...because the more he says the WORSE he looks!

The latest from Blount Mayor Jerry Cunningham responding to the ethics complaint against him:

"Not just to get it resolved, but to save the expense and keep the cave people, the citizens against virtually everything, from fussing about whoever (reviews the complaint)," he said. "Sometime before I retire, I hope I hear one of the cave people say one good thing about Blount County. Just one."

Here's a great idea, Jerry. Do the ENTIRE county a favor and retire now. Your credibility is shot. Seriously, even fellow lawyers are mortified at the sheer idiocy that comes out of Cunningham's mouth.

Just received this email from the secretary of the GMAC.

"The GMAC members are planning to have a public meeting at the Library on March 3rd at 6:30pm to present our findings to the public and would like to encourage each of you to attend for information prior to our reporting to you at your work session in March. We will cover things in much more detail at the Library because we will have more time." -J.C. Franklin, Secretary

Put on your calendars!

If I had any faith in county government, it would definitely have been shaken by this article:

A life left in ashes: Woman loses home, faith in government after fire

The county burned this woman's house and business down (an approximately $230K value)and will only reimburse her $100K. How is this protective of her constitutional right to seek full remedy? Can the government really come in, burn you out, and then reimburse you only a small percentage of your loss?

In January, Ridings was notified that due to the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act, which caps property damage claims at $100,000, she would only receive $100,000 from the county for her home.

Nevermind that she had received two earlier offers of more than $100K. But:

Stallions (who heads up the county Risk Management Dept.) also said he was advised by attorneys not to discuss the two prior offers made to Ridings that exceeded the $100,000 cap.

Alrighty, then. Just so long as we don't talk about it.

Until recently, Ridings did not have an attorney, but she has now retained Costner & Greene of Maryville.

You go, girl. A brief Google session revealed that a number of other states have ruled that these caps are unconstitutional.

It's time for Blount County Commission to ensure the safety of citizens who attend and wish to speak at commission meetings. As more is revealed about the threat by Sheriff Berrong against an elderly citizen at last week's commission meeting, ALL should be calling upon the Commission Chair to take action. See the entry at: Link... It appears the blogger interviewed the elderly man about the threats. Chairman Ramsey, and other commissioners should contact this man for a full accounting of what he was forced to endure.
Commission must go on the record, that citizens are welcome in the "publicly-funded" county courthouse for all public meetings without fear of being threatened, harassed, or followed home by marked, or unmarked sheriff's vehicles. Chairman Ramsey, with the backing of EVERY commissioner, needs to show leadership and put Berrong on notice that this WILL NOT be tolerated. Berrong does not run this county, NOR does he run the commission meetings.
Furthermore, citizens must remember THEY PAY BERRONG'S SALARY! If he, or his thugs threaten, follow, or in ANY WAY attempt to intimidate, or harass, REPORT THEM! Contact the Tennessee State Police AND the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and file an OFFICIAL report.
Perhaps it's also time for Ramsey to seek legal guidance on what needs to be done about this. It's gone on for too long. It's frightening to think Berrong has repeatedly pulled these tactics on people attending public meetings and to date, NOTHING has been done about it.
Heads up, Commission and Chairman Ramsey: Get control of the courthouse, and if the sheriff can't conduct himself professionally, kick his can out of there!

Change the name of the lawsuit in this story, and this could be just about any story to come out of this particular courtroom in recent time: (Link...)

Is there any way to determine what the average length of a court case is in this division of Blount County Courts compared to a similar division in a county of the same size? Anecdotally, it just seems like a quagmire in there.

It’s been a tough battle for Satterfield — with dismissals, appeals and reversals — that has dragged on in the legal system for more than four years.

I guess noone ever said Lady Justice was swift.

Sadly, in this case, the plaintiff actually died (in 2005) before the matter could be decided, and the judge dismissed the case after her death (not because she died, apparently). Fortunately for her father, carrying on the lawsuit in her name, there's an Appeals Court:

Blount County Circuit Court Judge W. Dale Young dismissed the suit in March 2006, but Satterfield’s attorneys immediately filed an appeal. In April 2007, the Tennessee Court of Appeals reversed Young’s decision, reinstated the lawsuit and charged ALCOA with the cost of the appeal.

Link...

Did anyone watch the Republican YouTube debate? Mitt Romney basically buried himself. He might be a nice guy, but he can't answer a question for squat. I almost felt sorry for him he sputtered around so poorly. Rudy G. handled it fairly well as did Huckabee who probably had the best one-liner of the night. Other observations from the peanut gallery?

This came across my email this morning: The Blount County Planning Commission will hold a called meeting on November 27, 2007 at 5:30 P.M. in the Blount County Courthouse Room 430. The purpose of the meeting is: continue revision of the Policies Plan and other plans for the County.

Copies of the Policies Plan and other plans and various analyses may be viewed at Link... under the Plans section.

Note: If you wanted to provide input, Chairman Scully said last time that if they allowed it, they'd be there all night. So, they didn't allow public input. Unless they do tonight's meeting differently, you'll have to think up a different way of giving your thoughts toward this important planning process.

I am curious, I know curiosity killed the cat.

What if anything is the Local Government for Blount County doing right?

Thanks!

Tomorrow's 5:30 meeting of the Planning Commission includes in its agenda a section on Long Range Planning. Three really important items stand out:

Here are the links to the supporting documents, the first being the agenda:

a - agenda for November 20, 2007
b - memo on amendments to subdivision regulations public h…
c - memo on rezoning public hearing for 11-20-07
d - memo on plat reviews for 11-20-07 _minus attachments_
e - memo on long range agenda items for 11-20-07 _minus en…

Might be a good meeting to attend, if you are interested in better understanding the process of how regulations are created. (And if your turkey is thawed.)

Sheriff and Drug Task Force are in the news again. See this link to WBIR.com : Link...

Sure seems strange the deputy would resign just a couple weeks before her "colleagues" arrest her. Thoughts?

The commission seating is in a semi-circle. The commission chair's section (where he sits with Roy Crawford) is in the middle and at a height head and shoulders above the rest. Presumably to allow him to see all the commissioners when they vote, although there is a handy-dandy computer system that shows when someone hits their little game-showesque button instead of raising their hand. I guess this chairman's structure obstructs a few of the commissioners to the immediate left and right of him from seeing each other. I'm sure this is inconvenient and it evidently use to encourage misbehavior from a few of the more juvenile commissioners that were on the audience's lefthand side during the last term.

However, I'm not sure it is worth it to me, Joe Q. Citizen, to pay $5,950 to cure the inconvenience caused by the original design. It was part of a courthouse redesign spearheaded by then-Chairman Steve Samples not all that long ago.

The county commission will vote on a measure to adopt design and lighting standards within the Zoning Regulations at their meeting tomorrow night at 7 p.m. You can find the proposed changes on the agenda here, starting on page 77: Link... I'll also paste them below.

What do you think of them? I'd especially like to hear the opinions of those of you who keep up with the Dark Skies Initiative and those of you who drive Hwy 411S. Are these regulations sufficient? Are they too much? Are they just right?

Couldn't make the reception Friday night to support Wendy Pitts Reeves? Here's another chance. The next Ethics Committee Meeting is tonight. Here's the full agenda, printed below and a link to make things easier to forward: Link... See "New Business" to find reference to Reeves, Proffitt, and Lewis.

AGENDA
Ethics Committee
Monday, October 29, 2007, 6:00 p.m.
Room 315, Blount County Courthouse
Members: Betsy Cunningham; Brenda Flowers; Ron French; Joe McCulley; and Wendy Pitts Reeves - Chair.

1. Call To Order.
2. Roll Call.
3. Approval of Minutes of October 2, 2007.
4. Public input on items on the agenda.
5. Old business:
a) Discussion/Possible Action Regarding the Ethics Policies and Procedures and the Committee.
i.) Report from Betsy Cunningham on theMake Up of the Committee.
ii.) Review of Changes in the Ethics Policy and Procedures.
iii.) Report from Betsy Cunningham regarding Open Records and Confidentiality.
b) Discussion and update Regarding Conflict of Interest Statement Form.
c) Discussion/Possible Action Regarding Procedures for Filing Complaints.
i.) Review of form letters for complainants and defendants.
ii.) Review of changes on the Ethics Violation Complaint Form.
d.) Discussion/Possible Action Regarding Employee Communication and Training Concerning Ethics
Policy.
6. New Business:
a) Discussion/Possible Action Regarding CTAS Opinion Concerning Health Care Providers
Concerning Commissioner Proffitt and Commissioner Wendy Pitts Reeves.
b) Discussion/Possible Action Regarding Attorney General Opinion Concerning Commissioner Mike
Lewis.
c) Other.
7. Next Meeting.
8. Public input on items not on the agenda.
9. Adjournment.

Here's the link: (Link...)

If I were John Loope, I would find the report of the Louisville City Atty/Ethics officer very unsatisfactory. Here's the full text:(Link...) Page 8 of the pdf (numbered page 6 in the document) says basically that all the allegations were dismissed as untrue in the report just because the accuser didn't provide all the evidence. Could it be possible that accuser expected the person tasked with investigating the complaint to uncover and examine the evidence? I mean, when I think of an "investigator," I envision someone in a trenchcoat who can get to the bottom of a matter. Not some attorney who says he took it upon himself to write a report and then declares the conclusion at the beginning. The attorney further says something like: "That [meaning that the accuser didn't provide all the evidence], in and of itself, should end the investigation and result in a finding of no ethical violations. However, since the investigation has the further function of allowing the accused persons to have their say and exonerate their names if there are no facts, I am continuing with the investigation."

So he says right at the beginning of the report that the only purpose of the report is to give the accused their say and that the conclusion has already been made based on lack of evidence PROVIDED BY THE ACCUSER. Not that I'm saying the lack of evidence provided automatically means the accused are guilty, either. But if I were going to be exonnerated in something, I'd hope it was a more ringing endorsement than this.

I'm glad the police investigators don't operate that way.

According to the Hunter Growth Strategy, Blount County's Zoning Regulations are "neither fish nor fowl, but a recipe for Urban Sprawl."

Hunter (whom we paid a boat load of money to come up with a "smart growth" plan for Blount County) recommended AGAINST commercializing along our highway corridors, yet you see more and more Rezoning Public Hearings for rezoning to Rural Arterial Commercial Zoning (RAC). Mind you, the RAC is greatly improved from its original form, but still: do we want Scenic Highway 411S to be commercialized beyond the Urban Growth Boundary with the city and straight to the county line? I have seen numerous quotes all over the place where officials state that it is a foregone conclusion.

Is this the welcome we wish to extend the tourists we sincerely hope we draw into our community? Did we learn nothing from the development of "Al- killya Highway"? Currently, the plan is to by-pass Alcoa Highway. Are we planning ahead to by-pass 411S by extending crappy metal building commercial down both sides of it??

And lo and behold, on next Tuesday's Intergovernmental Agenda, I see discussion and possible action to set up another hearing to AGAIN consider rezoning that place with the metal building that the owner built on the apparent pretense of using it as a private dwelling (4004 Hwy 411S, corner of Hitson and 411S). The fact that it had no windows was a major tip-off, of course. Even the TN Property Assessor's Databas calls it a "warehouse." The DT picked it up in this article back in May: (Link...) and here was the outcome; apparently the Planning Commission didn't care that it was an end-run around the law and they voted in favor of it: (Link...)

It was defeated 10-7 at the Commission Meeting (Link...), although the following Commissioners voted for it: Commissioners Farmer, Hargis, Harrison, Hasty, Helton, Lail, McCulley, Melton, Ramsey and Samples.

Roger Fields was quoted in that article as saying the property could not come up for another vote for 2 more years. Yet, here it is again. What's up with that? It is obvious that some in this administration never saw a commercialization on 411S that they didn't like.

Each September a new Chairman is picked. Or re-picked. Dr. Ramsey has been the chair for the last 5 years, if memory serves. Before that, Steve Samples was the Commission Chair for a really long time.

Given that there seems to be some consensus on this site that things aren't going quite as we would like them to in Blount County gov't, how important do you think this position is? Should we keep our fingers crossed that Bob Ramsey gets the job again, or are there others who could somehow influence some positive change?

Who would you ask YOUR commissioners to vote for for Commission Chair?

To refresh you on the options, here is a link to the commission: (Link...).

Note: This vote will take place at the September 20th meeting.

Checking out the committee agendas usually gives you a pretty good idea of the sorts of things that are going to be coming up in the main monthly commission meeting. Here are the links to both of those:

* Intergovernmental Committee Agenda for September 11, 07 (Link...)
* Public Services Committee Agenda for September 11, 07 (Link...)

The Commissioners tend to discuss things more openly in this setting as these meetings are not as formal. If you are looking to become more proactively involved in our local political process, a good way to start is to plan to attend these 2 evenings of meetings with the commission and then the planning commission meeting each month.

The agenda for the main commission meeting (third Thursday of the month) is usually not available until the Thursday or Friday prior to the meeting, but is always worth looking over. Hey, the commission's business is your business.

Hats off to Randy for providing Blount County with this forum.

From what I’ve been reading here bad guys run this county, the newspaper’s a rag and the opposition is pretty weak. Fair enough. Probably true on all counts. But that begs the question. How’d it get that way?

In my humble opinion democracy simply works. People tend to get the government they deserve.

Nobody stole the last county election. Jerry got elected without ballot stuffing or goons at the polls. Rag or not, the Daily Times has 20000+ Blount County subscribers (myself included). The organized opposition (Ravens, CAPPE, Democrats, etc.) are so self centered they rarely even talk with each other.

That’s not to say it’s gotta to be that way.

Show me 400 or 500 motivated Blount Countians who’ll donate 1 or 2 days a week through November 2010, who’ll donate a significant portion of their disposable income to partisan political races and are willing to boycott every last advertiser on every page of the Daily Times… show me that and we’ll turn this thing around !

You think I kid ? Let's look at what we're up against.

The Blount County Republican Party has 150 to 200 Executive Committee members who PAID to be part of their organization. 65 percent of Blount County voters consider themselves Republican. Half of those believe you go to hell for voting for a Democrat. The other half has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, our own version of the “Permanent Republican Majority”. Don’t kid yourself. These guys are well funded, very motivated and could really give a crap about what you and I think is fair.

It will take a lot of hard work by a lot of motivated people for a very long period of time just to level the playing field.

All that said.

I’d like to hear a few voices who can offer concrete practical ideas on how to change that status quo. We can not get to where we want to go by pouring our emotion through a computer terminal. We can not spend our time and energies dreaming up good ideas with no idea how to implement. In my opinion, you have to get to the streets. You have to engage the voters. You have to beg for money. You have to invest your time. You have to commit to governance.

How can we expect hundreds of Blount County residents to engage in this type of personal sacrifice if we're not willing to do the same ?

Wild Blue Sky

We have heard a lot about ties between Commissioner Lewis, the Sheriff, and American Fidelity/Green Bank. In fact, if you follow local news and issues, American Fidelity comes up quite a lot (remember the Sports Complex?). So I got a chuckle when the spouse brought me a little fold-over envelope from the County Clerk's office after buying tags for a car. It seems to be what the receipt comes in, because it is only 4x2. One side of the envelope has the Realty III Logo, phone number, address, and website (I think this is owned by Darrell Tipton, occasional candidate for various offices and recently added to the Public Building Authority by County Mayor Jerry Cunningham). The other side says "Compliments of American Fidelity Bank" and has the logo and phone number. On the inside, it says "Roy Crawford Jr., Blount County Clerk, yada yada yada."

Given all the money that the county keeps in American Fidelity Bank, I'm hoping these little gems were free to the county! Pretty good advertising; but how much is too much when it comes to the county gov't advancing the interests of business? Would other banks and realty companies have liked for every vehicle owner in the county to have been exposed to *their* names and logos? (Or maybe this is a cyclical thing and companies take turns?)

What are your thoughts?

Given that the School System eats up around 60% of the Blount County budget, a pretty momentous event will be taking place tonight at 7 p.m. in the Blount County School Central Office on Grandview Drive. There will be a School Board Meeting and each September, they choose a new chairman. Here are the school board members: Link....

The possibilities are many. Any one of the current board members could theoretically be elected.

The current chairman is Mike Treadway, who works for an architectural firm and serves on the joint construction committee, amongst other committees. He could be selected to serve another year.

And while school board seats are non-partisan by state law, former chairman of the Blount County Republican party John Davis could be selected. He's also a retired teacher and administrator.

Or Charles Finley, retired teacher and administrator.

Or Don McNelly, who holds a doctorate in education and was a professor in the school of education at UT.

Or Chris Cantrell, formerly of the Sheriff's department.

Or Booty Miller, retired teacher and administrator (although not likely, since he already served in this capacity and was passed over when his term expired a couple of years ago).

Or Rob Webb, who works for Rural Metro.

These meetings are always worth attending, given their huge impact on our tax rate.