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BY NIC MILLER
STAR STAFF
nic.miller@elizabethton.com

Carter County Mayor Patty Woodby was surprised when the time came to honor the Woman of the Year award.

Woodby had just finished speaking with members of the Business and Professional Women of Elizabethton about initiatives she is leading in the county when the time came to present the award. And she was surprised when she was named recipient.

“Receiving an award like this means so much to me, and just know that we are not stopping here,” Woodby said. “There is more work to be done within the community and we are going to get it done together.”

Woodby, the first female to hold the mayor position, shared three initiatives with the group during her talk:  The expansion of the Tweetsie Trail which focuses on tourism; a program to help recovered drug addicts become involved in the workforce which focuses on the opioid problem within the area; and an initiative to provide students in the community with a state of the art CTE center.

“I enjoy being involved and volunteering within the community and one of my passions is education, which is the reason for the initiative to transform the Workforce development complex in Stoney Creek into a centralized CTE educational hub that will involve Carter County Schools, Northeast State, and TCAT,” she said.

Woodby continued, “Another initiative in the works focuses on the Tweetsie Trail and an expansion project we are working on in the Hampton area. We went and presented the idea to Johnson City last week and they loved it, so that is another thing we are proud of.”

President Amber Farley and Second Vice President Robin McKamey presented Woodby with a plaque honoring her as the Woman of the Year.

“We are honored to present this plaque to Mayor Woodby due to her continued service to the community as Carter County mayor,” McKamey said.