This Week in Citizen-Times History (June 3, 2025)

The June 3, 1999 edition of The Citizen-Times saw the celebration of the graduation of the Class of 1999, with a front cover picture of students throwing their hats into the air.

Additionally, it was announced that the Scottsville Arts Council were set to hold a Fine Arts Day Camp at the Arts on Main Pavilion and the Scottsville Baptist Church, which ran from June 21 through June 25 that year.

Classes were limited to the first 16 students that applied, with a sign-up fee of $15, with the prerequisite that students have completed kindergarten through fifth grade.

Additionally, Tri-County assured readers they were prepared for whatever would come regarding the infamous Y2K bug, which was the fear that during the transition from the year 1999 to 2000, computer systems would break down, and potentially plunge the world into chaos, due to an error with how dates were stored.

David M. Callis, the executive vice president for Tri-County Electric Corporation, assured customers that the utility had been working diligently to address issues surrounding this concern, while urging that the people that were predicting massive blackouts were not involved in the utility industry, but were selling books on how to survive without electricity.

“That’s what we call a conflict of interest,” Callis said in an article. “(…) The people that are predicting catastrophes have a financial interest in you believing them. They want to sell you generators, freeze-dried food, water, weapons and even bomb shelters; they want to scare you into spending money on their products.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, announced that they would spend over $40 million on their Y2K readiness.

Besides the date changing, nothing significant happened on January 1, 2000.

The Citizen-Times, consolidated of The Citizen (1908) and Allen County Times (1890) on Oct. 10, 1918, has proudly served Scottsville and Allen County for 135 years.