DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. (MyFOX ATLANTA) – Jimmie Jett’s love is fixing custom cars at the Douglasville shop where he works, but he said he will never forget what happened at a Family Dollar store July 10. Jett ended up in the middle of an armed robbery.
“The cashier was dumping the cash drawer into the cash bag and I knew right then something wasn’t right,” recalled Jett.
Jett said he left his merchandise behind and followed the gunman out of the store. The gunman got into a truck driven by another man. Jett said that’s when he got into his vehicle and followed the men.
“So I came up behind them, got the tag number and was at a stop sign and when they took off they fired like six shots at me,” said Jett.
Jett said he followed the gunmen to Interstate 20, where he turned back for help. Jett said he saw a deputy not far from the store. “I pulled up beside him and I said, ‘you all hunting for a robbery suspect?’ He said, ‘yeah, how’d you know?’ I said, ‘tag number is so and so,’” said Jett.
Minutes later, the man accused of robbing the store Brian Isham and his alleged accomplice Spencer Grady were arrested.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said they received an erroneous report of a getaway car from the 911 call after the robbery and it wasn’t until they talked to Jett that officers were able to locate the suspects.
“Had he not told us the description of the vehicle, we couldn’t have found that vehicle,” said Major Tom Wheeler of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
Maj. Wheeler said Jett will be recognized for his actions. “He was nominated for the sheriff’s hero award,” said Wheeler.
When asked if he was hero Jett said, “I’m just an every day person doing my good duties for the day.”
Georgia Highlands College plans to start using the former Cub Foods building as their local campus starting in spring 2010. This fall they’ll use trailers behind Chapel Hill High School. This is, I think, the PERFECT use for the building–and I wish it would be on a permanent basis. It might be possible to even add a second floor if they wanted to use it permanently (which they don’t). I wish more people would think about using vacant buildings that are already there instead of building a brand new building which they might eventually be vacating if business doesn’t go well.
U.S. Congressman David Scott (D-GA) will host a town hall meeting and answer constituents’ questions regarding the Highway 92 relocation project Aug. 1 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Douglasville Downtown Conference Center.
A spokesperson from Scott’s office said the congressman will talk about the funding status of this Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) project and will give a progress report.
This event will be “constituent-driven,” as the public will be encouraged to give input about the project.
For more information, visit www.house.gov/davidscott
Local educators are expressing concern and disappointment over Gov. Sonny Perdue’s call Tuesday for three days of teacher furloughs to help plug state budget shortfalls.
The furlough proposal comes on top of an additional 3 percent cut in state QBE (Quality Basic Education) funding also announced at Perdue’s Tuesday afternoon news conference. The furloughs will likely come on teacher work days, times teachers use for planning.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” said Douglas County School Superintendent Don Remillard. “I’m not surprised that we got additional cuts to the budget, but to furlough staff on top of that is worse than we anticipated. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to that.”
Remillard said he learned of the cuts through an emergency call from the governor’s office to all school systems, shortly before Perdue’s news conference.
“(State School Superintendent) Kathy Cox has indicated there will be additional details either Friday or early next week,” he said.
Once the details are revealed, Remillard said the county system will have to revisit its budget and look at places where additional cuts can be made.
Board of Education (BOE) Chairman Jimmy Bartlett called the cuts “absolutely terrible” and said their impact on the system would be “huge.”
“We’ve already had cuts of about $9 million this year, although the $6 million in federal stimulus funds will offset some of it,” Bartlett said Wednesday. “The superintendent and finance department will be working through the numbers to see what it will mean.”
He said the cuts continue to shift the financial burden of education from the state to local taxpayers.
“When I first came on the board, the state funding was 67 percent,” he said. “This year it’s going to be only 53 percent.”
Board member Larry Barnes, who serves as the BOE’s legislative liaison, said he wonders when the cuts are going to stop.
“The state is not living up to its responsibility to fund education,” Barnes said, “particularly with all the federal requirements we’re being asked to meet.”
He said Douglas County’s system has been more fortunate than others in the state to have a sufficient level of reserves to absorb some of the cuts.
“Our responsibility is to the kids,” he said. “I just wonder when it’s (cuts) going to end.”
Jeff Hubbard, president of the Georgia Association of Educators (GAE) which represents about 42,000 teachers, issued a statement Wednesday questioning the impact of the furlough and speculating that the governor doesn’t have power to furlough teachers since they are employed by the local school systems.
“Loss of these planning days will negatively impact teachers’ ability to provide quality instruction for their students,” Hubbard said. “This amounts to less time to prepare for their students, which impacts their ability to get the school year off to a good start.”
Hubbard suggested the governor look at other areas for saving money, such as the state’s tax-free holidays and the tax incentives the state gives to motion picture companies.
“Educators pay $550-$600 out of their own pockets each year to provide for their classrooms and students,” he said. “Name any other profession where employees take out of their own pockets, and subsequently from their own families, to provide for their jobs.”
Perdue also called Tuesday for a 3 percent cut from Medicaid and ordered most other agencies to slash another 5 percent from their budgets and provide three unpaid furlough days to help fill the state’s $900 million shortfall. He warned that more cuts may be coming if state tax collections don’t rebound.
Perdue said the latest round of cuts were unavoidable amid falling revenues that have forced the state to cut about $3.7 billion from its spending plan during the last few months. These cuts have taken the Georgia budget down to the level it was around 2005 when it had one million fewer residents.
Eleven residents attended a public hearing Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Council Chambers regarding the proposed increase in the 2009 millage rate from 3.854 to 5.120 to fund the annual payment on the $23 million bond for construction of a new public safety and municipal court facility.
Officials said the city’s millage rate for maintenance and operation will remain at 3.854 for the sixth straight year in spite of a decrease in the city’s tax digest, and the 1.266 mills increase will go toward paying off the 20-year, $23 million bond issue approved last September by city voters.
If the proposed millage rate is approved by the City Council, city residents will see an increase in their property taxes.
The tax millage rate is levied against the tax digest which is the overall value of city properties.
The net maintenance and operations tax digest for 2009, which includes taxes collected for real estate, motor vehicles and mobile homes, is $26,035,362 less than the previous year.
City Finance Director Karin Callan said the city will lose approximately $100,340 in revenue by maintaining its 3.854 maintenance and operations millage rate because of the decrease in the tax digest.
Mayor Mickey Thompson said Wednesday the millage increase results from “a decision voters in the city of Douglasville made to improve their police department’s facilities.”
The bond referendum was passed last September by a majority of city voters.
According to a chart provided by Callan, property taxes for a home appraised at $100,000 will cost $50.64 more annually or $.14 more daily if the millage rate is increased to 5.120.
Local resident John Stone asked when the floor was open for comments if the city had considered other funding sources to build the proposed new police facility.
Councilman John Shildroth responded by saying the police facility would have been funded by the 2007 SPLOST referendum if it had not been rejected by a majority of county voters.
The city will hold the third and final public hearing Thursday, July 30 at 5:30 p.m.
The City Council will vote July 30 at 7:30 p.m. in a called meeting on the proposed millage rate after considering public comments from all three hearings.
And the DCSO news page changed again yesterday. Now each incident is a sentence; no further details are provided. Actually, it’s not even sentences, just phrases. Looks like someone wasn’t happy that the DCSO was actually printing a police blotter on their website. This looks like it was put together in five minutes compared to the paragraphs they did before. Now if only the city would have a website with a news page. Here’s what is on today’s news section on the DCSO news page:
Miscellaneous DCSO calls:
- unattended death of a 46 year old male with previous medical history
- female in a gray Volvo leaving Wesley Creekside complex rolled down her vehicle window and threatened to blow a man’s head off: male does not know this female: female followed him all the way from Douglasville
