Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Forsyth County News J Your "Hometown Paper" Since 1908 J ****************** 3-digit r GEORGIA NEWSPAPER PROJECT Vol. 95, No. 022 Karate kids r * i w >■; ' i y i ft & '■FW i -‘~ jMI wl / / \ if J i I w /jbftA F Wk J {SK.I *“ ■ 'Mi WflMiMMp' fiSli |Bh|H .sMt - jßswTr «■ sfe*. SHI Photo/David McGregor Instructor Brianna Sellers explains a karate stance to 5-year-old students Holden Roop and Kyle McKee during a class at the Central Park Recreation Center Wednesday. See more photos on page SA. County broadcasting locally produced cable programs By Todd Truelove Staff Writer The Forsyth Coijnty government is filming various programs to broad cast on Adelphia’s local access Channel 4 and has hired independ ent cameraman Jim Dean to produce them, according to Public Information Officer Bill Johnson. Due to financial constraints, Adelphia quit producing local news stories, meetings of the board of commissioners and high school sporting events last year firing company staff in the process. Dean, who used to work for Adelphia, is now under contract with the county on a freelance basis working for S3OO per episode. His duties include filming the commis sioner’s meetings and other county programs. Dean said Wednesday that he has been charging for the commission er’s meetings, but not for additional programming the county has been filming. Charges filed in wreck that killed Deputy Land By Colby Jones Staff Writer A Buford woman faces misde meanor charges in connection with the death of a Forsyth County sher iff’s deputy during a traffic accident last March on Hwy. 20 in Cumming. The Georgia State Patrol has charged Wanda Ann Sells, 51, with second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to yield for an emergency vehicle and making an improper left turn in connection with the March 2003 collision that killed Sgt. David P. Land. Land, who was 32, was a 13-year law enforcement veteran and member of the agency’s motorcycle unit. Under Georgia law, a person commits second-degree vehicular Missed paper policy: For a replacement paper, call 8 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 9 a.m. -1 p.m. on Sunday - (770) 887-3126. Copyright 0 2003 Forsyth County News 111 111 I “My main thing is, I worked at the radio station for years. I hated it when that left,” he said, adding it was worse after Adelphia quit producing local programs. “I wanted to see something back on the air, and I’m willing to do what I can to make that happen,” he said, adding at some point in the near future he will have to start charging for the county’s television shows. The shows are broadcast begin ning at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Meetings of the board of commissioners are broadcast on Thursdays immediately after other half-hour shows, Johnson said. Those shows include information from the Keep Forsyth County Beautiful program and a production for the Sheriff’s Office which offers public safety information, as well as a list of Forsyth County's most want ed crime suspects. Wednesday morning, filming was completed on the county’s third pro- homicide when a person is killed as a result of a minor traffic offense. It is punishable by a SI,OOO fine and up to a year in the county jail. The mis demeanor charge means state troop ers found no evidence that Sells was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the wreck. Sells was booked into the Forsyth County Jail on Tuesday evening and released the same night on a $2,200 bond, according to jail records. The Forsyth County Solicitor’s Office advised the state patrol on what charges to file and will handle the prosecution of the case, said a state patrol spokeswoman Thursday. Solicitor Leslie Abernathy could not be reached for comment on the case See WRECK, Page 2A INDEX AbbySß Church events7A Classifieds...6B Deaths2A FoodßA Horoscope6B Opinion Sportslß FRIDAY February 6, 2004 gram, “County Magazine.” Hosted by Johnson, the new program features information from various county departments. “The whole idea is to put county based programming on television to inform the people what their govern ment is doing for them,” he said. “All of the programs are going to be 30 minutes in length.” “We’ll run them for a month, and then we’ll update those programs,” Johnson said. Adelphia has agreed to let the county broadcast the programs through March 31 for free. Once that deadline is reached, if the county wants to continue televising pro grams, Johnson said Adelphia may charge an amount that has not yet been determined. The Board of Commissioners See CABLE, Page 2A Food Casserole recipes friends and family will devour. RageßA Johnson Downtown by night qje Whin "Tißflß'ii'aii Photo/David McGregor Passing traffic on Cumming Square is portrayed in a different light during a timed photo exposure Tuesday. , Religion Legislation may buy time for low scoring third-graders By Nicole Green Staff Writer State legislation to deter unmerit ed promotion of third-graders would not go into effect this year, as planned, if a bill introduced Tuesday becomes law. State Rep. Bob Holmes, D- Atlanta, presented House Bill 1310 “to delay the implementation of the Georgia Academic Placement and Promotion Policy for third-graders for one year.” This year is to be the first in a three-tiered policy to defeat social promotion. Under the current law, students in third grade this year who do not pass the state criterion-refer enced competency test (CRCT) in reading and do not meet grade level standards would have to repeat third grade. Fifth-graders will be accountable for grade level standards beginning in 2004-2005 and eighth-graders in 2005-2006. In preparation for this new poli cy, which was established in 2001, See what’s happening in local churches. Page 7A Panel OKs up to S2O million for expansion Bonds sought for Scientific Games By Todd Truelove Staff Writer The Forsyth County Development Authority recom mended Wednesday that Scientific Games be granted as much as S2O million in bonds to expand its local facilities. The expansion is expected to create more than 100 jobs in the county. “This is the [company’s] second expansion within the last six months,” Joni Owens, the president and CEO of the Cummig-Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce, told members of the Development Authority. She said the first expansion added more than 80 jobs to the county. “Most recently, in November, they acquired a com pany in New Jersey ... an on-line lottery company,” she said, adding the company decided to close that facility and relocate it at its facilities off McFarland Road. The expansion, she said, will add about 90,000 square feet onto Scientific Games’ current facility creating a 350,000-square-foot facility once construc tion is complete. She said about 35 families have decided to relocate from the New Jersey operations to Georgia. Phil Bauer, an attorney representing Scientific Games, said the company employs about 2,500 people worldwide 2,000 at its south Forsyth-based facili- See BONDS, Page 2A Rain LAKE LANIER LEVELS 1 Date Level WLfMfertfay Jan. 31 1067.90 ft rnnTnT Feb. l 1067.92 ft I IIIIUII ? Feb . 2 1067.96 ft if Feb. 3 1067.98 ft ////////// Fu || 1071.00 ft High in the high 50s. Low in the low 40s. x MH B ORTS, 1B syth sweeps Central 6* "In Forsyth we have really put in some safe guards. IVe don't put the weight all on one test" - Ellen Cohan, Forsyth County Schools 99 schools planned to use the second grade CRCT scores from 2002-2003 to target those students who need extra help to meet third-grade benchmarks. However, the CRCT tests for grades one, two, three, five and seven were faulty and deemed invalid last year. “Most systems had to rely on older data and internal testing which See LEGISLATION, Page 2A National group blasts science plan By Nicole Green Staff Writer The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) said Wednesday that the proposed Georgia science curriculum “does a disservice to the students of Georgia.” The NSTA is another name on the laundry list of notables who have criticized the substitution of “evolu tion” for “biological change over time” in the drafted Georgia Performance Standards. State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox said the Department of Education omitted the “buzzword” See GROUP, Page 2A