Walker County Sheriff’s Office has made at least one, possibly four, arrests related to the theft of six vehicles from Cagle’s Used Cars on Thursday evening.

According to sources, 18-year-old Nick Snyder was picked up late Tuesday and has confessed to the crime at Cagle’s, along with several other vehicle thefts over the last few weeks.

Mr. Snyder has apparently admitted stealing this Nissan XTerra several weeks ago. The vehicle was found stuck in mud, windows broken and interior slashed up – similar to the condition of the Cagle’s vehicles taken last week. The SUV was abandoned on a large tract of land near LaFayette High School, on the opposite side of town from where the other stolen vehicles were found.

We’re not convinced that the people arrested are the only ones involved, but this is probably as far as the Sheriff’s Office will take its investigation.

WQCH Radio, 05/29/2012:

“ONE OF LAFAYETTE’S LANDMARK SERVICE STATION BUILDINGS WILL SOON BE RESTORED TO IT’S 1950’s SPLENDOR. ELITE CUSTOM PAINT AND BODY OF LAFAYETTE HAS PURCHASED THE BUILDING NOW OCCUPIED BY MAXI MUFFLER, AT 303 NORTH MAIN STREET. WOLFGANG GEIGER IS ASKING THE PUBLIC’S HELP TO LOCATE PICTURES OF THE SERVICE STATION BUILDING AS IT LOOKED IN THE 1950’s OR 60’s. HE PLANS TO OPERATE THE BUSINESS AS ‘QUEEN CITY AUTO REPAIR AND MUFFLER.’ ANYONE WITH AN OLDER PHOTO OF 303 NORTH MAIN, IS ASKED TO CONTACT GEIGER AT 706 639 9493.”

Mr. Geiger’s best hope for finding a photo of the building from half a century ago will be in the library’s Walker County Messenger microfilm archives, or in an old yearbook advertisement. If you have any photos of the building from the era he’s looking for, call Wolfgang or e-mail them to us at pics@cityoflafayettega.com.

As promised, last night at 8 PM the Underground posted a look at 2012 local political candidates.

Walker GOP Chairman Nathan Smith is bragging? complaining? about the dearth of Democratic candidates to qualify for local elections. Only two in Walker, and none in Catoosa. Chattooga remains the region’s lone holdout.

Another argument against a new football stadium in Atlanta. Best case scenario, ticket prices go up. Worst case scenario, the state ends up paying a good portion of the estimated $1 billion price tag.

But, as pointed out several times, the State Legislature put this into motion two years ago… Unless current state leaders intervene and block it, this will happen regardless of how much we complain about it.

For today’s links and any breaking news, follow the Underground on Facebook or Twitter.

While some candidates for this year’s county and state elections have been campaigning for nearly a year, some weren’t sure about running for office until last week. But Noon Friday was the deadline to decide; any candidates who didn’t have their fee paid and their forms signed by then are being left off the ballot.

Candidates for state office (including state legislators) had to qualify at the State Capitol in Atlanta. Local candidates were asked to qualify at their respective party headquarters, or at the county elections office for non-partisan races. The photo above was taken Thursday during a registration event for Walker County Republicans.

The election scheduled for July 31 is a primary, to determine which candidates in each party will go on to represent the party during November’s general election. But with few Democratic candidates signed up, most of the November voting (at least for County races) is a formality. The future of Walker County leadership will for the most part be decided in late July.

Check back tonight at 8:00 for a full rundown of candidates and races in this year’s local election.

This week LaFayette City Council will be taking a serious look at splitting the police chief and fire chief jobs in a restructured Public Safety department. This Times Free Press report also includes a copy of fired Police Chief Tommy Freeman’s termination letter and his annual salary.

“LaFayette City Manager Frank Etheridge said the idea to split the department stems from criticism at a March meeting in which Freeman was accused of making decisions that saved money for the fire department but could cause a safety threat to firefighters. Freeman had his basic certification to work with a fire department, but nothing more, Etheridge said.”

(Department employees insisted he never even got that.)

Hopefully the fire and police department will be operationally separated, because glomming them together never really made sense except for allowing the city to pay a single chief more to supervise both than they could pay two chiefs to supervise the departments separately. Even if they stay in the same facility together, which is fine, they need some separate leadership and a distinct budget.

Happy Memorial Day. Take time today and remember the sacrifices made by so many in order that we can read and enjoy things like this every single day.

Noon Friday was the deadline for political candidate registration. Check back here Tuesday night at 8 PM for a full rundown of all the candidates in the local races.

Last week six vehicles were stolen from Cagle’s Used Cars south of LaFayette. A group suspected to be teens or young adults broke into Cagle’s, stole keys to every car on the lot, and then took a half-dozen of them for a joyride. Two of the vehicles were later found abandoned on the roadside, and four were located at the bottom of Pigeon Mountain where thieves had pushed them over a cliff.

All six were driven hard and pretty thoroughly trashed, but the two not pushed off Pigeon are salvageable. The other four required forestry service bulldozers to recover and are totaled. The $30,000+ in damage is, unfortunately, not insured.

The Sheriff’s Department suspects “a group of six to eight teens or young adults” and has offered a $500 reward for information leading to their arrest. The Cagles are also offering a reward for information about the thefts. Anyone with information about this ridiculous, senseless theft is encouraged to call the Sheriff’s Department at 706 638 2512.

Channel 3 Coverage

CatWalkChatt Coverage

WQCH Radio, 05/26/2012:

“WALKER COUNTY DIDN’T STAY BELOW 7-PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT FOR LONG. THE LATEST FIGURES SHOW THE RATE WENT UP FROM 6.9 IN MARCH, TO 7.5-PERCENT IN APRIL. THAT REPRESENTS AN ADDITIONAL 224 PEOPLE OUT OF WORK, OVER THE MONTH. THE GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REPORTS HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT IN APRIL FOR CATOOSA, CHATTOOGA AND DADE COUNTIES, AS WELL.

“THE BRIGHT SPOT IN THE AREA WAS WHITFIELD COUNTY. THEIR UNEMPLOYMENT DROPPED FROM 11.2 IN MARCH, TO 10.9 PERCENT IN APRIL. THAT’S A FALL OF 4/10th PERCENT. HOWEVER, DALTON STILL HAS THE HIGHEST UNEMPLOYMENT OF ANY METRO AREA IN THE STATE.”

A press release from the Bebe! campaign bragging about these higher unemployment numbers will probably not be forthcoming.

Remember, when you run for office take credit for the uncontrollable things that are good, and hide from the uncontrollable things that are bad.

Sunrise? I did that! Sunset? We had nothing to do with it!

Also note that 224 jobs lost in Walker County is 1100% of the jobs promised by SunRae Water Bottle Recycling LLC.

Candidate qualification for the July primary vote began yesterday morning and will continue through the rest of the week, ending Friday at noon. Details are beginning to trickle in:

Steve Tarvin will be running against Jay Neal to represent GA House district 2.. Disappointing; we were hoping he’d take on Jeff Mullis (who stinks) instead of the area’s only decent state legislator.

Tarvin is OK, but Jay is too.. We need somebody with some credentials and state-wide support to run against Mullis, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone except Tarvin with that kind of resume.

We’ve heard of no opposition for Mullis so far this year. Without an opponent he will only need to raise eighty or ninety thousand in out-of-state campaign donations instead of $200k.

Another surprise candidate qualification: Tim Westbrook has signed up to run for Walker Sheriff on the Democratic ticket. Looks like the sheriff race won’t be done until at least November.

Alan Painter is running for GA House District 1 (Dade, Rossville/Kensington/Lookout Mtn). Qualification for those state offices has to be done in Atlanta, which is where Alan was on Wednesday in the photo at right.

Mohawk will be adding around 500 positions to its Summerville facility over the next five years.

Jobs! Real jobs, not trash sorting/water bottling/worm turd harvesting jobs like we get in Walker County.

Bebe Heiskell can’t claim to have anything to do with this, but Jeff Mullis is taking credit, along with Nathan Deal and every government official in Summerville and Chattooga County from dog catcher up through commissioner.

WQCH Radio, 05/23/2012:

“THE WALKER COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION HAS APPROVED AN ARCHITECTURAL CONTRACT FOR CONSTRUCTION AND RENOVATION WORK AT LAFAYETTE HIGH SCHOOL. NEUHOFF TAYLOR ARCHITECTS GOT THE NOD FOR PROJECTS INCLUDING A NEW FOOTBALL FIELD HOUSE, PLUS THE ADDITION OF CLASSROOMS AND MODIFICATIONS IN THE EXISTING SCIENCE LABS. CHRIS JONES, DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES AND OPERATIONS, TOLD THE BOARD HE HAD MET RECENTLY WITH THE ADMINISTRATIVE AND COACHING STAFF AT LAFAYETTE HIGH TO COME UP WITH PRELIMINARY IDEAS FOR THE NEW FIELD HOUSE.”

Despite recent job cuts and budget problems within the school system, construction of new schools, renovations at existing schools, and new athletic facilities continues. That’s because those things are being funded with ESPLOST sales tax revenues that can’t legally be used for operating costs (like salaries), only construction and acquisition of property.

In March 2011 LU warned that the tax measure would pay for a lot of athletic facilities, and not a lot of the core things actually needed, but nobody listens to us..