Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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So long Swanner

Melissa Ziegler, the already-embattled executive director of the Development Corporation of Knox County, has a fresh round of 'splaining to do, say some disgruntled county commissioners. News of the "retirement" of the DCKC's popular development director David Swanner, 54,isn't sitting well, and Ziegler, who is also known to be on shaky ground with County Exec-to-be Mike Ragsdale, has not helped her position with Swanner's abrupt departure.

Playing k2k

They really should have been wary. It was, after all, the first day of April. But still a bunch of k2kers were ticked off over an announcement titled "Big time Pro Rodeo coming to Knoxville!" A couple of savvy souls tried to warn the others on the tempestuous Internet forum off the best April Fool's joke of the day. But when an anonymous guy going by the name SouthKnox Bubba posted a heads-up about the super-secret new $43 million rodeo arena headed for downtown Knoxville, he got the reaction of his dreams.

"This is big," Bubba crowed, disclosing the plan to plunk "the largest rodeo arena east of the Rockies" down on Riverside Drive. He said the official announcement would be forthcoming in about a week, and that the arena complex would include a cowboy museum and hall of fame, as well as a moving sidewalk connecting it to the Hyatt, errrr, Marriott.

Predictable reaction ensued, and the project was variously condemned as a sprawl-promoting, animal torturing, neighborhood-impacting, culturally inappropriate monstrosity. Bubba, who refuses to shed his anonymity, choosing instead to use a variety of South Knox-related screen names, first floated his foolery on our own MetroBlab forum but didn't get any takers. He congratulated the Blab congregants for not being gulled. "You guys are obviously too sharp to fall for something as stupid as the April Fools Rodeo troll," he noted. "Apparently, some of the folks at k2k are not. A couple have figured it out, but a few are still hacked off about it...You'd think the press release headline would be a clue: 'Affiliated Professional Rodeo Investors Linked For Opportunity On Lakeside Setting In Knoxville."

Commission Bites Back

It doesn't take reading between the lines to get County Commission lawyer Steve Roth's drift in a letter to school board lawyer Robert Watson: "Your letter of March 22 raised two issues. One is productive. The other was, to say the least, very disappointing. Let me deal with the productive issue first...."

The "productive" part was with the proposed agreement hammered out between school board chair Jim McClain and Commission Chairman Leo Cooper.

Then Roth got to "the remainder of your letter," which he described as "calculated more to incite and offend, rather than move the process of a settlement forward." Roth professed professional respect for Watson and said he "must assume that some of the truly amazing statements" in the letter "were demanded by" Superintendent Charles Q. Lindsey, "particularly since he felt the need to affix his signature." Roth took exception to a portion of Watson's letter that quotes Roth as saying that his clients "do not assert that the Commission has the power to veto (contracts with $50,000-plus price tags) except under the circumstances we've talked about, if it's illegal, if there's not money in the budget... basically if the paperwork is in order. (Emphasis added)"

"How the Superintendent could misunderstand this plain language is beyond me," the letter continues. "It's clear the courses he taught over the years never included English. Apparently he has simply forgotten the meaning of the word 'except.'"