I know that I stated last week that my notes for February 6th would be my last to be distributed on these sheets for at least a few weeks. However I decided to circulate them one more time due to the fact that Jake Bennett has announced that he will have open house for our new "Jellico Mountain Wedding Chapel" this Sunday, February 16th (2:00 PM - 4:00 PM and it should have the maximum amount of publicity. (How appropriate to have the open house during the Valentine Day weekend? There is even a wedding scheduled for the chapel on Valentine Day!)

If you haven't been on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville in the past year or so, you are in for a real surprise. Anyone that does not believe that a run down area can be renovated should check it out to see just how much can be accomplished. And its not finished yet!

My article last week published in the Jellico Advance-Sentinel was given a headline stating that I was reporting on progress being made in Jellico. That was a very appropriate heading and although it is not always visible, we are making progress but we need to keep pushing!

I earlier reported the work being done to the building on South Main Street by Johnny Baird and a lot of us are anxious to see the final results. And the new windows that Councilman Alvin Evans has placed in his building on North Main Street sure have made an improvement to the old Central/Rexall Drug Store. Even more improvement will be made when the weather allows painting of the exterior of that structure. (Many years ago the Central Drug store was one of our town's favorite hangouts. And who that experienced it will ever forget the great soda fountain with ice cream, shakes, malts, sundaes, etc.? And old-timers will remember that Estil Rountree's popcorn stand was located right outside with his popper going full blast and that aroma of hot and heavily buttered popcorn floating like a tantalizing vapor all over town.)

Developer Mike Ross indicated earlier that he is just awaiting the results of the revitalization study of our downtown to accomplish renovation of his building on South Main Street. And as I have reported, the owner of the fire damaged "Thomas Pawn Shop" emphasized that he hopes to have that building back into good condition by June. Others have indicated that they will help!

Although the process is painfully slow, one by one we are getting part of the downtown buildings back into shape. And consequently, the overall appearance of our entire town is improving. Last summer some postal employees and I talked with three ladies from Dayton, Ohio that came into the Post Office. They had not been to Jellico in several years and they were very, very complimentary of the progress that we have made in improving our downtown since their last visit. I told them that we certainly appreciated the compliments and that we are going to continue to try to improve. They promised to return in the future because they are so happy with what is now taking place and they want to see their hometown when it is totally renovated.

(I will never forget a former resident from out-of-town who talked with me about five years ago and just after I first assumed the office of mayor. He probably did not intend to be intentionally derogatory but he gave me his opinion about Jellico and was very negative in his unsolicited assessment of the condition of our downtown . According to him, the area at that time reminded him of "some bombed out towns that he had seen in movies dealing with World War II". (The former Tramell building had earlier burned and collapsed; the old Firestone/Begliutti Building was completely gutted without even a roof; buildings had boards in windows or owners had just left the broken window openings for birds and pigeons to fly inside and roost - thereby creating a very unhealthy situation; one building had a piece of sheet metal extending out from the roof that swayed with the wind and could have eventually blown down on to the street; some had not even removed trees and other growth from roofs and guttering; others had not had a fresh coat of paint in years; and the list could go on and on.

Thankfully a good percentage of those situations have been corrected during the past five years although some of the worst deteriorated buildings still have not been touched even until today.

I doubt that anyone will deny that we have made progress but we certainly have a lot of work remaining to bring Jellico back to the way that it should look and can look. And as I continuously point out, it's going to take the efforts of us all to get the job done. The Council and I are asking EVERYONE in Jellico -downtown and all over town and throughout our area - to get involved in our special "Clean Up, Paint Up, Fix Up Month" scheduled for April. Every individual can do something - if nothing more than voicing support for what we are attempting to accomplish and encouraging building owners to take corrective action. Maybe enough public opinion will get those who so far have absolutely refused to help to start cooperating and assist us in getting the job done! They will benefit as much or more than anyone else!

And if you were in town over the past weekend you got an idea of what "revitalizing" our down town can mean. The "Trail Keepers Foundation" had its annual membership meeting in our Conference Room on Saturday and there were vehicles all up North Main Street and in Veterans Park. Delegates were here from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and possibly other states.

Jake Bennett and I attended the meeting at the invitation of that group. We both welcomed them to Jellico and stated how glad that we are that they have selected our town for so many of their activities. They in turn expressed their appreciation to the people of Jellico, complimented us on the way that we are working to renovate and revitalize our town and pledged to contribute to that project in April. (We gave assurances that we will have plenty for them to do.)

And the number of folks and vehicles that later attended the live entertainment in the Conference Room increased from the first night. Larry Meadors, Angie Heatwole, Bill Rigney, Billy Elliott, and Ron Dabney really put on an entertaining show last Saturday night in the Conference Room.

Attendance is expected to increase again this Saturday night when the Twin Rivers Band will be joined by a group of entertainers from Lafollette. It's free and all are invited! (As someone remarked during the evening, "there isn't a small town anywhere around here that provides such good free entertainment for its citizens like Jellico does".)

A Little League meeting was also conducted in the Conference Room on Sunday afternoon. (The Conference Room/Tramell Building has really become a valuable asset for our town.)

Back during the time when we were having such tumultuous meetings of the Jellico City Council, we received an awful lot of negative publicity - although some other area towns were having even worse disagreements among their mayor/council members. But for some reasons, those were not nearly as widely covered and reported by the media as ours were. (Lafollette, Jacksboro, and Caryville all have had some "interesting" meetings in the past to say the least. And one town in eastern Kentucky supposedly had a real "knock down, drag out free for all" during one of its city council meetings a couple or so years ago.)

Although they were involved with important business, I had to laugh (and I am sure that a lot of others laughed) when the television networks recently aired the video tape of a city council meeting of a town in California when the lady mayor got up from her chair, walked over to a member of council, and slugged him with a shot that would have made a prize fighter proud. It's an understatement to say that they had some areas of serious disagreement!

Let's hope that they have all settled their differences by now. But if not, I can advise them from experience to just wait until the next election and the voters will do it for them!

The thousands of Big Orange football fans - that were in such a state of depression all though last season, through that terrible performance in the bowl game, and through our poor recruiting season all the way up to the very end - sure got a pleasant surprise on signing day. I have followed Tennessee football recruiting for too many years to admit and it was the most successful single day in signing blue chip prospects that I can ever recall. From all indications, we got some very outstanding (and unexpected) high school players that day and Phil Fulmer has once again proven that he is one of the best recruiters in all of college football. And it certainly was a big step toward righting the Vol ship!

We are never totally satisfied and as some are pointing out, it sure would have been good if we could have signed a top rated quarterback to go with all those receivers, linemen, linebackers and defensive backs. But I talked with Brent Hubbs of "Volquest", the Internet recruiting service, following the Tennessee/University of Massachusetts basketball game. And he told me that the "bird dogging" of outstanding junior quarterbacks is already well underway and that we can reasonably expect to land one or more of them next year. But in the meantime, I think that James Banks is more than capable of doing the job. I rarely ever agree with anything that Sports Editor John Adams, Knoxville News-Sentinel, writes. But like Adams insisted in an article in that paper last week , Banks needs to stay at quarterback. He is very exciting to watch!

I hope that those who regularly access our several Jellico Websites notice all of the requests for various types of information about Jellico including what we have to offer, present and former residents, ancestors, historical happenings, etc.. And I also hope that any users having knowledge concerning those requests will respond and furnish that information to those making the inquiries. It will be good public relations for our town and who knows what effect that it might have in the future? (I answer some but I just do not have the time to answer them all - nor do I have the requested information for all the requests. But somebody out there does.)

Netlink has recently placed a counter on its Internet Website to record the actual number of "hits (accesses) to the "Mayor's Column Link" on http://www.jellico.htm/jellico/jellico.htm Even though the counter has only very recently begun incrementing accesses, there had already been 240 by the time this article was written. Most of my local readers have always taken this column from the sheets that I have distributed around town and more recently from the Jellico Advance- Sentinel. Some locals do access it on the Internet but by far and away, the largest portion of those 240 and all of the hundreds of previous accesses before the counter was installed have come from out-of-town. And now that the column will be updated every week on the Website, the number is expected to increase dramatically as Internet users learn of that fact. And I am very anxious to see if I regain the large number of out-of-state, out of country and overseas readers - especially members of our Armed Forces - that I once enjoyed. (I have already been informed by one Internet user in Florida that he will again be calling these columns up each week since they are now being kept current. He said that he loves to get the news from Jellico.)

I greatly appreciate Netlink's help in making it available to so many folks in so many areas.