A lot to catch up on.

Since we can’t exhaust our main sheet with 80 inches of candidate forum coverage (it’s for the best, believe me), let me (briefly) recap here some of the other positions the 10 candidates took at this week’s Oconee Board of Commissioners forum.

Move the courthouse? Nope. Even Post 2 Commissioner Don Norris, who answered the question earlier this month by saying “it depends,” wouldn’t raise his hand Tuesday to say he wanted to move the county courthouse from Watkinsville.

Professional fire department? Nope. The county’s volunteer department ain’t broke, all the candidates said.

Oconee commissioners surprised everyone on Tuesday by moving light-speed on a recent request to consider recording their meetings on video and making them available to the public.

The three-week turn-around -- from the original request at a May 6 public meeting -- surprised no one more than the four guys who asked for it in the first place.

“That’s really different from the way things have worked in the past, and I think they’re to be applauded for being responsive,” one of the residents, UGA journalism professor Lee Becker, told me on Friday.

But it may be webcast.

A group of Oconee County residents teamed up Tuesday to push county commissioners to once again consider televising or webcasting their meetings, citing other places like Athens-Clarke and Walton counties that either have that service or are getting it.

County officials have studied airing commission meetings before but said deals with the three cable companies that claim the county as a service area would be too expensive.

But Farmington resident Tony Glenn, part of the group behind the new push, told commissioners at Tuesday night’s BOC meeting in Watkinsville that technology has changed and webcasting could be a cheaper option. Glenn runs a Web site where he plans to continue posting videos of the meetings. He captured the commission’s milestone vote last month approving beer and wine sales in county restaurants. It’s become Oconee’s first viral video, from what he says.

Mike Maxey, a Watkinsville grading contractor and tamer of the seemingly untamable Oconee veterans memorial project, apparently switched targets this week in his bid for the county's Board of Commissioners.

Maxey qualified Friday, the last day of the window, to challenge Chuck Horton, the former UGA police chief and Oconee board of education chairman. In doing so, he turned it around on the people (including me) he told in recent weeks he was contemplating a run for Chairman Melvin Davis' seat. (Bonus for Davis, who's taken heat from Horton recently for his governing style.)

That means every member of the BOC, including Post 3 Commissioner Margaret Hale who also qualified Friday, has a challenger this year for his or her spot in the starting lineup.

All 10 of them are Republicans. The homerun derby -- er, primary -- is July 15.

Oconee County commission chair candidate Sarah Bell, who qualified today, thinks the folks currently on the BOC don’t listen to the folks who aren’t. Bell’s an English teacher at Gainesville State College in Watkinsville. She’s a first-time candidate and a Republican who says she wants to lower county taxes and will cut departments down to size to get there, though she's not sure which departments.

Two familiar faces from Oconee commissions of yore -- well, up until four years ago, so not really that yore -- announced this week they're saddling up as challengers in July's Republican primary.

One of them, current Bishop Mayor Johnny Pritchett, wants to take back the Post 1 seat he lost in 2004 to Jim Luke. Pritchett, the retired Athens-Clarke fire marshal, served eight years on the board. He's running on his experience in government and offered in his announcement to send a copy of his resume to anyone who wants it.

And, in a surprise move, longtime commissioner and chicken farmer William "Bubber" Wilkes called Thursday to say he's coming back for another run. Wilkes' 20-year turn on the board also ended in defeat in 2004 (to Post 4 Commissioner Chuck Horton), so on one hand, it's not too shocking he wants back in. But then again, after the '04 campaign, he said he was hanging it up.

Presidential candidates have been on the campaign trail for at least a year, but candidates for local elections are just beginning to awake from the stupor of real life and join their national counterparts for a few Kafkaesque months of mudslinging, misspeaking and political MacGuffin-ing (any issue these days, it often seems).

In the coming months, this blog will keep track of the 2008 election seasion in Oconee County, where nearly every county post is up. And, since Oconee stories in the Banner-Herald usually have a regional perspective, for good reason, the blog will also provide county residents a reliable source for smaller, local issues -- wrap-ups after commission and school board meetings, new trends, extra interviews, etc.