Over the weekend, LaFayette burned down a house on North Main Street near Park St. for fire department training. The structure was donated by a church and was burned with a special permit.     

36-year-old Timothy Tindale is wanted by police in connection with last weekend’s shoplifting incident at Sears. He’s also wanted for violating probation. He lives on Straight Gut Rd. but hasn’t been located – if you see him out and about, contact LPD (706 639 1540).   

Early voting for the May 20th primary election begins today. LaFayette residents can vote at the county elections office in the Courthouse. Ballot issues include a property tax for libraries, permission for Commissioner Heiskell to “regulate” alcohol sales, and some non-binding straw polls.

Candidate primaries include House District 2 (Tarvin, Edwards, Brown), House District 1 (Deffenbaugh, Painter, Goff), GA Senate District 53 (Mullis, Dooley), US Senate, GA Governor, GA School Superintendent, and several others.

Most candidates locally are running as Republicans with no Democrat party challengers in November, so the winner of May’s vote will automatically win the final election. In almost every case, the candidates running as Democrats have no primary opponent, so most voters regardless of political affiliation will want to request a Republican ballot. The county questions about alcohol and taxes appear on all party AND independent ballots.

Meanwhile, registered voters in the county have been getting letters in the mail from Georgia Secretary of State’s office encouraging them to register to vote (even though they already did) before upcoming elections. The deadline to register passed several weeks ago.       

Northwest GA could get over 4 inches of rain through the next few days. Forecasters think Chattanooga could get up to six between tonight and early Wednesday.   

With Marty Stuart scheduled to perform, planners for Music on the Square expect this year’s concert to draw the biggest crowd yet. To accommodate a larger audience, this year the stage will be actually in the middle of the square, on Main Street, instead of on Patton St. at the Courthouse.

Seems like another good reason to make the old football field usable for these kinds of events instead of tying up traffic through town for two days.   

An elderly woman drove her car into the Sheriff’s Office Friday afternoon. Looks like no real damage (to the building) and no injuries.   

The next day, this occurred in Chickamauga on Hwy. 27:

The wreck involved two vehicles, apparently no major injuries were sustained.     

National legal group representing homosexual interests has filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s laws prohibiting same-sex-marriage.   

Walker County Schools is buying five new busses using ELOST funds. New cheese wagons, complete with air conditioning, will arrive in the fall.   

Walker County was paving Kay Conley Rd. in Rock Spring last week.

County workers have also been back after the Villanow water project this month, although it looks like they’re only working on it one day a week.   

Gov. Deal has signed a measure replacing the state’s Youth Apprenticeship Program with a new series of “work based learning” classes.   

Nearly-useless GA Ethics Commission Web site was briefly taken down last Thursday by hackers, apparently from Iran.

(LU Facebook comment of the week: “Wonder if someone in Iran is in trouble right now… ‘Not THAT Georgia!!!'”)   

Students from Whitfield County recently visited GNTC in Rock Spring to “investigate” a murder staged by the school’s Criminal Justice program.   

Wednesday during Lunch and Learn, Walker Co. Fire department took groups of citizens through training exercises at the county fire training tower.   

Federal government is expected to adopt rules making it normal for Internet services and Web sites to pay networks like Comcast or Windstream to prioritize their traffic. In other words, turn the Internet into cable TV where you pay for access to specific sites and content the providers don’t like can be limited or blocked.

The impact Internet access has made on freedom and transparency in the last twenty years may soon go away – that’s a scary thought no matter what your political loyalties are.

If this is something that concerns you (and it ought to), please consider signing a Whitehouse.gov petition asking the President to stop this from happening.   

More details – and controversy – about new teacher evaluation plan rolling out across Georgia this fall.   

State law allowing individuals to make tax-deductible donations to a private school scholarship fund has been challenged in court by a public school advocacy group.

Lawsuit says letting people take tax write-offs for making donations takes money from public education.   

As mentioned previously, Kids 4 Christ group in LaFayette is looking for a new building.   

John F. Kennedy is campaigning to join the GA Senate.

(No relation to the former president.)   

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