Scott County Commission honors Scott Appalachian Industries for gift of ambulance
Plus: New Dollar General potentially headed to West Oneida, and Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous meetings return to Highway 27 Unity Club.
Good Thursday evening! This is The Weekender, a final look at this week’s news from the Independent Herald. The Daybreaker (Monday) and The Weekender (Thursday evening) are our two news-first newsletters. We publish several other newsletters throughout the week, as well as our regular E-Edition on Thursday and our Varsity E-Edition on Sunday (during sports season). If you’d like to adjust your subscription to include (or exclude) any of these newsletters, do so here. If you haven’t subscribed, please consider doing so!
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Buckeye Home Medical Equipment. Serving Scott County and several other communities in the Upper Cumberland region, Buckeye is a full-line DME providing home health equipment to its patients.
County Commission honors SAI for gift of ambulance
HUNTSVILLE | At Monday’s monthly workshop of County Commission, Scott County Mayor Jerried Jeffers presented Scott Appalachian Industries with a framed resolution of appreciation in honor of SAI’s gift of an ambulance to the county.
SAI gifted the ambulance to Scott County EMS last month, with the organization’s Kaprecia Babb saying that she and her team wanted to offer its support to the county in a way that would be most effective, to honor the lifelong contributions of her father, Larry West, who founded SAI in the 1980s and ran it for years but is now retired.
The value of the gift was placed at greater than $300,000, according to remarks made by Jeffers at a County Commission meeting last month.
In other items discussed at Monday’s workshop:
• Mayor Jeffers said that the coalition of local governments in Scott and McCreary counties has submitted a letter to the TN Dept. of Environment & Conservation asking that the existing Roberta Phase II landfill permit be terminated based on what the coalition’s attorney calls a violation of the state’s Jackson Law. Jeffers said the coalition expects to receive a response from TDEC within 30 to 45 days.
• On an unrelated but similar note, Jeffers said that the Town of Oneida is “currently working on” a new host fee agreement with Waste Connections, which owns the existing Volunteer Regional Landfill, “to try to get more money.” The Scott Solid Waste Board recently approved a new host fee agreement on the county’s behalf that will see Scott County receive additional revenue from Waste Connections. The 10-year deal will see the county receive an additional five cents per ton for each of the first three years, then an additional two cents per ton for each of the remaining seven years, taking the host fee to $1.14 per ton at the end of the 10-year period, up from the current amount of 85 cents per ton. Under its existing agreement with Waste Connections, the Town of Oneida also receives 85 cents per ton.
• Jeffers also announced that the Solid Waste Board meeting scheduled for Nov. 10 has been postponed until Dec. 16.
• The Parks & Recreation Committee forwarded to the full County Commission a grant possibility that would see county government partner with the Scott County Board of Education for funding to make improvements to the baseball and softball fields at John John Yancey Memorial Park.
• The Budget Committee approved a Christmas bonus of $500 for full-time county employees and $250 for part-time county employees. Only workers who are under contract by Dec. 1 will be eligible.
Dollar General appears to be headed to West Oneida
ONEIDA | It appears that Coopertown will get a Dollar General, after all.
Scott County Mayor Jerried Jeffers announced during County Commission’s monthly workshop earlier this week that a “private investment group,” which he later clarified was Oneida-based Brewco, is in the process of selling a tract of property to the Goodlettsville, Tenn.-based chain of discount stores on the corner of Coopertown Road and Smith Road, across from New Haven Baptist Church.
Dollar General had previously considered a tract of land further east on Coopertown, inside the Oneida city limits, but a rezoning ordinance to change the property from residential to commercial failed on second reading after neighbors objected at a public hearing.
“Since it didn’t work out in the city limits they just stepped about half a mile down the road into the unincorporated area,” Jeffers said. “With that being said we will get all of their sales tax. I’m sure Oneida will come after them at some point with their urban growth but we will cross that bridge when we get there.”
The unincorporated areas of Scott County do not have zoning regulations.
The DG, if and when it is built, will be the corporation’s fifth store in Scott County. There are existing stores in Oneida, Huntsville, Winfield and Robbins. The corporation is also reportedly considering at least one other location in Scott County for a new store.
Dollar General has undertaken an aggressive expansion plan to saturate communities with its stores. It is the first national chain to specifically target rural areas that are traditionally underserved by retailers. That is part of the appeal of West Oneida, which is the fastest-growing section of Scott County. There were once several independently-owned general stores dotting the community, including one on the very lot where the new DG is being planned. All of them have closed, although a relatively-new store, The Barn, is located almost directly across the street.
Some American cities — such as Birmingham, Ala. and New Orleans, La. — have enacted ordinances to prevent over-saturation of Dollar Generals. While no such ordinances are in place in Scott County or its municipalities, they wouldn’t prevent a Coopertown DG, if written similar to the ones in Birmingham and New Orleans. The New Orleans restriction, for example, prohibits more than one DG in a two-mile radius. The Birmingham restriction is half that distance. The parcel of land being considered by DG is 2.7 miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest existing DG on Alberta Street in Oneida.
News of the planned new DG, first reported on Facebook by the Independent Herald on Monday, drew mixed reaction. A number of Scott Countians decried the continued saturation of Dollar General stores throughout the community, while several residents of the Coopertown, Black Oak and Station Camp neighborhoods countered that the new location would be convenient for residents of the West Oneida area.
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AA, NA complete move back to Highway 27 Unity Club
ONEIDA | Weekly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are moving from First United Methodist Church in Oneida back to the Highway 27 Unity Club, Amy Montgomery announced this week.
Montgomery previously told the Independent Herald that the Unity Club is reopening thanks to a generous donation by JDS Technologies owner Jerry Slaven, who purchased the facility at auction and offered lifetime usage to the Unity Club, rent-free. AA and NA meetings were held there until Montgomery was forced to sell the property as part of court-ordered divorce proceedings.
The meetings moved back to their former home at the Methodist Church when the Unity Club closed, but will move back to the club, located at 17737 Alberta Street in Oneida, as of Tuesday. AA meetings are at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and NA meetings are at 7 p.m. on Thursdays.
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The weekend
☀️ Weather: The weekend will start nice, although there will be some rain Saturday night and early Sunday. Check out our daily Eye to the Sky updates on our Facebook page — published each morning at 7 a.m. on the dot.
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📅 Community Calendar
• Friday: Oneida High School football will host West Greene in the first round of the TSSAA Class 2A playoffs at Jim May Stadium. Kickoff is 7 p.m. The IH Sports Network will broadcast the game, with the Rogers Group Pregame Show beginning at 6 p.m.
• Saturday: Second Saturday night service will be held at Jake’s Branch United Baptist Church at 6 p.m. For more information, see our Church Directory at indherald.com.
• Sunday: Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program designed to help with addiction, co-dependency and domestic abuse, will be hosted by Fire & Purpose Ministries from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 27192 Scott Highway in Winfield. There will be food, fellowship, praise and worship. Childcare is provided.
The Community Calendar is presented by Citizens Gas Utility District. Citizens Gas pipelines are generally safe. They can be damaged by such things as excavations, natural forces, and automobile accidents. These can potentially cause a leak. Visit citizensgastn.com.
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📢 Programming Note: Watch for our weekly E-Edition later this evening! You can always find our E-Editions here. The E-Edition is published on Thursdays (and on Sundays during the high school sports season) and includes all digital content from the week in an easy-to-read, flip book format.
Scenic Sale!
This week’s sale items at Scenic Foods in Huntsville! The sale continues through Tuesday. Sponsored content.
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◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)