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In the Club
"It is the greatest privilege of my tenure as chairman of our party to inform you that you've been selected to receive the Republican National Committee's highest honor..." was how the letter started.
Enclosed was an impressive-looking "Inaugural Platinum Card" from Jim Nicholson, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, writing in behalf of something called the "President's Club."
The only hitch was it was addressed to Knox County Executive Tommy Schumpert, a lifelong Democrat.
Well, maybe there is another hitch, too.
"There is a little matter of a $1,000 donation," Schumpert says.
Signgate
Shady Oaks Farm sits directly across Washington Pike from the proposed H.T. Hackney site in the Ritta Community. A large sign next to its driveway has served, in recent months, as a community bulletin board, posting notices of public meetings and inviting neighbors to join the Northeast Knox County Preservation Society.
Owner Barbara Harvey has emerged as the most outspoken member of the resistance to the Hackney plan, which would place a wholesale trucking operation in the green fields of Ritta. On Jan. 13, Hackney got the go-ahead from the Metropolitan Planning Commission. In the course of the Hackney fight, Harvey has pestered County Exec Tommy Schumpert with requests for information, and Schumpert has been slow with answers. So last Friday, she was glad to see a registered letter from the county, thinking she'd finally gotten the scoop on the availability of industrial park property.
But what she found was a notice under Schumpert's letterhead that the county had received a complaint on Jan. 13 (same day as the MPC meeting), and that her sign "...is in violation of the zoning ordinance... and you are required to remove it immediately." The sign has stood on the Harvey property since 1983
Harvey says this is "one more cheap shot." Schumpert says he was unaware of the letter, and "...could certainly see why Mrs. Harvey feels intimidated."
Senior Deputy Law Director Mike Moyers says Harvey's sign pre-dates the current code and would be "grandfathered." The sign may also be protected under free-speech exceptions to the code, which is there primarily to regulate advertising. Prosecution is unlikely
There will be a community meeting on the impact of the commercial rezoning on Feb. 3, 7 p.m., at Ritta Elementary School.
More Talk
There's a new talk radio show in town. WKVL AM 850 and FM 105.3 is doing two hours of local talk daily, from 7-9 a.m., and will bump it up in March, once its new headquarters are done, says general manager Mike Beverly. The station is located on Campbell Station Road, and the new digs will be on Watt Road—"If you get to Nashville, you've gone too far." So far, on-air talent consists of Beverly himself, "until I can hire somebody better," and most airtime is filled with nationally-syndicated shows. The stations are owned by Doug Horne, who owns seven others.
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