North Georgia and much of the south were hit with heavy rains during Christmas week, resulting in widespread floods on Christmas Day and the following weekend.

Many roadways in Walker, like Lake Howard Rd and Arnold Ln above, flooded and were (or should have been) closed.

Despite many examples of dumb “hero” antics (as seen in the video), nobody in Walker County died or sustained serious injury in the deluge. Chattooga County, however, lost one resident: George Paul Treadaway of Summerville, who died trying to drive down a flooded road in Gordon County.

  

Property damage includes the wooden bridge on Campbell Trail near Caboose Park behind Goodwill. Fortunately in LaFayette, most of the damage involved power outages and disrupted plans – not homes and businesses as we saw in 2009.                     

During the Christmas floods Walker County residents had to basically guess what roads would flood and what routes might be safe for travel, because the county released no list of road conditions for three days.

Chattooga and Catoosa emergency management officials updated media several times daily with lists of roads that were closed or closing. By comparison, Walker County’s official statement to media on December 26th was the super helpful “Numerous roads closed.”

Sources inside county government blame 911 director and Emergency Management Coordinator David Ashburn [depicted] for the lack of clear information and instruction, saying he was on vacation the entire time – along with his assistant, Curtis Creekmur, who he’s raised as a son. (Ashburn’s son Eric, a fire chief, was also thought to have gone with them.)

Nobody’s saying people can’t take vacation. Ashburn has been a county employee for over twenty years and he’s not in good health, he should have time off occasionally. But when you give those juicy high-paying leadership jobs to your family, somebody still has to stay behind and be in charge on holidays.

When every key emergency response role is held by a family member, you can’t go take vacations together.           

Rescue teams from Walker, Dade, and Hamilton counties spent about 12 hours on Friday night and Saturday morning (January 1 & 2) extracting a 50-year-old man from a cave in the Rising Fawn area of Dade County.

He’s thought to have fallen about 15 feet inside Byers Cave, sustaining a head injury. The Atlanta native, described as an experienced caver, was hospitalized and listed in critical condition as of Sunday.     

2015 has (thankfully) come to an end. Here are the past year’s 14 biggest local news stories shared by The LaFayette Underground: 

 
CHATTANOOGA STREET TAVERN

In January controversial eatery Chattanooga Street Tavern changed owners, from the Lovelady family to nurse Tabby Holcomb.

Holcomb’s efforts to bolster the business while still badgering and bullying the city as Mike Lovelady had done were unsuccessful; the eatery got one of the city’s worst health scores in years and finally closed down in July after almost 3 years of constant drama.

 
DFCS IGNORES ABUSE

In January LPD investigated a child abuse case on Pledger Parkway involving a 9-year-old boy who was allegedly being starved.

Details of the abuse are sad, and made much sadder by government failures that allowed it to continue for two months after teachers first noticed something was wrong. Walker DFCS ignored abuse complaints for seven weeks, getting at least thirteen calls from Gilbert teachers during that time but taking action only after police bypassed the agency and took matters into their own hands.

A state investigation into our local DFCS office resulted in the director being removed and encouraged more reform of DFCS offices around the state. The results of those reforms are still unclear.

 
SOLE COMMISSIONER GOVERNMENT

Just as they did in 2014, Walker County’s delegates in the General Assembly ignored their constituents in 2015 by refusing to allow a vote on sole commissioner county government.

After being presented with a petition signed by 2,045 Walker County taxpayers, Senator Jeff Mullis and his counterparts in the Georgia House – Steve Tarvin and John Deffenbaugh – claimed the petition was invalid and continued to insist nobody was asking them to allow a vote. (Sole Commissioner Heiskell too claimed the petition was all fake, but admitted she personally prefers the current system because she’d lose her job without it.)

After the petition was made public many attempted to call the three legislators about sole commissioner. Most found themselves dealing with a broken voicemail system or bored teen phone-answerers who seemed unmotivated to take messages. While ignoring constituent calls (and a newspaper poll showing broad support for a board of commissioners), Mullis and Tarvin continued insisting that there was no widespread demand for a vote on (or change of) the county’s type of government.

Tarvin thought sole commissioner was such a non-issue that he spent his own money creating and airing a TV commercial to explain his illogical position on the subject. Tarvin received more citizen calls after his commercial was shared on LU, but those who got the man on the phone said his statements to them were also contradictory nonsense.

Earlier in the year a push to put sole commissioner on the 2016 Republican primary ballot was defeated in a 53-57 decision during a party convention corrupted by county employees paid to vote.

Party Chairman Matt Williamson said at the time, despite obvious corruption of the process, that the matter had been settled – but in September joined other party leaders in deciding to actually put a question about sole commissioner on the ballot next year. (Were they motivated by a desire to do what the people want, or just take pressure off elected leaders? We’ll see..)

Confusion continues at the Hutch.

Thursday it was reported (not by LU) that Hutcheson would reopen Friday under the control of ApolloMD/ValorBridge. Later in the day those stories were withdrawn, and the same media outlets said Hutcheson will reopen sometime next week.

Channel 3 pushed out this report saying Hutcheson would open Friday, per the county’s hired gun lawyer who wants to credit Bebe as the hospital’s savior. They later modified the article to indicate no clear date for reopening.

Another report from the Times Free Press initially said Hutcheson would reopen Friday (notice the URL), then was updated to say it would be open for employees but not patients. However that’s been the case since it closed – they’ve had some office staff and administrators there answering phones and collecting money since the hospital was boarded up a week ago.

Some employees say they’ve been called and asked to work, most remain in limbo and don’t know more than the rest of us do about what’s happening.

ValorBridge manages emergency rooms and other hospital services, but has to date never owned any hospital outright – and won’t own Hutcheson until sometime next year IF its proposed $4.2 million buyout is ever finalized.   

Wednesday the CEO of General Electric told investors the company is on track to sell its appliance unit (including Roper in LaFayette) early next year.

How early next year?

Per this report, the industrial giant is asking interested bidders to make their offers by next week.

The same article says the most likely buyer THIS time seems to be Haier of China.

Haier already makes refrigerators, washers, microwaves, TV’s, cell phones, and air conditioners – but not ovens. If Haier does buy GE Appliances, Roper would probably be safe – but would be under Chinese control.     

Tuesday a trailer containing $10,000 of Little Debbies was stolen from Trion Walmart.

(The trailer is worth more than its contents, and is the likely motive for the theft – but nobody cares about a trailer. You don’t mess with Lil Debbie.)

Be on the lookout for black market Debbie cakes.   

Barwick Mills blaze prompts the City to look at how it responds to major industrial fires. LaFayette may seek legal means of inspecting similar properties to identify materials that would be toxic in a fire.

City Manager Hamilton admits they still don’t know what all ended up in Chattooga River as a result of the fire, and may never get specific substances nailed down despite EPA testing.   

Monday a tentative buyout deal for Hutcheson was approved in court.

ValorBridge, parent company of ER contractor ApolloMD, will be buying the closed facility for $4.2 million, and Maybrook of New York will buy Parkside Nursing Home and Hutcheson’s daycare center for $7.3 million. (A $4 million cash-and-credit deal from People’s Hospital of Illinois was rejected at the last minute when ValorBridge’s higher all-cash offer came in.)

The state extended Hutcheson’s expiring license to December 24th in order to allow for transition. Hospital leaders, such as they are, at one point said they expect to be reopened by THIS Friday, the 18th – doing what, and with what employees, yet unknown. (As this is written the hospital is still closed, but boards over its windows and tarps over its signs have been removed.)

When the hospital DOES reopen, it will still be under the current owners: Hutcheson, Inc. and the county Hospital Authority. ValorBridge/ApolloMD will “manage” the hospital, but the actual ownership structure won’t be changed until sometime next year.

ValorBridge says it will initially operate only an ER and related support units, but may eventually expand to provide more hospital services. Maybrook agreed to reserve a handful of inpatient rooms at Hutcheson’s main hospital for its residents, and will continue to feed those residents with Hutcheson’s main kitchen until it can transition over to feeding them via the daycare kitchen.

(No word on a role or cut [if any] for Hutcheson’s upper management, which got us to this point in the first place.)

As part of the buyout deal, ValorBridge surrendered claims on Hutcheson’s Battlefield Parkway properties Regions Bank wants to foreclose on. Also in the package, Erlanger agreed to cap its debt from Hutcheson at $20 million – the amount originally loaned to Hutcheson, with no interest. A more than generous gesture on the part of Erlanger, which is legally entitled to nearly twice that much.

After getting about $3 million from the hospital’s sale, Erlanger is now free to pursue the remaining $17 million from Walker and Catoosa, which co-backed the original loan. That means Walker County will need an extra $8.5 million in the next year, or another huge bond/loan/tax package to begin paying it down.

Get ready for another sizable tax increase on top of the one you just got, thanks to Hutcheson and the leadership of Walker and Catoosa counties.           

Until cleanup begins at the old Barwick Mill site sometime in January, the property will be patrolled 24/7 by security guards.

An environmental cleanup group hired to take care of the debris will hire off-duty cops to keep looters and lookey-loos out.   

59-year-old New York man found dead Saturday in Chickamauga Battlefield.

Duane Hollendeck’s remains were discovered by hikers on Alexander Bridge Rd. inside the national park property around 12:30 Saturday. Hollendeck was reported missing on December 8th (the previous Tuesday); he reportedly had a cut on his head when found.     

Hutcheson’s creditors and owners have tentatively reached a settlement that would allow the closed hospital to be purchased by a new bidder.

The latest deal is for cut-rate People’s Choice Hospital of Illinois to buy Hutcheson’s main campus for $4 million.

The agreement with People’s is different than previous buyout proposals because it sets in stone how much money Erlanger will get from the sale, and specifies that anything left of its debts will be paid by Walker and Catoosa. That SHOULD persuade Erlanger to sign off on the deal.

Regions Bank is apparently OK with the arrangement too, because People’s Choice has agreed not to block it from selling the surgery center it has a right to foreclose on.

This one SHOULD work – except for one thing: Now the state says the closed hospital’s Certificate of Need and/or license may be invalid.

A final decision in court is being delayed until Monday, the last day possible for any kind of sale. If Hutcheson doesn’t reopen by Tuesday that’s it for the 62-year-old hospital.

Meanwhile, the closed medical center’s bankruptcy trustee Ronald Glass names his own business as a “consultant” for the defunct facility, at a rate of $400 an hour.       

LaFayette City council voted 4-1 Wednesday morning to uphold the termination of Patti Scott as recreation director.

Scott said she’s held the job for over 20 years, through multiple city managers, and does more than the city knows. City Manager Hamilton said Scott takes no initiative and is disorganized.

“‘“This job is not about sports. It is not about coaches. It is about the community. It’s about how do we take care of LaFayette.'”

Recreation IS about the community and taking care of LaFayette, but it’s ALSO about the sports and coaches. That’s kind of how it works. And those are the areas where people had issue with the rec. department – weak coaching and disorganized sporting activities.

Was it handled correctly? Perhaps not. But there was definitely a need for change in the rec. department. If Scott was unwilling to make those changes, well… .. .

The one vote in support of Scott was from Wayne Swanson, the current longest serving council member.     

The EPA has released a lengthy report on environmental impact caused by the Barwick Mill fire last month.

Every chemical inside the old mill/warehouse still hasn’t been identified, but the EPA determined that air quality was only dangerous during the first day of the fire. Samples of the air and water were put through a barrage of tests by a lab; reports from those tests can be found through this link.

Cleanup now will take the better part of a year as two EPA contractors oversee removal of debris – with their bill sent to the site’s owner and renters.

The city says the property owner – Drennon Crutchfield of Dalton – will also be held responsible for paying the costs of putting out the fire, including overtime pay for firemen.

WQCH Radio, 11/21/15: “[City Manager] HAMILTON SAID THE NEXT STEP IS ‘PHASE-2 CLEANUP’ OF THE SITE, INCLUDING DEBRIS REMOVAL. THAT WILL BE THE FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PROPERTY OWNER, WITH OVERSIGHT BY THE CITY AND THE EPA. ‘WE DON’T WANT THE REMAINING BRICK WALLS FALLING ON WORKERS, AS AN EXAMPLE’, HAMILTON SAID. A MEETING WILL BE HELD IN THE NEAR FUTURE BETWEEN THE MILL OWNER, THE LESSEE, THE CITY AND THE EPA.

“IT’S STILL TOO EARLY TO KNOW THE MILL FIRE’S ECONOMIC IMPACT ON THE CITY OF LAFAYETTE, BUT HAMILTON SAID THEY’VE KEPT CAREFUL RECORDS ON SUCH THINGS AS EMPLOYEE OVERTIME AND OTHER EXPENSES. ‘THE PROPERTY OWNER WILL BE GETTING A BILL FROM THE CITY’, HE SAID. ‘THEY’RE EXPECTING IT’.”

(Hopefully Crutchfield pays this bill quicker than he pays his property taxes.)

More: “Massive environmental cleanup ready to get underway in LaFayette”