AIDT Leaves Shoals/Your Deputies at Work

Alabama Industrial Training Development, or AIDT, was established over 40 years ago as part of the network of community colleges. Aside from four regional centers, the AIDT has offices on all community college campuses. The office at NWSCC in Muscle Shoals remains open and should serve the Shoals as long as the community college system remains funded by the state. Just what is the mission of the AIDT? In their own words:

AIDT, an institution of the Alabama Community College System, encourages economic development through job-specific training. Training services are offered in many areas, at no cost, to new and expanding businesses throughout the State.

Certainly this is a worthwhile endeavor; however, many of us had never heard of this program until the advent of the National Alabama rail car plant in Barton. Apparently it's not unusual for the AIDT to open satellite offices in areas where large new industrial development is taking place.

That is exactly what AIDT did upon the announcement that the long awaited rail car plant was actually locating in Colbert County. The AIDT opened a centrally located office at 737 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals in order to evaluate and recruit prospective workers, specifically welders, for National Alabama.

Now the office is closed. Signs indicate the unit is for rent. Apparently there is no longer a need for recruiting and training those 1800 employees for National Alabama. Those 70 rail cars a day that were to have been produced since January 2009? Are these even still spoken of, or did everything disappear with Alabama's answer to the Wizard of Oz Greg Aziz?

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Yesterday we mentioned the dearth of police officers in Cherokee forcing the citizenry to rely on Colbert County deputies. A reader wrote of her experience during a possible break-in:

Forget about the deputies showing up. A friend called 911 as her ex was threatening her and trying to break in her house. They told her it would be a couple of hours before they could come.

One day my alarm company called me at (work) and said they had called the Sheriff’s department about a possible break in. I finished what I was doing and drove the 30 min drive to south of Tuscumbia.

When I got home no one was there. I waited about 15 more minutes and walked around the house checking all the windows and doors. Everything seemed ok. I opened the door and grabbed a butcher knife in the kitchen and walked through the house, everything ok, so I called them and said that my alarm company had called them and I was at home and everything was ok. They said thank you. I could have been the burglar calling them.


Some recently read food for thought (tongue in cheek style): There's no longer any such thing as sin, just mistakes, and we are not responsible even for them.

Shoalanda