Three Chattooga FFA students placed second in the UGA Beef Teem and Georgia Cattleman’s Association’s “Top Hand Stockmanship” statewide competition over the weekend.
Georgia Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson announced on Thursday of last week that Georgia’s April unemployment rate was 3.1 percent, unchanged from a revised 3.1 percent in March. The unemployment rate held at 3.1 percent for nine consecutive months and was three-tenths lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. In March, Georgia had the highest labor force participation rate in the southeast, 61.2 percent, and the highest employment-to-population ratio in the region, 59.2 percent.
AAA Travel expects there will be a significant number of Georgians planning to travel this Memorial Day holiday weekend. According to AAA’s 2023 Memorial Day Travel Forecast, 1.3 million Georgians will journey 50 miles or more. That’s 86,000 more than last year and 13,000 more than before the pandemic, in 2019.
An online military magazine has a featured article about the “real-life Matlock”, the late Chattooga County attorney, Bobby Lee Cook. Mr. Cook, a veteran of the United States Navy and native of Chattoogaville, was the inspiration for the long-running CBS series “Matlock” that stared North Carolina native and television legend, Andy Griffith.
This past Friday, county election officials across the state of Georgia heard from the Secretary of State’s office about election security in a conference call. In Chattooga County, local elections are still overseen by the Chattooga County Probate Judge’s Office and are conducted by the Chattooga County Registrar.
Last week, the Northwest Georgia Department of Public Health announced that they were closing all but one of the COVID-19 testing sites in Northwest Georgia. While the number of COVID-19 cases in our area is significantly lower than it has been at any time over the past few years, there was one death attributed to “COVID-related causes”, according to the numbers released by the Georgia Department of Public Health last week. In addition to that death, there was one new COVID-19 case reported in Chattooga County. The previous reporting period there had been no new COVID-19 cases reported. The Georgia Department of Public Health still has its free testing site open at the Coosa Valley Fairgrounds in Rome. New numbers are released from the Georgia Department of Public Health each Wednesday.
A forty-year-old man was arrested late last week and charged with DUI after he was stopped for weaving in and out of his lane of traffic. Summerville Police say that Ryan David Gifford of a Mahan Road, Summerville address, was stopped on Highway 48 after an officer noticed him not maintaining a single lane of traffic. Police say that Gifford admitted that he had “huffed a can of air” prior to driving. Gifford was arrested and booked into the Chattooga County Jail on charges of DUI for drugs, specifically “toxic vapor”.
The Tennessee State Veterinarian is confirming a case of atypical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) – commonly known as “mad cow disease” – in a cow with ties to Tennessee. The cow appeared unwell after arriving at a packing company in South Carolina.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has released a report regarding a fatal watercraft accident that took the life of a Trion High School graduate and injured another Chattooga County man.
A nineteen-year-old Chattooga County resident passed away on Sunday morning after a watercraft accident on Weiss Lake in Centre, Alabama. Daegen Vaughn passed away at Atrium Health Floyd Cherokee Medical Center. Details about the accident are incomplete at this time. Mason Funeral Home in Summerville will be in charge of arrangements and will release a complete obituary.