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Home | Staff Reporter List | Dave Flessner | Story Archive

Dave Flessner Stories

Posted: Sunday - Nov. 8, 2009
1 Comment
Who pays local stormwater fees? It depends
In Hamilton County, churches, schools and government agencies don’t pay the stormwater fee on their buildings and parking lots.
Posted: Sunday - Nov. 8, 2009
Stormwater fees bring flood of objections
Chattanoogans will have to pay more than $100 million in extra fees over the next five years to fix decades-old problems with clogged ditches, broken pipes and polluted runoff.
Posted: Friday - Nov. 6, 2009
6,200 area IRS refunds unclaimed
The tax man is looking for more than 6,200 workers in Tennessee and Georgia.
Posted: Thursday - Nov. 5, 2009
- Audio - Photo
Recruiting retirees
Every day, more than 7,000 Americans turn 65.
Posted: Wednesday - Nov. 4, 2009
- Audio
States receive boost for retraining
Thirty-one years after she graduated from high school, Angela Flynn is back in school as the only woman and the oldest student in her welding class at the Chattanooga State campus in Kimball, Tenn.
Posted: Tuesday - Nov. 3, 2009
1 Comment
Tennessee: State gets $12.1 million for unemployed workers
Tennessee is getting another $12.1 million in federal funds to help workers who lost their jobs due to foreign trade or competition.
Posted: Tuesday - Nov. 3, 2009
Area home foreclosures rise in summer
Home foreclosures continued to rise this summer in the Chattanooga area, according to a new report.
Posted: Monday - Nov. 2, 2009
11 Comments
EPB’s adult channel choices raise questions
EPB’s expansion from electricity to television is sparking questions over why the city-owned utility is marketing naughty movies.
Posted: Sunday - Nov. 1, 2009
Dalton skips vote, will save $11,000
The city of Dalton is saving nearly $11,000 this year because no one wants to challenge the City Council and school board members up for re-election.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 31, 2009
Davidson GOP ousts Wamp, Haslam critic
The Davidson County Republican Party voted Tuesday to remove First Vice Chairman Matt Collins, a vocal critic of gubernatorial candidates U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., and Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, from his position on the party's executive committee.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 31, 2009
- Audio
Study: Local hiring a boon
Local businesses, on average, generate about 2 percent more in taxes for Hamilton County than out-of-town contractors hired to do the same work, according to an economic study released Friday.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 30, 2009
1 Comment
Local contractors generate 2 percent more in local taxes
Contracts awarded to local bidders generate 2 percent more in city and county tax revenues than contracts given to non-local contractors, according to a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga study released today.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 30, 2009
Moody’s upgrades outlook for Erlanger
Moody’s Investors Service has affirmed its bond rating for Erlanger Hospital and upgraded its future outlook for Chattanooga’s biggest hospital as it prepares to refinance $124.8 million of debt next month.
Posted: Wednesday - Oct. 28, 2009
1 Comment - Audio - Photo
Smart power connection
EPB will receive one of the largest federal grants of its kind in the country to help make Chattanooga a national leader in building a smarter and more efficient electric system.
Posted: Tuesday - Oct. 27, 2009
Chattanooga: EPB wins grant for smart meters
EPB will receive $111 million in federal stimulus funding to help deploy smart meters throughout its service territory.
Posted: Tuesday - Oct. 27, 2009
- Audio - Photo
Accelerated by stimulus
While most of its lawmakers didn’t vote for the stimulus package, Tennessee still is among the top states in jobs generated through stimulus-funded federal contracts, according to an early report on the program’s progress.
Posted: Tuesday - Oct. 27, 2009
- Audio
Catoosa prepares for 2010 census
RINGGOLD, Ga. — As the fastest-growing county in Northwest Georgia, Catoosa County could pick up more than 10,000 residents in next year’s census compared with the 2000 population count.
Posted: Monday - Oct. 26, 2009
EPB says digital services on target
In its first five weeks of residential service, EPB's fiber optic service attracted more than 1,000 subscribers.
Posted: Monday - Oct. 26, 2009
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City, county eye tax collection merger
As the city treasurer for 44 years, Carl Levi figured the county trustee couldn’t save the city any money collecting property taxes and delinquent taxes for Chattanooga.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 24, 2009
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With power sales down, TVA plots new strategy
When the Tennessee Valley Authority adopted its last strategic plan in the spring of 2008, agency directors wanted to build at least three more nuclear reactors and buy several more gas-fired generators by 2020 to keep pace with the growing demand for electricity.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 23, 2009
Job data gets brighter in latest count
Unemployment fell last month across the Chattanooga region as employment bounced back with the start of fall classes and some discouraged jobless workers dropped out of the labor market.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 23, 2009
Dakota wind sites help TVA go green
The Tennessee Valley Authority, created 76 years ago to harness the power of the Tennessee River, announced Thursday that it will use the wind to generate more of its power by 2012.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 22, 2009
Chattanooga’s jobless rate dips to 9 percent last month
Unemployment in metropolitan Chattanooga fell last month by 0.6 percent to its lowest level since April, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said today.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 22, 2009
TVA to buy wind power from Dakota suppliers
The Tennessee Valley Authority is turning to wind generators in the Dakotas to boost its renewable energy portfolio.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 22, 2009
- Audio
State falls in energy efficiency ratings
Georgia was listed among the worst in the nation for energy efficiency, while Tennesseans are turning greener, according to a study released Wednesday.
Posted: Wednesday - Oct. 21, 2009
2 Comments - Audio - Photo
Manufacturing makeover
When Phyllis Powell graduated from high school in Trenton, Ga., in 1976, she didn't have far to travel to land her first job.
Posted: Tuesday - Oct. 20, 2009
1 Comment - Photo
Electric rate drop 5th in ’09
As Chattanoogans shivered through near-freezing temperatures Monday, TVA offered another reprieve from last year’s record jump in electricity prices to help warm the pocketbooks of its customers.
Posted: Monday - Oct. 19, 2009
Tennessee: TVA to cut power rates another 1.5%
For the fifth time this year, the Tennessee Valley Authority will cut its electricity rates due to declining fuel costs.
Posted: Sunday - Oct. 18, 2009
1 Comment - Audio - Photo
Clocking time on the bench
As prosecutors scurry to complete plea agreements and set hearing dates for the last of the hundreds of criminal cases heard during the week, Judge Bob Moon complains that his staff is exhausted and already 10 minutes past the court’s normal noon closing time.
Posted: Sunday - Oct. 18, 2009
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Frenzied days spent in Sessions Court
Piles of arrest warrants lie on the assistant district attorneys’ table at 8:30 a.m. in General Sessions Court. Defendants, witnesses and friends in the foreground of the courtroom cram themselves into the churchlike pews. People in the large hallway outside are just trying to figure out where to go.
Posted: Sunday - Oct. 18, 2009
Mayor urges study of court consolidation
Before 1993, criminal cases in Hamilton County were heard in both Chattanooga City Court and the county's General Sessions Court.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 17, 2009
1 Comment
Tennessee has highest sales tax rate in U.S.
Shoppers in Tennessee pay the highest sales tax rate in the nation, the Tax Foundation said Friday.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 16, 2009
1 Comment
Tennesssee: State has highest sales tax rate in country, group says
Tennessee has the highest combined state and local sales tax rate in the nation, the Tax Foundation reported today.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 16, 2009
5 Comments - Photo
Neighbors balk at selling land next to ash ponds
BRIDGEPORT, Ala. — As Jere McCraw tends the family cemetery where six generations of his ancestors are buried, he looks warily at the ash storage ponds built only a few hundred yards away, next to TVA’s Widows Creek Fossil Plant.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 16, 2009
Reactor shield redesign ordered
The most popular model for the next generation of nuclear power plants in the United States will have to be redesigned or tested again to ensure greater strength in its shield building, federal regulators said Thursday.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 15, 2009
Tennessee jobless rate drops to 10.5 percent
Unemployment in Tennessee declined by two-tenths of a percent in September but remained above the U.S. average, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported today.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 15, 2009
Georgia jobless rate steady at 10.1 percent
Georgia’s 10.1 percent jobless rate held steady last month, the state Department of Labor reported today.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 15, 2009
State workers face premium increase
Tennessee state employees will pay an extra 6 percent for their health insurance in 2010, but the increase will be more than offset for most workers by two premium holidays.
Posted: Sunday - Oct. 11, 2009
Call for metro faces county skeptics
Although Hamilton County voters have rejected metropolitan government three times in the past half century, proponents of government consolidation insist that public support can be built for a merger of city and county governments.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 10, 2009
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Recession puts brake on energy costs
Diane Conrad drives at least 64 miles a day between her Whitwell, Tenn., home and her job in Hixson so she regularly checks gas prices to cut her travel costs.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 9, 2009
4 Comments
EPB expands its fiber-optics services area
Three weeks after launching its residential video, Internet and phone service, EPB announced Thursday it is extending its fiber-optic service to another 10,000 homes.
Posted: Thursday - Oct. 8, 2009
Tennessee: Knoxville area fails air pollution standard
Four East Tennessee counties around Knoxville failed to meet the new daily standard for fine particulates in the air, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today.
Posted: Wednesday - Oct. 7, 2009
- Audio
NRC hears differing views on 2nd Watts Bar unit
SWEETWATER, Tenn. -- Nearly four decades after the Tennessee Valley Authority started building its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, federal regulators began updating their environmental assessment of whether a second reactor still can be safely added here in the next three years.
Posted: Tuesday - Oct. 6, 2009
2 Comments
Tennessee: Watts Bar nuclear reactor too risky, critics say
Critics of TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant told regulators today that finishing another reactor is too risky and expensive.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 3, 2009
1 Comment - Audio
Home taxes in Tennessee half the national average
Property taxes in Tennessee are only about half the U.S. average and Georgia's rates are only about two-thirds as much, according to new government estimates.
Posted: Saturday - Oct. 3, 2009
Networking policies lacking at businesses
Many of the largest businesses and local governments in the Chattanooga area have no policy regarding what their employees say on social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but many are working on one.
Posted: Friday - Oct. 2, 2009
- Audio
Lock funding reaches crisis, Wamp says
The crumbling Chickamauga lock in the Tennessee River is in danger of closing in the next five years unless Congress finds a way to put more money into building its replacement, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said Thursday.
Posted: Tuesday - Sept. 29, 2009
1 Comment
Recession cuts pay
ROCK SPRING, Ga. — Friday was supposed to be a day off for the 107 full-time employees at Georgia’s Northwest Technical College in Walker County.
Posted: Monday - Sept. 28, 2009
Tennessee: New manager to head TVA's Kingston cleanup
An environmental manager from the Department of Energy has been hired to manage the TVA’s cleanup of the ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant.
Posted: Monday - Sept. 28, 2009
1 Comment
Nuclear whistleblower wins case with TVA contractor
A TVA contractor violated the law by firing a nuclear plant worker who complained about safety issues, a new ruling says.
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