Last Friday fire claimed a house on Probasco St.

A family was burned out, losing their home, most of their possessions, and the family dog.

Firemen from LaFayette FD and Walker State Prison took time to give the animal a proper burial in the back yard after it was located.

Thanks, gentlemen, for your service – both with the fire and this extra act of kindness.     

Nathan Deal flew into Walker this morning. The Governor visited students at the county agriculture center in Rock Spring before ceremonially signing “Tanja’s Law” at the adjacent Civic Center.

Deal’s wife Sandra was in town a week earlier, stopping by LaFayette Middle School.     

LPD has finally released the name of their suspect in the alleged April 19th standoff/domestic situation on Wisteria Rd. It’s the same name LU got an hour after the incident (but was asked not to share) – Sean Patrick Walker.

[LU’s network of sources dug up this photo, which has been verified as Mr. Walker. Sorry for the quality, this is so far the only pic of Walker anyone has been able to locate.]

Walker is not considered dangerous for some reason; anyone aware of his location is asked to call LPD at 706 639 1540 or dial 911.     

In Bizarro Land, a government without money sells equipment and buys land.

This isn’t what anybody meant, at all, when the Commissioner was asked to unload assets to help with the county’s cash problems.

The equipment being sold tomorrow might actually BE surplus junk – it doesn’t look that great – but this isn’t all of the road equipment she’s unloaded. Maybe this is all we have left? LaFayette just got a great deal earlier this month on some road paving equipment the county was getting rid of, cheap.

And it’s said that several years ago, all of the county’s new paving equipment was traded to Talley Construction (a generous supporter of reelection campaigns) in return for some paving work. Now Talley has most of the county’s paving machines, and we pay them to pave for us instead of doing the work in-house. That’s like trading your car to somebody for a week of rides to work.

Heiskell has also bragged before about slashing the road barn budget. In 2010 she was asked during a tax increase meeting for anything she had done to save money, and she proudly answered she’d cut the road budget in half since taking office.

Somebody should be asking if we have anything LEFT at the road barn.

Bebe will of course answer criticism by saying she’s only doing what the people said. Again, this isn’t what anybody’s asked her to do. Stop selling road equipment we SHOULD be using, and start unloading property we don’t need that costs money to maintain. Or at least stop buying more of it for no good reason.

Meanwhile Heiskell continues to defend her financial decisions, and blames her predecessor Buddy Chapman (who left office in 2000) for financial problems. She compares Chapman to a “deadbeat dad.”

And doesn’t mention how much she’s wasted on that damn farm. Or the money she’s spending on a bank, or the contract she handed out last week for building an unnecessary new fire station for Hinkle.

Next on her list of wasteful projects: A casino. Last Wednesday on the UCTV dumpster fire show, a very drunk Commissioner Heiskell said she wants to someday build a casino in Rossville.

Isn’t that a “Dukes of Hazzard” episode plot?       

Shocking triple murder/suicide last week in Whitfield County. Man shoots his 8-year old-son, wife, and self in the parking lot of a gas station near Varnell.

Kill yourself? Fine then. But your wife and the kid? What the hell is wrong with people…   

Hutcheson and Walker County leaders are “liars” doing “increasingly desperate” things to dodge a $20 million debt to Erlanger.

That’s Erlanger’s response to the latest court actions in the various lawsuits filed between it, Hutcheson, and Walker County.

And that’s exactly the case. Walker County (ie, Bebe) and Hutcheson have dug a hole they can’t escape, piling lies on top of lies to kick that can down the road for someone else to deal with.

“Walker County Commissioner Bebe Heiskell, meanwhile, said she didn’t understand why Erlanger called her a liar, too: ‘I haven’t opened my mouth. So they’re not talking about me.'”

Maybe they’re just exceptionally perceptive. She IS a liar, we know, regardless of the particular issue at hand.

Erlanger is specifically blaming Don Oliver, Bebe’s hand-picked ex-convict / ex-drug-dealer / ex-state-legislator county attorney and sometime Hutcheson lawyer/board member, for disrupting the hospitals’ management agreement and pissing off everybody in every direction.

“During the six months when the hospitals negotiated a management agreement, he said in a court filing, Walker County Attorney Don Oliver upset officials from Catoosa County, Hutcheson and Erlanger, ‘jeopardizing HMC’s chances to survive.’

“In March 2011, Woodard said, Walker County rejected a management agreement between the hospitals, demanding that new attorneys examine it.

This shows, once again, responsibility for most leadership problems at Hutcheson can be directly laid in the lap of Commissioner Heiskell and her circle of supporters.   

Sometimes neighbors’ complaints about drug activity DO accomplish something.

WQCH Radio, 04/23/15: “THE DRUG TASK FORCE MADE A COUPLE OF ARRESTS IN THE LAFAYETTE AREA LAST WEEK:

“ROBERT TREVINO WAS ARRESTED FOR POSSESSION OF METH AND OXYCODONE, AT HIS RESIDENCE ON WHEELER ROAD, LAFAYETTE. TASK FORCE COMMANDER PAT DOYLE SAID THEY WERE RESPONDING TO COMPLAINTS IN THAT INVESTIGATION.

“FOLLOWING A TRAFFIC STOP, THE TASK FORCE ARRESTED 46 YEAR OLD RODNEY DEWAYNE TAYLOR, THEN SEARCHED HIS HOME AT CARRIAGE ESTATES TRAILER PARK IN LAFAYETTE. HE WAS CHARGED WITH A FELONY COUNT OF MARIJUANA POSSESSION, POSSESSION WITH INTENT TO DISTRIBUTE, AND USE OF A CELL PHONE IN THE COMMISSION OF A FELONY.”

Since when is using a cell phone during a crime a charge..?

Also: Local arrests, April 16-22.     

After… multiple.. weather-related delays, this year’s Movies In the Park series finally launches night at 7:30 with “Maleficient.”

2014 live-action Disney film will play free in Joe Stock Park downtown.   

Last Thursday, stretching into Friday, Verizon cell service was down over much of south Walker County. The outage also impacted other services like TracFone that depend on Verizon towers.

Verizon has not explained or even admitted to the loss of service. Multiple customers who called the company say they were told nothing was wrong, given instructions to reset their own phones, and were pushed to buy new phones by Verizon call center employees.

The world kept turning.   

Family of a baby badly injured in a police-led home invasion last year has reached a settlement with the parties responsible.

Habersham County (or its insurance provider) will give the Phonesavanh family $964,000 for medical bills, pain and suffering, emotional trauma, etc. and in return the family will not pursue additional damages against the county or its employees for blowing their child’s face off and causing damage to his lungs and other organs.

Would you settle for that amount in the same situation?   

Stay in your own county and do drugs, we have enough tweakers of our own already.

WQCH Radio, 04/21/15: “A DALTON RESIDENT WAS ARRESTED AT THE KRYSTAL IN LAFAYETTE ON A CHARGE OF METH POSSESSION. LAFAYETTE POLICE GOT THE CALL AT AROUND MIDNIGHT SUNDAY, FROM A BYSTANDER WHO SAID THE WOMAN’S CAR HAD BEEN PARKED WITH THE LIGHTS ON FOR A LONG TIME, AND SHE WASN’T MOVING.

“WHEN CONFRONTED, SHE REFUSED AT FIRST TO OPEN THE CAR DOOR FOR OFFICERS. THEY NOTICED HER SPEECH WAS SLURRED AS SHE TOLD THEM SHE WAS ‘RESTING’ AND ON HER WAY HOME TO WHITFIELD COUNTY.

“A CONSENT SEARCH LOCATED METH INSIDE THE VEHICLE – AND 45 YEAR OLD TRACI MICHELLE STAFFORD WAS TAKEN INTO CUSTODY.”   

Georgia now has 210 bald eagle nesting sites, the highest ever counted. 270 eagle chicks were raised in the state over the last year, including the well-known eagle family on Berry College’s huge campus.   

You can’t take your pit bull into Walmart and claim it’s a “service dog” just because you bought a paper saying so off the Internet.

Sorry to bust your bubble, inconsiderate moron.   

EPA-demanded, EPD-enforced outdoor burning ban for all of Walker County begins today. It’s now illegal to burn anything outdoors (except for recreational cooking fires) until the fall.

The ban is triggered by an air pollution reading in Rossville, picking up smog blowing off I-24. Georgia has to interfere with the private property rights of Walker citizens or risk losing a majority of federal road funding in the next year.

Thanks America!   

48 people busted for involvement with a meth distribution ring based out of a prison in the Savannah area.

Investigators say the inmate drug lord was coordinating his drug deals using a smuggled cell phone.   

Rabies has been found in at least two situations in Northeast GA; vets urge pet owners to get their animals vaccinated against the disease. Even if your pet doesn’t catch it, it could be destroyed if it’s exposed to rabies by another infected creature.

Reduced-cost clinics are over for this year, but if you haven’t gotten your pet vaccinated yet, please do so – for their sake and the sake of everyone else and their animals.   

Are you a Channing Wilson fan?   

Pete Wheeler, head of Georgia’s veterans agency, has passed away age 92.

Wheeler, himself a WWII vet, was appointed head of the state agency in 1954. During his record-setting sixty years in charge, he served under a dozen different governors.   

Fix California’s water problems? Move that dry state’s agriculture to the South, which has plenty of water (outside Atlanta).

Meanwhile we’re using tax money to buy up farmland to build industrial sites that will be abandoned in ten or fifteen years…   

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