NAMI Moultrie sponsors family support class

MOULTRIE, Ga. — Has mental illness touched your family?  Are you confused and looking for ways to help? NAMI Moultrie, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in cooperation with NAMI Georgia will offer the Family-to-Family Education Program in Moultrie again this spring. This 12-week course is designed to help families face the challenges of brain disorders and find support, resources, and coping strategies. The program is free of charge for families and caregivers of individuals with serious mental illnesses, which include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and co-occurring brain disorders and addictive disorders. For more information on the Family-to-Family course and NAMI Moultrie, contact Shannon Bell at shann.mbell@gmail, or Lynn Wilson at lynnbw45@gmail.com.

 

Whitfield Dems plan chili cook-off

DALTON, Ga. — The Whitfield County Democratic Party’s annual chili cook-off is Saturday, Feb. 18, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Mack Gaston Community Center. This year’s event will be a food drive for Greater Works of Dalton and also part of the Black History Month events at the community center. Tickets are $6 and include a chili meal, dessert, drink, samples of all entries and a vote in the contest. Contestants in the chili cook-off eat free. Attendees bringing two nonperishable food items for the food drive eat for $5. To enter the cook-off, purchase tickets or for more information, contact Cheryl Phipps at (706) 264-2789.

 

Tax commissioners meet in Tifton

TIFTON, Ga. — Tax commissioners from around the region met in Tifton on Feb. 8. This “meeting of the minds,” as Tift County Tax Commissioner Chad Alexander called it, is the second such meeting. The first one took place last year. The point of the meeting, according to Alexander, was to ensure consistency among different counties and conformity to state tax laws. He said that someone who owns property in three different counties may have three different tax law interpretations, and this meeting will help reduce inconsistencies and confusion. The 60 attendees represented 32 counties in Georgia and a representative from the Georgia Department of Revenue and two lawyers who specialize in property tax law came from Atlanta to be present.

 

More rain on the way

VALDOSTA, Ga. — More rain is on the way to South Georgia, according to forecasters. Tuesday should be mostly sunny with above-average high temperatures, said Alyson Hoegg, a meteorologist with the private forecasting firm AccuWeather. Highs should be in the 70s; the average high for those dates historically is in the mid-60s, she said. Rain chances pick up for South Georgia Wednesday, said Katie Moore, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, Fla. The weather service forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of rain Wednesday. “Probably we’ll see less than an inch (of rain),” she said. Storm activity should stretch across most of the Gulf Coast states, Hoegg said. The rain is being driven by a cold front moving through the area, she said. Overnight lows should take a quick plunge in the rain’s wake, dipping into the 30s Thursday, Hoegg said. Both forecasters said temperatures would bounce back by the weekend, with the weather service forecast calling for highs in the 70s Saturday with partly sunny skies. Neither meteorologist saw much of a chance of severe weather, though Hoegg said there was a “remote chance” of thunderstorms midweek.