Around 8:30 AM Wednesday a single-wide house trailer on Baker Hill caught fire. Neighbors reported loud booms or bangs, and several neighborhoods in south LaFayette briefly lost power.

A total of 22 Walker County and Walker State Prison firefighters responded to the blaze, but trailer fires are difficult to extinguish and the nearest hydrant was some 2,500 feet away. (Baker Hill is a political/geographical oddity, as it lies outside LaFayette city limits but can only be accessed by driving through town.)

When it was all said and done the home was a complete loss. A family of FOURTEEN people, including nine children all under the age of 10, was left homeless. The Snyders lost nearly everything (they likely didn’t have much to start with), and had no insurance.

The family has been temporarily put up in “a local home” by the Red Cross. They’ve been given some temporary help through Ledford Pharmacy, which is the suggested place to go if you’d also like to help the family out.           

This morning LaFayette Middle School will be involved in an emergency drill. The drill could involve evacuating the school, and plans at one point also involved shutting down the LaFayette bypass. Not sure if that’s still included in the drill.

Here’s a look at the latest news from LaFayette and Walker County:

Walker Co Schools is preparing for the transition to new Saddle Ridge School by terminating teachers. Last Friday administrators called selected teachers into their offices during school hours, read them a script prepared by school attorneys, and then sent them back to finish the school day. Those who heard the spiel will be unemployed come July.

Teachers weren’t dismissed in front of students, but were dismissed during school hours when kids were still at school to limit anyone reacting negatively. Because good teachers don’t get pissed and cause a scene when their students might see it.

Some have asked why we’re firing teachers while building a new school. The simple answer? SPLOST and ELOST sales taxes are both restricted to construction, building, purchasing property. We can build schools, replace roofs, buy school busses, buy police cars – but not pay power bills or salaries. So stop voting for sales tax renewal, it doesn’t accomplish anything.

Not sure whose situation is worse, the teachers soon to be out of work or the remaining teachers facing larger and larger classroom head count next fall.

So far cuts include five teachers at LaFayette Middle, five at Naomi, three at Fairyland, one at LHS, and two cuts plus one retirement without replacement at Chattanooga Valley Elementary. That’s seventeen teaching positions cut at just five schools. Those totals are not complete, just the ones LU has been made aware of. A full count may never be publicly announced – there’s still been no public confirmation of the teacher firing bloodbath covered here last year.     

An accident Sunday morning on South Chattanooga Street or Hwy. 337 involved 19 year old Jared Marsh. Marsh, who was by himself, hit a tree. He suffered a broken collarbone and head injuries, was sent to Erlanger.

WQCH Radio, 05/14/13: “LAFAYETTE POLICE SAY MARSH APPARENTLY FELL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL IN THE 11-HUNDRED BLOCK OF CHATTANOOGA STREET. THERE WERE NO SKID MARKS FROM BRAKING, AND THE JEEP CHEROKEE IMPACTED A TREE IN THE FRONT YARD OF A RESIDENCE.

“POLICE SAID FAMILY MEMBERS TOLD THEM MONDAY THAT JARED WAS IN A MEDICALLY-INDUCED COMA. THEY GOT THE CALL AT AROUND 6:40 SUNDAY MORNING.”       

Hutcheson’s latest loan, backed up by Walker and Catoosa, will come from Erlanger hospital. That brings the total amount owed to Erlanger (before interest) to $20.55 million. The half-million emergency loan was needed to finish setting up new computer systems.   

All together, Hutcheson has over $70 million in debt and growing.

Hutcheson will never be fixed until the hospital gets out from under that massive debt. In this piece, Commissioner Heiskell says Walker County will not back a needed $35 million bond to help the troubled facility pay down debt, because the amount is higher than we can risk.

This photo was taken Thursday on Crow Gap Rd. in Kensington. Guy in the hole says it was three feet deep and about five feet long under the pavement. County came out to patch it a few days earlier. After this they were called back out and “filled it with about six big rocks.”

Meanwhile the county road crew is clearing land for the Davenport family on Lookout Mountain and paving driveways at Mountain Cove Farms. We have resources to fix this stuff properly (all over the county) but don’t use them where they should be used.   

Georgia has freed schools from following the standards of No Child Left Behind and its hated AYP school scoring system. A new state-crafted acronym, CCRPI (College and Career Ready Performance Index), has been rolled out to evaluate school performance and the first scores from that system were released this week.

WQCH Radio, 05/08/13: “WALKER COUNTY SCHOOLS JUST RECEIVED THEIR FIRST SCORES UNDER THE NEW [CCRPI] ACCOUNTING SYSTEM. EACH SCHOOL IS GRADED ON A 100-POINT SCALE. NORTH LAFAYETTE ELEMENTARY HAD AMONG THE COUNTY’S HIGHEST SCORES: A 90.4. NAOMI SCORED 87.8, ROCK SPRING 84.2, AND GILBERT ELEMENTARY TRAILED AT 80.9. THE STATE AVERAGE FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IS 83.4.

“AMONG MIDDLE SCHOOLS, LAFAYETTE MIDDLE SCORED SLIGHTLY BELOW THE LEADER, CHATTANOOGA VALLEY MIDDLE. THE LMS SCORE IS AN IMPRESSIVE 92.7. THE STATE AVERAGE IS 81.4. AND AMONG THE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOLS, LAFAYETTE HIGH TOPPED RIDGELAND BY A SCANT 9-10th OF A POINT WITH A SCORE OF 76.6. RIDGELAND HAD THE LOWEST SCORE OF ALL WALKER COUNTY SCHOOLS AT 75.7. THE STATE AVERAGE FOR HIGH SCHOOLS IS 72.6, SO BOTH WALKER COUNTY HIGH SCHOOLS WERE ‘ABOVE THE AVERAGE’.

“FAIRYLAND ELEMENTARY, TRADITIONALLY THE SYSTEM’S HIGHEST PERFORMING SCHOOL, REPEATED THAT RECORD WITH 96.9 OUT OF 100 POSSIBLE POINTS. TWO WALKER COUNTY SCHOOLS SCORED BELOW THE STATE AVERAGE: GILBERT ELEMENTARY AND ROSSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL.

“SINCE THIS IS THE FIRST YEAR OF THE NEW MEASUREMENT, THERE ARE NO PAST SCORES WITH WHICH TO COMPARE THIS YEAR’S RESULTS. THE WALKER COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM DID NOT MAKE ‘ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS’ LAST YEAR, LARGELY DUE TO ATTENDANCE AND DROPOUT RECORDS AT THE TWO HIGH SCHOOLS.”

So far it’s not clear how CCRPI differs from AYP, other than being something local schools perform better on. Which might be the only advantage – we couldn’t pass the old test, so here’s one we can pass.   

Per sources, this morning employees of Joe’s Recycling found the business’s power meter and phone lines cut in an overnight robbery attempt. Thieves have also recently broken into parked Blossman Gas trucks for metal and destroyed a hot transformer bank behind the old Food Lion looking for copper.

Will the thieves get caught, get shot, or accidentally electrocute themselves?   

Glorified press release erm, article about new fire station planned for the Hinkle community on Lookout Mountain. The proposed new fire hall will be built next to a shopping center the county is building for a family that contributed much to the Commissioner’s campaign last year.

The county plans to use next year’s SPLOST money to build another outrageously fancy fire station like the one in Villanow for a community of fifty people, replacing an existing fire department that doesn’t have enough volunteers to put out a burning cigarette. Remember that when you see SPLOST on November’s ballot.

The people of Hinkle might prefer road work, garbage pickup, or something else. But the Davenports get THEIR wish: Another brand-new county building with no staff to operate it. Like the Villanow community center and the new library in LaFayette. Pretty buildings we wave at while standing outside locked doors.   

Monday Gov. Deal approved the ethics reform bill capping some lobbyist gifts to elected officials. Deal said the state’s elected officers are good people who don’t have any ethical problems (no joke – that’s what he said) but signed the toothless bill anyway.

Looks like everyone survived the weekend’s bad weather.

Here’s a look at other recent news from LaFayette, Walker County, and the region:

After years of complaints, Walker County is taking the “Pallet Man” of Wallaceville (on hwy. 341) to court over his business. Neighbors say it’s dangerous and an eyesore, the county says he’s violating zoning laws by operating a landfill. The owner, WIlburn Fields, says he’s being racially targeted and the business should be grandfathered in since it existed before the county’s zoning laws.

The county and neighbors are right in this case, it is a mess and needs to stop. Someday the whole place will catch fire and it’ll take every fire department in Northwest Georgia to put it out.

But there are plenty of other businesses in the county that violate zoning without anything said. The rules are enforced arbitrarily. If Mr. Fields was a little more considerate of neighbors (and a little less obvious) there wouldn’t be anything said.   

Engineered Floors, a new flooring business owned by Bob Shaw, will build two new carpet mills in Whitfield and Murray counties during the next few years. The mills are expected to hire some 2,400 people when they open.

One of the new plants announced last Wednesday is expected to open in the Carbondale industrial park off I-75. That’s good for Walker County: that site is only about 15 miles from the Walker/Whitfield line and could provide jobs for hundreds who live (or will live) in the Villanow area.     

This project in Whitfield will do more for Walker County’s economy than ANYTHING Bebe’s doing at Mountain Cove Farms.

If the county had wise leaders we’d be advertising the low cost of living and relatively lower home prices in Walker to the people who will be coming in to work at this new facility. But it’s not going to be within sight of Chickamauga so the opportunity won’t be taken advantage of.

Meanwhile in Chattooga County, leaders are happy to find a lower official unemployment rate but can’t figure out what caused it.

Hint: expired unemployment benefits.