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Drive To 55″ Plan Working In Tennessee

Gov. Bill Haslam

Gov. Haslam’s initiatives to boost postsecondary education degrees in Tennessee are showing success. Recent enrollment figures show high interest in three programs the governor launched as part of his “, which aims to increase the percentage of Tennesseans with a degree beyond high school from the current 32 percent to 55 percent by 2025. About 58,000 high school graduates have applied for the program that offers free tuition at any of the state’s community colleges or colleges of applied technology. The other two programs are geared toward adults. A push to provide free tuition at the state’s technology colleges has received 8,000 applicants, and a nonprofit online university that offers a competency-based degree program has an enrollment of 2,000, a nearly 200 percent growth rate since it was launched in 2013.

Classes For Family Members of Those With Mental Illness To Be Held In Manchester

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Family Members of Those With Mental Illness are Invited to Participate in an Upcoming With Hope In Mind class. The Coffee County Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) will be sponsoring and teaching an educational course, “With Hope in Mind” for persons who have a loved one with a mental illness. The 16 -hour course will cover a variety of mental illnesses, including bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ptsd and others. Symptoms, treatment options, available medications and their side effects, community resources and more will be among the issues covered during the program. A notebook of reference materials will be provided to each person attending the program and will be used as a teaching tool, organizers say. The class is free and confidential. Anyone interested in attending the program can contact Brenda or Pam at 931-952-6871 or herschel1018@yahoo.com or mitia2@yahoo.com for more information. The class will begin Monday, May 18 at 6:30 PM in a location in Manchester. Seating is limited and reservations are required.

Men Win Lawsuit Against Former Employer

Four men from Grundy County have won a lawsuit against their former boss. Dennis Byers, Greg Smartt, Leslie Brent King, and Clarence T. Birdwell, plaintiffs in a wrongful firing lawsuit against Grundy County Road Supervisor Dwayne “Turkey” Hargis, were victorious in their case. The men, employees of the Grundy County Highway Department at the time of their firing, will receive $200,000 in damages based on the humiliation and embarrassment incurred as a result of the actions of Turkey Hargis.
Byers, King, and Birdwell were fired by Hargis for not supporting him in the May 6 county election. When they arrived at work on May 7, 2104, the morning after the election, Hargis told them they no longer had jobs with the department. Smartt had left his position several months earlier after Hargis accused him of “electioneering” for another candidate.

Scam Warning From The Tullahoma Utilities Board

It has come to the attention of the Tullahoma Utilities Board (TUB) that several utility customers in Tullahoma have received scam calls lately. The caller is spoofing TUB’s phone number. Spoofing is the practice of causing the telephone network to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. For example, a Caller ID display might display a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed. The caller claims to work for TUB, and is telling customers’ utilities will be cut off if a payment is not received immediately. The caller is asking customers to either wire money, send a money order, or even use a credit card to send payment for a delinquent utility account. Usually, these calls are happening after hours, when the TUB office is closed for the day.
Please know that the Tullahoma Utilities Board has never and will never call a customer and ask for immediate payment.
If your account is past due, they will either send multiple notices, come to your home or business to let you know, or make a phone call to let you know your account is past due during regular business hours.
If you receive a similar call or have been the victim of this scam, please alert the police. As always, if you have any questions, call the TUB office at 455-4515.

Haslam Says No Racial Profiling In Tennessee

Gov. Bill Haslam

Gov. Bill Haslam has signed legislation that requires all of Tennessee’s law enforcement agencies to adopt written policies to ban racial profiling.
The Republican governor signed the measure earlier this week. It unanimously passed the House 93-0 and was approved 27-0 in the Senate during the recent session.
Supporters say the measure is in response to a series of incidents involving white police officers killing unarmed black men over the last year.
Previous efforts to require racial profiling policies fell short in the Legislature over the years.
Lawmakers in 2005 ordered a comptroller’s study on the role of ethnicity in traffic stops by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

National Safe Boating Week, May 16-22

For those headed out on the water, what looks like a perfect day for boating can quickly become hazardous. U.S. Coast Guard statistics show that drowning was the reported cause of death in three-fourths of recreational boating fatalities in 2013, and that 84 percent of those who drowned were not wearing life jackets. Tennessee ranks No. 7 in the nation for boating accidents and No. 6 in the nation for boating fatalities, with 119 boating mishaps causing 20 deaths in the state in 2013.
The National Safe Boating Council will kick off its Wear It! campaign promoting safe boating and life jackets with National Safe Boating Week, May 16-22.

Commencement Ceremonies Are Saturday At Motlow

Dr. Frank Glass

Dr. Frank Glass, former president of Motlow State Community College, will address the more than 700 students who plan to participate in commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 9, according to Dr. MaryLou Apple, president of Motlow College. The ceremonies will be held inside Nisbett Center on the Moore County campus.
A resident of Tullahoma, Motlow’s third president, and its first president emeritus, Dr. Glass is a career educator who served the College for 26 years. He has a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate from Middle Tennessee State University.
Dr. Glass was dean of the college before being named president in 1987. Under Glass’ leadership, the college grew from a single campus in Moore County to a multi-faceted institution with campuses in Fayetteville, McMinnville, and Smyrna.

New Fire Chief For Manchester

George Chambers was voted in as the new fire chief for the city of Manchester on Tuesday night. Aldermen Cheryl Swan, Tim Pauley, Lana Matthews-Sain and Tim Kilgore voted in favor of Chambers. Alderman Russell Bryan abstained and Vice-Mayor Ryan French did not attend the meeting. Alderman Swan says that Chambers is set to take over the department on May 18.
Chambers is a career firefighter starting with the Air Force in 1975 and retired from the military in 2004. Following that he was the assistant fire chief at AEDC from 2004-2010 and then left to be a fire chief in Afghanistan from 2010-2013.
Former chief George DeShields resigned on March 16. Department captains have been conducting the day-to-day operations of Manchester Fire and Rescue since he resigned.

Scam Warning From Sheriff Graves

Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves has issued a warning about another scam making the rounds in Coffee County. “It has been here in the past but it seems to have started again,” the sheriff said Tuesday.
The scammers call an individual poising as a deputy from the sheriff’s department. “They say that they are a deputy and that the person they are calling that they failed to show up for jury duty,” the sheriff said. The fake deputy then tells their intended victim that there is a warrant for their arrest, but to keep from being arrested they can pay a fine and the warrant will go away. “They tell their victim to get Green Dot card and call them and give them the number off of it,” Graves said. “They use the Green Dot numbers like a credit card and can the money from the cards.”
The sheriff stated that the sheriff’s department does not call people and ask for money like that.
Several people have fallen for the scam and have paid the scammers. The sheriff that they have called several locations with their scam.

May is “National Drug Court Month”

Since 2003 Recovery Drug Courts in Tennessee have offered intensive judicial supervision, substance treatment services, sanctions, and incentives to address the needs of drug-addicted non-violent offenders. The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse has been providing funding for the courts since 2012.
May is “National Drug Court Month” and Tennessee is joining with courts across the country that are demonstrating how a combination of accountability and compassion is the foundation for handling individuals addicted to drugs in the criminal justice system.
Douglas Varney, Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services says, “By treating those who are struggling with substance abuse, we can save taxpayer money, promote public safety and reduce drug abuse in communities.”

Just a few of the benefits of Recovery Drug Court:

Reducing correctional costs
Protecting community safety
Improving public welfare
Across the U.S. more than 3,000 Recovery Drug Courts including Coffee County offer communities a judicially-supervised court docket. In Drug Courts, seriously drug-addicted individuals remain in treatment for long periods of time while under close supervision.

Research continues to show that Recovery Drug Courts work better than jail or prison, better than probation, and better than treatment alone.

Category: News