The Elberton Star and WSGC Radio partnered to hold a political forum to give the local contested Board of Commissioners and Board of Education candidates an opportunity to answer questions about their views.
The Star and WSGC received over 30 submitted questions from the public, and due to the large volume, asked each candidate five questions pertaining to the major topics submitted. Candidates were given two minutes to provide an opening statement and one minute to answer each question:
Board of Commissioners District 2
Q: Recently Elbert Memorial Hospital leadership has asked the Board of Commissioners for millage support to help maintain everyday operation. Are you in favor of using millage to help support the hospital?
Nick Etheridge: “That’s a little bit of a loaded question. So I think that that decision needs to be sent to the people. The commissioners don’t need to be making that decision without asking the constituents ‘Are you willing to pay more in taxes to support the hospital.’ There are other strategies that could be implemented to get the hospital what it needs.”
Casey Freeman: “My voting record is just as crystal clear as it can be. I made the motion in 2019 to infuse that $937,000 into the hospital. We saved it. It’s ironic, in the December meeting of the board of commissioners, I pulled the agenda twice. I pulled it before we had our work session and I pulled that agenda before we had our meeting. The board of commissioners was slated to vote to give the hospital one mil of your tax budget for one year. When I found that out I called Allen Hulme and said ‘What in the world is going on here? We haven’t discussed this.’ He said ‘Casey, I have put it on the agenda just like the hospital wanted it on the agenda.’ … That is the reason commissioner Alexander … and myself and the rest of the commissioners killed that thing right there. We wanted to stop and take a breath.”
Mark Harper: “Hart County doesn’t have a chairman of the Board of Commissioners. Their chairman is elected from their commissioners that are elected by the people. Our chairman, who is Lee Vaughn right now, he makes $25,000 to run the meeting. He has a veto power and that’s all he has. If I’m reelected I’m going to do my best to do away with that veto power. That $25,000-a-year for four years, that’s $100,000. We could save that. I do think it needs to go before the people. Let the people decide on whether or not they want to spend that $100,000 for four years when you can have a commissioner run the meetings also.
Q: Are you in favor of eliminating the position of chairman of the Board of Commissioners?
Freeman: “Hart County doesn’t have a chairman of the Board of Commissioners. Their chairman is elected from their commissioners that are elected by the people. Our chairman, who is Lee Vaughn right now, he makes $25,000 to run the meeting. He has a veto power and that’s all he has. If I’m reelected I’m going to do my best to do away with that veto power. That $25,000-a-year for four years, that’s $100,000. We could save that. I do think it needs to go before the people. Let the people decide on whether or not they want to spend that $100,000 for four years when you can have a commissioner run the meetings also.”
Harper: “I really don’t see a need for a chairman. You’ve got your board of commissioners, somebody can be designated. You’ve already got those guys, I just don’t see the extra money going towards that. We’re trying to save money. We’re not trying to spend more money. We’re trying to find ways to cut fat and that’s what we need to do. Take some of the burden off of our tax people. We can’t keep taxing and taxing and taxing and getting the same result. We have to do something different and if little things like this, a little bit along, it can take the burden off of people.”
Etheridge: “I believe that we need the chairman with that veto power because it’s part of the checks and balances. So if for whatever reason we end up with a rogue board of commissioners, the chairman is the one who can keep it in check. In the business world we call that the cost of doing business. So yeah, $100,000, that’s a whole lot of money, but it’s money well-spent.”
Q: Economic growth continues to be a topic of conversation in every body of government. What kind of economic growth are you in favor of bringing to Elbert County and what is your plan to do so?
Harper: “Listen, economic growth is hard for this county. We’re in between [I-85] and [I-20]. We have no four lanes other than going to Athens. We need four lanes to come into Elberton. What I’ve heard slated with the bridges, we’re not getting a four lane. We’ve got to find ways of using our land. That’s how we run the county. We have to find ways to make our land make us money. We can’t blow away everything. I’m not for the solar farms, but we have to get some way to pay for the county to run, and we’re just in a bad situation where we’re in between 85 and 20. Listen, I love Elberton, but we just don’t have the four lane. We don’t have 85 or 20 access. So economic development, we’re really going to have to look and put our time in.”
Etheridge: “The county is in pretty bad shape when it comes to economic development right now. It’s definitely going to take rebuilding some relationships with some larger contractors and some conversations I’ve had with folks around the county, some contractors or housing developers currently consider Elbert County a ‘no’ county and don’t have any desire to come into the county to do any kind of additional development. So that is one of the first things that I will do if elected, is rebuild those relationships with those developers that initially were willing to invest in our community to continue to grow our communities. If we don’t provide opportunities for our kids coming up, then our kids aren’t going to want to stay here. And that is my whole reason for running is I want to have Elbert County be a place that my son wants to stay and raise his family.”
Freeman: “You know we’ve got liquid gold in our county. I cross it sometimes two or three times in a week. It’s called Richard B. Russell Lake. The county doesn’t even have a pumping permit for water for Richard B. Russell. The city does. This is a commodity that we can sell. This is a revenue source that we can use. Elbert County has joined the PROPEL program … one of the things in PROPEL is housing. We don’t have affordable housing here in Elbert County and that’s something we need to work on. We need to have something we can sell, a revenue source, and we need to build our county tax base. Our county tax base went up $30 million last year.”
Q: Are you in support of generating additional tax revenue through the creation of a regional landfill?
Etheridge: “The economic situation for Elbert County is in dire straits and if that would be what is needed in order to start the growth process for Elbert County, then yes I would be in support.”
Freeman: “Tommy Lyons and one of our county managers years ago, when I was sitting on the predecessor of planning and zoning, they broached that subject with us ... It would bring in a million dollars to the coffers of Elbert County. And we made a recommendation to the board of commissioners that that never happen. We didn’t want it. The people in Elbert county don’t want a regional landfill. The people in the second district are vehemently opposed to that and I’m vehemently opposed to it. That’s nothing but blood money people. That’s all in the world it is. It will ruin our county.”
Harper: “This is a big one. There’s no way I would have a regional landfill. You go to Monroe, you look at that Stone Mountain of trash. There is no way, no amount of money would I sell for having a regional landfill in Elberton. Our natural beauty of this county is what makes Elberton what it is. The lakes, the land. No regional landfill. Absolutely not.”
Q: During the commissioners’ annual retreat, economic developer Caitlyn Dye mentioned that Elbert’s housing shortage posed a significant obstacle to commercial growth. What is your plan to encourage what she referred to as “workforce housing.”
Freeman: “We are at a deficit as far as having affordable housing in this county. There are two projects, or have been two projects on the board. One of them was several town houses on Petersburg Road. That was a contract that I was very interested in doing and because of the limitations of sewage from the City of Elberton, that was put on the back burner. But I noticed when driving this morning, there was a big John Deere tractor sitting down there and they were cleaning that land up. So something’s going on somewhere. The next project is the Adair project that’s in front of the high school, and that’s being moved forward.”
Harper: “I wasn’t at the retreat so I’m not sure what she had to say, but we do have a housing shortage in Elberton. You hear people are looking for housing, looking for rent. We need affordable housing. We don’t need government housing. We need affordable housing. There’s a difference between the two.”
Etheridge: “That goes back to what I was talking about before about rebuilding those relationships with developers on having them be willing to come in and build out that affordable housing either long-term rentals like town houses or even just smaller homes. But its going to start with getting developers that are willing to come and invest.”
Board of Commissioners District 4
Q: Recently Elbert Memorial Hospital leadership has asked the Board of Commissioners for millage support to help maintain everyday operation. Are you in favor of using millage to help support the hospital?
Mike Scoggins: I’m not in support of putting the bill on the taxpayers for the hospital … I don’t want to see our hospital closed. I think the hospital needs to look internally to solve the problems. There’s no difference in us giving millage or tax money to the hospital as it would be to one of the granite sheds, Walmart, anybody that got in trouble. Our county doesn’t have a buffer. We work with a zero balance. I’m a taxpayer just like you. Our budget is based on our income on our taxes. We don’t have a buffer, so we can’t be the safety blanket for the hospital.
Kenneth Ashworth: “I’m not in favor of raising taxes to give to the hospital. Why do I say that? Because that is a business. They need to look inside and look at their finances and figure out how to spend their money wisely. I do know that they have gotten money in the past, and have not used it the way it should have been used. They have the opportunity to apply for grants and they have gotten grants before. If they’d taken and applied for all of the grants they could get, they’d have more money than they know what to do with.”
Q: Are you in favor of eliminating the position of chairman of the Board of Commissioners?
Ashworth: “I would be in favor of eliminating because right now you have a commission chairman and you have an assistant. If the chairman isn’t there, the assistant has to be there to run the meetings and conduct the meetings and somebody else would have to go and vote in place for Elbert County at some of these other meetings that are held.”
Scoggins: “Yes I would be in favor of eliminating the chairman of the board of commissioners. As Casey brought up Hart County doesn’t have one and its voted on internally. In Savannah we talked to a legal representative for ACCG, myself and Commissioner Hunt were there, about the process of doing away with the veto power. Even if you keep the chair, I don’t think you should have veto power. You’re vetoing 60 percent of the citizens of Elbert County. We’re supposed to vote like the citizens tell us to.”
Q: Economic growth continues to be a topic of conversation in every body of government. What kind of economic growth are you in favor of bringing to Elbert County and what is your plan to do so?
Scoggins: “Personally I think we’ve got to get all of the entities of the county working together. We’ve got to get the cities working with the county, the school board working together with the cities and the county. We’ve had several different opportunities for housing and other businesses that are all good until we get to where it has to be a joint venture and then something goes wrong. We don’t have cooperation between the city and county that we really need to see development.”
Ashworth: “I know the City of Elberton has built a spec building on the industrial park, they own the industrial park, it’s not county-owned, but the county agrees to go there and grade off whenever they get ready to do something. But the spec building is over there. Has been there now for a couple of years and from what I’ve been told, nobody is even looking to move into it. So it’s going to be real hard because we are in a location, like they said a while ago, between I-85 and I-20 and we’re just here in the middle. We’re not in a position to where we can have a lot of industry come in. Our kids, whenever they leave the school system, they don’t have a place to work unless they work in the granite industry and that is quickly shrinking down too. I see cars going to Athens all the time.”
Q: Are you in support of generating additional tax revenue through the creation of a regional landfill?
Ashworth: “I’ll tell you like I’ve always told you, I’m not in favor of a regional landfill. I don’t know if all of you know what a regional landfill is. It’s one that is built in a single location and garbage will be brought in from New York, California, wherever. It’s shipped in by train cars and now you are just a dumping ground. Guess what we have? We have hills around here and if they put it in there, and it goes down into the creeks, that’s going into the Broad River.”
Scoggins: “That’s a one-word answer: No. I’ll never be for a regional landfill.”
Q: During the commissioners’ annual retreat, economic developer Caitlyn Dye mentioned that Elbert’s housing shortage posed a significant obstacle to commercial growth. What is your plan to encourage what she referred to as “workforce housing.”
Scoggins: I think it goes back to we’ve got to build a better relationship with the city. We need housing but we’ve got to get on the same page with getting the services for them. Just like these townhomes and housing developments, we’ve got to get together to where it’s easy for them to come in and build. That’s the only way we’re going to get more housing.
Ashworth: “I wasn’t at the meeting but I still think we need to have affordable housing in order to have growth. I know someone in the building business and he’s also buying mobile homes and he’s putting them in the city limits of Bowman and he’s looking at land to build houses in the city of Bowman. I know they’re trying to build out that way.I don’t know what’s going on down through Elberton.”'