A deal with the devil

There are days when you’re so filled with love for the human race that your heart could burst with joy. Fortunately for me, this isn’t one of those days.

Consider the plight of the Thorngrove community residents. What’s about to happen out there is enough to banish any charitable sentiment left over from the holidays.

The Development Corporation has loads of your loot, not to mention its reputation on the line with the Midway business park proposal. TDC has already lost one battle in the courts to change the sector plan and allow a development that no one outside of its Market Square offices seems to want.

If anything, community opposition to the project has grown. That hasn’t stopped TDC from returning for a second bite at the apple. Like a malignant cancer that keeps coming back, Midway is again on the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s radar.

If the community is steamrolled by the TDC Express (motto: “Damn the citizens, full speed ahead”), it can turn to County Commission, which has the last word on zoning issues.

Cold comfort. Commission is the same body – albeit with some new faces – that in December 2006 voted 15-4 to give TDC $7.5 million dollars for Midway in the face of an unresolved lawsuit brought by residents of the area. A motion to delay the appropriation pending the outcome of the suit failed miserably, 13-6.

Watching the tapes of that meeting, it’s hard not to notice the arrogance of TDC’s representatives. Attorney John Valliant called the opposition “some lawsuit out there,” and he tacked on some advice for commissioners: “We don’t need to have strings attached.”

We see Valliant’s point. Who is the County Commission, or taxpayers for that matter, to be telling TDC how and when they can spend taxpayer dollars?

Reflecting the extent to which commission was under the spell of developers and TDC, at one point former chair Scott Moore asked, “Mr. Valliant, do you want the money if you can’t use it?” No response was necessary.

Fittingly, Chancellor Daryl Fansler upset the applecart in August 2008 when he ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. MPC had not demonstrated that a “substantial change” had occurred which would have justified rezoning the property, Fansler wrote.

Now, everything old is new again. MPC is scheduled to consider an amendment to the East County Sector Plan this Thursday, Feb. 11.

There are so many warts on this project that it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s the unprecedented price tag for the roughly 381 rural acres, an astounding $12 million. There’s the karst geology of the area which makes implementation of a septic system more than a little problematic. There’s the potential to irreparably damage the rural character of the community.

It’s time to put away forever the notion of “pave it and they will come.” Development at any price is a deal with the devil.

Contact Larry Van Guilder at lvgknox@mindspring.com. 

 

 

 

 

 

Reeves findings due soon

The Warren Commission established by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination of JFK took up its task on Nov. 29, 1963. On Sept. 27, 1964, 302 days later, the commission’s report was made public.

On Feb. 9, 2009, a year ago tomorrow, Law Director Bill Lockett announced the appointment of attorney Pamela Reeves to investigate the relationship between Knox County engineering and Natural Resources Recovery, the county’s recycling vendor. Working solo, Reeves may have had the tougher of the two assignments, but the end of the investigation is in sight.

Reeves says she has completed about 45 singled-spaced pages of her report, and she expects to have it in Lockett’s hands by the end of February. If not, she adds, her family may disown her.

Her hiring was prompted by Chancellor John Weaver’s ruling on Knox County’s motion to dismiss a false claims lawsuit against NRR brought by local business owner Brad Mayes. “The closeness of the relationship between the County and the defendants warrants scrutiny,” Weaver wrote. “Likewise, the Department of Engineering and Public Works should be investigated from the outside without reliance upon the Department being investigated.”

Lockett selected an attorney with stellar credentials. Reeves is a 1979 graduate of the UT College of Law. She was a Torch Bearer at UT and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Her firm, Anderson, Reeves and Cooper, specializes in mediation, arbitration and employment issues. She was admitted to practice before the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1979 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Reeves served as chair of the Knox County Election Commission in 2003. She is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and a former member of the association’s board of governors.

In a word, Reeves is one smart attorney. So, what gives? Where’s the report that will either confirm or dismiss Weaver’s intimation that something other than mulch is rotten in Knox County engineering?

Even for an attorney as accomplished as Reeves, the job she took on was daunting. There’s been a mountain of evidence to sift through and evaluate. Mayes alone has compiled thousands of documents in pursuing his false claims suit. Wading through that much data takes time.

Mayes has his own ideas about why the project has taken so long: “I think that the problems in solid waste are so numerous and widespread that it’s taken a year for Pam to look at all that has been mismanaged.”

Reeves won’t divulge her findings before handing over the report. But, based on the evidence we’ve seen and reported on, her conclusions aren’t likely to be added to the Ragsdale administration’s “cleared” tally.