President’s Corner

By Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status: Dick Jernigan has been added to our board since the Fall 2003 Newsletter. He is retired from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Fusion Energy Division. He is a member of our Legislative Committee because of his experience in this area on several other community boards. Welcome Dick!

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. Note particularly the addition of our Legislative DUI Package added for the last legislative session. We hope to upgrade this by this fall with a proposed Omnibus Bill on DUI. 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: We now have about 13 active court watchers, but we need about 7 more to be able to cover 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, Anderson County District Attorney, says that the court watchers are valuable). 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.

If you know of anyone who might become a court watcher call Kelly Dagenhart, 865-483-8801, with their agreement or with their name and he will call them. We need your help.