According to a report prepared by Bill Bishop, editor of the news site DailyYonder.com, Coffee County has seen more people going to college in the last 40 years, joining the rest of the country in what has been a massive increase in the number of adults who have earned college degrees. In 1970, 10.8 percent of those over 25 years of age had college degrees in Coffee County. By 2010, 19.0 percent of adults here had completed college. The percentage of adults with college degrees in Coffee County was less than the national average of 27.9 percent in 2010.
The number of adults in the United States with college degrees has nearly tripled since 1970, when only 10.7 percent of adults had graduated from college. But the percentage of adults with degrees in counties with small cities, such as Coffee County, while increasing, has generally fallen behind the proportion of college-educated residents in urban counties. The good news for rural America is that it has caught up in every other measure of education. Only 18.6 percent of the adult population in Coffee County had failed to graduate from high school in 2010. Nationally 15 percent of adults had not completed high school; in Tennessee, the rate was 17.5 percent.

National Health Care Corporation has announced plans to build a new $10.75 million state of the art healthcare facility in Tullahoma. The new skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility will be located on Cedar Lane and will have 90 beds. At full operation the facility will employ over 100 employees. NHC plans to begin construction on the 62,000 square foot facility in the next few days. And construction is expected to take approximately 12 months. The facility will have a payroll of $5.3 million.

A Tullahoma woman was arrested Tuesday after she was indicted by the grand jury on charges of aggravated burglary and theft over $1,000. Melynda Gail Sons, 40, of Oakwood Road, Tullahoma, was indicted by the June term of the Coffee County Grand Jury on the charges. Sons is accused of taking tools from a Broadway Electric Company that was parked at Kroger on North Jackson Street. According to the indictments Sons took a band saw, jigsaw, fiber optics test kit and a cordless hammer drill. The total value of the items taken was more than $10,000. She is being held in the Coffee County Jail under a bond of $22,500 and is to appear in Coffee County Circuit Court Sept. 17.

Police are still looking for the person responsible for the abuse for a dog in Warren County.
Corona the dog was found last week beaten, shot and left for dead.
Volunteers rushed the boxer-mix to a doctor and despite her extensive injuries; her doctor says she could make a full recovery.
The humane Society is offering an $8,000 reward for information about the abuse.
If you have information about this case, you can contact the Warren County sheriff’s office at their number (931) 473-7863.

Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves

With the help of the Department of Homeland Security, crime in Coffee and Franklin counties has gone down. According to the TBI, the total number of crimes committed in Coffee County fell seven percent since 2003, while property crimes are down 20 percent. Since then Coffee County has received several grants.
Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves said that the grants help our officers to have the information they need at their fingertips. Thirty percent of that funding goes to radio equipment. For officers protecting and serving, communication is the key.

Electricity rates for Tennessee Valley Authority customers will not be increased in the coming fiscal year. TVA’s board of directors voted Thursday to approve an $11.2 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year that begins Oct 1 and does not include any rate hikes. TVA chief executive officer Tom Kilgore also announced at the meeting that he will be retiring. TVA’s board of directors appointed Kilgore as CEO in 2006. Kilgore, who said he was in the fourth quarter of life and wanted to pursue other things, said he preferred to leave in four to six months but would wait until the board appoints his successor.