The Bishop Town Council on Jan. 12 unanimously passed an ordinance to redraw the official map of Bishop using the town well at the pavilion as the center point of the map. The town limit is a 2,640-foot radius from that point.
Any existing owners whose property was previously in the Bishop town limits can opt-in or out of belonging to the town. The same is true for owners whose property was not previously in the town limits.
“We are not going to force it on anybody … that now you’re in and you were out and now you have to pay Bishop taxes,” said Mayor Drew Kurtz.
Let them have an opportunity to be in or out at their discretion.”
Previous council members Hudson Holder and Mindy Porterfield were affected by the lack of a clear Bishop map when their properties were deemed by the Oconee County Board of Elections as being outside of the town limit, having used a qPublic map of Bishop as its source. qPublic.net is the website used by the Oconee County Property Appraisal’s Office to document land sales, property transfers, appraisals and historical data on all parcels in Oconee County.
When entering the website, a disclaimer states, “Oconee County does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of the information contained herein and disclaims any and all liability resulting from any error or omission in this map.”
“The lines and corners represented by GIS do not represent legal boundaries,” states the disclaimer. “Users should not rely on them for any purpose other than an approximation of the features represented within. They are of limited precision and are simply graphic representations developed for the county’s limited purposes.”
The council has decided the qPublic map was invalid and all historical records of Bishop place its center point at the town well.
“I’m really happy with this ordinance here,” said Holder, who no longer sits on the council. “I’m happy that y’all have put in extra work to make it … what it should be.”
Kurtz nominated Holder to be the Bishop representative to the Oconee County Planning Commission. The motion was unanimously approved.
The council also debated the future of the Bishop Community Center as it continues to go through renovations. Citizen Dallas Bono proposed a comprehensive four-prong plan he said would allow the building to thrive as the center and gathering point of the town.
Council member Deborah Lucas proposed a pilot program to shape the direction of the community center, making sure there is as much community involvement as possible.
Bono, who is the artistic director of the Collective Artist Workshop, proposed himself as a potential manager of the building, saying he would get council approval before renting the building to a group or organization.
I really want to see that building thrive and be a really cool place for the whole town,” Bono said.
The council debated and then approved a motion to work with the city lawyer to draw up a contract for a pilot program headed by Bono, who will be acting as a citizen representative and not in his capacity artistic director of CAW. The council also agreed to interview various candidates for manager of the community center.
Maia Capuano is a Fink Fellow in the Cox Institute’s Journalism Writing Lab at the
University of Georgia. This story was originally published in The Oconee Enterprise.
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