President’s Corner

By Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status

We are sad to have the following RID Board Members leave our service. Kathy Moore was elected to the Anderson County Commission and has found that her meeting commitments there conflict with RID’s so she has resigned after a long service to us. She was our Vice-President for several years. Jim Roper has served us for several years and has resigned due to commitments to other organizations. He was especially helpful in working with Mark Scarbrough in getting our boating program started. Grover Smithwick has moved to Florida during the winter and has been unable to attend. His legislative service for several years was especially appreciated.

We have added to the RID Board Angi Agle (who was just elected to the Oak Ridge School Board); B.J. Morgan from the Knoxville area whose family is a victim of DUI; and Jim Keeton of Oak Ridge, who was already Court Watching and has now agreed to train new Court Watchers.

RID Web Site

RID of Oak Ridge/Anderson County has had a web site active since the Fall of 2000 and has slowly been building up material on the site. Our web master is Buford Carter. The web address is www.korrnet.org/ridorac. Since many of our articles from each newsletter issue have an enduring usefulness, we will keep the issues on the web site for a limited time determined by the space we have and other material we wish to display. There are also several web pointers on the site to other useful material. We invite comments on how to improve the web site.

New Court Watchers

Mayme Crowell has been added September 23, 2003 as a new court watcher. Jim Keeton is now training new court watchers. We now have about 13 active court watchers. We still need about 13 more court watchers to be able to watch all of the court sessions and handle vacations, sickness, schedule conflicts, etc. An estimated 80% of the value of a court watcher is in just being at court when the DUIs are tried (Jim Ramsey, our Anderson County District Attorney, says that the court watchers are valuable). The other estimated 20% of the value comes from the records that the court watchers provide for our trend analysis and the suggestions for changes in the court system and laws to provide increased court performance. If you know of anyone who might become a court watcher call or e-mail Kelly Dagenhart, 865-483-8801, with their agreement or with their name and he will call them. We need your help.