Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Big Bucks, No Whammies

Sources close to City Council member Steve Hall say he's looking more like a mayoral candidate all the time. One sign they point to is his sudden burst of 202 Fund generosity. The 202 Fund is the discretionary $40,000 each City Council member is given annually to dole out among his/her constituents to support good causes and to buy good will. Until Tuesday's City Council meeting, Hall had been notoriously frugal with his 202 money. But that appears to have been changing since he started talking about running for mayor. This week, he doled out funds to the Inskip Norwood Recreation Committee, Central High School, the Knoxville Symphony.... What's up with the spending spree, Steve?

"That's because I've got a lot of it," Halls says, calculating that after Tuesday's giveaway session he has around $22,000 left to spread around. He says he intends for schools in his district to get about half of that. He also says the 202 Fund is a pain in the butt and he'd just as soon not have to fool with it.

Council Come Home

Longtime readers of this column may recall that we have, when it suits us, railed very politely about City Council's periodic meetings out in the hinterlands, sometimes in hard-to-find locations, frequently in schools with tiny chairs and bad lighting, and always without benefit of live TV coverage (the meetings in locations other than the City County building are taped and shown later).

Turns out that John Emison, president of the annexation-fighting Citizens for Home Rule, agrees with us. When he learned that this week's regularly scheduled Council meeting (which was to feature the annexation of several unwilling property owners) was to be held at Ridgedale Elementary School, he sent out the following email:

"This is outrageous, even by Victor Ashe's standards (and I'm using that word in its most generic sense). To think that upwards of 50 property owners will have their property tax burden doubled for eternity, and that this business will not even be conducted at the regular seat of city government is quite reminiscent of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence against the 'history of repeated injuries and usurpations' of King George III.... He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures....'"

Note to Emison: That was plumb eloquent.

Attention Frank Cagle

We can't vouch for its authenticity, but the following is the text of a flyer being circulated around Knoxville:

"Join the Ronald Reagan Brigade and fight for freedom in Iraq.
A call to arms for all Middle-aged men in East Tennessee.
Real men! Are you as tired as I am of being bashed on the Knoxville talk radio stations by those flag-burning, freedom-hating, Bush-bashing peaceniks?
When they charge that whenever we stand up for our president on the radio, we risk nothing because we are too old to fight, it just makes my blood boil!
Join me in proving them wrong!
Here is the plan. We will meet at 12 Noon on Tuesday, April 1 in the parking lot of the WNOX studio in Knoxville. Bring your NRA-approved weapon.
After brief welcoming remarks by Captain Frank, we will then fly to London and take the train to Istanbul—fighting our way through France if necessary—and then will be bused through Turkey to the Iraq border. All men from 40 to 70 welcome.
Then it's on to Baghdad for the Ronald Reagan Brigade. We'll show them!