January is National Blood Donor Month
Blood Assurance is in need of O negative, B negative donations. Blood drives are scheduled for Friday, January 28th at the Family Medical Center from 8:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.; at the Smithville Senior Citizens Center at city hall from noon until 2:00 p.m..; and at DeKalb Community Hospital from 2:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.
As part of your new year’s resolution, Blood Assurance encourages area residents to consider giving the gift of life in 2011. According to America’s Blood Centers, if all blood donors gave blood one additional time each year, blood shortages would be a rare occurrence. The current average is two donations per year.
Blood Assurance is currently experiencing a shortage of type O negative and B negative blood donations.
The holidays and winter weather are just two factors that can affect the blood supply. Illnesses such as the flu can temporarily prevent regular donors from giving blood, while the holidays can cause a decrease in the number of blood drives held at schools and local businesses, particularly during inclement weather.
What remains constant is the need for blood. Blood Assurance is the only source of blood donations for more than 50 hospitals and healthcare facilities in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
For a list of area blood drives this month, please visit www.bloodassurance.org/blooddrives.
All donors will receive a complimentary snack and t-shirt. Visitors at any Blood Assurance location or blood drive in January can register to win a $500 grocery gift card to the store of their choice. Three winners will be selected at random.
For more information about donating blood, please visit www.bloodassurance.org.

Donny Green, County Executive Director of the DeKalb County Farm Service Agency, says the DeKalb FSA County Committee met in regular session on Tuesday, December 7 to canvass and tabulate the ballots received in the 2010 Local Administrative Area (LAA) # 3 County Committee Election. The deadline to return ballots was December 6.
Timmie Adcock was re-elected to serve as a member on the Committee representing LAA-3. His third and final term began January 1, 2011.
In addition, the Committee met on January 4, 2011 for its Organizational Meeting. The Committee selected Timmie Adcock to serve as Chairperson, Jack Campbell to serve as Vice-Chairperson, and Mary Sanders to serve as Member. The Committee meets on the 2nd. Tuesday of each month at the DeKalb County USDA Service Center located at 647 Bright Hill Rd.
Green says that the DeKalb FSA County Committee and office staff wishes to express their appreciation to voters in LAA-3 who participated in the election by voting and returning their ballots. “The local County Committees are a very important part of Farm Service Agency’s program delivery and administrative processes. I do not know of any other agency providing federal programs that can say that the delivery and decision making efforts are made on the local level by a farmer-elected committee,” added Green.
For more information about FSA’s County Committees or other program inquiries, call 597-8225 (extension 2) or come by the DeKalb County Farm Service Agency office at 647 Bright Hill Street in Smithville. You can also visit the agency’s web site at: www.fsa.usda.gov.

Local authorities were called to the residence of a well known elderly man Tuesday morning after he was found dead on his property in the Snow Hill area
Dead is 77 year old Price Harrison.
Central dispatch received a call at 11:38 a.m. of a man found deceased outside of his home. The body was apparently discovered by farm hands
At this time authorities do not know whether he died of injuries in a fall or due to natural causes, but the body has been sent to the state medical examiner for an autopsy to help determine the cause.of death.
The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department is being assisted in the case by the TBI

The DeKalb County Fire Department has compiled its 2010 Incident Response Summary.
The best news in this report is that DeKalb County did not record any fire-related deaths in 2010. Overall, 2010 fire incident responses in the county were down by 82 calls from 2009. In 2009, the department responded to a total of 474 fire incidents. The department responded to 392 fire incident responses in 2010. This count does not include the 408 rural medical first responder calls that county fire department personnel responded to.
With DeKalb County’s rural population growing at rates higher than the cities’ population growth within DeKalb County, the department continues to strive to prevent fires and fire related incidents by using prevention and educational measures. DeKalb County Fire Department’s Fire Prevention and Safety Officer, Lt. Brad Mullinax, says that preventing incidents is much more economical than responding to them.
The following is a breakdown of each type of fire incident response that the department responded to in 2010:
Incident Type:
Structure
64 (2009)
60 (2010)
Wildland/Grass/Debris:
73 (2009)
55 (2010)
Auto Wrecks:
151 (2009)
124 (2010)
Vehicle Fires:
36 (2009)
15 (2010)
Landing Zones:
20 (2009)
35 (2010)
Extrication/Entrapment:
25 (2009)
18 (2010)
Alarms:
64 (2009)
59 (2010)
Misc.:
41 (2009)
26 (2010)
TOTAL:
474 (2009)
392 (2010)

The Smithville aldermen have still not taken action on the future of the golf course.
During Monday night’s city council meeting, Alderman Steve White mentioned that the greens would be re-seeded and fertilized once the weather warms up. “The seeding and fertilizing of the greens hasn’t been done yet. They’re waiting on some warmer days in a row. Otherwise if they put the seed down it wouldn’t germinate properly so it would be just wasted money if we did it right now, until we have a few 40 to 50 degree days in a row.”

White also made a motion that bids be advertised once specs are drawn up on repairs and maintenance of the municipal swimming pool. The board approved White’s motion. “I met with one of the guys who has done work on the pool in the past. With it (pool) empty we needed to see how bad it was. He looked at it. I think what we need to do is go ahead and advertise and get some bids in that way we can get a jump on the pool because it will take quite a bit of time for them to finish it. There’s quite a few cracks (in the pool). There are some softer spots or leaks and some structure cracks. All of those have to be repaired and then of course it’ll need the gel coating. That should hold it for approximately ten years”, said White.
Alderman Aaron Meeks also mentioned that some maintenance work will have to be done soon on the clubhouse, but no action was taken on that Monday night. “From the visit we made to the golf course, there’s going to be some repairs that’s going to be required on the club house. It’s not been maintained through neglect or whatever, I don’t know the reason and I wouldn’t begin to establish a reason or cause but there’s going to have to be some renovations and improvements made to the clubhouse at some point in time too”, said Meeks.
With no tenant or anyone to manage it, the municipal golf course remains closed for now.
Meanwhile, the aldermen approved the list of officers and members of the Smithville Volunteer Fire Department. Chief Charlie Parker included the request in his monthly report to the board. Parker said the department held it’s election of officers about an hour before the meeting of the mayor and aldermen Monday night. The following officers and members were approved by the department: Charlie Parker-Chief, Hoyte Hale-Deputy Chief, Jeff Wright-Captain and Training Officer, Danny Poss- Lieutenant, Jon Poss-Lieutenant, Donnie Cantrell-Lieutenant, Anthony Wright-Lieutenant and firefighters Wink Brown, Charles Young, Wallace Caldwell, Gary Johnson, Randall Hunt, Stephanie Wright, Glen Lattimore, Ronald Whitaker, Patrick Edge, and Greg Bess- Photographer.
Chief Parker added that “December starts a new year for the fire department. We had a busy December with a total of seven alarm calls, three motor vehicle accidents, eight landing zones, and two structure fires.”
Police Chief Randy Caplinger, Bobby Pinegar of the sewer plant and Public Works Director Kevin Robinson all gave their monthly reports to the mayor and aldermen.
Concerned citizen Gary Durham addressed the mayor and aldermen briefly asking them to again consider taking action to update or develop a new twenty year plan setting goals to meet future needs. Durham said he had surveyed 44 city residents and all had expressed support for a twenty year plan. Durham added that “it’s up to you to do what the people want, or what you want.” Mayor Taft Hendrixson said the issue will be referred to the city planning commission which meets the first Thursday night of each month.
Unless there is a need for a special meeting, the mayor and aldermen will not convene again in regular session until Monday, February 7th at 7:00 p.m. There will be no meeting on Monday, January 17th due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday.