No WhiteWash!

There appears to be a little battle between the City of Kingsport, TN and Northeast State Community College.

Check out the link “College conflict: Potential Northeast State Johnson City campus distresses some Kingsport officials” from the Johnson City Press to get the City of Kingsport views on Northeast State Community College putting a satellite campus in Johnson City.  It sounds like to me that Mayor Phillips of Kingsport and his pal and fishing buddy, Keith Wilson, Publisher of the Kingsport Times-News are a little bit upset that the college would even consider going to Johnson City.

I guess Mayor Phillips feels frustrated that he is losing control since another pal and fishing buddy retired as President of Northeast State Community College.

My advice to Dr. Janice Gilliam, President of Northeast State Community College is that if she thinks this is the right direction for the college, then go for it.  Fight the influence of the “good old boys club” in Kingsport and the heavy-handed tactics that they will use to stop you.

It is interesting that the Kingsport Times-News published an article on this subject on January 9, 2011 at 12:00am. which gave a link to the Johnson City Press website.  But very shortly after publishing the article, it disappeared!  If one searches on “College conflict: Potential Northeast State Johnson City campus distresses some Kingsport officials”, the article can be found in the search, but you get Invalid article when you click on the link for the Kingsport Times-News.

Why did the Kingsport Times-News take the article down?  What did they want to keep quiet?

TriCites.com gives another view below without the input from Mayor Dennis Phillips and Keith Wilson.  Click on the link below for the entire article.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, TN — Northeast State Community College wants to open a campus in Johnson City and the Downtown Centre is among its options.

According to President Dr. Janice Gilliam, Northeast State does not have any more room for classrooms or parking at the school’s main campus in Blountville. Couple that with the fact that one-third of the college’s students come from Washington County, she says it only makes sense to open a campus there.

Read more via Northeast State to create Johnson City campus, Downtown Centre a possible site | TriCities.com.

Listed below are the November, 2010 Tennessee sales tax collections for the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) listed below.

The laggard in monthly/yearly percent change sales tax collections is the Kingsport-Bristol MSA.

Chattanooga, Cleveland and Jackson are showing the greatest yearly percent increase and it appears that the involvement of the State of Tennessee to bring new industry to these areas are paying off.

Sales tax collections (thousand $) (Seasonally adjusted)

Source: Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR)

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance recently published a list of Best Cities for the Next Decade.

Learn more about how they picked the Best Cities for the Next Decade.

Also they published a list  367 U.S. metropolitan areas that can be sorted and ranked by different criteria.

In the example below, all metro areas in Tennessee have been extracted.  The table below was sorted by median household income.  We see that the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA has the lowest median household income for the Tennessee metro areas ranked and also has a higher cost of living than the other Tennessee metro areas listed below.

Furthermore, Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA median household income rank is 353 out of a total of 367 U.S. metro areas.  This shows that there were 14 metro areas that had a lower median household income than the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA metro area.

Click here for the entire list of 367 metro areas from Kiplinger.  The list can be sorted online or downloaded in spreadsheet format.  Click here to see the Kiplinger data sorted by “Median Household Income for all Metro Areas”

I am sure that our local City, County, and State elected officials will want to keep this data from getting out.

Nashville, TN- The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation today arrested the Sullivan County Highway Commissioner and Department Section Foreman on multiple charges after they were indicted by the Sullivan County Grand Jury yesterday.

Sullivan County Highway Commissioner Allan Pope (left picture), 60, 3273 Ridgeview, Kingsport, TN was indicted on seven counts in five separate cases. Charges include one count of theft over $10,000, four counts of theft over $1,000, one count of official misconduct and one count of private use of county equipment.

Sullivan County Highway Department Section Foreman David Campbell (right picture), 60, 244 Clearbranch Circle, Blountville, TN was indicted on eight counts in six separate cases. The charges against him include one count of theft over $10,000, four counts of theft over $1,000, two counts of official misconduct and one count of private use of county equipment.

While working for the county highway department, both Pope and Campbell had work performed on several different private properties at the county’s expense. The incidents occurred at various times as early as November 2006 through March of 2010. Services diverted included performing improvements to real property, filling in a water line ditch and providing a truck load of free gravel. The work was performed at various locations along Graybeal Road, Muddy Creek Road/Brown Circle, Hawley Road, Rice Cross Road and Brookley Drive. The TBI open the case in March of 2010 at the request of the District Attorney General.

Both Pope and Campbell were booked into the Sullivan County Jail on $10,000 bond each.

See the following links for more information.

• Sullivan County Highway Commissioner Allan Pope arrested
• Trustee candidate blames husband’s arrest on politics
• Did Sullivan highway commissioner break law with ditch-digging project?
• Highway commissioner tells his side of the Graybeal Road ditch story
• Sullivan ethics panel to examine ditch issue
• Ditch digging kerfuffle: Confusion muddies the rules of the road

Bristol, Tennessee made the top ten list for the “Best Schools for Your Housing Buck” for median home prices under $100,000.

See the links below for more information on other cities.

List Reveals Parents Can Find High Quality Schools in Cities and Towns With Homes They Can Afford

GreatSchools (www.greatschools.org), the leading source of information for school performance, and Forbes.com (www.Forbes.com), home page for the world’s business leaders, have debuted “Best Schools for Your Housing Buck”. The list is a unique ranking of the top 25 U.S. areas where parents can find the best schools at every housing price range, including the 2009 national median home price of $178,000. You can read the entire article, which includes the list of schools, on Forbes.com at: www.forbes.com/greatschools.

“Best Schools for Your Housing Buck” dispels the common notion that high performing schools can only be found in expensive communities. While affluent cities and good schools often go hand in hand, the list demonstrates that if parents are relocating, they don’t have to compromise on their child’s education. They can find a great school within their housing budget.

• Best cities to live and learn
• Top public schools: Small U.S. cities
• Top public schools: Midsize U.S. cities
• Top public schools: Large U.S. cities
• Top public schools: Under $100,000
• Top public schools: $200,000-$399,999
• Top public schools: $400,000-$599,999
• Top public schools: $600,000-$799,999
• Top public schools: $800,000 or more
• Top Cities 2010 methodology

Read more via GreatSchools – Public and Private School Ratings, Reviews and Parent Community.

The Kingsport, Tennessee area have gotten themselves more National attention with the recent Gallup-Healthways surveys.

WebMD article below gives (America’s Most Obese Metropolitan Areas) a summary of Gallup’s findings.

Please go to the Gallup link (What America’s Most Obese Metro Areas Have in Common) for more detail.

Do we need more restaurants in the Kingsport area?

America’s Most Obese Metropolitan Areas

March 3, 2010 — A ranking of No. 1 — or being in the Top 10 — isn’t always something to crow about.

The latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index lists the 10 most obese metropolitan areas in the U.S. and finds that adult obesity rates in each are significantly greater than the national average of 26.5%.

Here’s a list of the 10 most obese metro areas, with those ranking highest having the greatest obesity rates.

1. (tie) Montgomery, Ala., and Stockton, Calif.: 34.6%
2. Visalia/Porterville, Calif.: 34.1%
3. York/Hanover, Pa.: 34%
4. Flint, Mich.: 33.9%
5. McAllen/Edinburg/Mission, Texas: 33.7%
6. Bakersfield, Calif.: 33.6%
7. (tie) Lynchburg, Va., and Huntington/Ashland, West Va., Ky., Ohio: 33%
8. Kingsport/Bristol, Tenn., Va.: 32.9%

Eating Fruits and Veggies

The latest Well-Being Index also examines factors that are linked to obesity.

Here’s a look at how metro areas ranked according to the percentage eating fruits and vegetables frequently — listed from worst to best. The nationwide percentage is 56.8%.

1. McAllen/Edinburg/Mission, Texas:  45.7%
2. Montgomery, Ala.: 52.7%
3. Bakersfield, Calif.: 53.1%
4. Stockton, Calif.: 54.8%
5. Flint, Mich.: 56.4%
6. Visalia/Porterville, Calif.: 56.6%
7. Lynchburg, Va.: 56.8%
8. York/Hanover, Pa.: 59.0%
9. Huntington/Ashland/ West Va., Ky., Ohio 60.2 %
10. Kingsport/Bristol Tenn., Va.:  62.2%

Exercising Frequently

Here’s a look at the rankings — from worst to best — of the percentage of people exercising frequently. The percentage nationwide is 49.9%.

1. Montgomery, Ala.:  43.3%
2. Flint, Mich.:  44.5%
3. McAllen/Edinburg/Mission, Texas: 45.8%
4. Lynchburg, Va.: 46.1%
5. Huntington/Ashland, W. Va., Ky., Ohio:   47.7%
6. York/Hanover, Pa.: 47.8%
7. Bakersfield, Calif.:  48.4%
8. Kingsport/Bristol, Tenn., Va.: 48.5%
9. Visalia/Porterville, Calif.:  49.2%
10. Stockton, Calif.:  51%

Gallup-Healthways says in a news release that eight of the 10 most obese areas rank in the bottom two-thirds in terms of having easy access to fruits and vegetables and nine rank in the bottom two-thirds for having a safe place to exercise.

Seven of the 10 most obese metro areas rank among the bottom 25 places where residents say there have been times in the past year when they didn’t have enough money to buy food for themselves or family members.

Obesity’s Link to Health Problems

The researchers note that obesity often is a precursor to chronic health problems, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart attack. These conditions were included in the Gallup-Healthways physical health index.

The report also finds that:

• Each of the 10 most obese metro areas are in the bottom two-thirds of all places in terms of diabetes.
• The Huntington/Ashland areas of West Va., Kentucky, and Ohio, with Montgomery, Ala., and the Kingsport/Bristol area on the Tennessee-Virginia line are in the bottom 10 among all metro areas surveyed in regard to blood pressure, with rates nearly 10 percentage points above the national average.
• Huntington and Kingsport, along with Lynchburg, are in the bottom 10 for high cholesterol.
• Huntington and Kingsport are among the bottom 10 for heart attacks, with rates almost twice the national average.
• Four of the 10 most obese areas are in the top third among all metro areas for not smoking, but the other six rank in the bottom two-thirds.

The Gallup-Wellbeing report is based on telephone interviews with more than 353,000 adults 18 and over between Jan. 2, 2009, and Dec. 29, 2009. It has a margin of sampling error of 0.2 percentage points.

via America’s Most Obese Metropolitan Areas.

Copyright ©2009, WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved

Residential building permits are showing a –42.0% decrease for third quarter 08 to third quarter 09 in Sullivan County, Tennessee.  See the link for more detail  Residential Building Permit Trend Report from The Market Edge.

The Residential Building Permit Trend Report has data from the states of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

I have done many posts concerning the median age and population in Sullivan County, Tennessee and  Sullivan County has one of the oldest populations in the state (click here to view the data).

The data below is from the state and I hope will help illustrate exactly what will happen if Sullivan County continues as it has in the past.

Below in the graph is a breakdown on the population for the different age groups in Sullivan County for the census year 2000 and projections for year 2025.  Sullivan County population in year 2000 was 153,048 and is projected to be 161,262 in year 2025.

Note that in the graph below that the 2025 population for all age groups are less for age groups that are under the 55 to 59 age group.  The year 2025 graph shows that the population numbers shows the population growing for for ages group 55 and up.  The largest single age group with the largest population is the age group 75 and up and the larger part of them are females.

Is Sullivan County equipped to handle the aging population?  There should great demand for those businesses offering services to the elderly.  But, if you are a pediatric physician, you might want to start your practice elsewhere because of the low birth rate in Sullivan County.

The table below gives the actual population numbers for the different age groups.  I have added the year 2010 which is not plotted in the above graph so you can see what is projected for 2010.  The data from the state is given as number of males and females for each age group and I have added the male and female population numbers together in the table below and the graph.

Population Projections for Sullivan County, TN

You can view the data for other Tennessee Counties which includes projections for every five years up to year 2025.  Click on the link below to go to the Tennessee webpage

Demographic Information on Age-Gender Composition

In addition to the population projections for each Tennessee city and county contained in the report above, you may access more detailed cohort-component data for a city or county below. (Please note that updated demographic projections will be forthcoming.)

Please either click a county on the Tennessee state map or click a county name in the alphabetical list below the map to access the cohort-component data. Note the Word of Caution following table listed below.

Click here to view state data for Tennessee Counties

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I am one of the older population and am concerned about the future of Sullivan County.   No, you can’t move us out of the county, but you should be concerned about the future of the county when we have left this world.  There must be something in place to keep young people in Sullivan County.  A good start would be get companies that have good paying jobs to locate here.   If you too are concerned, talk to your elected officials.  You can email them at the following links.

Comments are welcome.

West Tennessee wins and East Tennessee loses again.  What are our local elected officials doing to bring  jobs to the Sullivan County area?

Project will Create 275 New Jobs and an Investment of $100 Million

NASHVILLE – Governor Phil Bredesen and Commissioner Matt Kisber of the Department of Economic and Community Development announced today that the Unilever plant in Covington, Tenn. will be expanding, generating an investment of $100 million and creating approximately 275 new jobs.

“This is great news for Unilever and the state of Tennessee,” Governor Bredesen said. “These new jobs are the result of a strong partnership between the state and the local community. I’m pleased Unilever has chosen to further solidify its presence in Tennessee and we look forward to working with them on this ambitious expansion project.”

Read more via Governor Bredesen, Commissioner Kisber Announce Unilever Expansion in Covington | TN.gov Newsroom.

The table below shows the median age for all of the 95 Tennessee counties.  Sullivan County has a rank of 5 for higher median age and is the 9th largest county in Tennessee.  Data is from the links below.

Population of Tennessee Counties in 2008

Population Estimates by Age in 2008