Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

Comment
on this story

Mean Gene

Channel 6 anchor Gene Patterson, who hosts the Sunday talk show "Tennessee This Week," led the pack when he broke the story of the high-flying spending habits of University of Tennessee President John Shumaker late last month. Other media have been scrambling to catch up with Patterson, who has made an appearance on Birmingham radio talk show host Paul Feinbaum's program to talk about Shumaker's use of the UT plane.

So far, Shumaker has declined to speak to Patterson and evidently this Sunday will be no exception. Shumaker has been booked to appear on Channel 10's "Inside Tennessee," where he is no doubt hoping to receive gentler treatment than that which Patterson might dispense.

Oyez, Oyez

Speaking of UT presidents, Pamela Reed,a close personal friend of Shumaker's predecessor J. Wade Gilley, has run into a bit of a rough patch. According to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records, Judge Richard Stair has found Reed in contempt of court for failure to answer a subpoena filed June 5 by Bankruptcy Trustee William Hendon. Reed has been ordered to appear in court July 31 to answer the charge and "show cause why she should not be jailed and/or fined." At issue is a debt owed to the estate of the late Shannon Francis-Garrett.

Catering to the Crowd

Whatever anyone else says to the contrary, caterers Susan Rothchild and Virginia Smothers stand by their belief that their businesses (Rothchild's and Buddy's Bar-B-Que) were in imminent danger of being shut out of the World's Fair Park. Smothers says she got an email from the Public Building Authority the first week in July warning her that Buddy's was in jeopardy of losing the July events they'd been booked to cater, which prompted her to fire off emails to four members of City Council. Rothchild echoes Smothers' story, except she says employees of the Tourist Bureau notified her. The park was reopened to anyone's catering service last week under the newly confirmed management of the Public Building Authority.

Rothchild also says that her business is now shut out of Chilhowee Park because she failed to respond to an imprecise and misleading ad that appeared in the Sunday paper in March 2001. The ad was a request for proposals for food and beverage concessions at Chilhowee. Since Rothchild's is not a concessionaire (except for Boomsday), Rothchild says she did not respond.

Later, she was alarmed to learn that a company from Perry, Ga., had been awarded exclusive rights not only to run the concessions in the East Knoxville park, but to do all the catering there.

"We were told there was one bid submitted," she says, adding that Rothchild's catered every Victor Ashe budget address "until the last one."

Flirting for Votes?

Karen Collins, the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership's superflack, was doing yard work last Saturday, and her daughters were playing with the sprinkler as mayoral candidate Bill Haslam came along pounding the pavement on Snowdon Drive in Fountain City. She says the street had been a political hotbed that day because City Council candidate Tim Wheeler was out there just two or three hours earlier. Anyway, Haslam said hello, met the neighbors, and proceeded to chat with her girls. They quickly invited him into the sprinkler for a quick splash and, believe it or not, he accepted by jumping clear over it. He had on khakis, dress shoes, etc. Collins says he did get wet, and the girls had a big laugh as he walked into the next yard. When Karen told the girls who he was and that he was running for mayor, her older and more skeptical child, Vera Aldridge said, "Oh, this whole time, I was thinking he wanted to flirt with us, but all he really wants is our vote."