• The first of two weeks of advance voting for the three contested seats on Eatonton City Council, and for the vacant District 3 seat on the Putnam Board of Commissioners saw an underwhelming voter turnout.
By late last Friday afternoon, only 254 of the city’s 4,043 eligible registered voters had cast ballots in the races for mayor, at-large council member, and Wards 2 and 3 councilmember. That’s a 6.5-percent turnout so far.
Turnout was even worse in the county’s District 3 race with four candidates. By late Friday afternoon, just 54 of 5,000-plus eligible voters had cast ballots, representing just over a one-percent turnout.
• Sharp-eyed-homeowners (and homeowners only) may have noticed a nice surprise in the fine print, and the bottom line, of the county’s property tax bills sent out a couple of weeks ago. Out of the state government’s surplus revenues this year, the state paid $500-plus of your local property taxes. It will be interesting to watch next year to see if inflation continues enough to fuel surpluses in the state’s two main revenue sources, sales and income taxes, or if the state cannot find more savings by pushing some costs down to local governments and school boards whose dominant source of revenue is property taxes.
Neither is likely, but the elections will be all but over, and the howling over property tax “increases” will remain at the local level.
• The closing of the sale of the old Eatonton Hotel and some adjacent property to the Drew Corporation is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 31. Most of the process will be quietly conducted online. The sales price from the Putnam Development Authority is reportedly in the $350,000 range.
• Early as last week, The Eatonton Messenger reached out to the Washington office of 10th District U.S. Representative Mike Collins to ask for his conference and floor votes for a new speaker of the House of Representatives. So far there has been no response. In one of the recorded floor votes later last week, other sources reported that all nine Georgia Republican representatives had voted for Ohio representative Jim Jordan.