Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Economic Developments

Just after local economic developers closed what is being described as one of the biggest corporate recruiting coups in recent years—the deal to move the Brunswick Boat Group's corporate headquarters to downtown Knoxville—Chamber partnership chief Tom Ingram got a surprise in the mail.

It was a letter from Mayor Victor Ashe dated June 26, telling him that the Chamber wasn't going to get the $145,000 city funding that had been approved by City Council during the June budget process. Ashe cited the (since expired) state budget crisis.

Ingram says Ashe was aware of the Brunswick success when he sent the letter, since the Chamber had been working with his staff and had coordinated the timing of the announcement to fit Ashe's schedule.

Ingram says Chamber board members Raja Jubran and Bruce Hartmann are planning to meet with Ashe to ask him to reconsider. In case that doesn't happen, Ingram says the Chamber will work to raise the money from other sources.

Meanwhile, several local captains of industry have been using a recurring phrase—"a square peg in a round hole"—in voicing their dissatisfaction with Ingram. Ingram says he is aware of this. "Evidently that's the cliché of the day," he says.

Many longtime political observers say Ingram, who was once upon a time Ashe's chief lobbyist and political strategist, has been in disfavor with the mayor ever since he chaired Tennessee Term Limits, the statewide initiative that raised money and hired staffers for referendum votes like the one that is forcing Ashe from office next year.

Ashe says the mayoral move to cut off city funding "has nothing to do with Ingram....the city has also decided not to renew its contract with Tennessee Resource Valley too, which is a saving of $40,000..."

Campaign Bulletins

"I am proud of my term at the Sheriff's office, and believe Sheriff Hutchison to be a man of integrity and honor..." "I have to say that Mr. Andrews has really ticked me off. He's rude, loud and has no clue about real law enforcement..." These are the kind of comments you expect during an election season, right? Except that those shows of support for Sheriff Tim Hutchison come from the campaign website of Jim Andrews, Hutchison's Democrat opponent in the August election. In addition to the normal stuff you expect on a campaign site—a candidate bio, position statements, smiley photos—Andrews' web HQ (www.andrews-sheriff.com) also has a bulletin board, open to public debate and discussion. Although it's dominated by Andrews supporters (who have nasty things of their own to say about Hutchison), it has provided some lively debate, with Andrews himself periodically wading into the fray to respond to questions and criticisms. The board has prompted some kudos, even from backers of the current sheriff. As one poster wrote, "Well, we are for Tim, but I have to tell you that Mr. Andrews deserves great respect for allowing pro and con Andrews comments on his own damn site!"

West Hills, Where the Buffalo Roam

Last Sunday evening, Mark Rosser's phone rang. It was his dad, Harold Rosser, with a strange bit of news.

"We've got a predicament, and I don't know what to do," Mark recalls his father saying. "Then he asked if I was sitting down. I said yes, and that alarmed me a little bit more." But it didn't prepare him for what came next: "We've got a couple of buffalo roaming the property." The elder Rosser, who is an avid gardener (Mark Rosser likes to say that gardening is his father's golf), carefully tends his corn, tomatoes, beans and blackberries, guarding the crops from pests of all kinds. That usually means manageable critters like aphids and bunnies. So Harold was unprepared to see a couple of buffalo headed for his corn. "I got my BB gun out," Harold Rosser told Mark, explaining that he'd tried calling the zoo and animal control, to no avail. "I suggested he call 911 and explain he didn't know who else to call. But when I hung up, I got to thinking that this sort of thing doesn't happen too often..."

So Mark and his wife Robin headed over to Middlebrook Pike, and made a detour into Dowell Springs development, where he spied four police cars and some officers standing around. "I drove up and told them my dad said there were buffalo in his yard. They asked was he the one shooting at them?"

By the time Mark and Robin arrived at his parents' Dick Lonas Road home, his dad was gone. "My mom said the buffalo had returned..."

So he walked toward the garden, and "Lo and behold, two buffalo ran out of the woods..." The beasts cavorted a bit, then crossed the road. Mark Rosser estimates they were "...for a lack of a better term, teenagers, about 600 pounds apiece." He never saw them again but has since heard that they escaped several days ago from a farm in the Norwood area. And he has two big regrets about the buffalo caper: "Not seeing my dad shooting buffalo with his BB gun; and not being a fly on the wall when my mother [Virginia] first spotted them."