Tuesday, May 19th

It is a move that will impact traffic on Athens’ south side for the next two months: Whitehall Road between South Milledge Avenue and the Middle Oconee River closes today and is expected to remain closed through July 31. City Hall says a contractor for the Athens-Clarke County Transportation and Public Works Department will lower the hill on Whitehall Road near the Milledge intersection by approximately five feet. The lowering of the hill is meant to improve the sight distance for vehicles both approaching the intersection and waiting at the intersection. The hill reduction is the first phase of a two-phase process for improving overall safety at this intersection. The second phase involves constructing a roundabout. There’s no word on when that work will take place.

New at UGA: a dual enrollment degree program with Emory University. The University of Georgia’s School of Social Work partners with the Candler School of Theology at Emory for a dual master’s in social work and divinity.

Athens-Clarke County Commissioners will hold another public hearing on Mayor Nancy Denson’s proposed budget, 6:30 this evening at City Hall. The budget hearing comes in advance of tonight’s Commission agenda setting, set for 7 o’clock, also at City Hall. Commissioners are expected to make appointments to the Oconee Rivers Greenway Commission.

The Athens Airport Authority meets this afternoon, 3:30 at Athens-Ben Epps Airport. And there’s an afternoon meeting of the Morton Theatre’s Board of Directors: 5:30 at the Theatre on Washington Street.

Athens-Clarke County Police are investigating reports that downtown parking meters have been tampered with: at least a half-dozen of them on Broad, Washington, and Hancock streets.

Charges have been dismissed in the Michael Hammonds case: he’s the Desert Storm veteran from Athens who made national news, smashing a window to rescue a dog that was locked inside a hot car in a shopping center parking lot in Oconee County.

Another meeting of the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir management board is on tap for today, 1 o’clock this afternoon at the historic courthouse in Monroe: Walton and Oconee counties are collaborating on the reservoir that will provide water for both counties.

The Banks County Sheriff’s Office released Monday the names of the two men killed in shootings that happened Sunday: Allen and William Sears were brothers. Investigators say 48 year-old Allen shot and killed 67 year-old William, then turned his gun on himself. The murder-suicide happened at a home off Highway 198 near Baldwin.

A name change is part of the purchase deal between the Ty Cobb Healthcare Center in Lavonia and the Athens-Based St Mary’s Healthcare System:  when the deal is consummated, sometime around June 1, it will become St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital. St. Mary’s signed in February a letter of intent to purchase cash-strapped Cobb, about three years after the facility opened off I-85 in Franklin County.

The city budget headlines this afternoon’s City Council agenda: the Gainesville City Council meets, 5:30 at the Public Safety Complex in Gainesville.

A public hearing on the budget that is up for a Hall County Commission vote next month is on tap for today in Gainesville: this morning’s budget forum starts at 10 o’clock at the Hall County Government Center.

The state Board of Regents meets today in Atlanta.

Service members return to Georgia: homecoming for more than 100 members of the 94^th Airlift Wing after a 4-month deployment to the Middle East, arriving at Dobbins.

The GBI reports upwards of arrests in a sweep of suspected child sex traffickers: most of the 22 arrests were in the Augusta area, most involving people who try to use the internet to arrange for underage sexual encounters.

The top executive over seaports in Savannah and Brunswick says he expects another record-breaking fiscal year following a busy spring in which East Coast ports benefited from a labor dispute on the West Coast. The Georgia Ports Authority handled 2.8 million tons of total cargo in April, a month that saw a whopping 335,900 cargo containers move through the Port of Savannah, an increase of nearly 26 percent from April 2014. That's the most tonnage and container volume Georgia ports have ever seen in a single month.

Just in time for the Memorial Day travel period: the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety says Georgia State Troopers and police and sheriff’s deputies around the state have launched another Click it or Ticket operation, citing motorists who aren’t wearing safety belts. Meantime, there are those who aren’t driving fast enough: Georgia State Troopers say they’ve written by 270 tickets for violators of the so-called slowpoke law, those who clog up the passing lanes on Georgia’s interstates and four-lane highways.