Early Morning Fire Destroys Home in Holmes Creek Community

June 2, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

An early morning fire Thursday destroyed a residence and spread to a wooded area on Wilson Drive in the Holmes Creek community. No one was injured.

“At approximately 1:40 a.m. Thursday morning, DeKalb County firefighters were dispatched to a residential structure fire on Wilson Drive in the Holmes Creek community. Upon arrival, firefighters found that the home was fully involved and had already collapsed. Fire had spread into the adjacent wooded area and firefighters were able to contain and extinguish the fire without any other property damage,” said DeKalb County Fire Chief Donny Green.

According to the occupants, Chief Green said “they were burning some debris outside the home a few hours earlier and the fire spread to a collapsed deck attached to the home. They awoke to find the entire exterior side of their home on fire. All occupants escaped without injury”.

The Main, Cookeville Highway, and Liberty stations responded along with DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department and DeKalb County Emergency Medical Services.

June 1, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

DeKalb County Clerk James L. (Jimmy) Poss wants to add another full-time employee in his office.

During Tuesday night’s meeting, Poss addressed the county budget committee asking that the county fund part of the position. Restricted earmarked fees for his office generated from noting of liens and titling transactions would be used to fund the rest of the salary.

The county clerk’s office currently has four full time employees and one of them doubles as a deputy clerk and bookkeeper. Poss said his goal is to have this employee become a full-time bookkeeper and to hire a new deputy clerk. The starting pay for a first-year county employee is currently $32,134 plus benefits but is scheduled to increase to $33,819 plus benefits with the 2023-24 fiscal year.

According to Poss, an amended law which passed last year by the Tennessee General Assembly provided the means for his office to collect sufficient fees through a restricted earmarked account to help pay for this position. Poss said the state last year upped fees for title transactions by $3.00 per title to provide more funds to clerks for doing work the state had previously done. The extra fees generated go into a restricted earmarked account for clerks to use for specific purposes including adding a clerical employee to handle the extra workload.

“Effective last July 1, 2022, the state legislature amended one of our (county clerk office) restricted fees after the state vehicles services department stopped completing the noting of liens at the state level and pushed them all back to county clerk’s offices across the state,” said County Clerk Poss. “Even before the change in the law, the state started reimbursing us and since then we have waited to see what kind of money this would generate. We are still two months away from having a full year in but from what we have received already we should finish out this fiscal year at between $18,000 and $20,000 in that revenue account,” said Poss.

“I need a new person to train on the front line and keep the lady who has been doing my book work for eight years. She knows the books well and has done a great job. Having her as a full-time bookkeeper is what I would like to do. I don’t know of any county our size that does not have a full-time bookkeeper. Nowadays there are so many vital procedures and it’s getting harder to function without a full-time bookkeeper whose duties include scanning multiple records, printing titles, completing mail in transactions, creating County Commission minutes, performing end of month reconciliations, printing and reviewing various reports, mailing annual renewal notices, reviewing, editing, and processing transactions prior to printing, among others,” said County Clerk Poss.

The budget committee has not yet acted on County Clerk Poss’ request.

May 31, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

The DeKalb County Ambulance Service recently received a $2,000 donation from Middle Tennessee Natural Gas Utility District through “Project Hometown Help.”

Assistant DeKalb EMS Director Trent Phipps accepted the donation on behalf of the ambulance service from Mike Corley, General Counsel for Middle Tennessee Natural Gas.

DeKalb EMS Director Hoyte Hale said the ambulance service is grateful to MTNG for this donation.

Funds from the Hometown Help voluntary program come from an automatic rounding up of participating customers’ bills to the next highest whole dollar amount. This funding is used to advance education, assist economic development, promote local charities, and provide relief to the disabled and elderly for payment of natural gas bills.

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