October 24th marks one year since The Underground site was relaunched in its current format. In the last 12 months the site has been read by thousands, attracted more than 800 Facebook followers, and on more than one occasion impacted local news headlines.

In honor of that one-year milestone LU readers were recently asked to name their favorite articles. Suggestions on the site and on Facebook were somewhat underwhelming, but these two received the most votes:

City Council Tells Roper Where to Go, an article about the city’s refusal to lower Roper’s electrical bill in order to keep the golf course open.

Plane Crazy, a piece revealing the city’s future plans for its money-losing airport.

Readers who didn’t vote directly still voted with their feet, making these the most-read Undrground articles for the last year:

Criminal Culture and ..Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out, our two articles about the murder of Theresa Parker (the first also discusses Tri-State Crematory and city council alcohol problems).

Protecting Their Own, about the Sheriff’s Department hiding the identity of a retired officer involved in a dangerous incident.

Mulling Over Mullis, a pre-election essay about the career of State Senator Jeff Mullis.

Chief Concerns, about the city’s growing arson problem and the police department’s inability (or unwillingness) to do anything about it.

Beyond just readership, some pieces have made a greater impact on the community than others. The two below have especially made a difference far beyond just the people who read The LaFayette Underground:

Infrastructure Insanity, an often-referenced report about local leaders’ indifference towards collapsing county and city infrastructure.

Wasted Potential, a discussion of disrepair and possibility at the old LHS football stadium in the heart of LaFayette. This piece became front page news and led to a long discussion at the August City Council meeting.

Some of our favorite articles are included in the lists above, but several others stand out as personal highlights:

Road to Riches or Highway to Hell?, a look at last year’s controversial liquor-by-the-drink bill that took both sides to task.

Charitable Questions, highlighting local nonprofit The Care Mission.

The Man in Black, a tribute to Johnny Cash on the 40th anniversary of his famous LaFayette concert.

If you haven’t read these we hope you will, or just go back to the beginning and read everything. Thanks for reading and participating in The LaFayette Underground during the last year and in the years to come.

In a year filled with pay cuts, job losses, plant closures, and otherwise dimming economic prospects, the last thing most LaFayette residents need is an increase in monthly expenses. But that’s what they’ll soon be getting courtesy of the City of LaFayette.

According to the city council meeting agenda for October 11th, which was posted late last week, tonight the LaFayette Council will vote on a “Water Rate Increase” followed by an identical vote for “Electric Rate Increase.” If the vote goes as planned (and it almost always does), your bill for City of LaFayette water and electricity will soon go up higher than it already is.

October 24th marks one year since The LaFayette Underground site was relaunched with a new serious approach to covering and discussing news in LaFayette and Walker County. In the time since we’ve touched on everything from Brent Marsh to Johnny Cash, city garbage pickup to county voting precincts. During that time we’ve also gained quite a few readers: many fans and quite a few detractors.

But the point wasn’t to make friends, it was to start discussion and get people thinking about the news instead of just reading it. As we said when the site first began, the LU is about “saying what needs to be said, flipping over some rocks, in hopes of bringing a little light back into this community before it completely dies.”

Few can argue we’ve not been successful in flipping over some rocks (rocks many people would prefer to see left alone), but so far the light – while bright – is still quite small. This site has inspired or shocked many who’ve read it, but a majority of people in the community still haven’t heard of The LaFayette Underground, much less read it.

To help spread the word the LU has added a set of share tools at the bottom of each article. Those tools allow for sharing over popular social network sites like Facebook or through direct e-mail. (The LU Facebook set up last February has over 700 followers and is a great way to get additional information not posted here on the main site.) A new printer-friendly link has also been added to the bottom of each post, so you can print articles to share with less technologically inclined friends and neighbors.

Some newer readers aren’t up to speed on articles from late last year and early 2010. To make reading older stuff easier, forward and backwards navigation links have been added to the bottom of each post. Readers can follow those links backwards in time or pick a random starting place and move forward to the present. We recommend you begin at the beginning or start reading the Reboot post from last October.

In recent months we’ve gotten complaints from many locals who don’t know about local events like political meetings and votes, sporting events, and entertainment until they’ve already happened. To (hopefully) correct that, we’ve also added a local calendar to the site. Upcoming events appear in the right-hand column, with the full calendar available through a link from the top navigation bar. To add something to the calendar, e-mail lu@cityoflafayettega.com.

Finally, in honor of the site’s anniversary, a reader challenge: In comments, what’s your favorite LU article from the last year, and why? Has anything surprised, shocked, or inspired you? Anything you’d like to see more of? A selection of favorites from comments and Facebook will be listed here later this month.

Thanks for reading The LaFayette Underground.

During last year’s murder trial, LaFayette Police Sergeant Sam Parker and his attorneys built their defense around the possibility that Theresa Parker was still alive. Shortly after being arrested Parker told GBI officers that Theresa had possibly gone to Florida, to Gatlinburg, or run off across the border with a singer named Elvis, a story that was brought back up during the trial and has been mentioned over and over by the few friends Sgt. Parker had left after his murder conviction.

Turns out Theresa was near the border, but not the one in Mexico. For the last few years she’s been near the Alabama-Georgia border where some of her remains were found last week by a Chattooga County farm hand.

Farmer David Ross Ledbetter took a break from loading corn last Monday and stumbled on a human jawbone near the Chattooga River in the Holland/Lyerly community. Chattooga County deputies found additional bones and clothing on Tuesday (but no sign of Elvis) while GBI forensics experts quickly matched the jawbone to Theresa Parker’s dental records, confirming what many had feared: Theresa never made it out of Georgia and won’t ever be coming home.

As a public service to the community, The Underground presents point-by-point coverage of the September 13, 2010 LaFayette City Council meeting. WQCH Radio does a good job of attending and covering these meetings (Walker County Messenger usually makes no mention of them), but their coverage is usually limited by the short amount of time they have for reading news. This is a bit more in-depth, with our commentary following in italics.

Even with the budget “tight” the council still set aside $620,000 for the golf course. A majority of that money will come from playing fees and clubhouse sales, but the golf course never breaks even. The city would have an extra hundred-thousand dollars on hand each year without that unneeded expense.