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Seven Days

Wednesday, May 1
It's learned that the Knoxville area has had its first accusation of a Catholic priest as a sexual predator. The allegation involves a priest from Lenoir City charged with assaulting a young man in a Knoxville health club. The response from the diocese was approximately that it didn't reflect badly on the church because the incident in question didn't involve a parishioner and didn't occur on church property or as a part of church activity. Oh, yeah. We didn't think of that.

Thursday, May 2
Vanderbilt's newest women's basketball coach resigns when it turns out he only had one master's degree, not the two that appeared on his resume. It wasn't so much the deceit as the bald fact that he had only one graduate degree. Not nearly enough to qualify him to coach Vandy's elite young ladies.

Friday, May 3
Islamic workers at the Whirlpool refrigeration plant in Lavergne, Tenn., sue the company for religious discrimination, saying, among other things, that they were followed into restrooms to make sure they weren't praying on company time. The company counters that its actions were simply a matter of insuring that the time-honored doctrine of separation of church and fridges wasn't being violated.

Monday, May 6
The Knoxville Police Department's flack, Darrell Debusk, chases down and helps arrest two felony suspects...without wrecking his city car. He's immediately recruited to teach vehicle pursuit in KPD training classes.

Tuesday, May 7
Knox County voters on Election Day bring the total of those who cast ballots in the county primary election to about 36,000. Nearly 200,000 eligible voters shun the opportunity. A spokesperson for the non-voters says they will all show up in August for the general election, because everybody wants the chance to vote for a general.

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:
"I don't know/but I been told/you keep on dancing/you never grow old." So sang Space Cowboy Steve Miller, and based on the number of correct entries for last week's Knoxville Found, many Knoxvillians subscribe to his creed. Variously (and accurately) described as near the Electric Ballroom, Braden's Furniture, Seventeenth Street and Western Avenue, north of the Foundry, and on Tulip Avenue, the dancing silhouettes remain forever in mid-step on the Knoxville Square Dancers Building, home of Square Dancers, Inc. Political-activist-about-town (and musical talent in her own right) Leslie Terry first correctly identified the photo, and, befitting her forward-thinking attitudes, wins a "Freeze-Dried Vanilla Flavored Ice Cream Sandwich; Space Food—Ready to Eat, No Refrigeration Needed," as "used by astronauts." The question is, used for what?

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

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday May 9
1:30 p.m.
City County Building
Main Assembly Room
400 Main Street
Consideration of the proposed H-1 historic overlay for the Sprankle Building will be postponed for 60 days at this meeting.

KNOX VOICES
Thursday May 6
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Old City Hall
601 W. Summit Hill Drive
A community forum on civic conversation. Short opening statements by Tom Ingram, Jesse Mayshark, Leslie Terry, Bill Lyons, Carlene Malone, and Saadia Williams followed by small group discussions. Sponsored by KACP, k2k, University of Tennessee and Metro Pulse.

CITY COUNCIL MEETING
Tuesday May 14
7 p.m.
Sequoyah Elementary School
942 South Gate Road
Regular meeting. Use the lower level entrance to the left on the front of the building (facing Iskagna Avenue).

Nobody Knows Nothin'
Tuesday's elections gave mixed signals

It is de rigeur among political pundits to spend the days immediately after an election parsing the results, attributing credit and blame, and sagely pronouncing the Meaning of It All.

But reading the tea leaves in Tuesday's mixed bag of county primaries is at best a game of second-guessing.

For example, it is true that, as many predicted, two Knox County school board incumbents lost their seats. And one of them was named Diane—but not the one people thought it would be. Pretty much everyone expected UT accounting prof Dan Murphy to dislodge Margaret Maddox in the affluent, well-educated 4th District. And he did. But the other challenger tagged as a likely winner, Donnie Ellis in the North Knox 7th District, lost to one-term incumbent Diane Dozier. Meanwhile, the virtually unknown Chuck James toppled Diane Jablonski in the suburban 6th District.

What does that mean? Well, if the school board races were really a referendum on Superintendent Charles Lindsey, it means that Lindsey is more popular in Halls than Farragut—not something anyone would have predicted. Ellis ran the most aggressively anti-Lindsey campaign, and he lost. Murphy and James have both made it clear they have a lot of concerns with the current administration, but they also stressed "working together" in their campaigns.

Combined with the addition to the board of Robert Bratton, who ran uncontested for the 9th District seat being vacated by board Chairman Jim McClain, the result will be a board where more than half the seats have turned over since Lindsey was hired. (The 5th District's Brian Hornback and the 8th District's Jim Williams were elected two years ago, after Lindsey was on board.) That may not be good news for a superintendent who has relied on strong board support in his battles with County Commission.

As for the Commission races, the biggest upset wasn't much of surprise by Election Day. Even people supporting longtime Commission Chairman Leo Cooper conceded he was in trouble in his bid to hold onto his 7th District seat. His opponent, Scott "Scooby" Moore, enjoyed the backing of Knox County developers (and the reported support of County Executive-to-be Mike Ragsdale), who painted Cooper as a naysayer because of his opposition to a new Wal-Mart in Halls and his persistent skepticism of Universe Knoxville. It probably didn't hurt that Moore is glib and young (at least in the relative terms of Commission candidates), while Cooper is creaky and blustery.

But out in the 5th District, some of the same interests were supporting Jim Ford against Craig Leuthold in the race to fill the seat occupied by Craig's father Frank (the elder Leuthold did not seek re-election). Frank Leuthold was the most outspoken critic of Universe Knoxville on Commission, which infuriated many in Knoxville's business leadership circles. The family name withstood the challenge, and Craig Leuthold took the seat.

Then there's Sheriff Tim Hutchison. It's tempting for his many critics to read his 56 percent primary vote victory (over 42 percent for challenger J.J. Jones, with the other 2 percent going to Carlos Ramsey) as a sign of weakening support. And it's true that his Democrat opponent in August, Jim Andrews, may be a more substantial candidate than Jones. But Tuesday's vote confirmed the conventional wisdom about Hutchison: he's not very popular in some city areas (Jones won the large Sequoyah Hills precinct by a 3-2 margin), but he still enjoys overwhelming support in rural and, crucially, suburban areas. He beat Jones almost 2-1 in Halls, and had sizable margins in Farragut, Powell, Karns and Cedar Bluff. Andrews promises a lively campaign; it'll have to be.

At least one race offered an unambiguous message: In Court Clerk Cathy Quist's 60-40 win over Lillian Bean for the office she wrested from Bean four years ago, voters were obviously not inclined to turn the clock back. Quist even eclipsed the vote total for Hutchision, her alleged political mentor. Maybe the sheriff should be taking advice from the clerk.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

k2k A-OK
Knoxville Internet forum gets international award

The vivacious, vigorous, and sometimes vituperative Knoxville Internet forum k2k got a big thumbs-up this week, from an unexpected source: it was one of four organizations that received awards Monday night at the annual conference of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) in Salt Lake City.

Knoxville architect Buzz Goss, who founded k2k in November 1999 with his wife Cherie Piercy-Goss, says the international group "felt like k2k represented their core values, but in an innovative way."

Those values, spelled out on the IAP2 website (www.iap2.org), include "The public should have a say in decisions about actions that affect their lives" and "Public participation includes the promise that the public's contribution will influence the decision." IAP2 is a group of public participation professionals from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Most members work for governments or corporations, helping to establish public participation models for democratic decision-making.

Before receiving the award, Goss, his wife and k2k participants Regina Rizzi, Leslie Terry and Charles Finney gave a presentation at the conference. "We talked about the history of Knoxville and the citizens' desire for greater public participation in the decision-making process," Goss says. Other awards at the conference went to the cities of Burlington, Vt. and Hillsboro, Ore. for public participation projects, and to the Utah Transit Authority.

k2k was founded to encourage discussion about downtown Knoxville. In the past two and a half years, it has grown to include more than 750 subscribers and cover topics ranging from the environment to local and state politics. The archives hold more than 32,000 posts.

"[The award] belongs to the participants of k2k," Goss says. "While Cherie and I started it, and we appreciate the recognition, truthfully it belongs to everyone who has participated and made it valuable to the community."

Steve Dupree, a civic activist and k2k moderator for the past two years, responds (via email), "It is a validation, no, it gives permission to the average Jane/Joe to take ownership of their community, however they define it."

Mayor Victor Ashe, an early k2k subscriber, adds (in the unpunctuated writing style characteristic of his k2k posts), "k2k is followed by many opinion makers in Knoxville including several who lurk...congratulations to them on winning this award...k2k helps get information out quickly and that generates replies as has happened on historic preservation."

k2k has already been the subject of scholarly study—University of Tennessee doctoral student Gay Lyons recently finished her political science dissertation on the forum. She followed k2k's development and interviewed and surveyed its subscribers.

"In my research, I didn't find any other group that was started in quite the same way and evolved in quite the same way," she says. She found that other "cybergroups" tended to be started by existing organizations, either public or private. k2k, on the other hand, is self-organizing and has no rules for membership or official leaders.

"Is it a 'group' in the way that political science has traditionally defined groups? The answer to that is no," Lyons says. "[But] I know people who say it's not a group, and I don't think that's entirely true either."

Whatever it is, participants expect it to keep evolving. k2k moderator Chad Tindell (who half-jokingly calls himself one of the forum's "token conservatives"), writes, "The issues it addresses will change as the issues which face downtown and Knoxville change. The subscriber group will change as more subscribers join the list. The list will likely move toward matching the demographics of Knoxville as a whole...The importance and influence of k2k will grow."

(To join k2k, send a blank email to [email protected]. There is no cost.)

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

Editor's Note: Jesse Fox Mayshark is a k2k subscriber.