The Fannin County Board of Commissioners had its first meeting in over a month because of the recent snow and ice storms. With ten new business items and a deputy being asked to remove a person from the room, the meeting would be anything but ordinary.
To start the meeting the commissioners quickly approve four Variance Requests all at one time. Chairman Bill Simonds told the audience that the commissioners have had plenty of time to review them all and no discussion was needed.

The board then gave a “cushion” to the Fannin County Water Authority. This cushion came in the form of allowing the authority to use up to $100,000 of SPLOST dollars. This money will help finish the construction and get the water following on My Mountain.

Michael Queen, Chairman of the Water Authority, explained to the crowd that this will give the authority a buffer to finish the project and will help revenue start coming in faster.

Queen explained the Water Authority owes the county around 3 million dollars and will be paying a large sum of $400,000 back to the county when the current project is complete and will then being making payment toward the rest of the borrowed funds.

Deputy Director for the EMA Darrell Payne was at the meeting to ask for funds and to explain an Emergency Alerting System that the EMA is looking into.

Currently the county is using a program called Nixle. This sends out a text message to people who have registered. Of the 14,000 numbers in the 911 directory only 1,800 have signed up for the current program.

Payne was there explaining the opportunity the county had to purchase a new program. This program allows the county to call the entire 14,000 numbers and leave recorded messages.

It will also allow the operator to select certain areas to send messages to; this will be helpful letting select areas know about possible water leaks and other emergency announcements.

The program has a $2,500 one time cost then yearly payments of $7,800. The proposal that the EMA brought to the commissioners asked them to pay the $2,500 up front and 46% of the yearly payments.

The other 54% would be split up, Blue Ridge and McCaysville would each pay 23% and Morgantown would be responsible for 8%.

The county approved its portion of the new program and will now wait on the cities approvals before moving forward.

In the mean time to sign up for the current program you can go to www.fannincountyga.com or text the word “readyfannin” to 888777.

Payne stayed at the podium for the next item on the agenda of opening ambulance bids. The commissioners would ultimately go with the cheapest bid coming in around $83,000. The new ambulance will be four wheel drive making every station have a four wheel drive truck.

After all of the new business had been taken care of it was time for public commentary. Since the last meeting got out of hand, a deputy had been sitting in the back of the room incase he was needed.

The first speaker wanted to know why the county did not give the locals a chance to bid on certain purchases and wanted to know if county employees got paid to eat as he had saw county trucks at a restaurant after nine in the morning.

The frustrated Simonds said yes some trucks where there but told the audience that the fire chief works around the clock on some days too.

The next individual was upset that he thought the county was giving gravel to someone for free. After calling the commissioners liars, Simonds asked the on duty deputy to take the man back to his seat.

During the commissioners commentary Simonds disclosed to the audience that he had declared the county in a state of emergency during the recent snow storms in hopes of finding some grant money to offset some of the expenses that were made during the storm.

Each of the commissioners commended the road department and local officials on a job well done during the storms.

The next meeting will be March 11th at 5:15 at the Court House.

Below is the video of the February 25th Meeting.