Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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The Mike'n' Maddy Show

Call it the Mister-Mister race. Two sets of M.R.s—Mike Ragsdale and Madeline Rogero—are shaping up as contenders in next year's county executive election. Ragsdale, of course, has been more or less campaigning for the post ever since he decided not to run in 1998. Conventional wisdom said he had it locked up a while ago. But that was before Rogero (like Ragsdale, a former county commissioner) started making noises about a run of her own. The potential adversaries were both at the political education seminars sponsored by Leadership Knoxville and the League of Women Voters over the past two weekends. At Saturday's session, Rogero was even a panelist. She was typically candid in her presentation, up until someone asked her what she saw as the major issues currently facing the county. Smiling toward the back of the room, from whence Ragsdale smiled back at her, Rogero said, "I don't really want to give away my campaign strategies."

Key Issues

Market Square property owner Susan Key wrote the editor of the News-Sentinel protesting the Worsham Watkins plan to take over Market Square. She included promises made last year by Public Building Authority chief Dale Smith and PBA lawyer Tom McAdams. When published last Sunday, the quotes from Smith and McAdams were removed.

Here is part of what was cut. "Quoting Dale Smith: 'The degree to which Worsham Watkins can bring in solid locked-down end users and tenants that are deemed very high value, that's where the PBA and the city will do what they did with Whittle; they will tilt toward giving Worsham Watkins more control rather than less. The degree to which they come in and say, 'I think I can do this, I think I can do that,' I don't think anybody is going to say well, let's go out and spend a few million bucks and get all those buildings so they can sit empty under your name or ours.'

"This quote is from a meeting taped on May 8, 2000, between a group of Market Square property owners and Dale Smith and Tom McAdams.

"Quoting Tom McAdams from the same meeting: 'We think their (Worsham/Watkins) proposal will be pretty specific. We think it will name names and have specific proposed locations.'

"Eight months later WW has still failed to 'bring in solid locked-down end users and tenants.' They have failed to 'be specific and name names.' So if the criteria for taking private property is what Smith and McAdams said it would be, Worsham Watkins has failed to produce the necessary information to justify doing this."

It's About Time

Baffin Harper Sr.'s application for a beer license for the Platinum Lounge in the Old City sailed right through the City Council's Beer Board on Tuesday with no discussion. The process was so smooth, in fact, that it was almost as if Harper's initial application a year ago hadn't been denied by the same board, with no explanation, after an embarrassing round of rumors and innuendo about the type of club Harper—who is black—planned to open. "People have come to the club, and word's gotten back up here that it's not the kind of club they said it was," Harper said after the Beer Board's vote on Tuesday night.

Harper and his daughter-in-law, Tamelyn Harper, opened the jazz and blues club after a months-long delay in December and received a liquor license earlier this month. Last spring, several Old City merchants complained to the city that the club would feature gangsta rap and bring violence to the area.