Job fair today, 9-3, at the GA Department of Labor office on the corner of Cherokee and Villanow in LaFayette LaFayette Housing Authority office. Looking to hire assemblers, forklift ops, welders, secretaries, and general labor. We expect nobody will show up because Walker County has the world’s lowest unemployment rate.

The event is being run by Express Employment Professionals, and we’ve heard they’re OK so far as temp staffing places go.

Remember, this is a temp agency. They might be paying more and have better jobs than the one you have, but it won’t last. Do not walk away from a steady job to take a temp position that won’t be around forever. But if you’re unemployed or looking for a second job, go for it.

Channel 3, WQCH, and now the Catoosa Messenger have run the same article about “SunRae Water.” You should call all three media outlets and tell them you don’t like being lied to, and tell them Bebe ought to pay for her campaign advertising instead of getting it free from them. Also cancel your subscription to the Messenger if this is what they’re mailing to you.

In the nearly three years the Underground has existed, this is the absolute worst and most blatantly obvious lie we’ve encountered. Keep checking back, we will get into this more later in the week.

Dr. Paul Shaw, candidate for Walker County Commissioner, has set up a campaign HQ at his former medical office on North Main Street. Shaw supporters and those interested in meeting the candidate are invited to a rally there tonight at 7. Signs and other campaign material will be available. It will either be Shaw or a fourth term for Bebe Heiskell, so we strongly encourage you to attend the rally.

According to Channel 3, a company called “Real Bright Sunrae Water” will be “taking over” the old Barwick-Archer carpet mill in Kensington. The company will supposedly begin production in early July, about six weeks from now.

On the surface this sounds like good news. The Barwick plant has been sitting empty, or being used as warehouse space, for the better part of thirty years. It’s an eyesore and a huge waste of potential where some company could set up and do something that would give people jobs.

But the Barwick mill is not at all appropriate for bottling water or any kind of food production, and “Real Bright Sunrae Water” doesn’t actually exist. Even Bebe Heiskell, who’s now excited to see the site begin producing water, said it was unfit to use as a horse farm in 2006 because of the pollution there. That pollution is still there, and will continue to be there six weeks from now.

All this is an outrageous claim, and any news outlets repeating the “news” without a challenge and some extra information about the site ought to be ashamed of themselves for buying and repeating a election-year lie generated by the Commissioner’s office.

Additionally, there is no “Real Bright Sunrae Water,” just a company called Sunrae Environmental owned by the same gentleman who supposedly runs the water company. Sunrae Environmental claims to process garbage for recycling, turning old bottles and tires into reusable material, but has no physical facilities for doing any of those things. The company has also never bottled water, and didn’t claim to until this week.

Sunrae was first incorporated in January 2011, went defunct, and was reincorporated in Tennessee last Tuesday as an LLC. Its owner also controls an ethanol producer, an organic recycling company that makes worm turds, a rubber company, and a medical sock distributor – all based out of his home.

Walker County Development Coordinator Larry Brooks, the man responsible for 2010’s Lookout Mountain unicorn factory hotel project, is also behind this questionable deal. (Where does he meet these people, prison?)

Due to the lateness of this information being released, there’s no time to fully present research about the company in a coherent way. Rest assured, the Underground will do a longer blog post about this announcement within a few days. More, much more, on this later…

(Newsflash: Bebe Heiskell thinks you’re a moron.)

Don’t forget about yesterday’s full-length post about job cuts at Walker County Schools.

A Chickamauga resident driving an ice cream truck in Summerville thought he could leave work early if he pretended to get robbed. He was incorrect.

WQCH Radio, 05/07/12:

“IT WAS MOSTLY ‘A’s’ AND ‘B’s’ IN LAST WEEK’S WALKER COUNTY RESTAURANT AND KITCHEN INSPECTION SCORES. WALKER COUNTY ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH GAVE TRIANGLE PARK THE HIGHEST SCORE, A ’95’. ALSO SCORING ‘A’s’ WERE TACO BELL AND MCDONALDS IN LAFAYETTE. ‘B’s’ WENT TO THE LAFAYETTE GOLF CLUB, ONE-ELEVEN, AND SUSIE’S IN LAFAYETTE. GUADALAJARA IN CHICKAMAUGA, SCORED A ‘C’. AMONG HEALTH CARE CENTERS, MARY & MARTHA’S PERSONAL CARE IN ROSSVILLE AND PENFIELD CHRISTIAN HOME IN LAFAYETTE, BOTH SCORED ‘B’s’.”

You should really eat at Triangle Park sometime.

Chickamauga businesses are sponsoring a run to help their school system build an indoor practice facility for baseball. Better than using more tax money, but indoor baseball practice? Seems a bit excessive.

Debate escalates over Georgia’s self-defense laws in light of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

This is the sixth LaFayette Underground Daily Update. We’ve enjoyed doing these and hope you find them useful. Leave a comment and let us know how we’re doing.

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For weeks, rumors have circulated about Walker County Schools cutting staff. The rumors ranged from thirty to sixty jobs lost, numbers that sound ridiculously high – which is why the tales weren’t repeated here. But since Friday school employees have begun sending in real names and numbers that indicate jobs are being redacted; the total number of teachers released could very well be in the upper range of what’s been rumored, if not higher.

According to school employees, LaFayette High School is losing between seven and sixteen teachers, with most saying twelve. LaFayette Middle (including Sixth Grade Academy) is losing five, with one additional teacher transferred to LHS. Chattanooga Valley Middle in Flintstone is losing at least four. Gilbert and Fairyland Elementary each lose one teacher, while Stone Creek Elementary looks to be dropping seven.

Hardest hit seems to be Ridgeland High School in Rossville; unverified numbers there say 25 teaching positions are being cut – nine of those from special education. That comes in between 50 and 59 teaching jobs eliminated, at just eight of the county system’s fourteen open schools. (Rock Spring Elementary staff report no cuts announced there – so far.)

The latest publicly available statistics for Walker County Schools are from the 2010-2011 school year. This year’s employment and attendance numbers are of course different, but not so different that we can’t use the earlier numbers for comparison. Based on last year’s school staffing, here’s the percentage of teachers being cut:

All include teachers listed as part-time in 2010-2011
*Accounts for transfers to or from other schools

55 job cuts out of 712 teachers is a reduction of nearly 8% – and keep in mind the cuts listed are only from eight of the fourteen schools. When this is all said and done with all schools included, there could be a 10-20% cut in teaching jobs from the entire Walker County School System.

Walker County Schools is quietly eliminating at least forty teaching positions at the end of the school year. The majority appear to be from middle and high school classrooms. LU contacted the school system for comment late last week and hopefully their response will be out soon. Even without a response, expect a full post on this later today.

The old BlueBird school bus plant south of town has been purchased by Phillips Brothers Machine. Phillips Bros’ current Rossville machine shop will be relocated to LaFayette. That’s a gain for the Queen City, but not for Walker County as it just moves a business from one end of the county to the other. However, the business may expand its payroll in the new location.

The BlueBird property acquisition is touted in this poorly-researched news report from CNN Money, comparing unemployment in Walker County with the unemployment in Dalton.

This essentially claims Walker County is better off than “Dalton County” because there’s more diversity in jobs available. Having a diverse job market is good. But seems like one major industry with thousands of jobs would be better than five or six companies with a handful each.

It’s good that “Nissin Break” and some of the other local mills discussed are doing well, but the real unemployment rate is a lot higher than what official numbers show – and seems like the jobs being added are paying a lot less than jobs the area lost. New jobs are a positive thing, but they don’t replace what’s been lost in numbers or income. It’s not as positive as this report sounds.

A bologna sandwich is good to have if you’re starving to death, but don’t let somebody convince you it’s a steak just to get your vote.

Another CNN Money report written by (or credited to) someone else with some of the same language and the same video sounds like a Bebe Heiskell campaign slogan. Expect to hear this a lot from her as the campaign heats up:

“As the United States grapples with stubbornly high unemployment, there’s one part of the country where the jobless rate is plummeting. Walker County, Ga., population, 68,756.”

The best way to lower an area’s official unemployment rate? Start losing jobs earlier than everywhere else so unemployment benefits (which are what the government uses to track unemployment) expire before everyone else’s do.

Last week LaFayette’s DDA wrote and sent out an entire press release regarding something they seem to have no idea about. Stringing together a bunch of technical terms to make a minor thing seem like a big deal.

“A new look and a new approach to inform — and stay informed — about Walker County’s largest city is what LaFayette’s Downtown Development Authority hopes to achieve by becoming a beta site for WordPress.”

OO now they have WordPress, downtown will thrive.

Meanwhile the existing DDA Web site hasn’t been updated since 2008.

Remember, Finster Fest will be this Saturday and Sunday in Summerville.

Chattanooga Times Free Press: “Changes are in the works this year. For one, the festival will be centered at Dowdy Park in downtown Summerville, with shuttles taking the anticipated 5,000 visitors to and from Paradise Garden, which is in a residential neighborhood that lacks parking. There will be live music both days with Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers headlining at 6 p.m. Saturday. In another change, tours will start inside Finster’s studio, which hasn’t been open to the public since Finster died.”

Paul Chapman has formally withdrawn his request to move North Georgia Firearms & Ammunition to Chickamauga. He said he doesn’t want to cause trouble for nearby businesses that have protested his plan. He’s been a lot nicer to them than they were to him, hope he can find a more suitable place soon.

Chattanooga Times Free Press / CEOs like look of south: “For the eighth consecutive year, Texas ranked No. 1 in a survey of 650 CEOs by Chief Executive magazine. Tennessee maintained its No. 4 ranking among the 50 states for its favorable business climate, while Georgia slipped three places this year to No. 8.”

The way Mr. Chapman was treated by the people of Chickamauga probably won’t help the state rank any higher next year.