01.15
Much like various eateries that have called the 111 building home, 2016 has passed us by.
Here are the most significant news stories discussed on LU during the last twelve months:
The year’s furthest-reaching local story is also it’s saddest: the tragic deaths of two babies in a fire out in Kensington.
Nataliegh and Jocelyn Long died on September 13th when their Carabou Lane trailer caught fire. Despite the best efforts of family and firemen, even to the point of injury, the girls could not be saved.
That was sadly not the only fire death in the area: A family of six was killed in a Trion trailer fire about a month later. During 2016 at least eleven died in fires across Chattooga and Walker; more than half were children.
2016 wasn’t just an election year, but an election year that many will remember for the rest of their lives.
Of course the presidential election was on everyone’s mind, but in Walker County two local matters dominated the conversation and news coverage: county commissioner, and the sole commissioner form of government itself.
In May, 75% of Republican voters and over 80% of Democrat voters in Walker County voted YES on identical ballot questions regarding a future vote on sole commissioner government.
An overwhelming message that voters are ready for a change – but it unfortunately means nothing in the long run.
The ballot question was exactly that, a question – nothing more than a glorified survey. It doesn’t actually change the form of government, and lawmakers aren’t legally bound to respond to it or do what the voters asked.
Immediately before AND after the vote, the elected leaders with power to actually make a change showed that they have no intention of doing so, at least not in a timely manner.
State Senator Jeff Mullis, who said before the vote nobody was interested in changing sole commissioner, said afterwards that the results weren’t significant because of low voter turnout. Rep. John Deffenbaugh, likewise, said he didn’t care what the voters said and would only support putting the sole commissioner system on a future ballot if he was directly asked to do so BY a sole commissioner.
They, and Rep. Steve Tarvin, all re-stated after the vote that they personally prefer sole commissioner – and are in no hurry to do away with it. Without them on board, a change won’t happen – so regardless of the vote, don’t hold your breath waiting on it.
The race to become that sole commissioner in 2017 and beyond was expected to be hot, and didn’t disappoint – but the number of candidates involved wasn’t quite the mob many predicted early in the year.
Before qualification began, influential citizens and Republican Party leaders (working outside official party channels) met together and picked one candidate they preferred to challenge politically-damaged commissioner Bebe Heiskell.
With the decision made, other potential candidates were pushed not to run. In the end only two qualified as Republicans: Chickamauga councilman Shannon Whitfield and Catlett contractor Mike Peardon.
Peardon, new to politics, quickly realized party officials were biased towards Whitfield and stopped participating in campaign events; during the May primary he received only a quarter of the Republican votes cast.
That put chosen heir Shannon Whitfield atop the November ballot, against incumbent Bebe Heiskell (who declared herself an independent, also citing party bias) and medical technologist Perry Lamb of LaFayette. Heiskell, as an incumbent, automatically qualified for the election while Lamb spent much of the year collecting signatures to get his name on the ballot.
In November, voters had a rare chance to pick for commissioner an educated man with a well-rounded resume, who campaigned almost entirely using his own money, who had no debts or obligations to the county’s old regime, who vowed to have the county thoroughly audited, and who took a firm stand against the continuation of broken sole commissioner government.
That candidate was Perry Lamb.
Voters of course went with Shannon Whitfield, a man whose education ended with graduation at Gordon Lee, whose only previous paying job was working for his daddy, who invested not a single penny of his own money into campaigning, a man whose family business accepted millions of dollars from Walker County’s commissioners every year “for generations” without bidding, who was giving Heiskell campaign donations until 2014 and politically supporting her until 2015, who claimed a full forensic audit of the county would cost too much, and who said in March he saw no advantage of having a commissioner board instead of a sole leader.
Whitfield won the November vote with almost the same margin he won the May primary: 72% of the record-setting-turnout vote. Lamb came in second with 14%, and incumbent Heiskell only scraped together a humiliating 12%.
Nothing ever really changes in Walker County politics.
Summer 2016 (and part of spring, and much of the fall actually) had almost no measurable rainfall. Extremely dry conditions hurt farms and led to fires, which popped up almost daily through the season – including several large blazes that burned for weeks at a time.
Fires atop Lookout Mountain closed trails for about a month and took dozens of fire fighters to control. (Four men eventually confessed to accidentally lighting that one and paid fines for negligence.)
Fire also damaged land in the Villanow/Subligna area, atop Rocky face Ridge, in Menlo, near Trion, a small section of Chickamauga Battlefield, a patch of woods near the Blue Hole, trees off Corinth Road, a trash-covered lot in Villanow, 10,000 acres in Cohutta, a lot off Probasco Street in LaFayette, and woods off Chamberlain Rd. – among many other places.
In just one day, 28 new fires were reported around the state and fire crews worked beyond exhaustion trying to keep existing blazes from growing worse. The state banned fireworks and some outdoor burning for many counties, while counties and cities themselves implemented “burn bands” during the worst of the drought – which finally came to a natural end around Thanksgiving.
In 2015 Hutcheson Medical Center went out of business, shutting its doors and laying off hundreds. But the hospital’s main facility was reopened in a last-minute deal with ApolloMD group, which had formerly run the troubled hospital’s emergency room. That’s where we started the year.
During 2016 ApolloMD finalized its purchase of Hutcheson’s building and equipment, dumping the damaged Hutcheson brand in favor of a new name: Cornerstone Medical Center. Cornerstone later named interim director Jessica Long, a onetime ApolloMD vice president, as its permanent CEO.
Cornerstone is adequate and improving; not quite the hospital Hutcheson was back in its glory days, and not what Erlanger would have made it into if the two had worked out any of several merger opportunities. But it IS much better than the broken mess it was for the previous half decade.
Now unrelated to Cornerstone and ApolloMD, the business entity known as Hutcheson still exists. Hutcheson no longer has physical property but remains alive on paper, a bodyless legal entity left to walk the earth like a ghost, haunting the taxpayers of Walker County – maybe forever.
In February, Erlanger sued what remained of Hutcheson, along with the Hospital Authority that owns it and Authority co-owner Walker County. The Chattanooga hospital demanded payment for debt remaining from loans Walker County backed for Hutcheson. (Fellow owner Catoosa was not sued and later settled for $6.25 million of the $8.something million it owed.)
Walker County hired a pricey outside lawyer, Stuart James, and tried a series of legal strategies to get out of paying the debt. Those legal angles included claiming the debt agreement wasn’t enforceable because it was between Walker and the Authority, not Walker and Erlanger; and claiming Walker can’t be sued across state lines because of “sovereign immunity.”
Both of those approaches were rejected by Judge Harold Murphy. Murphy also rejected a countersuit filed by the county against Erlanger, and suggested attorney James could be held personally responsible for Erlanger’s court costs since he was pushing the ridiculous case forward. (Judge Murphy additionally rejected Hutcheson’s ridiculous claim that it wasn’t making money under Erlanger.)
The county then changed legal strategies to pretending the whole thing didn’t exist, claiming that the debt could only be paid if the Bebe Heiskell-controlled Hospital Authority called it in – then decided a meeting where the debt was settled didn’t count.
In August Judge Murphy AGAIN ordered Walker County to pay its debts to Erlanger. The county responded by appealing to a higher court, pushing the next legal step into 2017 and costing the county additional tens of thousands in legal fees and interest on the Hutcheson debt.
Former employees of the former hospital found out in late 2015 that their health insurance plans, supposedly covered by payroll deductions, had actually not been paid up by Hutcheson and they had no health coverage. Employees began getting medical bills in the hundreds and thousands of dollars for procedures that SHOULD have been taken care of by their employer.
After contacting former Hutcheson employees, the US Department of Labor launched an investigation into the bankrupt institution’s (mis)handling of employee insurance and a retirement fund that may also have been defrauded.
As that investigation proceeds into 2017, ex-Hutcheson CEO Farrell Hayes, ex-COO Kevin Hopkins, and onetime hospital lawyer Don Oliver may all end up facing charges for their abuses of the hospital’s loyal workers. Which is probably why the hospital board tried (and failed) to have Catoosa and Walker buy personal liability insurance for its members back in the spring. Lacking that, they could all end up in civil court for killing Hutcheson.
On January 15th, Roper’s parent company General Electric announced intentions to sell GE Appliances (and Roper) to Chinese manufacturer Haier for $5.4 billion.
There were initially concerns about employee cuts and plant closures after the sale. But unlike an earlier abandoned deal with Electrolux, Haier had basically no presence in the United States – meaning there would be little overlap between the company’s existing operations and its new GE Appliances subsidiary, and no reason to close down plants or cut staff.
The deal was quickly approved by the government and made official on June 6th. As predicted, changes at the local level have been minimal.
Roper employees were given more confidence in their employer’s future in December when GE Appliances revealed that its three small non-union plants, including Roper, are the company’s only facilities that consistently make a profit.
LaFayette’s government priority in 2016 was cleaning up. Focus was put on finally addressing (at least in part) the city’s problem with junky properties and burned out homes.
In February city leaders identified 100 “troubled” properties in need of cleanup and began pushing their owners to bring them up to minimum standards or be dragged into court.
The need for cleanup was highlighted in mid-March by a fire inside an empty hoarder home that was difficult to put out and put an adjacent occupied house at risk.
The city dealt with Pear Pine trailer park, attempted to restrict chain stores from opening on South Main Street, took down the eyesore fence around LaFayette Golf Course, and by late fall claimed victory over many of the 100 troubled lots identified the previous winter.
However there is still much, much more left to do.
(After 13 months of delays and broken promises, LaFayette residents and leaders alike were finally relieved to see cleanup of the old Barwick mill begin in late December. The city also got around to paving South Chattanooga Street after nearly two years of prep work.)
SPENDING LIKE A DRUNKEN SOMETHING SOMETHING
Before, during, and after the election, sole commissioner Bebe Heiskell continued the same approach to county spending she had all through her time in office.
That is to say, she kept wasting money like tax dollars had no end.
Heiskell’s financial sins of the previous year were revealed in April 2016 with the 2015 audit. That document showed millions of new debts and another 12 months of breaking accounting rules and state guidelines by mixing SPLOST money with the general fund.
The state took no action against the Commissioner’s ethically bereft actions, and she apparently felt no reason to change them.
In May, Heiskell took out a $200k loan to expand the garbage dump, part of a $1-million project there – even though the landfill can’t hold household trash and hasn’t in twenty years. She then put the dump up for sale, receiving only one tiny bid for it before abandoning the idea.
Heiskell took out yet another tax anticipation loan midway through the year, giving away 2017’s tax revenue to pay for 2016’s spending. And still kept on spending: $1 million on a new fire station that still sits empty, untold amounts to renovate a building she previously claimed couldn’t be renovated, signed off on a satellite sheriff office that has no staff, paid for another county fair nobody attended, and wrapped up the year by forcing two Lookout Mountain landowners to sell their property for a walking trail.
Drastic property reappraisals in the fall conveniently allowed Bebe to lower taxe rates a hair before the election even as overall tax revenues (and tax bills) went up. She then claimed Walker County had the 5th lowest property tax rate in Georgia, forgetting to include 152 of the state’s 159 counties in her calculations.
As a result of her brilliance, Walker County soon may be among the state’s MOST taxed, not least.
LaFayette’s most sought-after citizen during 2016 wasn’t human, and possibly didn’t exist at all.
In mid-July, an individual living on Dogwood Circle in the heart of town reported seeing a mountain lion in their yard. That report was echoed by people who claimed to see it on Roundpond Road, Shipp Road, Straight Gut Road, at the bypass, twice outside North LaFayette Elementary, and eventually on the other side of the county at Ridgeland High School.
Every spotting was given a cursory investigation and quickly dismissed by the DNR. No legitimate photos or video of the animal ever surfaced, and the sightings stopped after school resumed in late August.
WONDER IF HE HAD A CELEBRATORY BBQ?
Last summer Walker County’s most famous son returned home after being sprung from prison.
Brent Marsh, who did 12 years in the can after taking a plea deal on hundreds of counts of theft, returned to his home and his Mama Clara in Noble during July.
Marsh, of course, was the man blamed for the Tri-State Crematory disaster, where bodies sent to the family business for cremation were instead left in the woods to rot until being uncovered in 2002.
Brent Marsh, his mother, and his late father Ray were all involved in the operation and deception, but only Brent was held legally accountable – thanks to deep ties between the family and local law enforcement.
As a condition of his parole, Marsh sent hand-signed form letters apologizing for his crime to family members of his victims. The letters are supposed to be the final step of healing and restitution for the community at large, but many in the community will never get over what happened as long as they remain on this earth.
The Audia plastic plant in Noble, once a secret development deal called “Project Eagle” finally opened in the spring. Unfortunately, after costing Walker taxpayers (past, present and future) some $25 million to build, the factory hired fewer than 1% of the jobs it was originally promised to create.
In 2010, Commissioner Heiskell hinted a secret project in Noble would bring ten thousand jobs to the county. Last March she credited herself for creating a thousand new positions with the mill and surrounding industrial park.
But in April, Heiskell admitted the mill had hired “about fifty” people – and it turns out many of them don’t live in Walker. Most of the ones who do moved to the area from somewhere else.
The REST of us are stuck paying for the project, which was completed with a 2015 bond attached to property taxes being paid through 2040.
Despite that complete failure, County Development Director Larry Brooks (who apparently keeps his job under the new commissioner, for now) is planning to throw more tax money after a similar project in 2017 – an unnamed “$100 million” manufacturer being courted by communities around the state.
In May, Judge Jon Bolling “Bo” Wood announced plans to retire as chief justice of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit.
Wood’s retirement in October led to a contentious battle between the court’s three remaining judges over who should be the new chief.
Gov. Deal chose Kristina Cook Graham as the next top judge, resulting in letters from Judge Ralph Van Pelt Jr, who also wanted the position. Van Pelt called into question Graham’s character, treatment of staff, and even her actual home address. Graham didn’t respond, but her father – legendary lawyer Bobby Lee Cook – threatened to have Van Pelt “removed from the court” if he interfered with his daughter’s career.
In the end Graham held on to her appointment as chief justice, and Gov. Deal picked Summerville lawyer Don Thompson as the court’s new fourth judge.
THERE’S NOTHING TO DOOO AROUND HEEERE
In early January, Back Alley Productions of Dalton announced plans to relocate into LaFayette’s Mars Theater.
The theater, which stopped regularly showing movies in the 1950’s and burned down in 2011, was renovated by Mike Lovelady and sporadically showed films and art displays until Lovelady got into minor legal trouble and closed shop in 2014.
After taking over the space and setting it up to suit them, Back Alley produced six live plays, ranging from Shakespeare to a performance about zombies and several sell-out showings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” in December.
The theater group has already announced plans to host twelve plays in 2017, which SHOULD in theory fix the “there’s nothing to do here” problem for many. Unfortunately, live theater isn’t everybody’s idea of a fun night out, and half the city’s population is unwilling to pay for any kind of entertainment – even a very nice live play.
For the rest of us who ARE willing to pay for nice things, having a performance group and active theater in town is a rare blessing. Hopefully they will find enough support to continue.
NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS & AWARDS
Achievement in Political Ethics: Senator Jeff Mullis easily wins this one, for the second year running.
In addition to Senator The Hutt’s continued efforts to block ethics reform, dismissive response to the sole commissioner vote, and extra helpings of lobbyist meals and trips, he was called out in February for breaking state campaign finance law by underreporting the balance of his campaign fund.
This year’s Achievement in Police Ethics award goes to ex-deputy Wesley Holland. The 61-year-old Walker Sheriff’s Office employee was fired in May after an inmate he transported from Fort Oglethorpe to Dunwoody told Dunwoody police that he stopped in Gordon County to have sex with her.
The GBI investigated her claim, and Holland was charged, in Gordon County, with violating his oath, sodomy, and sexual assault by an authority figure.
Holland was fired by Walker County as a result of the charges; fortunately the dalliance happened in Gordon County and was taken seriously by officers in Dunwoody, else Deputy Holland would still be on the force here in Walker.
A special commendation for Business Perseverance goes to Fountain Plaza car wash, for staying open after being robbed not once, not twice, but four times in less than two months.
Thieves stole a few hundred dollars in change, but did more damage to the carwash equipment than the dollar value of what was taken. Vandals also tore up a vacuum at the North Main carwash and oil change emporium.
The business installed better security cameras in the summer and was not hit again; there were to our knowledge never any arrests made in the repeated incidents.
2016’s trophy for Achievements in Criminality goes to one Sabrina Renee Bolton.
Ms. Bolton allegedly stole from the Family Dollar on April Fool’s Day.
She was confronted by store employees and fled, leaving behind her mother and child – who told police what happened and where she could be found.
Officers found Bolton hiding in a closet in her mother’s house – the same hiding place she chose in 2015 after running away from cops who had arrested her for shoplifting at Walmart. (She was arrested again later in the year for a domestic argument.)
During 2016, LU posted 1,747 times on Facebook.
Of those, the post seen by more people than any other wasn’t from LaFayette or even Walker County. A reader-contributed exclusive video of the January 5th fire at Golden Corral in Fort Oglethorpe was seen by 270,324 Facebook users – and watched to completion by nearly 14,000.
The year’s second most seen post – reaching nearly 130,000 people – was made during the same week, also a video: The now-infamous snow prep song “Walker County Will Survive” written and performed by Marty McGill.
Will Walker County survive the snow of 2016??
(Yes, we will.)
Posted by The LaFayette Underground on Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Here are the rest of LU’s top-fifteen Facebook posts from 2016:
- Pigeon Mountain Forest Fire November 13
Water System Contamination Scare September 25
Deputy Fired for Sex With Inmate May 13
Rescue from Ellison’s Cave March 26
Vada Pickard and Ryver Mitchell Arrested June 8
Drug Bust at LHS April 8
Summerville (Car) Dealer Arrested June 24
Mountain Lion Sighting July 12
Car Accident at Bojangles April 25
Wilson Road Shooting April 21
Michael James Gobert Murder Trial January 26
Justin Whitlock Truck Accident April 22
Rock Spring Earthquake November 13
During the year LU highlighted a few citizens doing good deeds:
LHS senior (now graduate) Brook Ravia spent three years of high school pushing her best friend’s wheelchair in marching band. Ravia was profiled on Channel 9 in March.
Another young woman, Shallowa Cumbee, set up a “Free Little Pantry” in front of the School Board building. The pantry works much like a free little library, where people can leave or take donations of small food and toiletry items.
Then there’s fireman Chad Regal.
Regal and another fire fighter selflessly went into a burning trailer in September, attempting to rescue Nataliegh and Jocelyn Long. The girls were not saved, but not for a lack of heroic effort on the part of fire crews.
Both men were given commendations by Walker County Fire & Rescue for their efforts; less than a week later Regal did the same thing again, going into a burning Rossville home to save an adult man. In that case the man was brought out and resuscitated, but later passed away in the hospital.
And finally, a few of those we lost during the year:
- January 13: Hoyt Scoggins, 90, pastor, retired musician.
January 24: Waymon “Sonny” Huggins, 88, retired forest ranger, State Senator.
January 31: Larry Stokes, 79, retired teacher, musician.
March 11: Virgil Sperry, 74, retired businessman, animal advocate.
May 17: Richard Wilbanks, 76, mortician.
July 18: Carlton Wheeler, 90, insurance agent.
September 5: Joshua Yarbrough, 30, father, truck driver.
May we all have a much better 2017.
