Jasmine Lewin
The Daily Astorian, Ore.
(TNS)
GEARHART — Robert Morey, a developer who is campaigning for mayor, has offered to donate a portion of the old Gearhart Elementary School grounds to the city for a new public safety building.
City leaders have not decided on a location for construction, though they have considered rebuilding at the site of the aging fire station on Pacific Way that was built in 1958.
Gearhart has long sought to build a new firehouse or public safety building. Over the years, a vocal faction in the community has shown a preference for building at the existing location.
Voters rejected a $14.5 million bond measure in 2022 that would have financed a new firehouse off Highlands Lane along U.S. Highway 101. Earlier this year, residents pressured the City Council to drop Lesley Miller Park as a potential location for a public safety building.
“We happen to have sufficient extra land that we can provide alternatives to the city for locating their fire station, public safety building and also public works,” Morey, who purchased the former elementary school with his wife in 2020, told The Astorian. “It really fits in with us, once we know we have rezoning we know how our house is going to be situated on the lot.
“It’s something we can do, something the community needs an option on, so we’re just happy to do it.”
Morey presented his idea at a City Council meeting Wednesday night. In his proposal, he wrote that an area on the former school grounds could accommodate both a new public safety building and an access route to an adjacent new public works building.
City Councilor Dana Gould expressed concerns about a potential conflict of interest, given that Morey is running against Mayor Kerry Smith in the November election.
“I think there are some other legal issues that we would have to pursue with the state, because you’re a candidate,” Gould said. “And you could eventually, you could potentially be mayor at that point so that could open up some other things that we’d have to explore.”
Morey responded that if he was elected mayor, he would recuse himself from City Council business relating to the old school property.
Last year, Scofi Gearhart LLC, Morey’s company, withdrew an application to rezone the former school property for residential use after objections from the Planning Commission and some residents.
Morey still wants to rezone the property to create a single-family home where he intends to live. If the property is rezoned, a fire station and public works facility could be permitted as conditional uses.
City Administrator Chad Sweet said that if the City Council wanted to pursue Morey’s offer, they would start with geotechnical analysis to confirm that the land is suitable for a building with critical infrastructure.
Sweet said the City Council will hold a work session to consider Morey’s proposal.
“There are some great possibilities down there, but there’s also some issues that need to be looked at carefully,” Sweet said.
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Greg Bluestein
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(TNS)
WRIGHTSVILLE — They are the far-flung towns that often feel invisible when major storms wreak havoc on Georgia. And officials are still working in these rural areas to uncover the extent of Hurricane Helene’s devastation.
While former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris all made separate visits this week to Valdosta and Augusta, two epicenters of Helene’s wrath, some of the most serious fallout took place in far smaller towns and settlements across east Georgia.
Gov. Brian Kemp led a two-day tour through about a dozen of these off-the-radar communities this week, bringing along state emergency officials, local legislators and community leaders to see the scope of the damage for themselves.
Even hardened emergency officials were stunned at what they saw. Flattened chicken coups. Ruined crops. Downed trees. Homes and businesses smashed beyond repair. Communities in crisis.
But they also took heart at the first responders and savvy local leaders who helped respond after the deadliest Georgia storm in decades.
“Y’all are all supermen,” Matt Hatchett, a local legislator, told a group of exhausted chainsaw workers, firefighters and medics gathered early Wednesday at a Wrightsville fire station.
“Just remember that you’re taking care of everybody else, so you’ve got to remember to take care of yourself.”
At each stop, Kemp told residents a similar message. Helene was the most significant storm to barrage Georgia in his lifetime and cleaning up the mess it left behind will be anything but simple.
“We aren’t going to sugarcoat anything. It’s going to be a long, hard, tough recovery,” he said. “But we’re working hard, and we’ll work hard every day until we get it done.”
Here are a few of their stories.
Signs of progress
DOUGLAS — Getting to the seat of Coffee County is like navigating a maze.
Downed power lines, splintered trees and telephone poles split like toothpicks line the roads into Douglas. At its height, the storm knocked out power to 99% of the county’s Georgia Power customers.
As Kemp entered town, he marveled grimly at the destruction. Even a monstrous hurricane Helene’s size couldn’t have caused this devastation. It looked like a cluster of tornadoes spawned by the storm crisscrossed town.
It could have been worse. Local officials credit the quick thinking of Steve Carver, the county’s emergency management chief, for aggressively deploying resources and stationing first responders as Helene homed in on Georgia.
By the middle of the week, key routes around the county of roughly 40,000 were cleared and a massive potable water truck rumbled into town. A few more trucks were supposed to arrive later in the week. Crews scattered arou