Greetings from the City Manager
Hello Ball Ground:
From each of us at City Hall, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We certainly hope that 2021 brings some much-needed relief on the COVID-19 front. As difficult as it is, especially this time of year, the extra efforts we put in right now to help prevent the spread of this virus will pay dividends in the months ahead. As we look around our City over the past few weeks, we have seen a much greater effort, especially in the areas of social distancing and face coverings, when appropriate. We at the City greatly appreciate these efforts by our community to keep us safer. And as COVID vaccinations have finally begun, we have registered our Community Center and Senior Center with the State for consideration as possible long term vaccination sites, and have offered them at no charge in an effort to encourage the State to establish a site that is convenient and accessible for our community. We should know by late January if our site is selected.
For our upcoming January council meeting, to provide better public access to meetings than Facebook Live has provided during these COVID times, we are setting up live streaming through YouTube. The specifics about accessing our meetings through YouTube will communicated in the near future.
After two excellent meetings with our local railroad this week, the rough Depot Street rail crossing is now scheduled for improvements in July 2021. Although planned railroad improvements are often delayed, hopefully this one won’t be and will be completed as planned. As always, the railroad expects the City to pay a large portion of the improvements and we are willing to do that. But by law, we simply aren’t allowed to touch anything within their crossing without them standing right there handling the project, and for safety reasons, we certainly understand that.
Our contractor for the A.W. Roberts Drive Water Line relocation project just finished their last project and planned on starting work Monday………we have delayed them because we didn’t want to begin digging in our customers front yards the week of Christmas. So hopefully, this will start immediately at the beginning of the new year. Once the relocation is done, it will allow extensive road repair by the State to permanently fix one of the worst roadways in the City.
Our final sidewalk project of the year is now taking place on Old Canton Road, right behind City Hall and will fill in the sidewalk gap on Old Canton Road between Beck Street an Depot Street. We have a lot of pedestrians in this area and hopefully this will provide a much safer environment for them.
If you haven’t visited our website recently, please take a few minutes to do so to see two new items we have added that provide a wealth of information about Ball Ground. First at the bottom of the front page, click on “City Map”. Here you will find a map of the City with multiple layers you can turn on and off. This contains information on everything from zoning to addresses to lot ownership and property values. The next thing to check out is the tab at the top of the page that says “Our Community”. After clicking on that tab, select “Demographics and Statistics”. The information located at this tab is extensive and really gives you some insight into the makeup of our city
Have a great Christmas and holiday season Ball Ground!
Eric
Update from the City Manager
Hello Ball Ground –
Interested in upgrading to fiber for your internet needs? We are very fortunate to have fiber infrastructure now available in the City of Ball Ground. New developments are being provided with fiber and Ellijay Telephone Company (ETC) is working on their plans to prioritize where fiber is installed in the existing parts of their system. If you are interested in obtaining fiber services you can go to their website at www.etcnow.com and click on the link that says “Ignite Fiber” – watch the short video and it will tell you about registering. Areas that see the most requests for service will be prioritized higher in the construction schedules.
Preliminary Engineering work is beginning on the proposed 372 Spur or “truck route” to ease the truck traffic thru downtown. Cherokee County has taken the lead on this project from the State of Georgia, even though it is a State Route, and we have seen much more accomplished since that has happened. We would like to thank Commissioner Steve West and Senator Brandon Beach for their efforts and support on this project.
Our contractor plans on beginning the water line relocation project in SR 372 (A. W. Roberts Drive) on Monday, December 7th. This is a 30-45 day project depending on weather so there will be some extra congestion in that area. The vast majority of the work will be done behind the sidewalk, not actually in the roadway, but it will still be close. During the one time period that contractor will be required to dig into SR 372 in the vicinity of the traffic light at SR 372 and SR Bus 5, the road will be reduced to one lane. This particular work will take place after 8:00 pm and both lanes reopened by 5:00 am. Since this work will be the very last thing accomplished we will be able to provide you with a more specific timeline after the new water line is installed behind the sidewalk. Again, the reason for the relocation is so that the State will make substantial repairs to the existing roadway.
We here at the City wish each of you the best possible Thanksgiving under these unique circumstances.
Take Care and please be safe.
Eric
Update from the City Manager
Hello Ball Ground:
Mark your calendar for this Saturday – October 31st. The City will again be providing dumpsters to help with the clean-up of our community. So if you have been cleaning out the garage, the basement or just general clean-out, and have too much to place at curb-side, you can bring it to the Community Building Parking lot between 8:00 AM and 2:00 PM this Saturday as long as you are a City of Ball Ground Sanitation Customer thru the Advanced Disposal Contract. As always, the dumping is limited to authorized items. We can’t take hazardous materials such as fuels, oils, wet paints. We cannot accept tires, batteries, or items containing freon. For future drops, we are working to be able to accept car batteries, and also working to accept tires (although there would be a charge for tires).
Speaking of Saturday – we are getting a lot of questions again about trick-or-treating. The City does not regulate trick-or-treating. We simply ask that residents who choose to participate turn their porch lights on and we ask the trick-or-treaters only go to the homes with the porch light lit. Residents who choose not to participate can simply keep their porch light extinguished.
We haven’t talked a lot lately about COVID-19, but a quick visit on any news channel and we see that the virus is again spiking across the Country. Wearing a mask will not stop the pandemic. Washing your hands will not stop the pandemic. Social distancing will not stop the pandemic. But these things together can help slow the spread until adequate treatments and vaccines are readily available. The last thing we want or need is for levels to spike uncontrollably to a point where businesses are again being forced to close their doors, limit hours and services in order to slow the spread, or even worse where too many people are ill and the required workforce can’t be supported. So on behalf of Mayor Roberts and the Ball Ground City Council we are asking everyone to continue the outstanding support of our local businesses. We love seeing the sidewalks and parks filled with our residents and visitors. We just ask each person to do as much as they can individually to slow the spread by remaining 6 feet away from persons with whom you do not live, wearing a mask when in public spaces and social distancing cannot be achieved, and simply avoiding large gatherings, especially those indoors.
On a final note – looks like we have some really rough weather heading into Ball Ground this evening. We can expect winds of 40+ miles per hour and heavy rains. With an already saturated ground, we are bound to see more than our share of downed trees. City crews are working today to make sure our equipment is up and running and ready to begin clearing as necessary. Please use caution when driving over the next 48 hours, watch for flooded roadways and downed trees, and always assume that any downed power lines are still energized.
#BALLGROUNDROCKS – and so do you.
Have a great week.
Eric
Update from the City Manager
Hello Ball Ground:
Feels like fall is in the air – so a great time to get outside and enjoy our parks, trails, and of course our Ball Ground businesses.
Given our lack of a large gathering space for City Council meetings, we will still be conducting our meeting this week as a combination meeting with some elected officials and staff present at City Hall and some dialing in from remote locations in order to comply with social distancing guidelines. We have a lengthy agenda for this meeting. Probably the most exciting item on the agenda is to consider the second reading and final approval of the alcohol license for “Rock Solid Brewing” that will be opening downtown later this year.
Mayor and Council will also consider 4 applications for annexation into the City – with one of the four parcels being a piece of property owned by the City that was purchased as part of the Roberts Lake Trail project. Another one of the parcels is a “split” parcel with half already being in the City – so this just cleans up City boundary lines. Additionally Mayor and Council with consider allocating the funds for resurfacing 1.1 miles of Old Canton Road, as well as for guard rail installation at the intersection of Old Canton Road and Commerce Lane. Finally, Mayor and Council will consider approving the Service Delivery Strategy (SDS) with Cherokee County, One Zoning Application, Purchasing a police patrol vehicle, installation of an Electric Vehicle Charging Station downtown, and a Small Business Grant program. We invite you to join us on Facebook for the meeting or dial into the number that will be provided later this week.
The walking path in Calvin Farmer Park is functional but not yet technically open for use. Later this week the handrails will be installed on the bridges and we will get started with the backfilling and sod installation as well.
We are about two weeks away from having background music playing in the downtown area from the new street sounds system that we have installed. A big thank-you to the folks at Barrel House Coffee for providing space for our equipment and internet connection to be able to provide this new addition to downtown.
The Ball Ground Police Department is planning a drive-thru “Trick-or-Treat” event for Halloween this year. Please “like” and following the Ball Ground Police Department as well as Ball Ground Main Street on Facebook for more information to come on this event.
Have a great week Ball Ground!
Eric
Update from the City Manager
Hello Ball Ground:
Our time is running out to achieve a complete census count for the City of Ball Ground. A great deal of our funding is based on population. How much gas tax we receive from the State of Georgia (what will help pay for resurfacing of Old Canton Road), and which recently paid for the resurfacing of Chestnut St, Billy Lane, and Dixie Drive, is based on population. Our grant success and failures are largely tied to the population. Transportation projects such as the 372 Spur/Truck Route are impacted by the population. Right now we are still lagging too far behind. Only 63% of our known addresses have responded. Please take the time now to respond – just click the link below. Ten minutes tops.
https://2020census.gov/en/ways-to-respond.html?cid=23756:2020%20census%20online:sem.ga:p:dm:en:&utm_source=sem.ga&utm_medium=p&utm_campaign=dm:en&utm_content=23756&utm_term=2020%20census%20online
If anyone needs assistance please let us know at City Hall and we will be glad to get your questions answered or get you access to a computer if needed.
Also, with school back in session next week – we know that a good many of our students are still attending virtually. If you or someone you know in the Ball Ground area has poor internet access presenting challenges, we have partnered with ETC to provide two hotspots in the City where students can come to download/upload assignments. The first location is the Ball Ground Senior Center parking lot. The network is named “Ball Ground Hotspot” and is open access. The second spot is the ETC switch building located at the corner of Old Canton Road and Coy M. Holcomb St (near the school bus entrance to Ball Ground STEM Academy). This network is called “ETC Internet” and requires a password which is etc12345
Hopefully, the bridges will be poured on the new walking pathway in Calvin Farmer on Friday. Backfilling and sod should be installed next Tuesday. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on this project already and are hopeful it will receive a great deal of use.
We have received the results back from EPD on the Lead and Copper testing in our system. Again our system tests extremely well and given our position we won’t be required to collect lead/copper samples for another 3 years, as opposed to the traditional annual monitoring. Our system continues to test extremely well in all areas.
We have submitted a request to Georgia DOT to reduce the speed limit on Canton Highway/Ball Ground Highway between the SR 372/Cartersville St and Howell Bridge Road from 45 mph to 35 mph. If approved, this would create the ability for a pedestrian crosswalk to be installed between Lantern Walk Drive and Coy M. Holcomb Street. Since this section of the roadway belongs to the State of Georgia, we cannot alter speed limits or install crosswalks without obtaining consent from the State.
Take Care.
Eric
