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Seven Days

Wednesday, June 19
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.
Nataniel Rocke, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan Realm of Alabama, claims the Klan is no longer racist. And the Cubs win the World Series.Pigs fly. Hell freezes over. (Wait a minute. The Eagles are touring again. Maybe anything is possible, after all.)

Thursday, June 20
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.
A police officer in LaVergne, Tennessee, who repeatedly kneed a handcuffed suspect in the groin, is cleared of excessive-force charges and awarded four months' backpay. Another officer who hit the handcuffed man 20 times with his baton accepted a settlement from the department and now works for it writing grants. Gee, maybe if they'd killed the guy they'd have gotten promotions...

Friday, June 21
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.

Saturday, June 22
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.
Members of the Honda Hooters and Promise Keepers gangs are seen at Saturday Night on the Town, but they don't rumble.

Sunday, June 23
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.
Gubernatorial candidates Jim Henry and the Rev. Bob Tripp debate, but don't solve the budget mess either. Van Hilleary, who refused to debate, also does not solve the budget mess.

Monday, June 24
State legislators talk, but don't resolve the budget mess.

Tuesday, June 25
State legislators balance the budget. Just kidding!
City Council votes to place the J. Allen Smith house under a historic overlay, despite Cherokee Country Club's pressing need for more parking and putting space. Golfers and vehicleans everywhere decry the vote.
Of the repeal of his long-sought election cycle change referendum, Mayor Ashe says, "[I]t's unfortunate when you take away the people's right to vote." Funny, he wasn't nearly so eager to let the people vote whether to recall him from office last year.

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:
Although it is, according to reader Amanda Mohney, "the most sought-after portrait backdrop for some drag queens that I once knew," last week's photo is not an advertisement for a sadomasochism club. It's the sign for the old S&M Supply Company, which opened its doors at 430 West Depot Avenue in 1963 and closed in 1992. (It supplied building materials, okay? You folks have such dirty minds...) Wesley G. Morgan, Ph.D., of UT's Department of Psychology, was first to identify the sign. ("One of my favorite signs," admits the academician.) For being a very good boy, Wesley gets a souvenir key-chain-with-Barbie-size-handcuffs, courtesy of Chicago the Musical. What you do with them is your business, prof.

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

MARKET SQUARE REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Thursday, June 27
10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Watson's Building
Market Square
Public input session for the Kinsey Probasco redevelopment plan for the Square's public space.

MARKET SQUARE REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Friday, June 28
3-5 p.m.
Watson's Building
Market Square
Presentation of data and design ideas gathered from Thursday's session.

KNOX COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION
Wednesday, July 3
4:30 p.m. City County Building
Room 327 (Fourth Sessions Courtroom)
400 Main St.
Certification of a petition regarding signs for state elections and a public forum.

A Square Deal
Redevelopment plan approved and funded

Monday afternoon, the sun was hot and the humidity was stifling, making Market Square a miserable setting for a suit-and-tie affair. But despite their not-dressed-for-the-weather apparel, City Council and audience members alike were all smiles. Notwithstanding Mayor Victor Ashe's observation that the state's budget stand-off could make their action in vain, City Council members voted 9-0 to approve $8 million for Kinsey Probasco to proceed with the first phase of its Market Square Redevelopment Plan.

The next steps will be taken almost immediately. Public input design charrettes are scheduled to be held in the old Watson's Building on Market Square from 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Thursday, June 27, and 3-5 p.m., Friday, June 28.

The $8 million contract will pay for

surveying and public input sessions, the planning of a parking garage and a theater on the 500 block of Gay Street and a parking garage and apartments immediately west of Market Square and for public improvements (such as redesigning the public space on Market Square). The firm also hopes to bring in federal mass-transit funds by combining a public transit center with the Gay Street garage and theater.

But planning the redevelopment of Market Square's public space comes first.

Developer Jon Kinsey is "absolutely" looking forward to Thursday and Friday's public input sessions. "That's the basis we will use to redo the public space. We've got a great team of professionals lined up, Knoxville-based professionals. [Market Square] is going to be recreated by Knoxvillians."

In sharp contrast to the design process for Worsham Watkins' Renaissance Knoxville proposal two years ago, Kinsey Probasco's design drawings will be accessible to the public, says Buzz Goss, principal architect for the project. "Anybody who wants to come in anytime we're working, they're welcome to. If they want to spend the whole time with us, that's just fine. Every drawing that my office produces is available."

Kinsey says, "Friday is an opportunity for the design teams to come back and say, 'Okay, here's what we've heard, we've consolidated all the ideas from the workshops. Whadda ya'll think?' It will then be another three to five weeks to further refine those designs, as well as do budgeting—because you can't design something you can't afford—then there will be another workshop, really, an open house, for the public to come and comment again. And we'll continue to talk to property owners and major employers and the like."

Only 10 months ago, reaching this stage, with apparently near-universal approbation, seemed ridiculously far-fetched. The lack of trust between Market Square property owners and the city was all too obvious (and often acrimoniously demonstrated in the online discussion forum, k2k). But after meetings between the Historic Market Square Association and KCDC, public input sessions organized by HMSA and KCDC, and KCDC Chairman Bill Lyons' constant championing of a win/win solution, two redevelopment proposals were received by KCDC in February of this year. The Kinsey Probasco proposal was unanimously approved by KCDC and recommended to City Council for approval.

Of the process to this point, MPC Executive Director Norman Whitaker says, "It's very positive. It's very unusual for a mostly privately funded project like this to make the process so open." Whitaker also applauds the way the developers are proceeding on the project. "The approach that's being used on this project is very diversified. There are a lot of different ownerships, a lot of different investors, a lot of different properties. That spreads the risk around."

Others are also positive. Bernadette and Scott West, owners of Earth to Old City (slated to move to Market Square eventually) and several properties on the Square, are enthusiastic about the possibilities opened by the public input process. "That's the key," says Scott West. "We'll throw out a lot of new ideas we haven't brought up before. We're completely for it." He adds, "You don't want to say anything negative, because you want to move forward, that's far more important than anything else. But our only quibble would be that we don't want the city of Knoxville to forget the small developers who have already come down here and put their life savings in and have already started moving their own homes and own businesses in, and to only concentrate on larger projects. They've got to incentivize everyone."

Bernadette West sums up her

husband's statement: "They need to make sure it's all interlocking."

Kinsey's descriptions of the charrettes offer hope that the Wests' ideas and their concerns will at least be given a hearing. "This will be very hands-on," he says. "We'll break into groups, with facilitators at each group to make sure that everything stays on track and the information is received. And it'll be fun. It's important, and it's fun."

—Scott McNutt

Bush Clouds the Air
Will new power plant regulations mean more pollution?

A proposal by the Bush administration to rewrite the Clean Air Act is a major setback to efforts to get TVA to clean up its coal power plants, local environmental groups say.

Although the idea is being floated as a way to improve air quality, the relaxed regulation will only lead to more pollution, the groups say.

"This really chips away at a fundamental block in the foundation of the Clean Air Act," says Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It's like trying to put a roof on a house that you knocked the foundation out of."

The Bush proposal would relax the New Source Review regulations, or NSR. When the Clean Air Act was passed in 1977, it exempted old power plants from compliance because it was believed (and argued by the industry) that those plants would have to be replaced within a few years anyway. But any work done to improve or increase the lifespan of those plants required them to comply with Clean Air Act standards.

Twenty-five years later, many of those old coal plants are still in operation. Over the past decade, the power companies, state and federal governments, and environmental and health agencies have argued and gone to court over whether work done on various plants is routine maintenance or improvements that would require them to now meet the Clean Air Act.

The new proposal by Bush—some of which can be enacted administratively (and may already have been)—essentially creates a new class of plants. The new rules will allow the old power plants to modernize without having to meet the emission standards created in 1977. The EPA argues that this will improve air quality, by allowing simple improvements power companies have avoided making because it risked NSR. However clean air advocates say the new rules create a bigger loophole and enforcing NSR would have done far more to clean the air.

In some cases, the old power plants might not have to make any improvements, because the new rules allow them to pick two consecutive years in the past decade as a base of emissions over which to make improvements, says Don Barger, the Southeast regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. The plants will pick their worst polluting years during that time period.

None of this seems to bode well for Knoxville (which has consistently ranked in the top 10 of U.S. cities with the dirtiest air) and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (considered one of the 10 most endangered national parks). Air pollution in the park is killing trees, plants, fish and other aquatic life, as well as decreasing visibility. Humans are at increased risk of asthma and other lung diseases.

"The proposals put out by the administration last week essentially abandon the clean up of the national parks," Barger says. "There is no combination of emission reductions that will clean up air in the park that does not involve cleaning up these old plants."

It's uncertain how any of this will affect lawsuits pending against TVA. A suit the EPA filed against TVA is perhaps the biggest of any lawsuit filed over New Source Review (arguments were heard on this on May 21) for NSR violations.

The Bush administration has said it will continue to push the lawsuit, despite its new proposal. But environmental groups say their hand has been weakened and they expect the court to take the new rules into account.

"It is hard for me to believe it's not going to impact the federal courts' interpretation of laws, when the administration walks away from the laws they're trying to enforce," Smith says. "There are a lot of clean-up actions the EPA had only begun to litigate that may not happen."

The federal courts haven't seen the last of it yet, however. A number of Northeastern states—which must deal with pollution created in the Midwest and Southeast—might file a lawsuit, along with environmental groups, against the federal government.

Smith says TVA shares the blame for the new rules, because the utility lobbied heavily for them.

"TVA spent hundreds of thousands of ratepayer dollars lobbying to get the loophole widened. They took ratepayer money we were paying in good faith for utilities and used it against us."

TVA could not be reached for comment by press time.

—Joe Tarr