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Seven Days

Wednesday, December 18
The departure of Bud Gilbert from next year's race for Knoxville mayor is cussed and discussed all over town. Speculation is rife that the lawyer and former legislator has made himself ripe for some big appointment, such as those that befell the previous candidates who withdrew from contention.

Friday, December 19
Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, an M.D., posits himself as the only candidate to succeed the errant Trent Lott, who resigns the Senate's Republican leadership post. Frist must have misunderstood the GOP's clamorous call: "Is there a spin doctor in the house?"

Sunday, December 21
An AP story out of Nashville discloses that the state Supreme Court has ruled that trees can be declared nuisances. And that's not just those dried up brown hulks of Christmas trees, either.

Monday, December 22
The AP reports that for the umpteenth time, a court will have to determine why legislators can't tell beer from liquor. The question is, why weren't the lobbyists who supply the lawmakers with both beverages consulted on this?

Wednesday, December 25
Snow falls all around the Knoxville area, but leaves the city with only a trace of a white Christmas. We just can't get no respect from the weather.

Monday, December 30
BellSouth offers long-distance telephone service to Tennessee customers for the first time since the breakup of the old phone monopoly. What that means is the Baby Bells are finally toilet-trained and out of diapers.

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:
Where else would you find a "Street of Dreams" except at a place where your fantasy home can be bought at a reasonable price and toted away on a trailer? Yes, the Knoxville Found photo in the Dec. 19 Metro Pulse is from Oakwood Homes on Airport Highway in Louisville.

For the conspiracy theorists, here's a chilling note: This week's winner is Crystal Young of WATE-TV 6 in Knoxville, following in the footsteps of the previous winner, Brennan Robison, also of WATE-TV 6. We admit it, we're in collusion with them, we're carrying their water, we're currying favor, we're the lapdogs of their imperialist policies. Soon, WATE-TV 6 will rule Knoxville, ha ha ha ha ha!

In the meantime, to Crystal our unworthy selves obsequiously present The Fighting Arts: Their Evolution from Secret Societies to Modern Times, in hopes this offering will be looked upon most kindly. Gort, Klaatu barada nikto.

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

MPC PUBLIC MEETING
Tuesday, Jan. 7
6:30 p.m.
Ritta Elementary School library
6228 Washington Pike
Updating the Northeast County Sector Plan. Other meetings: Jan. 14 at Corryton Community Building, 9331 Davis Road and Jan. 21 at Ritta Elementary School.
CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, Jan. 7
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.
MAYOR'S NIGHT OUT
Wednesday, Jan. 8
5 p.m.
Spring Hill Elementary School
4711 Mildred Drive
Bring your questions and concerns to Mayor Ashe live and in person, so come on out. Bring the kids.
KNOX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD
Wednesday, Jan. 8 *5 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting. On tap: an application to start a charter school in Knox County.

Chasing the Students
School board has new and replacement schools on tap

Projecting the need for elementary, middle, and high school classroom space in Knox County is next to impossible. It can be a crapshoot, but somebody has to do it.

The school board is that somebody. Last month, the board rolled the dice and submitted its extended five-year plan for new and upgraded schools to County Executive Mike Ragsdale for review. The board also approved the rezonings deemed necessary to match existing schools with population shifts.

What the board asked for in the coming fiscal year includes land-acquisition, design, and construction money for three new elementary schools, an elementary school replacement, a middle school expansion, and a new high school. One of the new schools, Ridgedale Elementary on Ball Camp Pike, and the expansion of Holston Middle School in East Knoxville, would be under construction by this summer.

Another new building, to house Cedar Bluff Primary, would be designed this year for construction in 2004, as would the new Gibbs Elementary. Land has also been acquired to replace Carter Elementary, another year or so down the road, and the board voted to acquire land this year for a new high school between Bearden and Farragut. But the name and location of the new high school—whether north or south of I-40/75—have yet to be determined.

"The growth rate in West Knox County has dictated it," School board Chairman Sam Anderson says of the high school proposal and the Cedar Bluff plan, which includes an upgraded intermediate school to follow immediately to serve third- through fifth-graders.

He says the Holston Middle expansion to house 1,000 students is also mandated by population growth in that district, where last year the number of new residential building permits was second only to the Farragut area's.

"We have to build where we expect the population to be in 10 years," Anderson says. "This building program is for five years, extended to 10, but some of it will very likely change with population shifts. One new apartment complex can add 100 students to a school district, and there's just no way of telling where the next several apartment complexes will fall.

"We've built two new middle schools in the last five years, and both are already full," Anderson says. "The size of middle schools is a problem [at 1,000 or more students at each]," but he says it costs $40 million to build a middle school, and the county has to be very careful where and when to place new ones. In fact, the disparity between the number of elementary and middle schools in Knox County is one of the dominant traits of the system; there are already 50 elementary schools and 14 middle schools in the county.

Anderson is just as concerned about large high schools as he is large middle schools. He points out that six high schools have been closed in the last 30 years in Knox County and that only one high school has been added since the 1970s. "The average [high] school size has grown in that time from 800 to 1,200, certainly larger than the ideal as far as I'm concerned."

No schools have been closed in Anderson's 14 years on the board, he says, adding that closings have become "impossible, unless you build a new school."

Since the board hasn't been doing closings, he says, "Rezoning is the toughest thing we do." He says the board has rezoned every high school and every middle school at some point in his tenure. "We have to do it, what with the population shifts," Anderson says.

In its last meeting in December, the board weathered protests to move blocks of students from Powell Elementary to Brickey Elementary and from Rocky Hill Elementary to Sequoyah Elementary and Bearden Elementary.

To the complaint that some of the Rocky Hill students would have to be transported seven miles, from Wright's Ferry Road to Sequoyah Hills, Anderson says, "We have students at Carter and Gibbs who are transported a lot more than seven miles, and with many more stops," he says.

At the same meeting, the board also switched downtown students from Green Elementary to Sequoyah. But there are no students in the downtown area at present. "We did it on the come. We know there's downtown residential coming on line. And both Green and Dogwood [Elementary] are full," Anderson says. Since Sequoyah is considered to be one of Knox County's top public elementary schools, this could have major long-term implications for the development of downtown residential.

As for the newest building plan, there's no certainty that the county executive will recommend it, or that the County Commission will fit it in to the Capital Improvement Plan that covers all county government projects.

County Executive Mike Ragsdale was on vacation and couldn't be reached to discuss the plan's prospects. But his spokesman Mike Cohen says the county administration, new this fall, has not "sat down internally and gone over it." He says there has been at least one meeting between Ragsdale and schools Superintendent Charles Lindsey over the capital budget, but no decision has been reached about any recommendation. "I will say that we're not for or against any individual project, and we won't be," Cohen says. He says the executive will recommend a bottom-line capital-spending figure, and it will be up to the school board to decide how to spend it.

The board's proposal for fiscal year 2004 is to spend more than $32 million, or about $8 million more than in the current fiscal year, on its capital projects. The Commission's 2004 capital budget for schools would be about $23 million, if earlier projections hold. That would be at least $1 million less than is being spent this year.

For the full five years, the school board is recommending capital outlays of about $168 million, up from $163 million in the previously approved capital budget for that period.

—Barry Henderson

Parkside Changes Due
County considers $5 million road widening

A few months ago, BellSouth gave some unusual instructions to truck drivers pulling out of its operations center at 9933 Parkside Drive. Traffic was so bad, and left turns so dangerous, that the company told its drivers that they were required to turn right no matter where they were headed.

The BellSouth anecdote is one of many coming out of the one-mile-long stretch of Parkside Drive extending from North Peters Road to Mabry Hood Road. The area is home to several businesses and feeder roads that generate large numbers of vehicles each day, including Mayfield Dairy, two fire stations, and several car dealerships.

In Knox County's long-range capital projects plan, the section isn't due to be widened until 2009. But a few months ago, after new County Executive Mike Ragsdale took office, Parkside businesses lobbied him and county Director of Engineering and Public Works Bruce Wuethrich to move the construction schedule up to 2004.

Figures compiled by Knoxville's traffic engineering department show traffic on Parkside between Mabry Hood and Hayfield jumped 35 percent from 1999 through 2001, to an average of 14,208 motorists each day. East of that section to where it joins North Peters, Parkside saw a steady climb to 16,763. "I doubt I have a road that carries that much traffic that's two-lane," Wuethrich said of the one-mile Parkside corridor. "This is probably the only road project where the landowners will all be glad to see us come and work on it."

Wuethrich has presented a $4.9 million estimate to Ragsdale for consideration in the short-term capital budget. It includes $1.75 million for right-of-way acquisition and $2.75 million for construction to widen the one-mile stretch to five lanes. The remaining $400,000 would be used for engineering, appraisals, and testing. Whether and where to place traffic signals would be determined during the design process.

If Ragsdale agrees the work is necessary—and there's every indication he will—the proposal will go to County Commission this spring, along with other projects for consideration.

Parkside's gradual expansion has been underway for a while. In the early 1980s, private developers built North Peters Road to service their burgeoning businesses. Eventually, what's now Parkside bridged east to meet North Peters. Circa 1989, the city financed the widening of Parkside from Lovell Road to Goody's in part to lure the company's corporate headquarters to Knoxville, and the widening continued east to Mabry Hood shortly thereafter. Just two years ago, the 2.5-mile extension of a four-lane Parkside from Lovell to Campbell Station Road paved the way for the Turkey Creek Development, with the city bearing the brunt of the $5.4 million cost. In addition to sales tax collected by the businesses, the resulting businesses pay nearly $1 million in property taxes each year, according to County Commissioner Mike Arms.

A stated purpose of the extension, though, was to alleviate congestion on the parallel stretch of Kingston Pike. According to traffic data compiled by the Metropolitan Planning Commission, 18,650 vehicles are now using the Parkside extension on an average day. Yet the daily vehicle count on Kingston Pike is little changed from the 33,842 recorded in 1999. Still, it's quite possible that the widening of Parkside to the east will encourage its use as an alternative east-west corridor and thus accomplish its stated purpose.

Sam Parnell, the head of engineering for the city, said this widening has been in the works for a long time. He added that, if not for lawsuits meant to fight annexation, the city might have been working on the road widening right now. Several years ago, the city began annexation proceedings but was halted by lawsuits filed by businesses destined to be brought into the city, including Ted Russell Ford, Beaty Chevrolet, Auction Land Co., Phoenix Conversions, Motor Land Co., Stonemill Log Homes, Russell Drama, and Saturn.

The apparent inevitability of annexation was a factor in not widening the bottleneck. Former County Executive Tommy Schumpert said since Knoxville kept annexing around Parkside, the county figured it would be a short time before the road itself was taken, too—and it could still happen even if millions are spent on widening.

"Oh yes," Schumpert admitted. "There's a very good possibility of that. But I think you have to look at the overall good of widening the road through there. There's going to be more traffic in West Knoxville, and it's going to be on one road or another."

Mike Cohen, director of communications for Ragsdale, agreed. "[The county] can't make traffic decisions based on what might or might not happen with annexation." He added that leaving Parkside a bottleneck between two four-lane roads has "basically engineered a higher probability of accidents."

Wuethrich summed it up more bluntly: "Somebody needs to get off dead center and do something on that road."

—Ann Hinch