President’s Corner

By Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status

We wish the retiring RID Board Members well and hope they will be able to support us in future projects.

We now have 12 RID Board Members and the authorized RID Board maximum was expanded from 20 up to 25 members at the December 2005 RID Meeting. We have lots of needed unstaffed projects and need to spread the work around to more people.

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 webmaster is Buford Carter, and our web address is www.discoveret.org/ridorac. We will have the latest information on the RID 2006 National Coalition Conference at the Double Tree Hotel on May 27 & 28, 2006 on the website. Since many of our articles from each newsletter issue have an enduring usefulness, we will keep the issues on the website 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

We now have about 10 active court watchers. We still need at least seven 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 and helped in the formation of our first Court Watcher Program in 1982). We particularly need watchers who will go to Clinton Court sessions. We have a Court Watch Manual and a training program for new watchers. 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.

Our newly upgraded Court Watch Data System has been programmed and now is in the process of being implemented into the Court Watch Program.

If you know of anyone who might become a court watcher call Kelly Dagenhart, 865-483-8801