The runoff election between Habersham County Commissioner hopefuls Ty Akins and Jason Hogan begins today, and both candidates sat down with Now Habersham to share a deeper look at their campaigns and hopes for the county.
Akins received 48 percent of the vote to Hogan’s 24 percent in the Nov. 2 special election, but due to not receiving more than half of the vote in an election between four candidates, the election went to a runoff.
The winner of the runoff will join the Habersham County Commission as the District 5 commissioner, succeeding Tim Stamey who resigned from the commission earlier this year for health reasons.
Ty Akins
Ty Akins is a Habersham County business owner, and serves on the Habersham County Development Authority and Habersham, Banks and Rabun Joint Development Authority. He believes his awareness of development, business and budgeting make him the best fit for the District 5 commissioner seat.
Akins’s main focuses of his campaign are business opportunities and communication with Habersham’s citizens. He says that knowing the needs of citizens is important, especially when it comes to development. He referred to development and annexation that’s happened around the county, mainly in Baldwin, that blindsided many residents and left them frustrated.
“You’re not going to make everyone happy, but I think they [citizens] just like the opportunity to speak, listen and be heard,” Akins says. “Nobody likes stuff sprung on them, that’s just not respectful of the people that you live with.”
He says that his hope as a commissioner would be to continue informing the public of discussions happening at the county level, as well as making sure citizens have an opportunity to voice their thoughts.
“People get busy and they don’t always have an opportunity to go to every planning meeting and every zoning meeting, so I think what Bruce Palmer started with the town hall is a great opportunity,” Akins said. “It’s an opportunity for feedback from the community and also tell them what’s going on.”
Akins says that while he doesn’t plan to instate any new programs or events to make sure the community and the county’s governing body are working together and listening, he says that he is available to hear citizen concerns.
“[That’s] the very nature of my job and what I’ve chosen to be involved with over the years,” he says. “I’m out seeing people anyway over the course of my day, and I have an open door right here in Downtown Clarkesville.”
Akins is hopeful to further business development in the county. He says that it should be easy for businesses to come to Habersham in order to take some of the county and state’s tax burden away from homeowners.
“We need it [development],” Akins says. “Our tax base is heavily residential, and we want more of that burden on businesses. As a business owner, I don’t say that lightly.”
He says that business development isn’t just important for tax purposes, though. From his own experience, he knows how important it is for families to stay together, and that children who have grown up in the Habersham community should have the opportunity to stay in the county.
“My son graduated high school here and has a job right here in Habersham, and he’s looking for a house,” Akins says. “I think that’s what a lot of folks want, . . . if you have a good relationship with your kids and want them to get educated and have an opportunity right here and stay near their family, . . . you should have that opportunity.”
Jason Hogan
Hogan works with government authorities every day in his job with the Rabun County School System, where he works as director of maintenance and facilities. He’s no stranger to water and sewer infrastructure, which he works with on a day-to-day basis, and is also experienced when it comes to using government funds and working with the county board of education to keep Rabun’s schools running.
“One of my biggest things is trying to get good relationships between the cities, county and board of education,” Hogan says. “We’re all divided by districts, but we have one big line around Habersham County. If we can work together, we can accomplish a whole lot more.”
Hogan’s biggest focus of his campaign is working with all the county’s entities to create a plan for development. He hopes to bring everyone together to discuss each city’s zoning, infrastructure, roads, school capacity and needs to create a plan that will support development, instead of needing to fix issues created by development.
“If we took a map and drew out where all the water is, where all the sewer is, what are all the capacities— to my knowledge nobody’s ever done that,” Hogan said. “How can you start on anything if you don’t know where what you have to work with is?”
He says one of the biggest development needs in the county is for the hospital.
“What I’ve heard for the last 20 years of my life is ‘don’t go to Habersham, they’ll let you die,’ and I don’t like hearing that,” he says. “That’s a huge employer, it’s a huge benefit to the county.”
Bringing in more medical care to the county is important to Hogan. He believes helping the Habersham Medical Center expand its resources, as well as bringing in more specialists to the area so that citizens can get medical care in their county instead of traveling to Gainesville, Athens and Atlanta, will help the county and its citizens.
He says this wouldn’t just keep people who need medical care in Habersham, it would create jobs in the county for healthcare workers, help the county maintain control over the hospital and bring more business to the county, both from people receiving medical care in Habersham and healthcare workers spending more time and money in the county.
“Am I the best candidate? I don’t know,” Hogan says. “That’s going to be left up to the voters, but I will not disappoint [them] if I’m elected in.”
Get out and vote
Both commissioner candidates encourage Habersham’s citizens to get out and vote, even if they didn’t vote in the Nov. 2 special election.
“It is a right, over the years, people didn’t have the right to vote, so exercise that right,” Hogan says. “I’ve always heard people complain ‘oh, I can’t stand this president,’ or ‘I can’t stand this governor,’ typically the first thing I ask them is ‘did you vote?’ and surprisingly, a lot of them say no, and then I say ‘then you have no right to complain.'”
Early voting begins today, Wednesday, Nov. 17, and runs through the 19, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday voting will occur on November 20 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and advance voting will begin Monday, November 22 and go through November 24 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
RELATED: Early voting in county commission runoff election begins
“I would encourage anyone to go out and vote again,” Akins says. “Tuesday the 30 is election day, and I’ve been encouraged by people who have brought it up to me and said they’d be sure to go out and vote again, and I’m looking forward to serving the county in yet another way.”
Election day in the runoff is on Nov. 30.
