Per this article, LaFayette City Council and Mayor Arnold have narrowed the list of City Manager candidates down to only three, out of over 60 who applied.

LaFayette Underground has now verified the final choice for City Manager is David Hamilton, a native of LaFayette currently living and working in Alabama.

Mr. Hamilton has been offered the position already, but hasn’t formally decided if he’ll accept the role. Sources close to Hamilton’s family say he’s been scouting homes in the area, which means he’s taking the offer seriously. An announcement of the selection will be made as soon as he signs on the dotted line.

City has been without a permanent manager for about 13 months now.   

Walker County and the state are throwing MORE money into an expansion of Mountain Cove Farms. Now the county has taken over a state-owned barn across the street for more wasteful foolishness.

WQCH Radio, 05/01/14: “IN OTHER BUSINESS THURSDAY, THE COMMISSIONER SIGNED A LEASE AGREEMENT WITH THE STATE, ALLOWING THE COUNTY TO USE THE LARGE WHITE BARN, LOCATED ACROSS THE ROAD FROM THE MANOR HOUSE AT MOUNTAIN COVE FARMS. THE LEASE REQUIRES NO MONEY, ONLY THAT THE COUNTY KEEP INSURANCE ON THE STRUCTURE. THE COUNTY HAS ALSO SECURED A 30-THOUSAND DOLLAR GRANT FROM THE STATE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION COMMISSION TO STABILIZE THE BARN’S STRUCTURE.

“COMMISSIONER HEISKELL SAID THEY’VE HAD SEVERAL REQUESTS FROM WEDDING PARTIES TO RENT THE RUSTIC BARN.”

Sounds great, right? Except insurance on a public facility (especially one collapsing) likely isn’t cheap, and the $30k grant (coming out of your STATE tax dollars) will hardly fix the thing up. It’ll need lights, a concrete floor, HVAC, new roof, a parking lot, restroom facilities, everything will have to be handicap accessible..

Having reached a place where Mountain Cove Farms requires only maintenance instead of continual investment in renovations or construction, the county just signed a deal committing more money to more renovation and construction.

Remember that when you’re driving around the county hitting potholes and wondering why nobody ever picks up trash off the side of the road. The county WOULD have money for those problems if it wasn’t wasting so much on Commissioner Heiskell’s pre-retirement dream.   

Parents of young children be careful. LU has heard from a family that recently visited the new Caboose Park on Patton St. and found the play area unusable due to broken glass on the ground, in the bushes, and in the sandbox.

The complaining parents cleaned up most of it, but be very, very cautious before letting kids play there without close supervision and checking out the sand before they do.

There are homeless people and/or drunks who regularly hang out or sleep in the park. It’s not policed well and is located between two places where homeless people tend to gather.

The park is a good idea but poorly planned by the DDA. There shouldn’t be a sandbox there – maybe a swingset, slide, or something else along those lines would be more appropriate than a sandbox, which is hard to keep clean, gets used as a bathroom by animals (and maybe people), and can hide dangerous things like needles or glass.

The city also needs to enforce a curfew on the site so those who decide to “camp out” can be removed. Perhaps some posted rules about no glass containers would also help – but only if LPD enforces them.

If we can have stupid rules banning bicycles and scooters from the rec. department we can surely ban drunk homeless people from leaving their trash in a tiny park.   

Strong thunderstorms with potential tornadoes rolled through the area late Monday and early Tuesday, but the worst damage done to Walker County was a few downed trees and several hundred people briefly without power. About twenty people spent the night in county-run emergency shelters set up at the Civic Center in Rock Spring and Armuchee Valley Community Center in Villanow. (Rossville City Hall was also open, but sat empty as “about 50” residents in that community chose instead to ride out the weather at Hutcheson Medical Center.)

It could have been much worse – per the National Weather Service, a small tornado touched down in northern Whitfield County monday evening. The twister took out trees, several farm buildings, and killed approximately 16,000 chickens.

The storms brought back memories of deadly tornadoes that tore through the region exactly three years earlier, killing a handful of people in Dade and Catoosa while doing millions in damage. Walker County also lost a resident in the 2011 tornadoes, but she was killed while staying with family in Alabama.

Recovering from THOSE storms took months, and some emotional scars still remain among many who lost (or nearly lost) friends and family. Thankfully Northwest Georgia was spared from enduring that again this week.         

LaFayette City Council has narrowed its list of City Manager candidates down to only three, from over 60 who applied. All three are from out of town.

City has been without a permanent manager for about 13 month now.

“Out of town” doesn’t necessarily mean way way out of town. Hopefully it’s somebody from the region, like Whitfield or Floyd or Gordon county, where the cities are professionally run but close enough to know the needs of locals.. Please no more City Managers from cities of 2,500 people south of the “Gnat Line.”   

Sgt. Tyler Skelly of LaFayette passed away early Tuesday morning in Dalton. The Marine suffered a seizure and fell while stationed in Bahrain two years ago; resulting injuries caused his health to deteriorate and ended his life this week. Skelly was 26.