LaFayette is finally getting serious about trashy yards and abandoned lots.

During Monday’s council meeting, city leaders discussed 100 properties identified as troubled. Councilman Bradford said they’ve contacted 20 property owners and 16 have agreed to begin cleaning them up, while four others may have to be dragged into court before anything is done.

20 troubled sites being dealt with now are on “main thoroughfares” where they’re the most visible. At the current pace, the city will get around to enforcing codes and cleaning up Linwood around 2024.   

Clara Edwards’ murder trial continued through the week in Catoosa County. Prosecutors are accusing Edwards of killing Saharah Weatherspoon, a 23-month-old foster child in her care who died after being hospitalized in late 2013.

In court Wednesday, witnesses said little Saharah was often sad, withdrawn, and never happy to see her foster mother Clara. But in a foster care situation that’s not always unusual. Others said the child was always neat, clean and well dressed.

More damning, witnesses also shared about many unexplained (or poorly excused) injuries the child was seen with at church and in daycare. One who attended church with Edwards said she referred to the child as a demon. Daycare AND church workers reported the child’s condition to Catoosa DFCS, with no apparent action taken.

Times Free Press, 02/11/16: “Members of the day care center reported concerns about Edwards to the Division of Family and Children Services in September. Members of Destiny Restoration Church, meanwhile, reported similar concerns to DFCS in October. Saharah remained in Edwards’ home, though.”>

Thursday Catoosa detectives (including Walker County resident / 2012 Sheriff candidate Freddie Roden) and a GBI agent detailed the last days of infant Saharah Weatherspoon’s life. The jury then watched a video of Edwards discussing Sahara and how she was injured multiple times.

In the video Clara Edwards described the child as “a faller-downer” who probably needed a helmet but wasn’t provided one by the private foster care agency she worked for. She described herself as a “nurturer.”

Then Friday the jury saw more video of Edwards explaining how the child who died in her care fell.

A medical examiner who autopsied the baby said she couldn’t possibly have been hurt in the fall described, and a multitude of injuries indicate more than just a few accidents leading to her death.

Court will resume Monday afternoon, barring bad weather.       

Under pressure (and with assistance from) the FBI, GA Department of Corrections and GBI continue cracking down on prison smuggling. This week 45 or 46 current and former prison employees were charged with corruption, including bribery and drug smuggling.

Twenty of those charged were currently employed by GDC or a private-prison contractor, GEO Group, and all were fired. Two charged were “civilians” and one an inmate. The rest are former employees.

GPB, 02/11/16: “A majority of those charged were Georgia Department of Corrections officers accused of agreeing to protect a person they believed was a high-level drug trafficker. The indictments say the officers agreed to wear their uniforms during the drug transports to deter law enforcement interference.

“The officers charged worked at nine different prisons.”

Five corrections officers arrested are from the state’s Cobra unit, considered best of the best for prison security. (Cobra officers were deployed to Hays Prison in Trion when things there got bad a few years back, with mixed results.)

Outside of the COBRA team that works all over Georgia, none of those charged live or worked in this part of the state. Those arrested worked at only nine of the state’s 33 prisons, meaning this is likely just a drop in the bucket of prison corruption in GA. (Hays, for example, is still lousy with this stuff.) Arrests will surely continue.

LU Exclusive: Walker Commissioner race heats up with the unexpected entry of another candidate.

Erlanger surgical tech Perry Lamb of LaFayette is aiming for Bebe Heiskell’s job, saying he wants to make the county financially sound and give us a board of commissioners.

Lamb tells LU that he’s running as an independent so he doesn’t have to compromise his values and wants give the average citizen a voice instead of “local government working for the affluent” as it does now. (Mr. Lamb, like fellow candidate Mike Peardon, signed the sole commissioner vote petition in 2014.)

Meanwhile commissioner candidate Shannon Whitfield’s gang is throwing up signs all over the county without permission of property owners, trying to create the illusion he’s got wider support than he actually does…

And where’s Bebe? Is she putting up any kind of a fight or is this election just a handoff?   

Lyerly man loses $12,000 via stolen checks; LPD says most of 49 swiped checks were cashed at Shop-Rite LaFayette.

Arrested are Deanna Paige Clark of LaFayette; Cody Trimble, Kelsey Leann Wallin, Charlotte Ann Trimble, and Sierra Skye Parker of Trion; Rebecca Webb of Chickamauga; and Jesse Joseph Trammell of Rock Spring.

Having nearly every check handled by the same store leads some to wonder if there’s a problem with the way Shop-Rite processes checks OR if there’s someone employed at the LaFayette store who was in on the scam.   

Monday night LaFayette’s Council had opportunity to put the brakes on more golf course spending, but decided in a 3-1 vote to put another $140,000 into the course over the next four years – on top of its annual losses.

Per City Manager Hamilton, the new golf cart lease – about $3,000 a month for the next four years – will be cheaper than repairing old carts. And Councilman Bradford says you can’t have a golf course without carts.

That makes sense, but why do we still have a course at all, and why can’t we run it at a profit if most private course operators manage to? That’s the core problem and complaint.         

School was canceled in Walker County again Wednesday, and won’t be held again until next Tuesday when winter break ends – assuming the weather Tuesday isn’t worse.

School administrators say they will add makeup snow days later in the year, schedule to be announced.

Naomi Elementary took heat online for saying the school’s Valentine’s Day parties scheduled for this week won’t be made up after school resumes. (They backtracked and added a time in for that on Tuesday after getting complaints.)

Parents know what’s REALLY important; God forbid they teach the kids something besides candy and made-up holidays when they get back.     

Snow, or the threat thereof, does another number on local school schedules.

After announcing a 2-hour delay, class in Walker County was canceled entirely today. Chattooga County also had a two hour delay today, then had class but sent students home at 11:30 – less than two hours after they arrived.

GNTC is closed today, LaFayette library closed early, and Walker Transit did not run due to weather.

Tomorrow Walker County Schools will be on another two hour delay, and may decide to cancel class again. (Not much point having school tomorrow; winter break starts Thursday.)

Chickamauga, Whitfield, Catoosa, and Hamilton will also be on a two hour delay Wednesday; Chattooga classes will start THREE hours late – if they start at all.           

Summerville police have arrested two 18-year-old suspects from one recent convenience store robbery there.

Detectives say Dylon Dave Allen and Zaykives Banard McCray, both of Rome, are behind the January 15th holdup and shooting of a store clerk on Hawkins Dr. in Summerville. (That clerk is still in ICU at Floyd Medical.)

  

Mr. McCray [left] held up a Rome convenience store with a shotgun a year and a half ago when he was 17. He faced a laundry list of charges from THAT crime but apparently spent little or no time in jail for it. Suspect Dylon Allen [right] has no record, at least not as an adult.

Two suspects other holdups (including the one in LaFayette at Steve’s Kwik Stop) went to jail days ago; no word yet if the two pair are linked at all. Authorities say only one recent robbery, at the Wildlife Market south of Summerville, remains unsolved.   

Loyal Hutcheson employees continue paying the price for their commitment.

This family owes hundreds of dollars to a doctor’s office because insurance money Hutcheson took out of their paycheck never made it to an insurance company.

LU got permission to share this if the family name AND the name of the doctor’s office, which isn’t responsible for HMC’s crookedness, were both redacted.

To their credit, this medical facility cut the amount owed by about 2/3 when they verified there was no insurance. Also credit to Memorial for sending the letter below to other medical offices in the area explaining what Hutcheson did and why Hutcheson’s insured employees should be treated like lower-cost uninsured patients.

  

Even with the bill cut, $570 is still a good bit of money. Unfortunately others face not hundreds but tens of thousands in unpaid medical bills; at least one former Hutcheson staffer is filing bankruptcy to deal with a situation insurance would have covered IF they had actually been insured.   

UPDATED 02/10/16

LaFayette’s elected leaders have finally recognized a huge problem that has been ignored for years: LaFayette Golf Course costs the city entirely too much money.

In January one council member actually spoke up and opposed extra golf course spending, hopefully signaling a long-sought change in city budget priorities.

WQCH Radio, 01/14/16: “LAFAYETTE’S CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ENTERED INTO A CONTROVERSIAL DISCUSSION AT MONDAY NIGHT’S MEETING, ON THE SUBJECT OF THE LAFAYETTE GOLF COURSE.

“THE AGENDA CALLED FOR A VOTE ON A FOUR-YEAR RENEWAL OF THE LEASE ON 60 GOLF CARTS, AT JUST OVER 140-THOUSAND DOLLARS. BUT BEFORE THE VOTE WAS CALLED, COUNCIL MEMBER BEACHER GARMANY HAD COMMENTS PREPARED.

“HE REELED-OUT A LIST OF LOSSES IN THE OPERATION FOR 2015, SAYING ‘I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG THE TAX PAYERS CAN KEEP SUBSIDIZING THE GOLF COURSE’. GARMANY SAID THAT OF THE CITY’S PROPERTY TAX REVENUE, 55-CENTS OF EVERY DOLLAR GOES TO PAY FOR LOSSES AT THE COURSE.

“COUNCIL MEMBER WAYNE SWANSON DEFENDED THE GOLF COURSE OPERATION, THEN MADE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE GOLF CART LEASE. HIS MOTION DIED FOR LACK OF A SECOND.

“EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE DISCUSSION AGREED THAT THE GOLF COURSE HAD A BAD YEAR IN 2015. WEATHER PREVENTED PLAY FOR AROUND 100 DAYS WHEN THE USUAL NUMBER OF ‘UNPLAYABLE DAYS’ IS HALF-THAT.

“MAYOR ANDY ARNOLD CALLED THE GOLF COURSE ‘AN ASSET TO THE CITY’ AND SAID THAT THE COUNCIL NEEDS TO ‘TRUST THAT THE CITY MANAGER WILL COME UP WITH A PLAN TO GET THE COURSE CLOSER TO BREAK-EVEN’ IN IT’S OPERATION.

“AT THE END OF THE DISCUSSION, THE COUNCIL AGREED TO TABLE THE GOLF CART MATTER UNTIL NEXT MONTH’S MEETING.

Huge annual losses at the golf course aren’t new. LU first reported on the greens losing “green” six years ago in a report comparing the course’s 2008 loss of $193,000 to an excuse city leaders at the time made for not cutting taxes on Roper’s electric bill.

Since then the city has continued to throw good money after bad, spending money on golf cart batteries, pavement for the golf course access road, a $14,500 golf-only pickup truck, and replacement water pumps for the greens – all to support a hobby generally enjoyed by the city’s wealthiest residents.

Chattooga deputies raided a Trion motel and arrested two men they believe are responsible for (or at least involved in) the recent crime wave.

They found unspecified evidence that links the men to recent convenience store robberies in Chattooga, Walker, Floyd, and Whitfield.

Off the jail go James Tyrone Carmichael of Rome and Jake Lee Skuse of Leesburg, Al. They’re being held on robbery, drug, and gun charges.

Per investigators, Mr. Carmichael got out of prison on January 21 for previous armed robbery conviction(s). But the first robbery was on January 15th – indicating others are involved.

Meanwhile, Steve Wilson sends out press releases claiming credit for the Chattooga County arrest and LPD detectives grasp at straws theorizing the robberies specifically targeted retailers owned by indians.     

This week Walker County was hit again by heavy rains and flooding.

Water covered several roads and bridges along Chickamauga Creek, including Hog Jowl and Andrews Lane (seen above.) Kay Conley and a few roads in Chickamauga and Flintstone were also affected.

Rossville’s bingo hall, the city’s center of dubious economic activity, collapsed during the heavy rain – causing thousands of dollars in improvements to downtown Rossvegas. No other serious damage was reported.         

Flames claims a life in the Gore community.

A house fire on Little Sand Mountain Rd in Chattooga County Tuesday afternoon has resulted in one person dead. The victim was identified by The Summerville News as 30-year-old Joshua James Childers.