Thursday LaFayette Utilities Secretary Teresa Abbott was fired after working for the city 25 years. The main reason given for her termination was giving permission for a worker’s comp claim and signing White’s name on a form without permission. She plans to appeal the firing during July’s council meeting.

You’ll recall that she’s the one who caught Richie White (no relation) stealing from Public Works by having his family business overcharge the city for garbage truck parts – something the city now says didn’t happen. She also ran the Public Works department for a while between directors, and applied to become the director when they hired Mark White.

Abbott apparently broke the rules by handling the workers’ comp claim the way she did, but we’re told until recently they were always handled that way.

SNR Groceries (Old Trion Hwy near Shattuck Industrial, formerly RC’s) was broken into Friday night or early Saturday morning. The robbers apparently took cigarettes, beer, and worthless unactivated lottery tickets. If you have any information or saw anything suspicious, call LaFayette PD at 706 639 1540.

WQCH Radio, 06/22/2012:

“GEORGIA DOT IS CAUTIONING POLITICAL CANDIDATES NOT TO PLACE SIGNS ON HIGHWAY RIGHTS OF WAY – THEY WILL BE REMOVED BY DOT CREWS. SIGNS REMOVED WILL BE HELD FOR 30 DAYS AND THEN DESTROYED. DEWAYNE COMER, DISTRICT ENGINEER IN CARTERSVILLE, SAID ‘FOR SAFETY’S SAKE, THERE ARE LAWS ABOUT WHERE SIGNS CAN BE PLACED… AND THE DEPARTMENT WILL REMOVE ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED SIGNS FROM OUR RIGHTS OF WAY’.”

This may cut back the number of signs for Wilson and Heiskell, since so many of their “supporters” live in vacant lots and on highway right of ways. (A sign in a right-of-way isn’t a supporter, it’s artificial.)

Of course the county won’t be removing illegally placed signs on its own rights of way. Depending on the candidate.

Speaking of signs in prohibited places: is this Bebe! board placed illegally in the state highway right-of-way or illegally at the Lee School Rd. fire station? Looks like the latter to us.

If it’s at the fire department her campaign is violating some serious rules. But they’re rules nobody enforces. It puts Dr. Shaw at an unfair disadvantage because he doesn’t have his own fire stations to post signs in front of.

This is YOUR property being used for campaign purposes.

Walker County is owed nearly $800,000 in uncollected taxes on trailers. Tax Commissioner candidate Keith Fults blames current Tax Commissioner Carolyn Walker. Walker says the problem is the assessor’s office including trailers that no longer exist on the tax rolls, but the assessor’s office says they removed most of those two years ago.

Summary of Tuesday’s Chamber-of-Commerce-Sponsored Candidate Forum at the Civic Center:

Steve Wilson says nobody has escaped from the Jail since he’s been Sheriff, which is a non-truth (also called a lie). Bebe Heiskell continues clinging to HER non-truth that the people of Walker County are happy with the single-queen form of government. So happy, in fact, that she won’t let you vote on it.

WQCH Radio, 06/22/2012:

“WHILE SOME AREA COUNTIES RECORDED HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT, WALKER COUNTY’S RATE WAS DOWN FROM APRIL TO MAY.cACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, UNEMPLOYMENT HERE FELL FROM 7.5 TO 7.3 PERCENT OVER THE MONTH. THAT REPRESENTS 84 FEWER PEOPLE ON UNEMPLOYMENT IN WALKER COUNTY.

“CATOOSA COUNTY WAS UNCHANGED AT 6.7 PERCENT. AMONG THOSE WITH A HIGHER RATE: CHATTOOGA COUNTY’S UNEMPLOYMENT ROSE FROM 10.1 TO 10.4 PERCENT, DADE WAS UP FROM 7.6 TO 7.9, AND WHITFIELD COUNTY’S RATE ROSE FROM 10.9 PERCENT IN APRIL TO 11.1 PERCENT IN MAY.”

In other words: 84 people’s unemployment expired. Vote for Bebe!

meanwhile..

“A new study shows Georgia is one of the worst states in the union when it comes to economic insecurity. It suggests the impact from the Great Recession is both worse and longer-lasting than we might have thought.”

According to the Times Free Press, LaFayette has a new plan for dealing with abandoned or dilapidated homes. But this new plan sounds a lot like the old plan that hasn’t worked.

Apparently the details shared in this article are the old plan, and the city hasn’t finalized anything about going after the properties aggressively. Hopefully they’ll come up with something effective, because the number of dilapidated and abandoned homes in the city is dangerous and disgraceful.

Complicating things, under state law the county cannot take a house for non-payment of taxes without contacting the owner. There are some houses in town that no longer have a living owner, and there’s no heir.. Those properties will never belong to anyone, and thus the city will never have a way to clean them up.

Need to change state law to remove that roadblock. After ten or twenty years of no taxes paid and no owner to contact the city or county should be able to take the property.

This 12-minute video is promoting Chattooga County to the outside world. It’s hokey, and long, but better than anything we’ve ever seen promoting Walker.

It’d be more effective with some non-local person (Jeff Mullis doesn’t count) promoting the community, and also being short enough for anybody to want to sit through it.. Maybe even a 30 or 60 second version to use as a commercial.

But what we like about it is they don’t talk about what they’ve done and how great things already are economically, and none of the politicians speaking take credit for what’s there.

Meanwhile Bebe is running a county-funded commercial on UCTV bragging on the sole commissioner system and saying “colored people” a lot.

(Thanks to The Summerville News for posting this. We’re still hunting for a copy of Bebe’s UCTV commercial.)

In order to get federal school funding, GA is implementing a new system for evaluating teachers. But the state is trying to opt out of one part where students’ opinions of the teachers factor into the score. Should students have this kind of input?

Will students, we’re talking 8 or 10 year old kids, be fair? The teacher who brings candy and shows movies gets good scores, the one who makes them write, read, and think gets crap scores.. That’s not good for education, but may be the direction we soon go in.

Here’s a site with some discussion and some samples of the kinds of questions that would be asked. It’s a series of Yes or No questions, if they roll it out to match this one. The whole thing is ultimately coming from a project of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jay Neal and Nathan Deal want to use money saved in prison reform to expand online and in-class training for state inmates.

Football fans take note: The Falcons and Titans will play a practice game against each other in Dalton on August 6th.

Channel 3 says it’ll be free to the public.

A year after the state passed a new law to check immigrant employment status, many local government agencies haven’t bothered setting up the systems they (and many businesses) are required to use.

Rabid horse found in Dalton.

Be a responsible animal owner and get your beast(s) – even the big ones – vaccinated for rabies. It’s not just the animal’s health at stake, it could be your neighbors or your own family members.

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