Commentators during the three-week-long NCAA basketball tournament, aka: “March Madness,” have several times brought up the notion that “the advantage goes to the team with the best Plan B.”
The idea is not confined to basketball. The Putnam County Board of Commissioners had several opportunities at last week’s mid-month meeting to ponder their own possibilities for a Plan B.
One was decided on the spot. In January, the commissioners had worked out an agreement on which roads would be resurfaced, at least with the state’s annual Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant (LMIG) monies (70 percent state, 30 percent local).
However, when bids came in at a significantly higher price than projected, the commissioners immediately approved County Manager Paul Van Haute’s recommendation to eliminate the 0.7-mile Sammons Parkway from this package of resurfacing funding. Sammons Parkway lies parallel to Harmony Road and serves several industries and some heavy truck traffic.
The other remaining LMIG projects remain intact: 1 mile of Old Phoenix Road from Ga.44 to the first bridge crossing, 1 mile of Clark’s Fork/Bugger Bear Road and its intersection with Little Road, and 1 mile of Dennis Station Road from Old Milledgeville Road to a point past the Interfor lumber mill.
A second Plan B lies on the near horizon: an ordinance attempting to regulate competing interests involving short-term rentals on both Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair. The commission had set up two special hearings on March 23 and April 4, solely to listen to complaints and possible solutions, but several speakers jumped the gun and registered their views during the “public comments” period during the regularly scheduled mid-month meeting.
Erin Olson charged that commercial “hotels” were being created in residential zones and that there were likely “hundreds of properties not listed with the county.” Charles Trumbo gave a smorgasbord of complaints and possible solutions – noise and/or nuisance ordinances for 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., no dogs or outdoor fires, background and license checks for non-resident owners, a limit of two persons and one automobile per bedroom.
A third item with Plan B implications came with the commission’s quiet approval of a five-year hazard mitigation plan required by the state and federal Emergency Management Agency. Led by Sheriff Howard Sills, the designated county emergency management director, a committee ultimately involving 62 people and agencies met four times last year to update the 2017 plan for devising strategies to deal with potential disasters, both natural and man-made.
The plan identifies eight natural hazards, ranging from severe thunderstorms/ winter weather to tornados, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, and even earthquakes. The six-item technological/ manmade list goes from hazardous materials incidents and dam failures to terrorism, critical infrastructure failures, and emergent infectious diseases.
The plan recognizes that the type and severity of a hazard will dictate modifications in an agency’s response. However, you cannot have a Plan B without a Plan A, and this is a first-step Plan A.
In preparation for such disasters, the plan made several recommendations, including backup generators for the county and city fire stations, a culvert replacement program, the purchase of electronic signage and traffic barriers, and equipment to respond to hazardous materials spills.
In other actions, the commissioners agreed to transfer the county-owned Lower Harmony/Bethel Church Road waterline to the Eatonton-Putnam Water and Sewer Authority and canceled its normal first-Friday-of-the-month meeting (April 7).