Tracy Norman always keeps a yellow safety vest on hand.
Depending on the day, Norman might wear his yellow vest while visiting animal health sites in North Carolina, Puerto Rico or Connecticut. His full-time job is as senior manager of capital expenditure sourcing at Boehringer Ingelheim, one of the largest vaccine manufacturing companies.
Other days, Norman and his vest can be found cleaning up storm damage and directing traffic on the roads of Oglethorpe County.
“It depends on the day,” Norman said.
In his role as an elected commissioner who represents District 5, no day is the same. It’s not full time, but it’s often spontaneous or fit between other tasks.
“On an average week (I work) about 10 hours, at a minimum,” Norman said.
For their time, councilmen are paid a state-set salary of roughly $10,000 a year during their first term.
During the week, Norman said a bulk of his duties stem from responding to questions, concerns, emails and phone calls from residents. These can range from them notifying him about a pothole to calling for an entire road closure.
For Norman, the job tends to be more hands-on than one might think.
“We had bridges with water up on them,” Norman said. “I pulled up (to) one of the bridges with water and looked at a couple of our road department guys and went, ‘Have y'all eaten? No? Go get something.’”
Norman and his yellow vest stayed to help redirect traffic following road closures and flooded bridges.
Norman said BOC Chairman Jay Paul and District 1 Commissioner Howard Sanders are also extremely involved in physically aiding the county in times of need.
“Some of us are definitely not afraid to get our hands dirty,” he said.
Another part of his time is spent researching the items on the board’s agenda throughout the month.
The BOC meets on every first Monday and the board members typically receive the agenda 4-5 days prior to the meetings. However, the commissioners are often already aware of many concerns or items.
This month, Norman has been looking into the details of the ballot initiative called Save our Homes. He has spent multiple evenings researching state law and surrounding communities also voting to opt in or out.
“I’ve probably spent 20 hours in the last month just finding out what other counties are doing,” Norman said.
Norman said he’s already received this upcoming month’s zoning board documents, which has factored into his hours of research. The number of zoning requests has increased, as reported previously in The Echo.
“I’ve already read through the whole zoning board report, which can be 50-plus pages easily,” Norman said.
Other days are more mundane, but Norman said he’s constantly connecting with his constituents.
“People come to me in confidence, people catch me in the grocery store, ball games, at the gas station, pretty much anywhere,” Norman said. “We’re told what we have to do, but a lot of it is input from citizens,” Norman said.
The frustrating part?
Norman said there are issues where the commissioners’ hands are tied, like one recent response he had to give a resident.
“It’s a federal issue,” Norman said. “All I can do is call Rep. (Mike) Collins. I can get Sen. Ossoff on it, and they are working with us on this. They're aware of these issues because we pick up the phone and we call our federal people.”