5A
mmm
THURSDAY, MARCH 26
Thundershowers: Low, 56;
high, 65; 90% chance rain
FRIDAY, MARCH 27
Thundershowers: Low, 56;
high, 69; 40% chance rain
SATURDAY, MARCH 28
Scattered showers: Low, 48;
high, 73; 40% chance rain
SUNDAY, MARCH 29
Partly cloudy: Low, 42; high,
66; 40% chance rain
Precipitation this month
3.78 inches
Precipitation This Year
11.01 Inches
INDEX
Church News 4B
Classified Ads ...101 2B
Calendar 3A
Crime News 7-8A
News Roundup 2A
Obituaries 6-7B
Opinions 4-5A
School News .... 1 1-1 2A
Sports 1-3B
Social News 10A
Spring—At Last
Thrift, blooming in a Lewis Circle yard. Photos by Mark Beardsley
Spring's Beauty Brings
Fresh And Welcome Color
Winter gave way to spring last Friday,
just in time for a glorious weekend that
— hopefully — portends an abundance of
warm and beautiful days.
The daffodils, a late winter harbringer
of change, are fading, but nature is pro
ducing a huge array of colorful buds and
blossoms to stir the gardener’s heart.
One need not travel to find the evi
dence of spring’s arrival. From thrift to
henbit, flowering cherry trees to dog
woods (just now starting to bloom), the
ladscape is ablaze with color. There is no
recession in nature.
Enjoy it. The weather forecast for the
rest of this week calls for rain.
A honeybee visits a flowering cherry tree
near the intersection of Washington Street and
Jefferson Road.
A maple tree blooms
at Commerce High
School on Lakeview
Drive.
Daffodils in a
Woodland Trail yard.
Yellowbells (forsythia) at Willoughby Park on Clayton Street.
City Seeking
Deep Cuts
In Operations
Revenue Projections Lead City To
Propose 15% Cuts In Operations
By Mark Beardsley
Don’t look for anything
new out of Commerce’s gov
ernment next fiscal year.
Facing declining revenues
related to plant closings
and cutbacks, the 2009-10
city budget will be the lean
est since 1990, reports city
manager Clarence Bryant.
“The budget we’ll do this
year will be very similar to
the one we did in 1990,”
Bryant said. “We’ll sit back
and wait for the telephone
to right, and go out and fix
it. It won’t be that extreme,
but we’re looking for it to be
very close to it.”
The budget process has
just started. It will wind up
in early July when a final
version—including numbers
from the last month of this
fiscal year — is approved.
The early goal was to shave
15 percent from the opera
tions cost of most depart
ments. For the utilities, that
means no capital expendi
tures and little maintenance
other than what is absolute
ly necessary or required by
law.
That doesn’t mean a 15 per
cent cut in the utility depart
ments’ budgets. That’s not
possible, given that so much
of the expenses are tied up
in buying gas or electricity.
Nor is it possible to trim
all budgets by that amount.
“Some departments can
do it and some can’t,”
Bryant explained. “Some, if
they do, are going to have to
cut services.”
“We’re trying to do every
thing we can do to keep the
level of service at the same
rate and the level of employ
ment at the same
Please Turn to Page 3A
Judge Booth Hears
Motion To Toss
Bear Creek Lawsuit
By Mark Beardsley
Superior Court Judge Joe
Booth will decide whether
Jackson County’s lawsuit
against the Upper Oconee
Basin Water Authority
should proceed.
The county is suing the
authority — of which it is
a member — to force it to
recalculate the yield of
the Bear Creek Reservoir,
which the authority man
ages, under the belief that
the lake’s actual capacity
is less than half what the
authority claims. Should
Jackson County prevail, all
assumptions upon which
Athens-Clarke, Barrow,
Oconee — and Jackson —
counties use the water will
be null and void. That has
huge financial ramifications,
particularly for Barrow and
Athens-Clarke.
Booth listened to argu
ments last Wednesday on a
motion by the authority to
dismiss the suit. He did not
indicate when the parties
can expect a decision.
Andrew Ekonomou of the
Atlanta law firm Ekonomou,
Atkinson & Lambros LLC
argued that
the author
ity has
sovereign
immunity
and that
Georgia
law did
not allow Mike Bowers
declaratory
judgment as requested in
the suit.
Former Georgia Attorney
General Mike Bowers of
the Atlanta law firm Balch
& Bingham LLP countered
those arguments on behalf
of Jackson County and its
water and sewerage author
ity.
At stake is how much water
each of the counties can
count on each day during
the 50-year term of the inter
governmental agreement
that created the authority
and allowed for the building
of the reservoir. The current
“established yield” of 58 mil
lion gallons a day (mgd) is
the basis not just for water
use projections among the
four owners, but also of
Please Turn to Page 3A
'Unseasonably Healthy' February Not Good For BJC
By Mark Beardsley
Only at a hospital would
the absence of a flu season
be received as bad news.
But an “unseasonably
healthy” February resulted
in BJC Medical Center
finishing the month about
$65,000 in the red after a
January in which the facility
was $19,000 in the black.
January’s small “profit”
was considered important
as it came in the wake of
a large layoff of hospital
personnel because of the
economy. A return to red
ink in February was a bit of
a surprise.
“March has rebounded.
We hope February was an
anomaly,” commented Ray
Leadbetter, BJC’s chief
financial officer.
“The flu vaccine is too
effective,” joked CEO Jim
Yarborough.
Leadbetter, after the
January numbers, had pre
dicted that the facility would
wind up its fiscal year June
30 $759,000 in the red. It
was $ 1 million in the red for
the first six months of the
fiscal year.