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Seven Days

Thursday, May 31
Mayor Victor Ashe announces the latest evolution of proposals for downtown redevelopment. Among other things, he says developers Ron Watkins and Earl Worsham deserve a "pat on the back" for their efforts to date. Hey, it's not quite the total control over acres of public and private property and $130 million in taxpayer subsidy the two W's originally asked for, but who can turn down a pat on the back?
About 75 teachers stage a peaceful protest in the hallways of the City County Building for higher salaries. Security guards promptly escort them from the building and threaten to send them to the principal's office if they don't behave.

Friday, June 1
UT President J. Wade Gilley abruptly announces his resignation, following weeks of rumors and denials that he was going to do just that. TV reporters looking for man-on-the-street reaction have a hard time finding anyone on Cumberland Avenue who has heard of "J. Wade Gilley."

Sunday, June 3
The UT baseball team caps a weekend of Vol success, which also included the track and field team's NCAA championship in Oregon, with a last-ditch grand-slam home run that sends the team to the College World Series. TV reporters looking for man-on-the-street reaction have a hard time finding anyone on Cumberland Avenue who has heard of UT's baseball or track-and-field teams.

Monday, June 4
UT scientists find Millie, the much-heralded cloned cow, dead in a pasture. They can't determine a cause of death for the 9-month-old replicant. Um, have you guys seen Blade Runner?
Acting UT President Eli Fly goes to Nashville to assure legislators someone is still running the university. "The people over here heard the news about Dr. Gilley," he explains. No, all the way in Nashville? Gah-lee. That Pony Express thing sure is a miracle.
State senators reject a new services tax, leaving them with two options for resolving next year's budget shortfall: a state income tax and a "quick-fix" plan that would put off serious tax restructuring for some other year. Boy, that'll be a tough one for them, won't it?

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:
Here's one we're surprised so few people seemed able to locate: the final resting place of Vol hero Gen. Robert Neyland (as in Neyland Drive, Neyland Stadium, etc.). You'd think it would be a shrine along the lines of the Lincoln Memorial, or at least Jim Morrison's grave. Instead, it's a fairly modest plot in the Veterans Cemetery at Tyson and Bernard. As our winner, Scott Williams, notes, "You just have to walk down the sidewalk along Tyson and you'll see it right at the nice evergreen tree." It's no wonder Williams was the first to identify it; he says, "I told Jack Neely where it was last year (even he didn't know where it was!)" All right, that's it Neely, you're outta here! Hey Scott, want a job? If not, at least accept as a token of our appreciation a fine car-care kit courtesy of Eagle One. You've got your all-wheel cleaner, your auto glass cleaner, your high-gloss tire shine, even some polish and wax. Car not included.

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

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
MONDAY, JUNE 11
4:30 P.M.
MAIN ASSEMBLY ROOM, CITY COUNTY BUILDING
400 MAIN ST.
A special public hearing on county-wide curfews. Commission is considering new weeknight and weekend curfews for teenagers. The public is encouraged to submit written remarks at the public hearing, or e-mail them to [email protected].

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
TUESDAY, JUNE 12
7 P.M.
CITY COUNTY BUILDING
400 MAIN ST.
Council is scheduled to vote on the plan to redraw Council district lines.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
THURSDAY, JUNE 14
1:30 P.M.
CITY COUNTY BUILDING
400 MAIN ST.
MPC will vote to change the zoning on Market Square from commercial to the H-1 historic preservation designation.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
THURSDAY, JUNE 14
6:30 P.M.
SOUTH-DOYLE HIGH SCHOOL
2020 TIPTON RD.
MPC will hold a public meeting for input on the South Knox County Sector Plan.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
THURSDAY, JUNE 14
TIME AND LOCATION TO BE ANNOUNCED
Council will consider a proposal from Mayor Victor Ashe to create two new redevelopment areas—one on Market Square and another for the block to the west of the Square—for redevelopment through KCDC, plus a first reading of the new Alternative Building Code for downtown.

Counting to Two (2)

KnoxRecall enters tricky legal terrain

Even as members of the group KnoxRecall continue their petition drive to force Mayor Victor Ashe and three City Council members from office, their attorney is preparing to take the fight into the chambers of Knox County Chancery Court.

The Knox County Election Commission ruled last Wednesday that KnoxRecall's effort was invalid, because none of the four targeted officials has yet served two years in their current terms. KnoxRecall lawyer Margaret Held plans to argue that the city charter requires only that the office-holder have served two years total, including prior terms.

"It just flat doesn't have the word 'current,'" Held says of the law. She plans to file suit next week.

The charter section in question stipulates that no official can be recalled "until after the official has served two (2) full years in office." City Law Director Michael Kelley has argued since the beginning of the KnoxRecall effort last month that the law protects Ashe, along with Vice Mayor Jack Sharp and Councilmen Ed Shouse and Larry Cox, from any recall effort until December of this year, because their current terms started in December 1999. KnoxRecall members believe the language is more literal, meaning that the incumbents' prior terms (14 years total for Ashe, 18 for Shouse and Cox, 26 for Sharp) can be counted.

In last week's decision, the Election Commission relied on an interpretation from an outside counsel, former Nashville Law Director Jim Murphy. Election Commission Chairman David Eldridge says, "I reviewed everything from both sides that was presented to me as an election commissioner, and we quickly realized we should seek our own independent legal advice."

(Knox County Law Director Mike Moyers declined to get involved, citing a long-standing practice of not making interpretations of Knoxville city ordinances.)

Murphy's opinion was based on what he called a "well recognized meaning of the word 'office'" that refers to the "current term of office." He also cited city records that he said show the City Council members who approved the city charter language in 1976, 1980 and 1982 intended it to refer to the current term.

Kelley also submitted affidavits to the Election Commission from Jon G. Roach, who was city law director during those years, and two members of the Charter Commission that drew up the language, Barbara Pelot and Walter Lambert. All three say the language was intended to mean two years of the current term. "This question was specifically discussed at various times both within the [Charter] Commission, at the Commission's presentation at public hearing to the City Council and at various other times..." Roach's affidavit says.

For the record, Roach is currently a law partner of Robert Watson, Ashe's personal attorney. Pelot is running for City Council.

But that's where Held's argument comes in. She notes the Charter Commission actually drew up two versions of the recall provision. In 1976, it specified that "[n]o elected official shall be subject to recall except after two (2) full years from the date of taking office." But when that language went to city voters for approval, as all charter amendments must, it was voted down. (It was part of a broad restructuring of the city administration.) In 1980, the Charter Commission amended it to its current language, removing the specific "from the date of taking office" language. That version also failed on first attempt, possibly with the help of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, which opined in an editorial that the provision "could make it more difficult for citizens to initiate recall or a referendum. Government, especially local government, should not hinder such redress."

The same revised language went to voters again in 1982, again as part of a set of administrative changes. It passed that time. Held argues that in considering the "intent" of the law, a judge should weigh not what the Charter Commission meant when it wrote it, but what the voters themselves intended. Since voters rejected the more specific language, she says, they should be given the benefit of believing they meant "two years" literally, not a new two-year grace period every time an official is re-elected.

"The voters are the ones who enacted this language through referendum," she says. "There's no evidence they intended anything other than what the language says."

That's not the only issue likely to be raised in KnoxRecall's suit. Held says Recall volunteers have also encountered discrepancies in the Election Commission's registration rolls, in many cases finding people still registered who moved or died years ago and by law should have been removed from the registry. "Approximately 10 to 12 percent of the houses we are circulating the petitions to, there are major problems with the rolls," she says.

That's significant because KnoxRecall needs to get signatures from 15 percent of the city's registered voters.

Eldridge says he hopes all the issues are resolved quickly so they don't interfere with the planning of this fall's elections. "Historically, in dealing with election issues, the courts have been quite receptive to applications to expedite matters," he says.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

UT's Spring Sports Fling

Track, tennis and baseball come alive

In years gone by, each of UT's spring sports teams has had its moments in the sun. In 1951 and 1995, the baseball Vols made it to the College World Series. In 1975 and 1991, the men's track team won the NCAA championship. In 1990, the men's tennis team reached the final round of the NCAA tournament.

But never in a single year had the Vols contended for a national championship in all three sports. Until this year, that is. Whether it's a tribute to the prowess of UT's athletic program, to the individual coaches and athletes involved, or just to some conjunction of the stars, behold the accomplishments of the last month.

In mid-May, the tennis team knocked off number one seed Stanford on its way to an NCAA final round match against arch-rival Georgia which—sad to say—the Vols lost.

Last Saturday, the track team eked out a victory by a single point in the NCAA meet at Eugene, Ore., after previously having broken Arkansas' 10-year stranglehold on the SEC championship.

Then, on Sunday, the baseball team came from behind in their final at-bat for the second day in a row to win their place among the eight teams that will compete in the College World Series at Omaha.

After a rebuilding year in football and a basketball season (both men's and women's) that failed to live up to lofty expectations, UT's spring fling has been the highlight of the sports year locally—and then some. Never mind that 108,000 fans didn't show up at the Goodfriend Tennis Center, Tom Black Track or Lindsey Nelson Stadium. These top-flight facilities are one of the reasons for the Vols' success and a tribute to Athletic Director Doug Dickey. Even more tribute goes to the coaches, each of whom brought their teams back from low ebbs in recent years.

Consider tennis coach Mike Fancutt, for example. UT had just gone 0-12 in the SEC in 1996 when Fancutt got the call in Brisbane, Australia, asking if he'd be interested in the job. With his parents and two brothers, he was running the Fancutt Tennis Center there at the time. But he'd been a part of UT's tennis heyday years in the early 1980s, playing under fabled coach Mike DePalmer. So coming back to Knoxville held appeal. And guess who Fancutt brought with him to jump-start the Vols resurgence: a bunch of scrappy young Aussies.

By this year, he's become more global in his recruiting with a line-up consisting of two Aussies, a New Zealander, an Indonesian, a Canadian and a mid-year transfer from Del Ray Beach Junior College. Five of them return next year, and Fancutt believes his program is now well enough established to attract top U.S. junior players. "We're looking at one of the two or three top American kids," he says. But then he joshes that, "I think we'll have to get a couple more Aussies or I'll lose my Australian accent."

UT ruled the SEC roost in track and field from the 1960s through the 1980s. Indeed, under the man who established this dynasty, Chuck Rohe, the Vols once won 17 conference championships in a row. But after one of his successors, Doug Brown, left in 1995 to become the coach at Florida, it appeared as if the Vols' fortunes had gone south with him. Brown's successor, Bill Webb, groomed a few stellar athletes, including Olympians Lawrence Johnson in the pole vault and Tom Pappas in the decathlon. But Arkansas' brigades of distance runners kept leaving UT in the dust when it came to team scores. Then came the invasion of Vol sprinters, first footballer Leonard Scott, then freshmen Justin Gatlin and Sean Lambert. Among them, they accounted for 35 of UT's 50 points at the NCAA meet last weekend.

Baseball coach Rod Delmonico's back was against the wall when this season started. He hadn't had a winning season in the SEC since Todd Helton led the Vols to the College World Series in 1995. One more losing record, and he knew he was out of a job. But with Chris Burke breaking most of Helton's hitting records, the Vols played their way into the NCAA tournament and then turned on the heroics each of the past two weekends. It's safe to say that Delmonico will be welcome back regardless of how the team fares in Omaha.

Now, if only the Lady Vols can start replicating the men's spring sport successes.

—Joe Sullivan