Barrow Journal

BY LORIN SINN-CLARK
My brother was in town last week, visiting from Colorado. He wanted some real Southern Barbeque, so we took him to Smokin’-Po-Boys on West Athens Street in Winder, across the street from the downtown side of the old courthouse. [Full Story »] 

The Barrow County Board of Commissioners budget committee will meet Thursday at 4 p.m. to again wrestle with what portends to be the most difficult budget year in the county’s history.

County BOC chairman Danny Yearwood said this week that climbing out of what amounts to a nearly $10 million revenue hole over the next 16 months will require a combination of departmental restructuring, layoffs, salary and benefit reductions and higher taxes.

“We are going to face this thing,” he said in an interview.

Last week, he began preparing the county’s elected officials and department managers for what may be required. At a May 21 meeting to kickoff the FY2010 budget process, he reeled off numbers showing the severity of the projected shortfall and the lack of a simple fix. [Full Story »] 

For a brief moment last week, Barrow officials thought their sales tax revenues had taken a dramatic turn for the better. But further investigation of why the county got two sales tax checks from the state this month revealed that all counties got two checks. [Full Story »]