Seems these folks at city council had some legitimate complaints.

read here

Police draw fire - The News Observer - News

...and then back to my original argument. Why does a town of 600 ppl need four full time police officers? Who is paying for it?

I think we need to get TRU TV to come to Copperhill and film an episode of their show "Speeders" (click to see info.) - where they show all the excuses people give for speeding in different towns all over the country.. people complaining about "speed traps", etc. etc. They could just come film the next Copperhill City Council meeting.

I'm getting tired of the City wasting its time dealing with this (non)issue. Instead of having a city council b-t-h session every few months where NOTHING productive gets done and wasting valuable time, why dosent the council set a productive agenda (which the mayor needs to do), and then allow public comment ONLY for issues on the council's agenda and then move on with the city's business - instead of talking time and time and time again about the same issues that don't mean squat, why not work on some of the real issues that the city needs to deal with - how's this for starters.. take a clue and start running the place halfway professionally, instead of like a disfunctional Mayberry. Here's a few points for starters instead of constant griping of the police doing their job. .

1) Developing a economic development to bring more business and progress to town - encourage business to come to town and help the businesses in town be more successful
2) Work with the two tourist trains coming into town to make the destination more appealing to tourists and visitors (hint - this will be the largest single source of economic development for Copperhill/McCaysville and the surrounding area going forward.) - does anyone care about making life on town better for themselves or their families? The town should be bending over backward to do anything possible to attract more people (and their money) into town - why not develop a plan to build a riverwalk, build a great train depot on the site of the old railyard, present the history of the the mining and the town or some other things like that? There's no shortage of things that the city leadership could be PROACTIVELY doing, rather than just waiting for people to show up at the next City Council meeting to complain about the police yet again.
3) Develop a plan to deal with repairing the town infrastructure - sewer lines are decaying and roads and sidewalks need repair - the mayor and council need to develop a plan to raise revenue to fund these things (and that AINT goning to come from the police department, regardless of what some may say). Why not start constructivelly talking with surrounding towns and hire a shared grant writer to bring more money into town? These things can be done, if someone would set an agenda and work toward it consistently.

Police write tickets in towns all across the USA - so what? For some reason, certain people in Copperhill seem to think that they are in their own little bananna republic where the laws should revolve around them and their "kin"... why should Copperhill be any different from anywhere else in the USA? It's time the town grows up and people start to realize that they are part of the greater world and not still in the "Alternate universe of Copperhill" - bring some much overdue HONEST and PROFESSIONAL law enforcement presence to the region - its been lacking for the past 50+ years and its about d--n time it got here - for some peoples information - traffic enforcement can also help deter drug activity, thefts, and keep other criminals away from town if they know that there's a chance they will be stopped by the police when traveling through the area - sounds good to me.. If you are someone with nothing to hide, who cares if there's a visible police presence? Too bad the Copperhill police didn't stop Mr. Hilton, who frequently drove through the area and then brutally murdered Meridith Emerson last month after abducting her from Vogel State Park near Blairsville. Maybe if he had been stopped for a traffic violation such as exceeding the speed limit, some cop would have detected something suspicious about him and probed deeper and prevented the eventual brutal murder of a young woman. With people such as him driving through town on Highway 68, its probably good someone is keeping an eye on things. How many more of his type are out there running around here mixed in with the honest citizens? Apparently he used an elderly couples' ATM card at the bank in Ducktown after he murdered them in N. Carolina. He probably drove through Copperhill who knows how many times while on his various murder and crime sprees. Get it?

Also seems like the News Observer would have better things to write on than this junk. All they need to do is recycle the articles about every year and they would never have to write another one. Of course, the News Observer's editorial position on most issues is pretty much a joke anyway... They love to pander to those with the xenophobic "local" point of view and those who want to the region to be stuck in an underachiving, backward mentality. The region deserves a better newspaper