East Reed Rd. bridge in better times. Should it
REALLY cost $90,000 to replace this small crossing?

Last week during its monthly meeting, the Noble Neighborhood Association again brought up the issue of repairs to a bridge on East Reed Rd. that was washed out during September’s flooding. The bridge over Town Creek has been closed since September 21st with traffic rerouted down Center Point Rd. and Loughridge Ln. through a number of residential neighborhoods not used to high levels of traffic.

According to news reports, “Residents were originally told that a large pipe construction could be done in a matter of weeks, then no news except that the county road department was waiting on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Everyone felt that the wait had already been far too long. Reportedly, the cost of a full bridge construction is about $90,000 which the county government hopes to get FEMA to pay. .. David Boyle shared that he had spoken with the County commissioner’s Office this morning and learned that the bidding for contracts would be open in January and closed in March with a decision on contractors soon after so that actual construction could be in June or July, depending on weather.”

Monday’s city council meeting addressed two of the biggest issues facing local leaders, but the way those issues were handled still left many questions avoided and unanswered.

A zoning ruling before the meeting technically permits tattoo shops to open their doors within city limits, but the rules are so specific and restrictive that none are likely to ever do so. The council ruled that tattoo shops can exist, but only in areas zoned I-1 (light industrial) and at least 500 feet away from churches, schools, recreation areas, libraries, government buildings, or property intended for residential use. A site south of town on Hwy. 27 in the former Teddy D’s barber shop building which had been the proposed future location for such a business doesn’t meet that standard since it’s located in front of a subdivision and across the highway from LaFayette Church of God. Entrepreneurial tattooists would do well to set up shop outside the city limits so they can be free of the city council’s repressive and ever-changing zoning standards.

The LaFayette City Council will have its regularly scheduled December meeting tonight at 7:30. This should be an interesting session, featuring irritated restaurant owners / beer-advocates who feel their position was misrepresented in November’s vote along with residents grieving over council-ordained cemetery desecration.

Four families will be talking about the cemetery issue, and will probably bring (or mention) evidence shown in this TV report. Announced plans to create a new cemetery panel will hopefully come to fruition and accomplish something, but depending on the respective moods of council and crowd they may well be “delayed” to a future date to encourage forgetting about the issue. An e-mail we obtained indicates public works manager Vanessa Gilliam feels slighted and unfairly blamed for the whole cemetery issue, but she probably won’t speak at the meeting (and has so far refused to reply to our inquiries) since she values her job.

New questions have been raised about the death of Charles Cochran since my previous posts about it. I started to reply to each one individually but decided readers would be better served by having them all discussed here in one more post about the suicide that still has more questions than answers.

Additional thoughts…

In addition to previous comments about the Cochran suicide, it should also be said that if the Walker Sheriff’s Office or Rossville PD wanted Mr. Cochran dead they could certainly come up with a better way to do it than beat and hang him while he was in their care. If we’ve learned anything from Sam Parker, we know that law enforcement officers (even incompetent ones) are perfectly capable of murdering people without arresting them first. Anonymously killing Charles Cochran in an empty parking lot or in the woods would make more sense than police officers forcibly hanging him in a jail cell. One more unsolved murder in a year filled with them would have generated a lot less attention than what happened on November 6th.

SITE UPDATE
Thanks so much for the encouraging and complimentary e-mails; we read everything even if you don’t get a reply. Sorry for the irregular updates, it’s hard to write lengthy pieces coherently with limited amounts of time. We’re trying to get a fun piece written and posted sometime this weekend, check back soon for more.

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