The 51st annual Paulding County Chamber of Commerce celebration last night honored four county residents before passing the microphone to keynote speaker Neal Boortz.

The event at the Paulding County Senior Community Center included the award for Business of the Year, which was given to Little Caesar’s franchise owners Gerry and Lynn Barr of Paulding County.

Outgoing chamber board chair-man Jim Ashworth said the busi-ness was chosen because it has contributed to the growth of the county.

The franchise has three locations in the county and employs 70 peo-ple, while also providing support to the community through various charity events such as March Against Meth, River of Life and Relay for Life, among others.

“Little Caesar’s, as a corpora-tion, is very community minded,” Lynn Barr said in accepting the award with her husband. “I hope that we have demonstrated it.”

The Citizen of the Year was awarded to Brian Stover.

Jim Ashworth, reading from a nomination for Stover, said he is “one who gives with a servant’s heart,” through his participation with numerous charities and chari-table events.

Stover is active in the Rotary Club of Paulding County, The Family Alliance of Paulding, McKenna Farms and other local organizations.

“I do appreciate it,” he said of the award. “I’ve had a lot of help through the times.”

Ambassador of the Year, which honors volunteers within the mar-keting arm of the chamber, was given to Sara Magnusson, a Re-gions Bank employee since 1999. Ashworth said Magnusson has been very dedicated to her work with the chamber.

Boortz, a longtime Atlanta-area radio talk show host who is now nationally syndicated, took to the stage immediately after the awards and proclaimed his goal for the evening was to offend everyone in the room.

Over the course of more than an hour, Boortz picked apart the recent State of the Union address given by President Barack Obama.

He debunked Obama’s claim that over the last 22 months 3 million jobs have been created — saying it was only 2.2 million jobs and in the same time period 5 million were lost.

The labor force has shrunk, he added, and government spending is at “an all-time high.”

“Why is illegal immigration down?” Boortz asked when refer-ring to Obama’s claim. “Because the Obama economy is so bad, even Mexicans don’t want to come here to work.”

Boortz said re-electing Obama would be akin to “strapping an economic suicide vest on.”

As far as who Boortz sees fit as the next president, he said he doesn’t care as long as the nation selects a candidate who can beat Obama.