Josh Peterson

After almost three years of planning, anticipation and delays, contractors expect to break ground on the Love’s Travel Stop and Country Store off of Interstate-24 exit 117 sometime in mid to late February of 2020. 

When Love’s officials originally announced the project in the summer of 2017, the anticipated cost was to be $20 million with the expectation of bringing 40 full-time jobs. There will be a Hardee’s restaurant going in with the store, according to local officials. County mayor Gary Cordell is excited about the prospect of tax revenues the new business will bring to the county’s coffers. 

“We anticipate that this will be a good amount of sales tax dollars generated for the county,” explained Cordell.

After months of back and forth to gain approval for the project from the county commission due to resident concerns of illegal activities (such as human trafficking, prostitution and other drug-related crimes), construction was then halted because of what Cordell described as a “wetlands issue” on the property.

The Love’s Travel Stop will be located in Coffee County off of exit 117 of Interstate 24 on an approximate 20-acre plot of land. 

The Comptroller’s Office has released a new report that examines the opioid prescribing patterns of Tennessee’s doctors, nurses, dentists, and other licensed practitioners. Comptroller researchers worked to identify prescribers whose patterns were “significantly statistically abnormal,” and to investigate what disciplinary responses, if any, were taken by the licensing boards in response.

The Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) identified 62 prescribers for further investigation based on their 2017 prescribing patterns. It is important to note that identification by OREA for further investigation alone did not indicate inappropriate prescribing. Prescribing data can be used as a tool to find potentially inappropriate prescribing, but a fuller range of information is necessary to determine if an identified prescribing pattern is inappropriate.

Forty-nine of the 62 prescribers identified by OREA (79 percent) have not been disciplined by their licensing board since the start of 2017 and are not currently under investigation by the department. Eight of the 62 prescribers identified by OREA received some level of discipline since the start of 2017, and the department is developing cases against the remaining five prescribers.

The report’s key conclusions include:

• For half (31 of the 62) of prescribers identified by OREA, no query had been opened by the Department of Health. This suggests that an area of potential improvement for the department is the monitoring of specific types of prescribing patterns, such as monitoring prescribers with a high number of patients on concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions.
• Consultants play a significant role in determining the ultimate course of the Department of Health’s investigations into prescribers. Consultants decide whether the department will begin an investigation and, after an investigation, whether discipline will be sought against a prescriber and the level of discipline that will be pursued. Of the 62 prescribers identified by OREA, queries opened by the department were closed for 16 prescribers based on a consultant’s opinion, while six prescribers reached a settlement with the department based on the disciplinary recommendations of a consultant.
• From opening a query to receiving a ruling from a board, the disciplinary process can take years to complete. For example, four of the five prescribers whose cases are currently being developed by the department have been under investigation for at least two years and have not yet been brought before the relevant board.

The report includes three policy considerations that address the Department of Health’s use of data to identify potentially inappropriate prescribers and the role of consultants in determining whether to seek discipline against practitioners with potentially inappropriate prescribing patterns. 

To read the report, please visit the Comptroller’s OREA website at: http://comptroller.tn.gov/orea

With its most recent round of layoffs, Goodman Manufacturing in Fayetteville has now laid off nearly 1,500 employees.

The company filed a WARN notice with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce on January 9, notifying that 11 more workers would be permanently laid off by March 8 as the company continues to work to shutter operations in Fayetteville. In total, 1,492 people have lost their jobs.

The most recent round of layoffs is the 10^th for the company since 2018. According to the Elk Valley Times, fewer than 100 employees remain inside the plant. Daikin, which is parent company to Goodman, announced in 2015 that the plant would close by 2017, but delays have kept it open until recently, when layoffs began to increase. The plant is moving operations to its headquarters in Daikin, Texas.

A new scam is targeting even the most tech savvy of folks – this one is targeting people who often order from Amazon.

This scam is through text message and is disguised as a delivery notification from companies like Amazon and FedEx.

The scammer sends text message that poses and appears to be from these companies and within the text will be a link to take you to a fake Amazon page. This fake page looks remarkably similar to the real Amazon page, however, you can see differences in the website url if you look closely. This fake page will ask the intended victim to take a “free survey.” The survey will ask for your credit card information to pay for shipping, at which point you will be signed up to receive a produce each month with a charge of $98.95.

Coffee County and Manchester City Schools are partnering together to host a Mobile Food Pantry for families in need on Friday, February 21st at First Baptist Church of Manchester. A Mobile Food Pantry is a large scale food distribution in which food items are delivered via Second Harvest Food Bank to a designated location for immediate distribution to those in need.  

“We, Coffee County and Manchester City Schools, are excited to offer this opportunity for our families. By working together, this allows us to ensure we are serving every family in need,” said Taylor Rayfield, Coordinator of Family Resource for Coffee County Schools.

The Mobile Food Pantry will be held on Friday, February 21st at First Baptist Church of Manchester, 1006 Hillsboro Blvd., Manchester, Tennessee 37355. Doors open at 9 AM and is a first come, first serve opportunity. This program is for families who have a student enrolled in the Coffee County Schools or Manchester City Schools System.

For questions, contact Taylor Rayfield, Coordinator of Family Resource for Coffee County Schools at (931) 222-1066, or BJ Sylvia, Coordinator of Family Resource for Manchester City Schools at (931) 728-3412.

Those of you who frequently travel Oakdale Street in Manchester may have noticed the ride is a bit smoother after last week.

The Manchester Public Works Department paved a 2,500 foot stretch of Oakdale St. last week at a cost of approximately $57,000 that took about 693 tons of asphault.

According to department director George Gannon, the department still has to re-stripe the section of road with divider lines, crosswalks and other important markers and that work will be done when weather permits.

The public works department has also been busy with other projects, such as paving Taylor St. from Oak St. to Oakdale and also Locust St. from Oak St. to Oakdale. Most all of Oak St. was paved, with a small portion left to be finished soon. Gannon said the department will also be paving Summer St. from Hills Chapel to Jackson St. within the next month as weather permits.

 A bill in Congress that would ensure pregnant women aren’t fired from their jobs for requesting reasonable accommodations in the workplace has received bipartisan approval in the House Education and Labor Committee, and soon should move to the House floor for a vote.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is co-sponsored by 26 representatives from both sides of the aisle. Elizabeth Gedmark is vice president of the workforce advocacy group A Better Balance. She said gaps in current state laws leave Tennessee’s pregnant workers at risk of losing their jobs for making minor requests, such as needing to sit or avoid heavy lifting.

“We for many years have been working on a Tennessee Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and that bill has garnered bipartisan support,” Gedmark said. “We expect that it will again this year, and we think that 2020 is the year that Tennessee will be next.”

The bill is sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Johnny Shaw of Bolivar. In 2018, Tennessee made national headlines when a New York Times investigation revealed six Memphis women had suffered miscarriages after lifting heavy boxes without being given breaks at their employer’s warehouse.

Gedmark said outdated policies aren’t in line with the fact that women now outnumber men in the labor force, according to the latest federal data.

“Women are now the majority of the workforce, so this is not the 1950s,” she said. “And we can’t rely on laws from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s for our reality now, where women are working farther into their pregnancies and more and more women are working, and they’re supporting their families.”

She pointed out while a 1978 federal law bars employers from firing someone because they’re pregnant, it doesn’t protect workers from unsafe working conditions. Gedmark added that pregnancy discrimination remains widespread and is an uphill battle in courtrooms.

“Even in court cases where women had gone all the way to court with this issue, two-thirds of them in post-2015 cases lost their pregnancy-discrimination claims,” she said.

She also noted black women filed nearly 30% of pregnancy-discrimination complaints between 2010 and 2015, despite making up only 14% of the female labor force.

Story by Nadia Ramlagan, Public News Service – TN

We have more news on the subjects accused of crimes involving prostitution and / or sexual crimes involving juveniles. Rutherford County Circuit Court documents show that a total of 16 men are scheduled to be in court on February 6, 2020 for a Discovery Hearing. A Discovery Hearing is a legal term used in a pre-trial court procedure, it provides an exchange of information between parties that are involved in a legal proceeding.

Their original arrests took place over a two-day period this past October in Smyrna, TN

The TBI headed the cases that revolved around a two-day undercover sting. Agents placed ads online to nab those looking to engage in sex acts with minors. As a result of the sting, a total of 16 people were taken into custody. Of those arrested, 8 live in Rutherford County.

Now, the cases are on their way to the courts in Rutherford County.

1. John Thomas Sulkowski, 24, of Murfreesboro
2. Harry Garcia, 44, of Murfreesboro
3. Deadrick Darrell Evans, 20, of Murfreesboro
4. Lian Sian Thang, 32, of Smyrna
5. Jose Guadalupe Zarate-Flores, 39, of Smyrna
6. Luis Miguel Garcia-Alvarez, 34, of La Vergne
7. Gameel Mesad, 55, of La Vergne
8. Diego Mancilla Martinez, 46, of La Vergne
9. James H. Farmer, 55, of Franklin
10. Miguel Erazo, 43, of Antioch
11. Juan Manual Tovar, 47, of Antioch
12. Paul Florez-Vazquez, 30, of Nashville
13. Manasranjan Murlidhar Rana, 31, of Nashville
14. Michael Romero, 31, of Prospect
15. Taylor Moore, 23, of Rombauer, Missouri
16. Tony Maddox, 38, of Cowan, Texas

Again, the suspects were arrested as a result of a TBI sting geared towards nabbing those allegedly seeking sex from minors.

News partners WGNS provided this report.