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Seven Days

Wednesday, April 11
A summer-like heat wave catches us by surprise—including the poor bureaucrats in the State Office Building on Henley, which was designed with windows that don't open. During this sweaty crisis, workers, including those in the Department of Revenue, fled the building in search of cooler air. Just think of the reaction once the effects of this economic "slow-down" sink into the state budget.

Thursday, April 12
The MPC votes to strike compromise language that would exempt some highways from new billboard construction in the oft-debated, never resolved Billboard Ban legislation. Once again, the wording goes back to City Council, who will either choose to adopt it without amendment or to go back—again—to the drawing board. Is this what's meant by ping pong legislation?

Saturday, April 14
Both the Smokies and the ThunderCats open their seasons. In other sports news, Earth First! protesters chain themselves to earth-moving equipment at the site where 321 is being widened, just east of Gatlinburg.

Monday, April 16
The new coordinator for the Tennessee Amphibian Monitoring Program is interviewed on the decline of amphibian populations here and elsewhere. An immediate search is initiated for WIVK the Frog.
Knox County' schools food service officials reveal that they've dumped 5,000 pounds of ham because it had been frozen, thawed and refrozen. Top school administrators inquire about how the process might be applied to the school system's relationship with Knox County Commission—especially the thaw or dump part.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
The stone marker planted on the lawn of the Knox County Courthouse commemorates the first building erected at the site, which was called "the Block House." This fortified barracks quartered federal troops sent to Knoxville by Territorial Governor William Blount's boss, General Henry Knox, the first U.S. Secretary of War. The garrison's purpose was to protect the territorial capital from Indian attacks. Though no one ever directly assaulted the installation, it's believed that cannons fired from the fort—by two old men, who happened to be the only males in town at the time—helped discourage a planned siege by thousands of Chickamaugans massed in West Knox County in 1793. It was first identified correctly by Gregory Heagerty of Atlanta, who is the winner of a copy of Sam Pickering's essay collection, A Little Fling.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
MONDAY, APRIL 23
2 P.M.
CITY COUNTY BUILDING
400 MAIN ST.
Commission is expected to consider a $250,000 allocation for planning funds for the Universe Knoxville project and a proposal to transfer property on State Street to an as-yet unformed nonprofit corporation to oversee the project.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE CAMPUS MASTER PLAN PUBLIC FORUM
MONDAY, APRIL 23
3 P.M.
UNIVERSITY CENTER CREST ROOM
UT's still accepting public input on their update of the campus master plan effort to make the university more accessible to pedestrians.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL BUDGET HEARING
TUESDAY, APRIL 24
8:30 A.M.
CITY COUNTY BUILDING
400 MAIN ST.
City Council will review the mayor's budget during a full-day session, beginning with an overview at 8:30 a.m. and followed by discussion of individual city departments. The entire meeting is open to the public, but a public hearing will conclude the day at 5:30 p.m.

Can I Get a Recall?

Citizens muddle through the state's confusing referendum law.

Two groups of citizens trying to get separate initiatives on the ballot are finding it's not so easy to go over the heads of their elected officials.

At one time, getting a referendum or recall on the ballot meant collecting signatures of 30 percent of the number of people who voted in the previous election. Thanks to a 1997 state law, petitioners now need to collect the signatures of 15 percent of all registered voters.

For the group hoping to recall Mayor Victor Ashe and three council members, that means gathering 15,656 signatures instead of the 5,408 that would have been required under the old law. The same holds true for a group trying to pass a referendum restricting billboards. They both must gather the signatures within 75 days.

The 15 percent of registered voters sets a steep mark for citizens to jump if they want to plead a cause directly to voters. With 234,329 registered voters in the county, it'll take signatures from 35,159 of them to get on the ballot. The city's 104,243 registered voters require 15,656. In contrast, a little more than 18,000 people voted in the last mayoral election.

The motivation behind the state law has spawned a conspiracy theory, with some pointing to Mayor Ashe as the inspiration for it. The contention is that Ashe—upset that citizens had forced a term limit proposition on the ballot, which succeeded—lobbied the state to make it tougher for citizens to get referendums approved.

Ashe denies any involvement.

Of the recall, Ashe says, "Being mayor means making difficult decisions that not each of the citizens will all agree with. Certainly, if some of those citizens are sufficiently concerned, they have the right to initiate a referendum, as provided by city charter and state law."

"Meanwhile, I have a job to do," he adds. "I'm going to continue doing my job, which I was elected to do."

The recall movement sprouted after an April 3 council meeting. Numerous residents came to the meeting to support Melissa Mayfield's serving out the final eight months of her late husband's term. A maverick council member who often voted in the minority, Danny Mayfield died of cancer on March 21. The council ignored the residents' pleas, and let a motion to appoint Melissa Mayfield fail. They then appointed Raleigh Wynn to the seat.

Steve Dupree, who is helping to organize the recall effort, says it's focusing on three councilmen whose terms don't end this year—Jack Sharp, Larry Cox and Ed Shouse. (Councilman Nick Pavlis' term doesn't end, but unlike his colleagues he voted to appoint Mayfield to council.) The group will also circulate a petition to recall the mayor.

"In our opinion, this was done with [Ashe's] tacit approval, if not active participation," Dupree says. Separate petitions will be circulated for each of the offices. If the required signatures are collected for any of them, it would force a recall vote on that candidate.

However, Dupree says the recall effort is about more than the Mayfield snub. There have been several issues in the past couple of years where council has ignored the wishes of residents.

"This council is unresponsive to the wishes of the citizenry," he says. "In representative government, if you're not responsive to citizens...in my opinion, just mine, you've committed fraud. When they signed on to be a representative, what did they think that meant?

"We've reached a point where I have no confidence in their ability to represent me," Dupree says.

There is no limit to what residents can put on a ballot, says the city's law director, Michael Kelley. "You could write an ordinance saying the Sneeches should wear stars on their bellies," Kelley says. However, if a referendum passes, it might not be enforceable if it violates other laws or civil rights.

Once the required signatures are collected, they're given to the election commission, which has 30 days to certify that they're legit. If the commission certifies the petition, council then has 20 days to act on the proposal. If council doesn't vote to approve, it is placed on the ballot. Petitions have to be certified 60 days prior to an election in order to be on the ballot. Special elections can be set for referendums and recalls, as was the case with the term-limit proposition.

The procedure is basically the same with recalls (skipping the city council vote). However, when a candidate can be recalled is in dispute.

The state law doesn't address this issue, but the city charter reads, "No such petition shall be circulated until after the official has served two (2) full years in office." Kelley interprets that to mean two years after the start of each term, not two years after the person has held the office. "The reason behind the policy is, if someone has just finished a hard fought election, you wouldn't want the losing candidate's supporters to go through the back door to get that person recalled." The recall group interprets the restriction as meaning two years after a person first takes the office. If Kelley is correct, a recall petition couldn't be filed until after the first Saturday this December for Sharp, Cox and Shouse, and after Jan. 1, 2002, for Ashe.

Nick Della Volpe, one of the organizers behind the billboard referendum, says there are several community groups and people now circulating petitions for the billboard referendum. They need to have all the signatures by June 25 in order to get it on the November ballot, he says.

Dupree says he doesn't know when the recall group will start circulating petitions. "It can be delayed through formalities if we do not dot all the i's and cross all the t's," he says. "Once the petition is done correctly, we'll hit the ground running."

—Joe Tarr

...And There's Unreal

'Johnny Knoxville' was a Fairstein creation of the '80s, he claims

Johnny Knoxville, the MTV version, says he's being sued by a Southern Californian who claims to have been the original Johnny Knoxville. But South Knoxville's infamous Johnny—real name P.J. Clapp and a graduate of South Young High School—may have to contend with another, closer-to-home Johnny Knoxville, too.

John Fairstein—artist, filmmaker, designer, and builder of the area's only full-size electric motorcycle—says he created Johnny Knoxville in 1986 or '87. He believes Clapp probably picked up the name from an overheard conversation at Hooray's, the late Old City nightclub.

"I was shocked and dismayed when I heard there was another person using the name on television," Fairstein says. "And I don't believe the stuff he does, all that grossness—the poo cocktail, I mean having the contents of a portable john dumped over your head? That's not wit, that's [word that rhymes with wit]. The real Johnny Knoxville would never do that. He can be way out there, but the real Johnny Knoxville is never gratuitously offensive."

As an example, Fairstein cites a recording he made. "One year I sent out Johnny Knoxville's Christmas Album to a few friends. It was just one line: 'Have yourself a happy little holiday.' It was simple, but it had a positive, forward-looking message in the lyrics—uh, I mean lyric."

The original Johnny Knoxville, he says, has a cult following and "it's my obligation to provide those people with wisdom and entertainment, and that does not include the kind of gratuitous grossness the other guy does." The "other guy" is Clapp, who uses the name Johnny Knoxville as one of the creators and stars of Jackass, a Sunday-night offering on MTV that is perhaps best characterized as dumb-stunt comedy.

So Fairstein is talking to lawyers, "including a patent and trademark attorney."

The real Johnny Knoxville was born, according to Fairstein, at a campout on the shore of Norris Lake. "It was after a few beers and a lot of sun; we all were coming up with nicknames—Kneezie and Gilligan and Leapin' Lena and Squeegie—and I became Johnny Knoxville."

Over the years, Johnny took on a couple of different personae. "I made a CD about modern office romance, called Johnny Knoxville Sings the Blues, with songs like 'Mail Room Fax Love' and 'Your Lips Taste Like Stamps' and 'Hurts Like a Paper Cut.' Well, I made the artwork and put it in a jewel case, but I haven't actually recorded the songs yet, or even written them, but that part's easy once you have the titles." Johnny admits that he doesn't sing or play any instruments, but does not see that as an obstacle. "Hey man, look at Madonna. "

And there is General John Knoxville, whose uniform jacket is weighted with enough medals to provoke envy—or at least a hernia—in any Third World dictator. The general regularly makes appearances at high-concept, fancy-dress social occasions in greater Knoxville. "He's well-known among the area's highest social milieu," says Fairstein. "And, I might add, always in demand because of his urbane wit and amusing ways."

Fairstein is at work on a TV show for his creation, "to debut in the community-television venue."

—Chris Wohlwend

Fairstein's Johnny is featured on the website, Johnny Knoxville's Eyeball Club.