County Passes Farm Winery and Mass Notifications change

Gilmer, Ga. – Citizens can already see the change today after final approval for a change in the Farm Winery ordinance is allowing local Farm Wineries to sell Georgia brewed beers in their tasting rooms.

Having been underway for a while, the final approval this month is the last stage of the process and took effect over this last weekend. As owners of wineries in previous meetings stated, they sought to cater to couples or friends who may travel to the winery together, but have a member uninterested in wine. This change now allows them to serve beer to those people through a limited selection via the ordinance restrictions, that being Georgia crafted beers.

Another change that came this month was through Public Safety as they looked at mass notification systems. Handling EAS (Emergency Alert System) and IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert and Warning System), the county is currently using the CodeRed Vendor.

Integrating systems can disperse notifications to both widespread and isolated areas through several agencies in the county. According to Public Safety Director Keith Kucera, the department has found a much more discounted rate for utilizing these systems. Saving about $6,750 a year compared to their current system, the new vendor is called Hyper-Reach.

Kucera also noted lesser restrictions with the newer vendor such as no restriction on a number of messages to send outThe previous vendor that Public Safety used has a preset limit of messages they can send. And then charges per message over that limit.

The approval came to select the new vendors in the August Regular Meeting from both present commissioners.

Additionally, during the meeting, the Board also approved Jay Zipperman and Jim Harris to the Keep Gilmer Beautiful Advisory Board. The two were already members and are being reappointed.