Sunday Edition January 20, 2019 BARTOW COUNTY’S ONLY DAILY NEWSPAPER $1.50 GDOT eyeing Highway 41 improvements BY JAMES SWIFT 3 and Joe Frank Harris Parkway.) line traffic.” said. “During the peak hour at Zena [email protected] “At Collins Drive there were 56 While several factors play into the Drive, in particular, you’re spend- crashes in a five-year period,” high rate of traffic accidents at those ing over 300 seconds, potentially, The Georgia Department of Barry said. “At Zena Drive there two intersections — among others, to turn off the side street. So even Transportation (GDOT) is looking were 30 crashes identified … nine- Barry cited sight distance issues and if you’re wanting to turn right off at a proposal that would bring teen of those were angle crashes.” routine traffic traveling faster than the side street, if you get stuck be- major safety improvements to two The 2013-2017 study window the posted speed limit of 45 miles hind somebody who’s wanting to intersections along Highway 41 in for the two intersections included per hour — she said perhaps the turn left, you could be sitting there Cartersville. 20 crashes with injuries near biggest cause is the dearth of space for quite a long time.” GDOT District 6 Traffic Engineer Collins Drive and 15 crashes with for motorists attempting left and That’s a problem that Bartow Christina Barry presented the find- injuries near Zena Drive, including through turns off the side streets. County Transit Department Director ings of a road safety audit at a a fatality resulting from a right But that’s not just a public safety Weldon Dudley knows firsthand, Cartersville-Bartow Metropolitan turning vehicle hitting a pedestrian issue, Barry said — it’s also a considering his busses take residents Planning Organization meeting on in October 2014. major driver of congestion. up Zena Drive to the Bartow County Wednesday, which examined crash “Some of that can be caused by “The through maneuvers and the Environmental Health Department JAMES SWIFT/THE DAILY TRIBUNE NEWS The Georgia Department of Transportation is proposing patterns along the Collins Drive and the lack of acceptable gaps,” Barry left turn maneuvers at Collins building five days a week. intersection improvements that would eliminate left turns at Zena Zena Drive intersections on Highway said, “and just the conflicts be- Drive, Hickory Lane and Zena Drive and Collins Drive on Joe Frank Harris Parkway. 41 (alternately known as State Route tween the side streets and the main- Drive are all very, very low,” she SEE HWY 41, PAGE 5A Cartersville City Council approves $37M-plus in voestalpine pins lowered profit wastewater plant upgrades forecast on Bartow County plant BY JAMSES SWIFT [email protected] State-mandated improvements to the City of Cartersville’s waste- water plant won’t come cheap — indeed, the upgrades necessary to complete the nutrient removal project appear to approach $40 mil- lion. Members of the Cartersville City Council unanimously approved a $37,562,882.64 bid from Atlanta-based contractor Archer Western at Thursday evening’s meeting to upgrade the infrastructure at the James R. Stafford Water Pollution Control Plant off Walnut Grove Road. “This is a topic that we’ve been discussing for close to three years now, in various formats,” said City of Cartersville Water Department Director Bob Jones. “In March of last year, the city was issued a new wastewater discharge permit. In that permit were stricter dis- charge guidelines, and in order to meet those guidelines long term, we will have to undergo a fairly extensive construction project at the wastewater plant.” Originally constructed in the 1960s, the facility in West Cartersville can only treat “conventional pollutants,” as Jones ex- plained to The Daily Tribune News last June. “Phosphorous, we have no ability to treat, and really, that is what’s driving the cost and the complexity of this project,” he said. “In pre- vious expansions, all we were doing is adding on more of the equip- ment we already had. In this particular expansion, we are actually SEE COUNCIL, PAGE 2A JAMES SWIFT/THE DAILY TRIBUNE NEWS “We are currently facing challenges in the continuous expansion of our largest automotive plant in the United States in Cartersville,” a representative from voestalpine AG told The Daily Tribune News. “This has led to issues in the supply of our customers and impacts on earning due to external order relocations.” Manufacturer sees stocks slide amid production problems BY JAMES SWIFT over the last year. lenges in the continuous expan- sons for additional costs have pri- [email protected] According to voestalpine AG sion of our largest automotive marily been the processing of sev- Head of Investor Relations Peter plant in the United States in eral large orders within a very On Wednesday, voestalpine AG Fleischer, subpar production num- Cartersville,” a representative short time in a still very young or- JAMES SWIFT/THE DAILY TRIBUNE NEWS gave investors some discomfort- bers at the manufacturing facility from voestalpine AG told The ganization and a too ambitious The Cartersville City Council approved a $37.5 million bid for ing news — not only did the Linz, in White certainly played a part in Daily Tribune News in an email. ramp-up planning.” Atlanta-based contractor Archer Western to upgrade the city Austria-based manufacturer miss those reduced earning projections. “This has led to issues in the sup- But that’s not the only problem wastewater plant at Thursday evening’s meeting. its nine-month earning forecast by “This is due, on the one hand, to ply of our customers and impacts voestalpine is experiencing at its 187 million euros (equivalent to a significantly higher impact on on earning due to external order facility in Bartow County. Simply roughly $213 million), the interna- earning from the ramp-up of auto- relocations.” put, representatives of the com- tional steel company also an- motive activities in voestalpine The representative, however, pany said they just can’t find em- Bartow school board, nounced it was lowering its Automotive Components did not have a specific monetary ployees capable of meeting full-year profit forecast from Cartersville, USA,” a Jan. 16 let- estimate for how much delayed production demands. roughly 1 billion euros ($1.13 bil- ter to investors stated, “as well as production at the local plant has “An ongoing shortage of skilled staff participate in lion) to about $750 million euros related one-off effects from provi- impacted overall voestalpine rev- workers in the region has had an ($854.1 million.) sions due to external transfers of enue. impact on the fact that we have not Such marks the second time orders.” “Several production lines for been able to find and maintain training sessions voestalpine has lowered its profit The Daily Tribune News high-quality automotive products enough qualified personnel to forecast in the current fiscal year. reached out to company were ramped-up in parallel in the process these orders in time,” The BY DONNA HARRIS By Thursday, voestalpine shares spokesman Peter Felsbach, who last five years, due to persistent Daily Tribune News was told. [email protected] were down by as much as 8 per- deferred comments to strong demands of our cus- Bartow County Commissioner cent — a substantial decrease for voestalpine’s group communica- tomers,”The Daily Tribune News Steve Taylor said he hasn’t spoken Bartow County school officials have hit the ground running in a company that already saw its tions department. was told by a voestalpine repre- this new year. shares lose almost half their value “We are currently facing chal- sentative. “In retrospect, the rea- SEE VOESTALPINE, PAGE 5A Superintendent Dr. Phillip Page, all five school board members, Page’s executive cabinet and 17 of the 20 school system principals started 2019 by meeting Jan. 11 for a 2½-hour board of education retreat at the central office. “The purpose of the retreat was to share with our school board the district’s instructional focus over the next three years and the BHM receives grant to digitize records progress we have already seen in our schools,” Page said. Dr. Jasmine Kullar, a professional learning community associate BY DONNA HARRIS collection of county documents that include Gaines said. “Working with DLG on this proj- with Solution Tree and an assistant superintendent for the Cobb [email protected] topics such as guardianship (1850-1929), in- ect will help us make the historically rich col- County School District, led a session on professional learning com- dentures (1860-1929), lunacy (1866-1929), lection of documents available to historians, munities — groups of educators who meet regularly to share ex- The Digital Library of Georgia is making it pauperism (1866-1879) and land grants/deeds students, families and other researchers lo- pertise and work collaboratively to increase student achievement. easier for researchers and historians to find (1866-1929). cally and globally. With the growing interest “By giving building leaders in our schools the time and tools information on Bartow County’s history and The records were created by court officials in genealogy and family studies, these mate- they need to organize professional learning communities, we will past residents. to document legal proceedings and transac- rials may hold valuable information and con- see higher levels of teacher commitment and greater gains in stu- The DLG awarded one of its six competi- tions. nections for family trees or other scholarly dent achievement,” Page said. tive digitization service grants to the Bartow “We are thrilled to be one of the recipients endeavors.” History Museum at 4 E.