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Seven Days

Wednesday, Aug. 15
Knox County Public Building Authority officials, having lost some local work lately, discuss plans to seek contracts in other counties. Um, guys? Any chance you could take some of our other public entities with you?

Friday, Aug. 17
UT officials threaten to take away state legislators' free football tickets as part of their budget cuts. Officials say it is not "by any stretch of the imagination" intended as a threat against legislators, who just happen to keep approving budgets with paltry education increases. They add that if they don't get more money from the state next year, further cuts might include legislators' parking spaces, hors d'oeuvres and first-born children.
A city-county committee studying cell phone towers recommends that each new spire should require two permits rather than one, to allow time for communities to study the towers' impact. Reached for comment, tower developers said, "We'r XSDFcrackle rackle bzzzvery very conce rdZZCCESFDgz zzzzz zzzzzz zzzz..."
Knox County students are outraged and devastated to learn that the Skaggston Elementary School that burned down today was not being used. "Oh sure," one unidentified fifth-grader says, "the school no one goes to burns down. Lot of good that does me."

Monday, Aug. 20
A new Princeton Review ranking names the University of Tennessee the nation's top "Party School." Hey, who says Wade Gilley didn't have an impact?

Tuesday, Aug. 21
At Mayor Victor Ashe's urging, City Council asks TDOT to spare two oak trees slated for the axe as part of the I-40 expansion near Papermill Drive. Ashe notes one of the trees has been around more than 200 years—almost as long as Vice Mayor Jack Sharp.

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:
Open Sesame! Yes indeedy, as many of you noted, this is part of the Arabian Nights-style mural on the side of the Royal Gallery of Oriental Rugs on Kingston Pike. It gives Bearden that multi-cultural flair, don't you think? First right answer came from Todd White of Knoxville. While we'd love to give him a magic carpet (and we tried convincing Jack Neely to crawl inside a lamp), he's just going to have to settle for the closer-to-home hominies of Roy Herron and L.H. "Cotton" Ivy's compendium, Tennessee Political Humor. Because we all know Tennessee politics is a joke...

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

LAST DAY TO REGISTER TO VOTE
Friday, Aug. 24
City County Building
If you're not registered, today's the last opportunity in order to vote in Sept. 25 City Council primary.

Monday, Aug. 27
District 1 (South Knoxville and Fort Sanders) Forum
7 p.m.
South Knoxville Community Center, 522 Maryville Pike.
Contact Diana Conn, 579-6049 or email Patti Berrier.
District 2 Forum
7 p.m.
West Hills Elementary. Contact Cap Hardin, 693.3770.

Tuesday, Aug. 28
Meet the Candidates Night
6 p.m.
Calhoun's on the River.
Reservations are required: Call 546.4665.

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, Aug. 27
2 p.m.
City County Bldg., Main Assembly Rm.
400 Main St.
Regular monthly meeting.

Heavy Traffic

2nd District Council race is a fender-bender

Campaign yard signs have been sprouting throughout the West Knoxville suburbs, but nowhere else resembles the proliferation on the corner lot at Wesley Road and Yorkshire Drive in West Hills.

There, a cluster, if not clutter, of signs tout four of the six candidates running for the 2nd District seat on City Council that's being vacated after 28 years in office by Jean Teague. The names on the signs read Joe Bailey, Sharon Byrd, Archie Ellis and Leslie Terry. But in effect, their message is "Anyone but Barbara Pelot," which is surprising since Pelot is widely perceived to be the heir apparent to Teague's mantle as the champion of homeowner interests in neighborhoods like West Hills.

What makes it all the more surprising is that the rancher at Wesley and Yorkshire is owned by Bill Stack, who preceded Pelot as president of the West Hills Community Association. While Pelot can be charming, Stack is by no means alone in having been rubbed the wrong way by her sometimes caustic and even domineering style. Bailey, whose signs outnumber Pelot's by two-to-one in West Hills, agrees with Stack's assessment that, "Bailey's positives aren't putting yard signs out as much as Pelot's negatives."

Still, Bailey's hard work and political moxie have contributed to his emergence as a surprisingly strong contender. When campaigning commenced last spring, Pelot and Archie Ellis appeared to be the front-runners for the Sept. 25 primary, from which the top two finishers in the district will face off in a citywide general election on Nov. 6. Both the 64-year-old Pelot and the 49-year-old Ellis have much deeper roots in the district than the 43-year-old Bailey, who moved back to his native Knoxville in 1998 after spending most of his adult life in Washington, D.C.

In the early going, Bailey appeared uncomfortable, deflecting questions about his positions by saying he was in a listening mode to find out what voters wanted—or, cynics would say, wanted to hear. After a summer of going door-to-door, Bailey now has answers.

"I know what people want," he says with great assurance, "and it starts with someone who is a strong advocate of neighborhoods." Beyond the generalities, he can talk in detail about techniques for traffic calming on residential streets that have become thoroughfares or speedways for reckless drivers. Traffic circles, speed humps and stiffer fines for speeders head the list.

In a recent mailing to 6,000 households in the district, Bailey also proclaims that, "I am an advocate of downtown revitalization. I would like to restore the downtown as the center business district... It is time for us to get serious about growing business and reducing our dependency on property taxes for revenue. Our taxes are too high and I will always fight against any tax increase."

It helps that Bailey's father, Ed, and his uncle "Hop" are very well-connected and are reportedly making lot of calls on Joe's behalf. Ed Bailey was a longtime city councilman and a longtime resident of West Hills where Joe grew up. "Hop" Bailey is a prominent realtor and stalwart resident of Sequoyah Hills, which turns out the most votes of any neighborhood in the district. But after working in presidential campaigns for Ronald Reagan and George Bush (the elder) and holding down a number of Washington posts, Joe Bailey has plenty of political savvy in his own right. "He knows how to work a crowd," says County Commissioner Wanda Moody, who has an overlapping district.

There are many similarities between the Bailey and Ellis candidacies. While Ellis is more nearly a silk-stocking type and is pals with most of the city's bigwigs in his own right, he's by no means held himself aloof from the rigors of campaigning. He reckons he's already covered about 1,100 houses door-to-door and is shooting for 2,500 by primary election day.

"I started out being afraid, but now it's a blast," he says. "People will tell you anything on their front porch, but there are consistent themes." Topping the list, he also reports, are traffic issues, and Ellis is steeped in how north-south streets that connect Middlebrook and Kingston Pikes are getting overloaded, among other concerns.

As he has from the outset, though, he insists, "The most resounding theme is that people have become impatient with the progress of the city as a whole. They are very much in favor of downtown revitalization and are willing to embrace whatever it takes in a prudent way to make that happen." (This sounds different than Bailey's no-new-taxes pledge). All of this would ring truer if it weren't for the fact that Ellis works for developer Ron Watkins who, in a separate venture, has been partnering with Earl Worsham in what's known as the Worsham Watkins downtown redevelopment plan. But it's become doubtful whether they intend to pursue that plan any further, and if they'd just count themselves out it would remove any appearance of a conflict of interest overhanging the Ellis campaign.

Ellis has raised over $20,000 for the primary, and Bailey expects to match that total, which places them far ahead of any of the other candidates. That means advertising and mailings down the stretch that the others won't be able to match. Their contributions have come primarily from the business community, with considerable overlapping. James Haslam II, for example, has contributed $1,000 to each, which could be interpreted as yet another form of anti-Pelot expression.

The one candidate in the field who's totally divorced from the establishment is Leslie Terry. When she isn't with her students, the music teacher is beating the drums as an activist on a wide range of local issues. She's a moderator and prolific contributor to the K2K network; she was a petition bearer in the abortive KnoxRecall effort to oust Mayor Victor Ashe and three Council members; and she's campaigning now as hard as anyone.

Alone among the candidates, Terry has a web site (www.terryforknoxville.com) that should help compensate for a lack of funds to otherwise disseminate her message, especially among younger voters to whom she's most likely to appeal. Heading the list of issues which she addresses on her site, though, are—guess what—streets and traffic, followed by sidewalks. She, too, favors downtown redevelopment but with a different emphasis. "I firmly support and will work for the creation of incentive 'packages' that will utilize tax credits, our new existing buildings code and other tools to encourage investment in our downtown by investment in by individual business, residential and retail developers... I am opposed to using only a single developer...as has been proposed in the past," she states.

Scott Meece, a 25-year-old, and Sharon Byrd, a 58-year-old realtor, are also in the race but appear to be lagging behind the other candidates.

Pelot, for her part, remains true to her neighborhood roots. At a recent luncheon meeting of the West Knoxville Sertoma Club, at which only Ellis and Pelot were invited to speak, Ellis led off with an encomium to the importance of downtown vitality. Pelot professed to agree, but went on to say that, "From my perspective, the city's strength comes from the health of our neighborhoods. I see my role as a City Council member to be the voice of the people, to be an extension of those neighborhoods."

Pelot tries to turn the fact that Ellis and Bailey will outspend her four-to-one into an advantage. "I'm concerned about the money Archie's raising," she says while pointing out that almost all her contributions have been $100 or less. "From my experience with Jean Teague's campaigns, $5,000 is enough even when you've got a much better-funded opponent as Jean Teague did when Bobby Denton ran against her."

The best thing Pelot has going for her, though, may be her age and identification with voters of her generation. Voters over the age of 60 have accounted for a disproportionate share of the turnout in recent city elections as younger voters have stayed away from the polls in droves.

—Joe Sullivan