CENTRE — Probate Judge Melvyn Salter called The Post Friday afternoon just before press time to announce that the County Commission will not vote on the proposed sewage ordinance at today's (March 26) meeting, as we have been announcing in this publication for weeks.

It seems the mandatory 30-day public comment period will not have expired in time for the commissioners to take the next step in cleaning up Weiss Lake quite as quickly as most had hoped.

“I miscalculated the time frame because there were only 29 days in February,” Salter said. “It's my fault.”

Salter said he wants to go by the word of the law to ensure that no one is able to use the one-day shortfall as an excuse to ignore the ordinance in the future. Salter added that he feels good about how the commissioners will vote when the sewage ordinance finally does come up, hopefully at the next meeting on April 9 at 10 a.m.

“I feel good about the ordinance,” Salter said. “There has been a lot of attention focused on it recently and I think the commissioners understand how important this issue is to the people of Cherokee County.”

The Commission first took up the sewage ordinance issue over two years ago. Since that time, multiple versions of the document, which has averaged around 10 pages, have passed between the county government and the state Health Department.

Since state lawyers have been drafting the document since the beginning, delays were exacerbated each time a commissioner came across any wording in the ordinance that he wanted edited out or changed.

The latest version of the ordinance has been in the Commission's hands for several months, but another state-level delay prevented commissioners from agreeing to place the ordinance in the public domain for comment until mid-February.

Two weeks ago, after hearing a plea from local physician Brian Perry for the commissioners to stop squabbling over details and act on the ordinance, Commissioner Kimball Parker assured Dr. Perry the Commission is working as fast as it can.

“We are trying to do something with this ordinance,” Parker said. “But it has been a long process.”

At the March 12 meeting, Dr. Perry told the commissioners they were in a “unique position” to end decades of neglect by approving the ordinance.

“You can enact this ordinance or you can kick the can down the road,” Perry said.

Commissioners Parker, Carlton Teague and Elbert St. Clair have all publicly supported the sewage ordinance in the past.

Commissioner Wade Sprouse has repeatedly told The Post he does not approve of the wording of the document. However, he joined the other three commissioners last month in voting to release the ordinance for pubic comment.