Metro Pulse/Citybeat

Comment
on this story

Seven Days

Wednesday, Aug. 1
Security officers at the state Capitol cordoned off the House and Senate chambers from anti-income tax demonstrators. They used rope to do it. Pretty risky. The frustrated lawmakers, already deprived of sharp objects and belts by their own rules, could have used the rope to hang themselves.

Thursday, Aug. 2
The owner of a 15-foot-long python that twice got loose to roam an East Knoxville neighborhood is charged with violating Knoxville's leash law. He apparently missed his chance to point at the snake and tell the animal control officers, "Hey, that is the leash!"

Anderson County Sheriff Charles Scott Manning will remain in office at least until next year's election under terms of the settlement of an ouster suit against him. The terms: Before taking any action affecting sheriff's personnel he will have to call in his chief deputy and ask, "Mother, may I?"

Friday, Aug. 3
Franklin Haney, the Chattanooga developer who owns the delapidated Holiday Inn next to Knoxville's new convention center, is revealed as one of the proponents of a plan to help TVA finance its idled nuclear power plant construction program. Financing would probably be easier if TVA referred to the facilities as Crowne Plaza nuclear plants.

Monday, Aug. 6
Protesters blocked the entrance to Oak Ridge's Y-12 nuclear weapons plant on the anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Fifteen were arrested, including some from "elsewhere." The federal government was officially mum on the protest, but Y-12 officials were overheard attributing this and other such demonstrations in Oak Ridge to "outside agitators."

Tuesday, Aug. 7
Can you say, "Sine die?" The Legislature overrode Gov. Don Sundquist's veto of their "straw, not hay" budget and quickly departed the Capitol in disgrace.

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:
Last week's photo, in keeping with the theme of our 10th anniversary issue, was of something near and dear to our hearts here at Metro Pulse: the futon couch in our office reception area. For the past five years or so, it has been a roost for assorted visitors, ranging from congressional candidates to punk rockers, as well as a haven for the weary butts of MP staffers killing time in those late-afternoon minutes before happy hour. And more than one of us has found occasion for an after-hours (or between-hours) nap on it. It is, in short, our friend, our companion, and perhaps the greatest source of non-alcoholic solace we have. Fittingly, it came to us direct from the late, lamented Futopia, the store run by former Metro Pulse systems specialist Wendy Smith. Both Futopia and Wendy have moved on, but the sofa remains the same. The first right identification (one of only two) came from the mysterious Mr. Iz Bitt, a downtown feline purported to share living quarters with Buzz Goss and Cherie Piercy-Goss. After investigating, we're reasonably satisfied that Mr. Bitt's entry is in no way connected to the fact that his human companions have both won "Knoxville Found" in the recent past and are temporarily ineligible for further prizes. Surely no cat worth his flea collar would allow himself to be exploited in such a fashion. Since we're short on cans of tuna this week, Mr. Bitt will have to settle for sharpening his claws on a hardcover copy of Susan Choi's novel The Foreign Student.

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

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Monday, Aug. 13
6:30 p.m.
Knoxville Center Mall, Town Hall
3000-A Mall Road
MPC will discuss the East City Sector Plan.

Tuesday, Aug. 14
7:00 p.m.
Mars Hill Baptist Church, Fellowship Hall
1540 Robinson Road
MPC will discuss the Walker Springs and Mars Hill Road Corridor Study.

Drying Out

Knox County closes its public inebriation sobering station

Drunks picked up by Knoxville and Knox County law enforcement officers are more likely now to be sent to jail, since the county's sobering station at Lakeshore closed July 1 because of reduced usage.

The station was opened in 1991 after a cap was placed on the number of jail beds. It was also thought that jail wasn't the best place for drunks to be—at a sobering station, they could get medical information and find out where to get more help.

Many of the center's patients were homeless, and local shelters are worried what will happen with its closing.

"I have a hard time justifying sending people to jail because they've had a few drinks," says Leasa Graham, a social worker at Volunteer Ministry Center, a daytime shelter. "You could have a few drinks and they tell you to go home. My people have a few drinks and they take them to jail. It costs them fines and everything. "And it does nothing to treat the problem," she adds.

When it first opened, the station had about 8,000 visits a year, says Patricia Hall, of the Helen Ross McNabb Center, which operated the facility. Before closing, the numbers were down to about 350, or just one or two a night. Why the numbers have dropped is not apparent.

Those admitted to the sobering station couldn't have any other criminal charges aside from public drunkenness. They stayed at the sobering station for eight to 12 hours, no longer than 24. It could hold a maximum of eight to 10 people at one time, Hall says.

Located at Lakeshore Mental Health Institute, the center was operated in conjunction with the detoxification center, a 5- to 7- day program that is a first step in kicking alcohol or drug addictions, Hall says. The detox center is still open.

Hall says the sobering station had a good effect in the community, in that it directed many toward the detox center.

"A lot of these folks [brought to the sobering station] did go into the detox and then got sober. It was quite successful in that it brought a lot of people into the system. Obviously, I thought it was an asset to the community," Hall says. "What's happening, it appears, is since the July 1, the folks who need the detox are finding it anyway. They're not waiting until they get arrested."

Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell Debusk says that missions are helping by taking care of some of the drunks.

"If they aren't a danger to themselves or anyone else, we'll contact the missions and see if they can take them," Debusk says. If the drunk is too much for a mission to handle, they'll be taken to jail, or in some cases the hospital, he says.

The Knox Area Rescue Mission has a breathalyzer and doesn't accept any intoxicated people at its overnight shelter. Melissa Monroe, a spokeswoman for the shelter, says they haven't seen an increase in the number of drunks coming there.

Graham says that folks at VMC are now reluctant to call the police. "Before we felt safe calling the police, because we knew [the intoxicated person] would be safe and wouldn't be prosecuted," she says.

The VMC will let people sleep off drunks or drug binges, as long as they're not bothering anyone or damaging property. Many people would ask VMC staff to call the police to take them to the sobering station, hoping to avoid injury or trouble that can come with being drunk on the streets.

"They're in dangerous places anyway because their judgment is impaired by alcohol; they get hit, killed," Graham says. "Most of the time someone's been beaten it's because they were intoxicated and someone took their money. The women are usually raped at those times.

"If you could have someone in a safe place and have the chance to address the real problem, you might be able to make a real difference," she says.

—Joe Tarr

Towering Problem

Cell tower notification remains in question

A number of Concord residents are claiming that a cell phone tower company failed to notify them about its plans and deceived people about where it would be built.

The controversy has forced the Metropolitan Planning Commission to rethink how it notifies people about zoning changes and has one county commissioner calling for a 120-day moratorium on cell towers.

Neither will do any good for the residents living next to the 195-foot tower that was erected late in July near Northshore Drive.

Crown Communications, Inc., the company that built the tower to lease to four cell phone companies, held a neighborhood meeting on its plans on May 1. It notified residents about the meeting with fliers stuffed in their newspaper boxes or left at their doors, according to Steve Roth, an attorney for Crown. However, several neighbors say they never got the fliers, and didn't know about the tower until construction began.

"If one person on our street had gotten the notice, they would have marched up and down the block to make sure everyone knew," says Gene Hoffman, a Sandpiper Lane resident whose house is now dwarfed by the tower.

Neighbors also have a map passed out at the meeting—distributed by an anti-cell phone tower activist who doesn't live in the neighborhood—showing the tower located off of Bluegrass Road. But the tower is 800 to 1,000 feet from Bluegrass Road and less than 100 from one house on Sandpiper Lane. (Roth wasn't certain what map was being referred to but says he suspects it was a site-plan map, intended to show the general location, not the exact site.)

To further confuse matters, the MPC's pending zoning change sign was posted off of Bluegrass Road, not Sandpiper Lane. The location of the tower on the MPC's "use on review" report is listed as the "Northwest side of Bluegrass Rd., north of Northshore Dr., southwest of Garland Rd."

Hoffman says that if the tower had been placed more in the middle of the property or closer to Bluegrass Road, the tower would have been less intrusive to the high-density neighborhood on Sandpiper Lane.

However, Crown put the tower where the property's owner told them, Roth says. "I truly don't know what else we could have done to notify everybody," he adds.

Norm Whitaker, executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission, says that a significant number of residents clearly didn't get the word about the tower, although he doesn't believe the poor communication was intentional.

"We weren't getting calls from citizens, and we really expect to any time we're dealing with a new tower," he says. "We were told the reason we may not have heard is the applicants put fliers in mailboxes and held a public hearing. It appears that some of those things happened but the people closest to the tower heard nothing about it."

He says the MPC is looking at ways to improve notification. One possibility is requiring certified letters be sent to all abutting property owners.

But Whitaker doesn't think the MPC can do anything about the tower now. "There are a number of things we can add to our public notice procedure," Whitaker says. "I'm not sure what we can do at this point about the tower."

The residents' attorney, Wayne Kline, is asking the MPC for a rehearing on the matter. The neighbors hope to have the cell tower relocated, even if it's just to another part of the same property.

"The thing that really bugs us, if you look around this area, you can find so many suitable sites that have the elevation and are far away from any development," Hoffman says. "I think greed took over here."

Meanwhile, the latest battle in the cell tower war has opened up a front in Fountain City, where the MPC staff recommended against a cell tower being built at the intersection of Holbrook, Kingwood and Balsam on property the city "sold" to Disabled American Veterans Chapter 24 for $50 in 1984. The veterans' group allegedly promised in turn to build a senior citizens' center and meeting hall. No chapter member could be reached for comment at press time.

—Joe Tarr