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Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009

The Telegraph looks back: Decade's top midstate stories

As the decade winds down, The Telegraph looks back at the top stories from 2000-2008.

2000: At the start of the decade, members of Westside Boosters Inc. launched plans to build a more than $3 million stadium and said they had a list of pledges to cover much of the cost. The Bibb County Commission backed the debt, but the Westside Boosters never came up with the money. That, in effect, left the county on the hook for the sports complex behind Westside High School.

2001: Once upon a time, the Atlanta Braves had a farm team in Macon. The Macon Braves had been unhappy with their facilities at Luther Williams Field, and ultimately negotiations with the city bogged down. The Atlanta Braves promised to move the Class A South Atlantic team to Rome if voters there approved a tax to pay for a new $15 million baseball stadium. On the evening of Nov. 6, 2001, Rome voters OK’d the tax in a 7,163 to 7,021 vote. It was a squeaker, but it was enough for the team to leave town.

2002: For the first time in 130 years, a Republican governor was elected in Georgia. But this wasn’t just any Republican. Sonny Perdue was one of ours, born and raised in Houston County. The agribusinessman from Bonaire waged an under-funded, underdog campaign to win a historic victory over an incumbent Democrat who had the largest campaign war chest ever assembled in Georgia.

2003: When Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the nation’s second- and third-largest cigarette companies announced they planned to merge, they weren’t just blowing smoke. The merger meant the closure of Brown & Williamson’s Macon cigarette plant, which sent shock waves through the midstate. The company had 2,100 employees, some of whom left town to take jobs at R.J. Reynolds’ North Carolina plants.

2004: Turbulence at Macon City Hall captured headlines for much of 2004. It was a year of investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and the Bibb County district attorney, a bond rating reduction, questions about the management of contracts at the Terminal Station and a failed effort to recall Mayor Jack Ellis. In just one of several twists and turns, the Bibb County grand jury opened an investigation into how the city spent $12 million in money that was supposed to pay for Terminal Station work and six other downtown revitalization projects. In subsequent developments: District Attorney Howard Simms in July asked the grand jury to indict city finance director Kelly Clark, the city struggled to make payroll, and FBI agents questioned several former members of Macon’s Finance Department. Later that year, the IRS sent an agent to look into how the city had spent millions in bond funds.

2005: The Macon-based 48th Brigade of the Georgia National Guard deployed to the Middle East. Nearly 9,000 members of the Georgia Army National Guard have been called to active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan in the global war on terror. In midsummer 2005, 11 Georgians died in an 11-day span. Then in early December, three guardsmen — two of them from Middle Georgia — died in an accident. Sgt. Philip Allan Dodson Jr., 42, of Forsyth, and Sgt. Marcus Shawn Futrell, 20, of Macon, were killed when the Humvee they were riding in overturned while in a military convoy.

2006: Bibb County sheriff’s Sgt. Joseph Whitehead was gunned down during a raid on Atherton Street in the early hours of March 23. Whitehead, 36, led the charge as the drug squad barged into a house on a dead end street on the fringes of Unionville. The district attorney is seeking the death penalty against the alleged shooters, Antron Dawayne Fair and Damon Antwon Jolly. Whitehead became the first Bibb County deputy in nearly 81 years to be killed in the line of duty. His funeral drew hundreds of law enforcement officers from across Georgia.

2007: Mayor Robert Reichert rolled into Macon City Hall in an election year that lifted him above several other candidates. He won every precinct and 63 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. In November’s general election, Reichert took a whopping 96 percent of the vote. Term-limited Mayor Jack Ellis’ controversial tenure wound down, and nearly half the City Council seats turned over in 2007.

2008: A storm system embedded with tornadoes struck Middle Georgia before daybreak on Mother’s Day. South Macon and western Bibb County saw the brunt of the storm, with massive trees crashing down on rooftops and high winds tearing up homes and businesses. The county’s tree canopy took a big hit, with up to 90 percent of Macon State College’s trees decimated. Although there were no deaths in Bibb County, Tracey and Lisa Clements of Laurens County were killed when a tornado hit their mobile home. Statewide, insurance companies paid more than $125 million in damages from the storms.