Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

Comment
on this story

No New Taxes

That's the message City Council members have been getting from Mayor Victor Ashe in one-on-one briefings about the budget he will present on April 12. It remains a mystery, though, whether the budget will include any funding for the Renaissance Knoxville plan for downtown redevelopment. Even more mysterious are Ashe's intimations that RK may not happen "on my watch." Does that mean the mayor will soon be out of here for some post in the Bush administration, or that city backing for RK will languish until the end of his term in 2003, or what?

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick

At 10 a.m. Monday, a diverse group of Knoxvillians gathered on Melissa Mayfield's front porch to urge City Council to appoint her to fill her late husband Danny Mayfield's City Council seat. At 10:31, a fax allegedly from Vice Mayor Jack Sharp labeled "News Release" came rolling into local newsrooms. Sharp's fax, which did not give the telephone number of the fax machine that sent it, declared him "unimpressed" and launched into an attack on state Senator Tim Burchett and lawyer Greg Isaacs, who organized the Mayfield press conference. The fax contended that Burchett was trying to "dictate whom to put on City Council."

Since Sharp is famously technology-challenged (he is proud to proclaim that he still has a rotary telephone, doesn't type or have a fax machine), it was curious that he could whip out the denunciation before the Mayfield supporters got back to their cars.

When asked who sent the fax, Sharp said "My office." When told that the fax did not originate from the City Council office, he smiled broadly. When asked if it came from Mayor Victor Ashe, who has attempted to publicly distance himself from the process of choosing Mayfield's successor, Sharp winked.

Some who read the Sharp news release did so with a sense of deja vu, since parts of it sounded oddly familiar. For example, the fax said: "If Tim devoted as much attention to the state budget problems as he has to lobbying Council, we would all be better off..." An ad hominem March 7 post on the K2K email list said: "...if you spent less time calling the mayor names... and more time looking after your (business), maybe some of [sic] your clients would be doing better."

The author of the K2K post defending the mayor? Victor Ashe.

Democracy in Action

When Melissa Mayfield arrived back in Knoxville from burying her husband, the first thing she saw was that Danny Mayfield's name had already been removed from list of City Council members on the "Welcome to Knoxville" sign. Next, she heard that Vice Mayor Jack Sharp and five of her husband's colleagues were ramrodding a resolution to name his replacement at the earliest possible opportunity, despite the fact that they had 30 days from his March 21 death and despite the fact that she'd asked Sharp and Mayor Victor Ashe to talk to her before any such move was made.

In a well-orchestrated and Sunshine Law-defying series of parliamentary moves, Councilman Larry Cox presented a motion Tuesday night to select 77-year-old Raleigh Wynn to fill Mayfield's City Council seat as "a compromise" but didn't say with whom he was compromising. However, here are some of the reasons that Council members gave for rejecting Melissa to those who called them in her behalf:

"She's got those two kids, and she needs to stay home and take care of them." —Jack Sharp.

"I'm afraid she's going to be a Carlene Malone clone." —Council member Ivan Harmon.

"We're going to call Alvin Nance and get her a job at KCDC" —(unidentified Council member)

"I don't know her." —Council member Jean Teague. (This despite the fact that Melissa had attended Council meetings with her husband for more than three years.)

Teague, Sharp and Gary Underwood did not return Melissa Mayfield's calls when she attempted to discuss the appointment with them.

All Together Now

The invite to City Council candidate Rob Frost's reception this Monday at the Lions Club in Fountain City lists an interesting cast of co-hosts. There are traditional GOP power-broker types (Caesar Stair, Mike McClamroch), downtown/K2K developers and activists (David Dewhirst, Rachel Craig), and neighborhood preservationists (Kim Trent, Finbarr Saunders, Metro Pulse contributor Matt Edens). Also on the list is grassroots agitator (and Frost's neighbor) Jeff Talman, who until this week was an undeclared candidate for the same seat. Quite a coalition. Now if only Frost, a lawyer who lives in the Fourth and Gill neighborhood, can get someone to figure out whether he's still in the 4th District, he'll be all set. (Redrawn district lines are due to come from City Council in the next few months.)