Oconee County Commissioners Approve Major Development Plans at Final 2024 Meeting

On Dec. 3, in their final meeting of 2024, the Oconee County Board of Commissioners passed a rezone request for a 10-acre site at Plaza Parkway and Jennings Mill road, leading the way for exciting new developments for the Oconee County community. During the meeting, many other requests were passed as well as finances were discussed. 

The  rezone request, #P24-0115, has been in the works for a few months, and was finally passed at this meeting, with eight exceptions. These plans include both a hotel and fitness center. Some of the features of the fitness half of this development includes workout floors, fitness studios, personal training services and cardio group classes. 

This development plan is for those not only visiting Oconee County, but also the residents themselves. By including a place for both, the Oconee County community values of inclusivity and family-centred places are shown. 

“There are plans to do a family centric type of development: summer camps, they have a daycare in the facility where parents come and they can leave their children as they workout, so very family centric,” said Justin Greer, the engineer for this design with Pittman and Greer engineering. 

As the community to family dynamic is important for many in Oconee, the passing of other residential rezone requests/ variance requests was a big win for the community. This includes the passing of requests #P24-0187, #P24-0161, #P24-0164 and #P24-0213, which are explained in the meeting agenda.

Tensions were  low during the meeting except for the discussion of variance #P24-0144, when there began a debate over property lines as well as what situation qualifies you to claim a  hardship variance. 

Another large portion of the meeting was dedicated to the county's finances. At the beginning of the meeting, Clay Pilgrim, the county's financial auditor presented the FY24 Audit Report by Rushton.  This report was approved and showed an unmodified opinion and a clean financial statement. 

At the end of the meeting, Melissa Braswell, the county’s financial director presented the first quarter FY25 financial update which was approved as well. There were many improvements since years past, specifically in regards to SPLOST. 

“Local option sales taxes are recorded on the general one for the first quarter, we collected 2.8 million, which is around 7% increase from their prior year,” said Braswell. 

In addition to the rezone/ variance requests and financial updates, multiple county  board and council members were appointed and approved. This includes the offices of Oconee County Library Board, Oconee County Farmland Preservation Ranking Committee, Oconee County Board of Health, and MACORTS Policy Committee.

Finally, the topic of alcohol licenses and ordinances was also discussed.