Small towns go back on the map after Perdue takes GDOT to task

Sandtown, Aonia, and Prather are back on the map of Wilkes County, thanks to the public uproar over their deletion - along with 485 other small Georgia towns - from the official state map.

After a storm of criticism from all corners of the state - and from Georgia's small-town governor - the Georgia Department of Transportation announced last week that it will restore all 488 communities left off the 2006 map to the next printing of the state map.

The GDOT said that its decision to restore the small towns to the map was made after its December State Transportation Board meeting, but the decision was not announced until January 3, after Governor Sonny Purdue wrote a letter on the matter to Mike Evans, Chairman of the State Transportation Board.

Bonaire native Purdue, citing his own small-town roots, said, "I know the personal connection that each citizen feels with his or her town. I think this feeling even tends to increase as the size of the town decreases."

The governor went on to say that he wasn't surprised at the way many small communities reacted to the DOT's decision to "de-clutter" the state map by eliminating references to many of the state's small towns. "My office has been inundated with letters, phone calls and emails from constituents asking the state to reconsider this decision," he said. "I myself have heard first-hand from Georgians about their concerns regarding the economic and societal impact the state's actions will have on small communities."

"The governor is correct," Georgia DOT Communications Director Vicki Gavalas said. "These communities are as much a part of the fabric of our state as our major metropolitan areas. The Department will provide the public with a map that not only reflects Georgia's economic evolution, but also the historic significant of its many communities."

The small towns will be restored in both the large print edition of the map due out this summer and next year's regular edition of the map. The DOT annually makes more than one million copies of the official state map, in large-print and regular, available at state and regional visitor information centers.

And the Georgia Department of Transportation apologized. "We regret that residents of these communities felt slighted by our decision," Gavalas said. "That was certainly not our intent."

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