Former Mayor Jakie West Awarded for Role in Bringing CCA to Trousdale County
Dec 8 2014
Republished from the Macon County Chronicle
Jakie West, previous Trousdale County Mayor and member of the Tennessee Risk Management Trust where he represented Hartsville/Trousdale County's Metropolitan Government, is awarded for his dedication and contributions to the county and trust. During Jakie's term in office he played a very important part in bringing CCA to Trousdale County. He was involved in the negotiations from the beginning of his term and, as the end of his term neared, he had the honor and reward of signing a contract with the State of Tennessee that will result in brining 300-400 jobs to Trousdale County. As a member of the 4-Lake Board, Jakie was also instrumental in bringing ARC Automotive and 66 jobs to the Powercom Industrial Park. In the long run, this will be one of his greatest contributions to the future of Trousdale County.
It is hard to top something that big, but he made many more contributions that were just as important in their own way. During his term, the County was awarded over $4.1 million dollars in grants which provided funding for cleanup of the dilapidated property on Broadway and Dixie Streets, improved water service, a new fire hall, a new community center/disaster relief building, an upgraded fuel management system for county vehicles, a communications tower for outlying areas of the county, a tornado early warning siren, and commercial brush chipper for clean-up in disaster situations. While some of these projects are still in progress, Jakie was on the "ground floor" as these projects started up.
Jakie also oversaw improvements to Trousdale's parks with a new basketball court, re-surfacing of the tennis courts, improvements to the Little League fields and the installation of monitoring cameras to improve safety at the park
Jakie also served as Trustee for TNRMT. He was a major contributor to improving the Trusts services to counties and schools throughout the State of Tennessee.