President’s Corner

From the RID Oak Ridge/Anderson County President, Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status

Will Stirling has retired from the RID Board after several years as the Court Watcher Program Manager. We will miss him and all of his enthusiastic contributions to the Board. Charlotte Textor has retired as RID Board Member and Secretary, but will continue contributing to RID by preparing the RID newsletter electronically and doing court watch data entry to our new Court Watch Data Base.

Martha Fowler and Deneice Daniels have been added to our RID Board since the Spring 2004 newsletter. Martha will take over the Court Watcher Manager position from Will Stirling and will do all the scheduling of Court Watchers. Deneice Daniels is our new RID Administrative Assistant to the President taking on duties in this new position.

We now have 13 board members and the authorized RID Board maximum was expanded from 15 to 20 members at the December 2004 RID Meeting. We are a working board and have lots of work and need to spread it around more. We have several successes, but some things are just not getting done properly.

Peggy Hanaver, a Ph.D. Chemist, who is focusing on raising her family now, has agreed to come on the RID Board at the June 7 meeting. Dr. Fred Barry, a retired heart specialist in Oak Ridge, has agreed to come on the RID Board at the July 5 meeting as his term as President of the Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club expires.

RID Web Site

RID of Oak Ridge/Anderson Co. has had a web site active since Fall 2000 and has slowly been building up material on the site. Our webmaster is Buford Carter. The address is www.korrnet.org/ridorac. Since many of our articles from each newsletter 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. We still need at least seven more 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 Co. 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 (which can be seen on our web site in PDF format) 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 better court performance.

Our newly upgraded Court Watch Data System has been programmed and now has been implemented into the Court Watch Program. We now have some data from the Anderson County Computer System, which has been obtained by our data base person, George Ritter, retired from Y-12, and Ed Frome, our Ph.D. Statistician from ORNL, is in the process of analyzing this data for trends.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in becoming a court watcher, call Kelly Dagenhart at (865) 483-8801, and he will contact them. We need your help.

Treasurer’s Books Review

Gene Sanslow, a former auditor for the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge, has reviewed RID’s treasurer’s books from the last review and turned in a completely acceptable report concerning RID’s books in September 2004.

National Meeting

RID of Oak Ridge/Anderson County proposed to RID National President, Doris Aiken, back in the winter, that we have a RID National Meeting in Oak Ridge next year. Plans have progressed to the point that we have selected May 27^th-28^th, 2006 at the Double Tree Hotel in Oak Ridge, and have signed the contract for the meeting. We are planning on about 60 people attending, which is about the number that attended the last Oak Ridge meeting in the late 1980s. We will try to make the conference attractive to all RID chapter leaders and members, to traffic safety professionals, and to legislatures.

Please consult our web site at www.korrnet.org/ridorac periodically for updates on the registration process, agenda, costs, and display participants.