Barrow Journal

The Barrow County Board of Commissioners will wait until it has a full seven-member board in place before it holds another vote on the county manager’s recommendation to spend an additional $500,000 on the Victor Lord Park expansion project.
During its meeting Tuesday night, the board voted 6-0 to temporarily suspend a county rule that requires a main motion which garners a tied vote to roll over to the next meeting.
The board is currently conducting business without a member in District 3 after Roger Wehunt resigned in October due to health reasons. A special election for the vacant seat is set for March 19, with a runoff, if necessary, to be held April 16. Qualifying for the seat began Wednesday morning and runs through noon Friday at the county elections office.
The board has remained in a 3-3 tie on county manager Mike Renshaw’s recommendation that $500,000 be added to cover a significant portion of the engineering, architectural design and project management costs associated with the 2018 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) project at Victor Lord Park and allow more of the sales tax collections to go directly toward park upgrades. The additional $500,000 would come from two sources — $352,000 from excess amphitheater/cultural arts center funds from the county’s SPLOST 2005 collections and $148,000 from re-allocated Fiscal Year 2019 capital improvement plan leisure services funds for projects that county officials have said could be deferred.
Commissioners Billy Parks, Isaiah Berry and Ben Hendrix have remained opposed to the recommendation, while chairman Pat Graham and commissioners Joe Goodman and Bill Brown are in favor.
For more coverage of Tuesday's meeting, see the Dec. 12 edition of the Barrow News-Journal.