Georgia Guidestones go to EGA museum

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by Rose Scoggins

CNI News Service

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The remnants of the Georgia Guidestones will have a new home as they were donated to the Elberton Granite Association (EGA) Museum after a vote from the Elbert County Board of Commissioners during Monday night’s meeting.

The vote came after hesitancy from the board as they lagged to make a motion.

“If we do not donate them, what are we going to do with them?” Chairman Lee Vaughn asked.

Commissioner Casey Freeman said the board had previously discussed options on what to do with the stones and said he’d hoped that a foundation would have been created that the remnants could be donated to.

“That hasn’t happened yet,” Freeman said. “I’ll make the motion that we go ahead and donate those things to EGA.”

After a second from commissioner Kenneth Ashworth, the board voted 4-0 to approve the donation.

EGA Executive Vice President Chris Kubas said Tuesday that EGA doesn’t currently have a timeline or specific plan for the pieces, but wanted to make sure that they were properly preserved.

“The county was making it clear that they literally did not want them at all and, if left up to them, they could’ve just been destroyed and crushed up into gravel and that would’ve been the end of them,” Kubas said. “From the granite industry perspective, we didn’t want to see that happen. They are a testament to the type of work we do and a lot of people feel really connected to them. It was quite a monumental undertaking to create that. I don’t know if all the pieces are going to be utilized, but there are some larger pieces that could be incorporated into some sort of display at the museum in the future. Until we can study that, we said ‘We’ll take them and take charge of them’ just so they stay preserved until we can figure out what to do with them.’ I will probably talk to Mayor [Daniel] Graves and we’ll [see] how we can best do something in the future that would  promote tourism from the Guidestones.”

The board added the donation to the agenda after discussing the video surveillance system still at the monument during the Aug. 4 work session.

Emergency Services Director Chuck Almond asked the board to consider disconnecting the system in order to use the fiber cables that connect the surveillance system to their emergency operations center on Mahoney Drive for a telephone system connecting the center, the fire administration building and the new fire building.

“We’re paying $150 per month for the fiber that runs from our office to Guidestones Road,” Almond said Thursday. “We’ve been monitoring it. We’ve had to send the sheriff’s department out there a couple of times. We saw a couple of people with rakes and shovels. As far as what we’re doing for that property, I think it’s time to disconnect…Those cameras are our property and we’ve been paying a security camera to do maintenance. We should separate from that if its possible.”

Elbert County Attorney Bill Daughtry said last week that the county is waiting to hear back from their insurance company before moving forward with reverting the Guidestones property back to its original owner.

“Our insurance company has never dealt with the bombing of a monument. It’s taking them a little longer than a normal insurance claim,” Daughtry said. “If we have claims-made policy, we find out there’s coverage and we make a claim but we no longer own the property, that could potentially be grounds for denying our claim. We’re still waiting on an answer from the [Association of Georgia County Commissioners] about insurance coverage. I think that the bulk of the work was donated, but emergency services had a lot of overtime, the sheriff’s office had three or four days of overtime. We’d like to reimburse that through our insurance company if we can.”

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