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SEE PAGE 1B SEE PAGE 5A Tiger Wrestlers Win Tourney At Apalachee School Board Chairman Bids Farewell Vol. 132 No. 44 26 Pages 3 Sections Commerce News Wednesday DECEMBER 12, 2007 mainstreetnews.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 Facade Removed Lee and Gina Hagan had planned to remove the facade and awning from Giftworks at the Joy Shoppe on South Broad Street, but not until after Christmas. But nature took things into its own hands, and the Hagans noticed the facade separating from the building last week. When the gap grew significantly overnight, they blocked off the area and called in a crew to remove the facade before it fell. After a couple of days where the only access to the store was through the back door, the business is again fully accessible. Schools May Make Students' Grades Available Online Commerce Council Nixes Cheaper Pouring Licenses Police Take $290,000 From Truck On I-85 The Commerce Police Department confiscated $296,200 in cash from a south bound tractor-trailer rig on Interstate 85 last Wednesday. Detective Chad Knight said his officers were getting train ing from Lowndes County officers in drug interdiction techniques when they pulled over the truck for an expired tag on the trailer. Because the truck was trav eling between two known “source” cities, New York and Laredo, Texas, because of excessive downtime in the driver’s log book and because the driver would not make eye contact with officials, police asked for consent to search the truck. The driver, Jesus Tomas Vela Jr., complied. Officers found 30 packs of currency heat-sealed and wrapped with sheets of fab ric softener and duct taped behind the wall of the sleeper, Knight said. The department’s drug dog later alerted on the currency, confirming that it had contained drug residue, according to Knight. “The driver didn’t know any thing about it,” said Knight with a laugh. “He signed a dis claimer on it, and we contact ed the federal authorities.” Federal agents will conduct a currency investigation, but it is expected that the depart ment will be able to suc cessfully condemn the cur rency. If that happens, the Drug Enforcement Agency will keep 40 percent of the money, and Commerce and Lowndes County will split the rest. I N D E X Births 6B Church News 5B Classified Ads 1-4C Calendar 3A Crime News 7-8A News Roundup 2A Obituaries 9A Opinions 4A School News 6-8B Sports 1-4B Social News 6-7B WEATHER OUTLOOK THURSDAY FRIDAY Few Showers; Partly cloudy; Low, 44; high, 75; Low, 41; high, 66; 30% chance rain 10% chance rain SATURDAY SUNDAY Showers; Partly cloudy; Low, 33; high, 54; Low, 35; high, 49; 60% chance rain 20% chance rain CONTACT US Phone: 706-335-2927 FAX: 706-387-5435 E-mail: news@mainstreetnews. com mark@mainstreetnews.com brandon@mainstreetnews.com teresa@mainstreetnews.com Mail: PO. Box 459, Commerce, GA 30529 Program Would Let Parents More Closely Track Kids' Progress By Ben Munro A student’s worst nightmare might become reality: Parental access to their grades at all times. A long-awaited online system for Commerce parents to instantly check students’ grades could be in the works — if the money is there, of course. City schools superintendent Dr. James E. “Mac” McCoy said the Commerce High School council has been requesting this technol ogy for over two years. He’s put the expense in the budget for the program, but couldn’t make any promises. “I told them the best I could do is present this to the board and I would put it in the budget,” McCoy said. “But at the end of the day, it would be one of those things that if we can afford it, we’ll put it in. If we can’t afford it, it will just have to go to the back burner.” The superintendent called this “a big ticket item.” “Parent Connect,” which the CHS council initially requested, would cost $18,000 for K-12. But less expensive, more user-friendly, alternate programs are now on the market. The newer programs start out at around $10,000. The CHS school council has long yearned for an intelligence program that would allow them to frequently monitor their childs’ grades. “It has been on their stove boil ing for two and a half years, I know,” McCoy said. The council had considered raising the money itself for the service before finding out the program’s cost. McCoy said the council backed off the idea for about a year, before asking if the school system could fund it. “It is still a growing concern to them and they’d like to see us try to put that in our budget,” McCoy said . Teachers might have to alter their usual practice in entering grades to fit the system if it became a reality. McCoy said the program requires teachers to focus on entering grades on a regular basis. Because once parents — who would need a parental code and the child’s code to access the grades — are aware the information is out there, they’ll constantly check. “They will worry you to death,” McCoy said. McCoy said that while work ing for another school system that used this type of program, he remembered that procedures being written for teachers to enter grades every two weeks. Some entered them daily. “You have to stay on top of it because parents stay on top of it,” he said . “It is a great program for parents.” McCoy said this program “spread like wild-fire” when he worked at Buford and said he expected that it would trickle down if introduced in Commerce. “It won’t be long before parents are screaming for it in the middle school and elementary school and the primary school,” McCoy said . In other business conducted Thursday night, the board of edu cation: Please Turn to Page 5A The cost for a license to sell alcoholic beverages by the drink isn’t coming down after all. The Commerce City Council voted 4-2 to defeat a motion by Ward 4 Councilman Bob Sosebee to slash the cost of a mixed drink pouring license by 80 percent. Only Ward 5 Councilman Richard Massey supported Sosebee’s motion. Mayor Pro Tem Dusty Slater, Ward 1 Councilman Wayne Gholston, Ward 2 Councilman Donald Wilson and Ward 3 Councilman Mark Fitzpatrick opposed it. Sosebee raised the issue, argu ing that since the city had received no license applications in the two years mixed drinks have been legal, that the license fee must Rep. Glenn Richardson is on a mission. He says he wants to replace all property taxes in Georgia with sales taxes, and he brought that campaign to the Commerce Kiwanis Club last Thursday. Richardson, a Republican from Paulding County and speaker of the Georgia House, has written legislation to amend the Georgia constitution to that effect. There is also speculation that Richardson has raised the issue primarily to Four days after Commerce officials heard Rep. Glenn Richardson explain his proposed constitutional amendment to change state funding for schools, they passed a resolution in oppo sition to the bill. House Resolution 900, spon sored by Richardson, who is speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, aims to increase the state sales tax as a means of eliminating property taxes. Mayor Charles L. “Buzzie” be too high. He made the motion that the fee be dropped from its current $5,000 rate to $1,000. “I’ve talked to people in the downtown about it and no one thinks they can justify the fee we set,” he said in making the motion. Considering the subject was alcohol, there was little discus sion. Wilson asked if “this is going to open a lot more problems?” to which Sosebee said, “We don’t have any. No one has gotten a license yet.” Fitzpatrick said he does not see cost as the issue. “I just don’t think money is what stopped it,” he said. “I just don’t think we’ve had the right HR 900 a subject at cham ber breakfast PAGE 11A gain name recognition for a run for governor. He spoke as a guest of Keith Ariail to approximately 100 people — most of them guests of the Kiwanis Club. His talk was heavy on his phi losophy of taxation and light on details as to how a revolution ary change in the way Georgia schools and city and county gov ernments are funded will affect Hardy Jr. noted that during his presentation, Richardson “also insulted a lot of folks in the room” during a presentation last Thursday at the Commerce Civic Center. Hardy said the resolution will be sent to Richardson and to the local legislative delegations. “We don’t like it,” he said of the tax plan. “We don’t like anything about it. We’re against it in any form.” HR 900, if passed by the people come.” The vote proves once again that sentiments expressed in a work session don’t necessarily trans late into action when it comes time to vote. At the Dec. 3 work session, neither Slater nor Gholston expressed any opposition to the concept when Sosebee brought it up. Their nods of apparent agree ment suggested that they would be likely to support the issue. Fitzpatrick and Wilson were not present at the work session. Also at the work session, the council had discussed the pos sibility of licensing package sales of liquor in Commerce. That matter was not on the agenda Monday. taxpayers or the entities that spend the tax money. The motivating factor for the proposed constitutional amend ment is Richardson’s belief that the taxation of property — land, houses, businesses, vehicles and inventory — is illogical and that Georgians would be better served if every citizen paid taxes as they consume — or spend. He calls property taxes “regressive.” General Assembly, would go before the voters for an up or down vote . The resolution start ed out as a means to remove all property taxes, but Richardson has pared it down in presenta tions across the state to the point that in its first year it would eliminate only taxes for education in exchange for removing almost all of the sales tax exemptions and turning all education funding authority over to the state. Litter Removal Project Members of the Commerce Kiwanis Club and Commerce High School Key Club picked up their one-mile stretch of the U.S. 441 bypass Saturday morning under the Adopt- A-Road program sponsored by Keep Jackson County Beautiful. Left to right are Kiwanians Mark McCannon (president), Keith Ariail, Don Moore, Brian Vandiver and Teresa Holcomb; Key Club members Maddison Knick, Bree Haggard, Matthew Dahlke (advisor), Deep Patel, Tennyson Shropshire; and Kiwanian Hasco Craver. House Speaker Finds Commerce A Tough Sell For Big Tax Change Glenn Richardson Brings HR 900 Plans To Kiwanis Meeting Please Turn to Page 11A Council Passes Resolution Opposing HR 900