Update from the City Manager

Hello Ball Ground:

A lot has changed over the holidays and as many of you may know first hand, COVID is now exploding in Cherokee County and across the State of Georgia. We have begun to feel the effects right here in our City of Ball Ground Employee Family.

In recent meetings with State and Georgia Municipal Officials, Mayor Roberts has been briefed that the crisis in Georgia is not only worsening but that it is fast approaching catastrophic levels and many hospitals across our State have little to no ICU bed capacity. We know first-hand that last week most of our local hospitals were completely full and diverting patients to other hospitals. This is not only dangerous for the treatment of individuals ill with the virus but also extremely dangerous for the numerous medical emergencies our community faces on a daily basis.

We are now seeing the results of the Thanksgiving holiday surge which is 60% higher than the surge we experienced last summer. Just to put things in context looking at the past two weeks in Cherokee County we are up 2,366 cases. Pickens is up 305 cases. Those numbers by themselves don’t sound huge, but you factor in that we are having to wait on testing again, and in Cherokee, the positive rate over the past 2 weeks is 21.9% of all folks being tested are positive, compared to just 9.3% prior to. Next door in Pickens of all folks being tested in the past two weeks, 30.3% are positive compared to their previous rate of 10.2%. So we are simply at a tremendous growth rate, and the full fallout of Christmas and New Years hasn’t fully hit us yet.

The Governor has issued new executive orders and where originally the Governor wanted no local enforcement, the State is now really pushing for local governments to begin enforcement of his orders. Some of the key areas where the State is pushing for local law enforcement to begin enforcement include:

Enforcement of the 50 persons per gathering limits
Enforcement of limiting bars and sporting events to 50 persons or 35% of their fire capacity, whichever is greater
Enforcement of the requirement of restaurants to ensure at least six feet of separation from seating to seating or utilize physical barriers to separate groups sitting within six feet of one another

While our numbers are currently horrible – there is help on the way as the vaccine is beginning to arrive and distribution is taking place. Mayor Roberts and I both plan on taking the vaccine as soon as it becomes available for our age groups and we strongly encourage each of you to consult your personal physician and make a choice that is best for you. Personally, we firmly believe that the vaccine is our best way out of this pandemic.

In other news:

The monthly meeting of the Mayor and Council will take place via phone conference Thursday. This morning our contractor will be here to take cameras live, create the YouTube channel for the City, and hopefully by the end of the day, we will be able to provide instructions on how our customers can view the meeting live thru YouTube. Regardless, we will be providing the phone number for anyone who would like to call in instead.

The new water line project on A.W. Roberts Drive is currently underway and approximately 30% of the new line has already been installed, but obviously, we are having rain setbacks today, and we expect rain again tomorrow as well.

The sidewalk project behind City Hall is 95% complete, simply waiting on the handrails to arrive and we keep getting “backorder” answers on them. While the sidewalk is available we do urge caution in the area as we do need the handrails to make the area safer.

Finally, and one of the things that is not so pleasant to talk about. We really need the help of our sewer customers in the City in ensuring that we only put down the drain things that are made to go down the drain. It continues to amaze me the things we find in our sewer lift stations. We had an incident last Monday in one of our new lift stations where large quantities of grease formed around a substantial quantity of shop towels and got sucked into one of our pumps, shorting out and destroying the pump. Meanwhile, the pump right next to it caught up a pair of underwear and jammed up the impeller. By the end of the day, Monday, the shop towels and underwear combined to create a little over $10,000 in damage to the station. This includes parts, a pump, contract labor, and hiring a septage hauler to pump down the station while pumps were being taken care of. Meanwhile, the same shop towel situation at two other lift stations has cost over $30,000 in the past 3 months. Grease blockages in the sewer mains have run another $12,000. We really need your help. Grease has no place in a sewer system, likewise with shop towels, clothing, coke bottles, and just last week we pulled out some golf balls and tennis balls. Ultimately this type of damage impacts you, our customers, as our rates must cover typical daily operations, treatment, and all of these repairs. We appreciate your help.

As a reminder, with Cherokee County Schools having gone back to distance learning, at least for this week, we have wifi hotspots in place if needed. Simply pull into the parking lot at the Ball Ground Senior Center – no password required.

Stay safe Ball Ground – and strongly consider accepting the vaccine when available for your profession or age group.

Eric

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

December Council Meeting Canceled

The December Meeting of the Ball Ground City Council has been canceled.

The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, January 14, 2021.

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 Mayor

Hello Ball Ground:

Our monthly meeting of Mayor and Council will take place via teleconference this Thursday at 7:00 PM. The meeting can be heard by “liking” the City of Ball Ground Facebook page, or by dialing in. Instructions for dialing in will be available on the agenda when posted on the website later today.

The meeting will likely be a short one, as we have no items of new business. Old Business will include the 2nd reading by Mayor and Council for the annexation of 3 parcels of property into the City, one of which is a portion of the City Property for Roberts Lake Trail.

Last week the official announcement was made that our sanitation company Advanced Disposal has merged with Waste Management. Advanced is to continue to operate as a subsidiary of Waste Management. We keep all of the same folks we have been working with and should not notice any changes in the near term. However; given that they are now the same company, as trucks and cans are replaced we could see some Waste Management Logos right along with the Advanced Logos. Again, nothing changes for us other than an occasional logo – but still just the one provider.

In some ways it almost feels like we have become numb to the whole COVID-19 Pandemic and life is appearing to return to “normal”. With this, we are seeing tremendous spikes across the Country and the virus is on the rise again right here in Cherokee County. While I think we have all learned we can still do a great number of things, let’s please continue to remember to social distance, especially inside our stores and businesses. Mask wearing inside businesses and among gatherings although not mandated are still highly recommended by the City.

City Hall will be closed tomorrow in honor of Veterans Day. Over the next couple of years, we will be working on a couple of long term Veterans related goals. First, we would like to be able to identify and recognize every Veteran currently living in the City. Additionally, we would like to be able to identify any service members that were residents of Ball Ground who were killed in action in any of our wars or conflicts. Finally, we would like to identify any previous City of Ball Ground residing Veterans who have passed away. Coinciding with this, we will be setting up a committee to establish a small Veterans Memorial here in the City, and to assist with fundraising and grant solicitation to bring the project to life. So initially, if you are interested in serving on such a committee, please let me know. In the meantime, be thinking of those you know who are Veterans, and also anyone you have any information on that may have been killed in action while serving in the military. Once we have our group activated, we will be out soliciting this information in an attempt to recognize all city residents who have served.

Have a great week Ball Ground.

A R (Rick) Roberts III
Mayor, City of Ball Ground

Update from the City Manager

Hello Ball Ground:

Mark your calendar for this Saturday – October 31^st. 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