News - Friday, June 16, 2017

Chattanooga’s Michael Walton, 33, grew up in Greenville, Tennessee, about six hours from Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where his biological grandfather was a supervisor at a strip coal mine.

His grandfather died when Walton’s father was just 5, of pneumonia, speculatively caused by the working conditions. His grandmother died just six months later, and Walton’s dad was raised by his aunt.

Areas of excessive water, ponding and flash flooding after a heavy storm in Middle Tennessee bring back memories of Nashville’s 2010 devastating flood.

The pools of standing water and storm run-off are more than reminders of the flood for Janey Camp; They also are data.

When President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, phasing out both U.S. commitments to achieve carbon reduction targets and financial contributions to slow climate change, it was a call to action for many.

As Congress fiddles with an Obamacare replacement, one likely to cut billions in Medicaid spending, health care experts warn a decrease in funding could be hard on Tennessee.

During a recent forum in Jackson, Andy Schneider of the Georgetown Center on Children and Families reported that 50 percent of Tennessee’s children in small towns and rural areas are covered by Medicaid, a higher percentage than the rest of the nation, and more than in Tennessee’s urban areas where 39 percent have Medicaid.

Just like that, David Blackburn is gone.

It hit just about everyone affiliated with the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga athletic program like a punch to the gut Tuesday morning when Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Blackburn turned in his notice, effective immediately.

The Tennessee Bar Association has elected Jennifer Exum, estate planning and probate administration attorney at Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, as the chair of the TBA Estate Planning and Probate Section. With more than a decade of experience, Exum counsels Chambliss clients in the areas of estate administration, estate planning, conservatorships, tax, estate-related litigation and general civil litigation.

Attorney Ethan Hargraves has joined the law firm of Massey & Associates. A lawyer since 2014, he comes to the firm after serving clerkships at the Tennessee Supreme Court and Alabama Supreme Court.

Tony Vitello wants to put a Power T in Tennessee baseball, and with it a yearly contender for SEC championships and NCAA tournament bids.

The new UT baseball coach was introduced last Friday at Tennessee’s Lindsey Nelson Stadium. He emphasized power pitching and power hitting as part of his rebuilding plan.

The title of “It Comes at Night” is a clever bit of misdirection.

I spent most of the film waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and claim victims. But the horror of the film comes not from without but from within.

“It Comes” opens with a restrained but arresting image: an old man, covered in sores, his eyes looking unnatural, something dripping out of his mouth.

The Chattanooga Film Festival will screen the new 4K restoration of “Monterey Pop,” a rockumentary about the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival, the weekend of June 16.

Monterey launched the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding, who were just a few among a wildly diverse cast that included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, the Byrds, Hugh Masekela and Ravi Shankar.

Anyone who drives regularly through the ridge cut on I-24 is familiar with Kings Lodge, the budget motel that stood on the side of Missionary Ridge since 1970. Built just three years after that portion of the interstate was completed, Kings Lodge was once an iconic place for Chattanooga visitors to stay and enjoy the views of downtown and the mountains.

Habitat for Humanity of the Greater Chattanooga Area celebrated National Homeowner Month on June 10 by hosting a double dedication ceremony.

During the ceremony, Fanetta McCain and Ashley Jackson were presented with mock keys to their three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes located in Chattanooga’s Historic Glass Farm Neighborhood. McCain and Jackson became the 270th and 271st Habitat homeowners in the Greater Chattanooga area.

The City of East Ridge and CARTA transportation services want to hear from the residents and business owners of East Ridge to see if expanded services to the area are wanted or needed. Several months ago, East Ridge hosted CARTA for a public input meeting in hopes of gaining more information about what the citizens, visitors and businesses owners desired in their bus and disabled transportation services.

May was the third month this year that residential home sales ended in the negative column when compared to the same period last year.

There was a total of 925 closed units in May, compared with 945 in 2016 for a 2.1 percent decrease. This modest monthly decrease in home sales leaves the region up 1.2 percent year to date, which is good news for home sellers.

Remodeling projects improve the looks and function of your home, and if you decide to sell, certain projects will give you a good return on your investment.

Curb-appeal projects provide some of the best returns on your investment, according to Remodeling magazine’s 2017 Cost vs. Value Report. The report compares out-of-pocket costs of 29 remodeling projects against how much real estate professionals predict the improvements will add to the potential selling price of a house sold within a year of finishing the project.

If you’ve needed a mortgage or another type of loan over the past several years, you’ve probably appreciated the historically low interest rates we’ve experienced.

But if you’ve wanted to own fixed-rate investments, such as bonds, you might have been less pleased at the low-rate environment.