Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

By Austin Bogues The Virginia Gazette

5:00 p.m. EST, December 26, 2014

WILLIAMSBURG Shara Ware grew up spending summers in the pest control business. Starting in high school she helped in the office. And after going to college she even pitched in to help with removals.

"I'm certified. I've been under houses. I learned it from the ground up," she said with a laugh. Her parents, John and Sonia James, have been running James Pest Control since 1967.

The company, which employs nine people, has serviced different locations in the greater Williamsburg area, eliminating pests like ants, fleas, ticks, rodents and all other types of creatures that creep, crawl and frighten the squeamish.

One of Ware's scariest moments was when in the early '90s the company removed bats from an old church. "It looked like a wall of black except for it was moving," she recalled.

"It was amazing but scary at the same time." Through an intricate process, workers located to entry and exit points and sealed them each evening as the bats went out to hunt.

Now, Ware serves as vice president of the company her parents founded.

Through the years, the business has changed slightly. The majority of calls these days are for ant and termite damage, Ware said. There has also been an increased focus on doing pest removal in ways that are more environmentally friendly.

"I think we try to cater to the customer, and we work with their schedule," Ware said. "If that means 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, then that's what we'll do," she said.

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James Pest Control takes fight to creepy crawlers

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VOL. 8 | NO. 1 | Saturday, December 27, 2014

A company affiliated with Robert F. Fogelman II has filed a loan on a key piece of East Memphis property.

Crown Centre LLC filed a $6.1 million loan with Financial Federal Bank for the old Cozymels Mexican Grill location at 6450 Poplar Ave. near International Papers campus in East Memphis, according to a Dec. 17 deed of trust.

The Shelby County Assessor of Propertys 2014 appraisal for the property is $1.9 million.

The old Cozymels restaurant was razed in 2013. A 2012 plan approved by the Land Use Control Board said Fogelman, who is listed as manager of Crown Centre LLC in the deed of trust, was seeking to develop a three-story mixed-use building with retail on the ground floor and office space on the upper floors, but several sources have indicated over the last year that the project could be shifting in focus to a more retail-oriented development.

Fogelman did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Anderson has ordered three tax preparers with ties to the Mo Money tax refund scandal from working as tax preparers or having anything to do with the preparation and filing of federal tax returns in any way.

Anderson approved the civil injuction Monday, Dec. 22, against Shandon Allen, Shewanda Hamilton and Tabitha Tunstall based on a request by U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton.

Allen, Hamilton and Tunstall had each managed locations of the Mo Money tax businesses before a 2013 federal court action alleging widespread fraud in the preparation of the tax forms and handling of the refunds led to a court order banning the compnay and its owners from tax preparation.

The three defendants have 15 days from the court order to provide the court a list with contact information of anyone for whom they and their companies prepared federal tax returns from the 2008 tax year to the present. They also have 15 days to provide the court with a list of all employees, independent contractors, managers and others who worked for them in any way.

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TruGreen Donates $125,000 Through Lawn Stars

LANCASTER, S.C. Two Fort Lawn people died Saturday morning in a fatal accident in Lancaster, but a child survived the wreck, authorities said.

The crash was reported shortly before 10:45 a.m. on Riverside Road, according to S.C. Highway Patrol Lance Cpl. Tony Keller.

A 20-year-old woman was driving a 2007 Buick heading north on Riverside Road when her vehicle ran off the right side of the road and overturned, Keller said. The driver was partially ejected from the vehicle.

She and a 22-year-old man sitting in the passenger seat were pronounced dead on the scene, Keller said. Emergency responders had to free him from the wreckage, authorities said.

A 2-year-old boy was in a child seat in the vehicle's backseat, he said. The child was taken to Spring Memorial for treatment.

Neither victim was wearing a seatbelt, authorities said.

The names of the victims have not been released.

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2 killed in Lancaster County wreck

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From resident, to voter, to volunteer, to activist grass-roots energy surged in 2014, changing the local political landscape for a long time to come.

Rumbles began early in 2014 as the Denton Drilling Advisory Group launched a petition drive that would eventually bring about the first ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state.

People registered to vote in large numbers, showed up at the polls to cast their ballots and weighed in other city matters, large and small. Thousands signed another petition, and thousands more voted, to end the citys prohibition on liquor sales. A big public-private partnership unraveled as community support for a new convention center and hotel plummeted. Public opinion pushed both an obscure property maintenance rule for flag displays and the citys once-perfunctory legislative agenda back to the drawing board to better reflect local priorities.

Denton became the first Texas city to ban hydraulic fracturing after a citizen-driven proposition cruised to a landslide victory at the polls in November.

Although voter turnout statewide was thought to be the lowest in the nation, local turnout was higher than average for a gubernatorial election. Thousands of people registered to vote in Denton. Although not all those newbies cast ballots, the city saw more voters make their choice in the fracking ban than in any other municipal issue in recent history.

Dozens of cities in New York and elsewhere have banned fracking, but Texas is oil and gas country. So Dentons proposition over the rights of a Texas city to police what happens within its borders pushed the local battle into the national spotlight.

The campaign was the most expensive in the citys history, by far. Denton Taxpayers for a Strong Economy, which opposed the ban, far outraised and outspent Pass the Ban in its Frack-Free Denton campaign.

Denton Taxpayers pulled in close to $700,000 through Oct. 25, the latest campaign finance reporting date, a figure nearly 10 times the $75,000 raised by Pass the Ban. Chevron and Occidental Petroleum contributed $95,000 to defeat the ban even though neither operates any gas wells in Denton. EnerVest, XTO Energy and Devon Energy, which do have wells in Denton, all made six-figure donations that totaled more than $540,000.

Final campaign finance reports are due in the city secretarys office next month.

Denton Taxpayers sent out several mailers and had ads running in print, broadcast and social media, many of them with an image of a pink piggy bank being smashed by a gavel, in the final days before the election. The group also secured testimonials from former Texas Womans University chancellor Ann Stuart and former mayor Perry McNeill as well as support from the North Texas State Fair Association, the Denton Chamber of Commerce and the Denton County Republican Party, which bought its own ads opposing the ban.

Excerpt from:
Year in review: Spurred to action

Weeks after his team took Super Bowl 43, head coach Mike Tomlin was laying the groundwork for the next great generation of Pittsburgh Steelers.

As the league's landscape continued to evolve, so was the need for Tomlin's Steelers to follow suit.

The NFL was different game in 2009 than it was when former head coach Bill Cowher's Steelers won Super Bowl 40 in early 2006. Still, today, the NFL is contrasting to the year Tomlin's squad achieved a Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl 43 in early 2009.

Today's NFL is about creating matchup disasters with subpackages. For better or worse, it's become a weekly shootout.

A rebuild for Pittsburgh seemed imminent and necessary during that 2009 offseason. Even as the team would go to the Super Bowl the following season (2010), aging veterans on both sides of the ball like Hines Ward, Aaron Smith and Casey Hampton to name a few, the core of the Steelers for three Super Bowl appearances in six years, would eventually have to be replaced.

Mike Tomlin led his team to a Super Bowl 43 win in just his second season as head coach.

So, what did Tomlin desire for his offense? Caught in the "Tomlinisms" and coach talk often associated with a typical press conference during the 2009 season, he laid a few key quotes that were buried as the years went by.

"You study a team like New England, and they walk into a stadium offensively, and week to week they can be whatever they choose to be,"Tomlin told Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a Sept. 23, 2009 article. "They can beat you in three wides, four wides, three tight ends, and it makes them very difficult to prepare for and ultimately beat."

Flash to today, the team is earning high praise on the offensive side of the ball, where it seems like the long turnover of a championship-caliber team may finally be bearing fruit. That after two, long torturous seasons of...8-8 football. Oh, Pittsburgh fans, why must we bear such pain?

Offensively, the Steelers are well on their way to becoming that ideal image, that Patriots image Tomlin swooned over in 2009. The 2014 version is executing with the ball in a variety of ways, able to attack teams with a devastating power counter run game or with a record-breaking aerial assault. Or, in many cases, both at the same time.

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Mike Tomlin's Pittsburgh Steelers Offense Takes New England Patriots' Mentality

Colby Sue Weathers: her mother had asked a local gunshop not to sell her the weapon she used to kill her father.

Lets say your mental landscape is similar to that of Colby Sue Weathers back in 2012: suicidal, homicidal, paranoid, schizophrenic. Oh, and with a drug and alcohol problem. You are too disabled by mental illness - schizophrenia was diagnosed in 2011 - and recurring hospitalisations to work. You are not great about maintaining your psychotropic drug regimen, which you administer inconsistently and sometimes to woozy excess. And you have an occasional hankering, occasionally satisfied, to consume a bottle of spirits. In other words, your life is utterly out of control.

One trouble you probably dont have - provided you live in the United States - is gaining access to a lethal firearm. Thanks in part to the advocacy of the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups, and in part to the commitment of politicians, you can buy a gun and kill someone, yourself included, almost entirely free of obstacles. In many cases, you can do so completely legally. Because in practice, the US gun market generally does not discriminate against a wide array of pre-existing conditions, including madness.

There are no thorough background checks to determine whether you are mentally unhinged and a danger to yourself or others. No waiting periods to give the evil voices echoing inside your head time to decamp. No opportunities for family or friends or public safety officials to intervene in the firearm transaction. No meaningful commercial distinctions made between a skilled hunter eager for the approach of deer season and a dangerous psychotic with visions of blood.

Last week, Janet Delana filed a negligence suit against Odessa Gun & Pawn shop in Odessa, Missouri. In May 2012, Odessa sold Delanas daughter - Colby Sue Weathers - a Hi-Point .40 calibre semi-automatic pistol. According to the suit, Weathers, who was 38 at the time, had intended to shoot herself. She sat with the gun for an hour or so before abandoning her goal and informing her parents, who promptly got rid of the gun.

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A few weeks later, in late June, the voices in Weatherss head told her to buy another gun and kill herself. Having observed her daughters agitation, Delana said she called Odessa Gun & Pawn on June 25, and alerted an employee to her daughters chronic mental illness and current suicidal state. She asked that the shop refrain from selling Weathers a gun. Two days later, Weathers turned up at Odessa and bought another Hi-Point pistol. Weathers drove home, loaded two bullets and shot her father. Dad is dead, she texted her mother. He was.

The lawsuit, which was filed by lawyers for the Brady Centre to Prevent Gun Violence, is an uphill challenge'', said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of the excellent book, Gun Fight, via email. Under the nations gun laws, the dealer was allowed to sell to someone without a criminal or mental illness record. Its usually hard to pin responsibility for someones bad acts on a commercial establishment that merely supplied the equipment.

Supplying the equipment is what the nations 140,000 federally licensed firearms dealers do for a living. And there is absolutely nothing in federal law requiring them to sell their wares in a manner that is socially responsible, discerning or protective of human life. Kevin Jamison, the lawyer for Odessa, told me, The store went through all the proper legal procedures.

And there you have the nub of the problem. The lawsuit doesnt even claim that Odessa violated the law. Presumably, Weathers passed an instant background check before killing her father. A 2011 report by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg, revealed that almost half the states had submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the federal background check database. Cases of substance abuse were also hugely underreported. And merely being crazy isnt sufficient for inclusion in the database, anyway. You have to be certified crazy. As the Los Angeles Times reported in September after a mass shooting at Washingtons Naval Yard, Most mentally ill people - including Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard shooter who apparently showed signs of psychosis - never get treatment or arent recognized as being in crisis.

Continued here:
Colby Sue Weathers: homicidal, psychotic and legally sold a gun