Blountville News

UPDATE: BRISTOL, Tenn. -- The driver of a bulldozer that smashed into a gas pipeline, sending natural gas shooting into the air just feet from Tennessee Route 126 between Bristol and Blountville on Friday, was nowhere to be found when emergency responders arrived.

Anyone wanting to run for a seat on the Sullivan County Commission or one of eight other locally elected offices can pick up a petition to get their name on the ballot starting today.

One at Knoxville, one at Kingsport draw raised eyebrows. Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 12:56 AM Two recent circumstances - one on the Republican side, one on the Democratic side - have crystallized skepticism concerning the value of straw votes, the kind usually taken at cattle-call receptions for candidates in this or that locality.

Gov. Phil Bredesen kicked off budget hearings today for a state spending plan that the Democrat said he anticipates will be the toughest to assemble since he came into office in 2003.

" Sen. Roy Herron decisively won the second Democratic straw poll in the race for Governor on Saturday.

NASHVILLE a ' Gov. Phil Bredesen and other elected officials are dedicating a new underground meeting hall at the governor's mansion in Nashville.

Sullivan County school officials could close Bristol's Akard Elementary before the next school year begins as part of a plan to pay back $15.4 million in bonds they'll use to renovate Ketron Intermediate School.

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. - It is 9 a.m. Wednesday, and in the next hour, one man must pick out a dozen dogs that won't live until lunchtime.

Authorities have upped the charges on a woman arrested Thursday after police stumbled upon a meth lab in her kitchen.

A Davidson County chancellor turned town a request to force state officials to move expeditiously toward implementing paper ballot voting systems across Tennessee by the 2010 general election as required by a 2008 state statute.

Nine of Sullivan County's 24 public elementary and middle schools scored a "C" average on an annual report card released Tuesday by the Tennessee Department of Education.

Several bottles of whiskey were indeed heisted from a Sullivan County school system warehouse during a recent break-in, but school officials deny the eight pornographic DVDs found along with them were ever in the building.

An internal report by Sullivan County schools officials explains where whiskey taken from a school system warehouse came from.

A former student of the Sullivan County school system is accused of breaking into an off-the-beaten path Department of Education warehouse and stealing, among other things, several bottles of liquor and $160 worth of pornographic DVDs.

Two minutes after midnight, the wee first minutes into Thursday. The phone rang.

Voter fraud in upper east Tennessee?! Wow. You expect the stories from Memphis or Shelby county.

BY MAC McLEAN BRISTOL HERALD COURIER BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. - Wanda Hooker's kitchen window made a loud sucking sound as two contractors checked it and the rest of her 37-year-old mobile home for leaks.

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey said here Friday that two-year colleges are a vital tool for the region's economic development.

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. - "I see Daddy!" squealed Isabella Davis, her face pressed up against a window at Tri-Cities Regional Airport.

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. - Dismayed by the Sullivan County Board of Education's decision against renewing its director of schools' contract, a county commissioner is looking to breathe new life into an old idea.