School Board Approves Agreement To Charge County Facility Fees

Participants in Youth Tackle Football and Youth Basketball programs of the Oconee County Parks and Recreation Department will be paying higher fees starting in a year because of an agreement approved last week by the Oconee County Board of Education.

The approval was the final step in a process initiated by Oconee County Schools to recover maintenance costs from the Oconee County government for use by the county of athletic facilities at county schools.

The Joint Use Agreement, which allows both the schools and the county to charge the other for use of respective athletic facilities, replaces a 10-year agreement in which the schools and the county agreed not to charge each other for use of sports facilities.

Oconee County, which opposed the initiation of fees, has said it will not begin charging the schools for use of its facilities, and the Board of Education compromised by phasing in the charges to the county.

The agreement is short-term, extending for only three years, and it allows either party to change the fees it charges and to terminate the contract easily.

In other action at the Board of Education meeting last week, Brock Toole, chief operations officer for Oconee County Schools, reported that Malcom Bridge Road was scheduled to close on May 18 for construction of a roundabout at the bus and staff entrance to Malcom Bridge Middle School.

Saranna Charping, chief financial officer for the school system, told the Board that collection from the Education Local Option Sales Tax for March was down 10 percent from the same month a year earlier and that the average collection for the last 14 months is down just less than 2 percent.

For more on the story, with a video recording of the virtual meeting of the Board of Education, please go to Oconee County Observations.