by Joe Sullivan
When the Development Corporation of Knox County was formed in 1991, the intent was to insulate it from politics in fulfillment of its mission to foster economic development through the acquisition of sites and employers for industrial and business parks. A majority of the Development Corp.'s nine-member board of directors were selected from the private sector, and these five directors nominate their own successors, subject to County Commission approval. (The county executive and three members of County Commission comprise the balance of the board.)
However, instead of looking to the Development Corporation to determine how to deploy its funding in the interest of maximizing job-creating growth, County Commission is now attempting to dictate how these funds get spent in the name of political expediency. Under a proposal sponsored by Commissioner John Griess, all of a $16 million appropriation to the Development Corp. would have to be invested inside Knoxville's city limits as part of a deal on annexation. In return for getting the $16 million, the city would have to agree to cease all annexations except upon request of a property owner. While stopping short of approving the Griess proposal, Commission appointed a committee to use it as a point of departure for negotiation with the city on the supercharged annexation issue.
At no time did Commission give any consideration to whether throwing money at the city represents a cost-effective use of economic development outlays. It didn't even address whether the city or the Development Corp. board has any plan for using it at all. Nor did it consider the one use that represents the city's most pressing need—but is outside the Development Corp.'s sphere of responsibility: namely, a contribution toward funding downtown redevelopment plans.
Equally disturbing, the proposal seemed to presume that the county would be doing the city a favor by throwing the city any money at all. Never mind that city taxpayers pay about 40 percent of the county's total property tax take. To the County Commission majority whose districts lie largely outside the city limits, the parts that lie within are often viewed as alien territory.
Mayor Victor Ashe, no doubt, has done his utmost to heighten that sense of alienation with his recent annexation binge, capped by his laying claim last week to the county's Forks of the River Industrial Park. But at least there is some method to the mayor's madness. Most of the property he's been staking out this year will probably become off limits to him starting next July. That's when an Urban Growth Boundary takes effect under the state's 1998 Growth Plan law, and Ashe has been holding off until then on even more massive annexations that he can make within that proposed boundary (drawn by a statutorily constituted Coordinating Committee).
County Commission's political gamesmanship would be even more disturbing if it stood any chance of succeeding in preventing involuntary annexations within that boundary. But Ashe rejects out of hand any deal that would limit the city to voluntary annexations, while professing to be prepared to negotiate on the size of the boundary itself. But commissioners who are resolved not to concede one square inch of county turf dominate County Commission's negotiating committee. So much so that the compromise-minded Griess was excluded from the committee. So the dispute seems as destined as ever to go before a three-judge panel in Nashville for adjudication despite Griess' laudable end of seeking a local settlement (even if his means were not).
The Development Corp.'s hierarchies, for their part, insist they're already just as mindful of needs and opportunities within the city as without. "We want to spend money wherever it's feasible to strengthen our economy," says the corporation's outgoing chairman, developer Pat Wood. Another board member, Sharon Miller, who is also chair of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, hosts monthly meetings on her back porch involving the Development Corp.'s executive director, Melissa Ziegler, and the city's director of development, Doug Berry. "They work together very well. Doug said he didn't have the money to acquire Coster Shop [a 50-acre development site off I-275], and Melissa said she could find it if she could be reimbursed upon resale," Miller relates.
Ashe has a different view. He characterizes the Development Corp.'s involvement within the city as "minimal" and goes on to assert, "I think their attitude is that the city must have left Knox County."
Wood acknowledges that all five of the corporation's industrial and business parks are located outside the city (at least until Ashe's foray into Forks of the River that has shaken several of the companies located there). "Although Melissa is constantly looking, we've never found any sites within in the city. But we've contributed to the retention of major industries like Ameristeel and Rohm and Haas," Wood claims. Then there's the little matter of relative costs. As Berry himself has acknowledged, a "greenfield" site on the outskirts costs on the order of $50,000 an acre to acquire and prepare for use, whereas a remedied "brownfield" site in the urban core might cost $200,000. That's before getting into another cost differential facing prospects for an urban site: namely, city taxes.
Estrangement between the county, the city and the Development Corp. are hardly conducive to attracting the likes of a Dell Computer or a Hewlett-Packard as Nashville recently has done. Adversarial relations between Ashe and the president of the chamber partnership, Tom Ingram, don't help matters either. But these strains pale by comparison with the schism created by the annexation issue, which has no end in sight.
Consolidation of city and county governments was supposed to be the solution to all our fractional, factional problems when it was brought to a vote in a 1996 referendum. But county voters perceived it as a stepping-stone to city domination and rejected it 2-to-1. When queried about the divisiveness that seemed inherent in the state's 1998 Growth Plan Law, then state Sen. Bud Gilbert observed, only partly in jest, "I know, it's going to be so bad it will make consolidation look good by comparison."
Conceivably, he will be proven right. But not until a consolidated legislative body can be constituted that's not impervious to urban needs.
August 31, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 35
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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