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Seven Days

Wednesday, October 1
The Associated Press reports on a Vanderbilt U. study that says the number of people living in the South who identify themselves as Southerners has declined by 10 percent, to about 70 percent, in the last decade. Lordy, what do they identify themselves as?

Thursday, October 2
TVA's long-range "strategic plan" to reduce its $45 billion debt is publicized. Do the agency's officials not understand that letting the public know it has such a plan may lead to an uncomfortable situation in which people expect TVA to follow through on it?

Friday, October 3
An AP report out of Nashville says more Tennessee cities and counties should consider consolidating their governments because one government could operate more efficiently than two. Who thought of that? Are they sure? Did they ask the sheriffs?

Saturday, October 4
The football Vols take a touristy approach to their visit to Auburn, Ala. After all, it is the "loveliest village on the plain." Ask 'em. They saw it at its loveliest. They forgot to run the football, but who'd remember, it's so pretty there?

Sunday, October 5
The News Sentinel reports that a former employee of Pilot Travel Centers has sued the corporation for firing him when he refused to shave his beard. Too bad Mayor-elect Bill Haslam is no longer with the Pilot Corp. He's shown himself to be such a nice guy he'd have grown a beard and gotten fired, too, just to make the guy feel better.

Monday, October 6
The media gets a tour of the UT president's house on Cherokee Boulevard and finds that ousted President John Shumaker had really spruced up the place, including spending university money on two $7,000 entertainment systems. He paid for another such system himself, and took it with him. Nobody ever said Shumaker was easily entertained.

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:
According to their Mission Statement, for 125 years Knoxville College has provided a challenging educational experience for students of potential who have "been afforded little advantage within society."
Through the years, the college's persistent financial difficulties have been well documented. But less noted are the many small successes seen on campus.
Last week's photo showed the brick entrance monument adorned with the college's initials. The structure was provided to the school by the Gaiter family, longtime benefactors of Knoxville College.
Since Sam McKenzie of Knoxville was the first with a correct ID, he'll receive a copy of Shadows Over Baker Street, a collection of new H.P. Lovecraft-inspired stories edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan, just in time for Halloween!

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

POLICE ADVISORY AND REVIEW COMMITTEE
Thursday, Oct. 9
6 p.m.
Mount Calvary Baptist Church
1801 8th Ave.
Regular meeting.

JOINT ECONOMIC & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BOARD EXECUTIVE MEETING
Thursday, Oct. 9
8 a.m.
Briefing Room, Knox Area Chamber Partnership — Historic City Hall
Regular meeting.

CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, Oct. 14
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

Drydocked
Citizen opposition halts Concord boathouse

Concord Park is one of Knox County's older and better known parks. Located along the shore of Fort Loudoun Lake, it has attracted boaters fishermen, and picnickers for more than 50 years.

The Concord Marina is located on the eastern shore of an inlet accessible from Northshore Drive. Though located on public property, it's privately funded and operated. It's been there for decades, but has recently expanded to comprise about 180 boat slips.

The marina company recently proposed to build a large boathouse nearby, on the bank between the current marina and Northshore drive: 100 yards long, it would be a dry-stack facility that would more than double the capacity, with space for about 260 boats. It was a project that had appeal to some local boaters, boat retailers who stood to expand their markets, and promised to bring in tax revenue to Knox County.

But it also threatened to take up a good deal of Concord Park currently used for family cookouts and by freelance fishermen, and, some expected, create an eyesore on a nearly pristine inlet. On Monday the county nixed the plan, a decision formally announced by County Mayor Ragsdale on Tuesday.

Knox County Parks Director Doug Bataille says that because Concord Marina's boathouse proposal was outside the original leased area, the county sought public comment; if they'd gotten none, he says, the county probably would have given the plan a green light. After a month of public comment on the project, however, his office received 183 formal opinions, 112 against the boathouse project, and 71 for it. That proportion was roughly mirrored by the 60-plus who attended an open meeting at the marina on Sept. 18.

"I can't recall too many times that we've gotten this kind of response from the public," Bataille says. He also discussed the matter with the county mayor and commissioners of the affected districts; they also reported citizen skepticism of the project. Some were concerned that the 45-foot-tall, football-field-sized steel building would be an eyesore both from the town of Concord and from Northshore. Others, like members of the Concord Yacht Club, were concerned about the increased motorboat traffic from that inlet. Still others were concerned about increased automobile traffic along Northshore, which is a two-lane road here.

Others objected purely out of principle. West Knoxvillian Alexander Van Hook, a retired UT chemistry professor, pointed out that the five-acre project area would "severely cut into [the park's] usefulness and its appeal to the general public. The purpose of the park system is to provide recreational opportunity for all the citizens of the county, rich as well as poor, including those without boats."

Though it was mostly rural 20 years ago, the Concord area is hardly virginal. Now bisected by Pellissippi Parkway, it has been the subject of massive residential development in recent years, of McMansion cul-de-sacs and lakeside condos and commercial strip centers. But just a couple hundred yards across the inlet is something that's been passed by in West Knox County: the tiny, 200-year-old town of Concord. Its 19th-century buildings are clearly visible right across the water from the site of the current marina.

"It's a tight-knit community over there, very voiceful," says, Billy Harrison, gesturing across the inlet at Concord. "If one complains, they all complain. There are two or three people who don't want it to happen." (Bataille says some Concord residents did object, but they did not dominate the opposition.)

Harrison's clearly disappointed in the decision. About the project's opponents, he says, "Tell them we're losing a tax base of $3-to-400,000 a year that's gonna go to Blount County or Loudon County," he says. (County sources say the figure actually going to the county, based on the five percent of gross the county gets from the operation, would have been around $24,000 annually.)

Boating's a popular pastime here, and according to some industry indicators it's getting more popular, but boat owners are getting more squeezed for storage all the time. "These homeowners' associations don't let people keep their boats in their yards," Harrison says. He says the proposed "dry stack" boathouse is the most efficient way to store boats.

"We're gonna drop it and see what happens," Harrison says. "It really isn't worth the hassle of fighting the people." He adds that some of his marina's patrons are Concord residents and, perhaps, opponents of the new boatdock.

The county seems prepared to allow Concord Marina to proceed with a marina restaurant on its current site that has been described as similar to Riverside Tavern, but with a more casual atmosphere.

—Jack Neely

Safe and Supportive
A program for homeless veterans gets its money back

The Steps House—a 12-step program for veterans and other men—got its funds reinstated this month.

The halfway houses, sprinkled around South Knoxville, almost had to close when it lost 60 percent of its funding earlier this year. A large music benefit, Festival Americana, held in May failed to raise any money.

"The last nine months have been real tough," says Patrick White, Steps founder and director. "I'll tell you what, I do believe in miracles. It's absolutely amazing that we made it."

The 12-year-old program isn't a shelter per se, but a 12-step program for men with alcohol and drug habits, mental illness, homelessness or other problems. Within a number of different houses, the men are given varying degrees of responsibility and supervision, depending on how far along they are in the recovery process.

You don't have to be a veteran to take advantage of it, but Steps had come to specialize in helping veterans. However, the Veterans Administration restructured its funding mechanism, and a convoluted way of awarding the grants left a number of long-standing programs without funds.

Steps House lost about $600,000, or 65 percent of its annual budget. With the help of Rep. John Duncan, some careful budgeting, and donations, the Steps House was able to hold on until this month.

No layoffs were necessary, but the staff voluntarily took 40 percent pay cuts, White says. "That's not like anything that would happen at a corporation," he says.

White praised Duncan's office for its assistance in filling out grant proposals, trying to find temporary funds, and doing the things "that politicians do." Temporary funding also came from Wal-Mart and some other veterans' organizations.

With the reinstated funds, the Steps House has the funding for 40 beds for three years. The VA will pay to house a specific veteran there for up to two years. (Overall, Steps has 86 beds total.)

Harold Busch, who oversees the VA's homeless program in Knoxville, says the Steps House is a big help. "Since we've had a contract with the Steps House, we've placed over 600 veterans in that program. We're really excited we got the new grant and we're up and running again," Busch says.

While most people blame homelessness on drugs and alcohol, Busch says the problems are always much more complex than that, involving mental illness, family problems, job training, unemployment, etc. The VA uses a number of different organizations and programs to confront those problems.

Although last spring's Festival Americana failed to raise any money, the Steps House isn't done with fund-raisers. A benefit called "Elvis Lives In Concert," featuring a number of celebrity impersonators, is set for Jan. 24 at the Civic Auditorium.

—Joe Tarr

Candidate Packaging
Rogero got almost all of the criticism

All over town, many Knoxvillians scrutinized one mayoral candidate in particular, and when they talked about what they saw, the conversations weren't about taxes or urban sprawl or downtown revitalization. The subject tended to be careful analyses of Madeline Rogero's hairdo and clothes. Evaluations of her makeup. And they told her about it. Early and often.

"My granddaughter Jada goes to a Barbie web site where she can put clothes on the dolls and see them in different outfits," says Rogero, an accomplished public servant with a long resume and a penchant for planning and detailed policy statements. "We heard so much about my wardrobe that at one point we were joking about doing something like that on our web site—putting up the question: 'What clothes look best on Madeline?'"

Rogero says she got a hint of what was to come at the beginning of the campaign "...when I was told, 'You've got to stop wearing those black jeans that you wore to work all the time...so I brought out all these clothes from my closet, and we figured out which would be best. It was kind of a team decision.

"I started wearing some tailored suits, and I thought I looked really good until I started hearing that I looked drab. So I went out and got some bright colored dresses."

But those short-sleeved, long-skirted jacketed dresses rubbed some people the wrong way, too. "I didn't like that whole short-sleeved dress thing," says one Rogero-supporting beauty salon owner/makeup artist. "Too conservative, earth-motherish. I'd

prefer to have seen her in something with a little more pizzazz, a little more fru-fru. But that's just my preference—I used to be a drag queen, you know."

Rogero, who ran, and lost—a strong underdog campaign against well-funded opponent Bill Haslam—had run for office before, but two successful County Commission races and eight years in office in the early '90s didn't prepare her for the level of scrutiny that would be brought to bear on the issue of her appearance as a mayoral candidate in 2003.

"After I bought the dresses, I hear 'You gotta cut your hair,' " Rogero says. Another salon owner, Frank Gambuzza of Salon Visage, volunteered for the job of coifing Rogero for the duration of the campaign. "Frank was doing my hair, and I thought it was looking pretty good, but then I started hearing that I needed highlights," Rogero says.

"After that, I started hearing 'You always need your lipstick.'"

When she started appearing in the bright-colored, long-skirted summer dresses and knee-length suits, several supporters (male) offered the suggestion that she ought to show more leg, which was a tougher issue than they could have imagined, due to the demands of the campaign trail, which led her from dais to high school auditorium stage to TV set.

In one of her first joint appearances with Haslam, the two candidates found themselves sitting in folding chairs at the John T. O'Connor Senior Citizens Center. There was no table, and one candidate had to worry about whether her skirt was creeping up over her knees.

"I sat there very stiff and proper, where Bill could be relaxed. I had to be cautious, and that's why I had to start wearing pants or a long dress. We started asking the people who organized these events to skirt the tables."

The TV forum at the Bijou Theater in July was even trickier, and the candidates found themselves up on stage, perched awkwardly on throne-like, elevated director's chairs with footstools in front.

"I had to wear a long dress that night," says Rogero. Haslam, who generally gets high marks for his high-end wardrobe, says he didn't get much fashion advice. "There were people noticing that I was losing weight, or that I needed a haircut, but, really, I think that women get more of that than men do," he says.

One fashion-conscious political observer was impressed by Haslam's wardrobe. "Canali ties. Those go for at least $150 a pop. And Gucci loafers. Bill wore some high-dollar stuff."

Another says Haslam started styling during the years he was commuting to New York to work for Saks Fifth Avenue. "I did have one old pair of Gucci loafers, but I wore them out," Haslam says. "But I guess I did upgrade my wardrobe some—it was probably the difference between working for a truckstop and working for Saks."

Meanwhile, Rogero's salon owner/supporter still frets. He says he will go to his grave believing that fashion and politics are inseparable. "She really needed to lose those Barbara Bush curls and get some highlights. Caramel-color highlights, not like Big Jane Rogero (the spoofy campaign TV spot in which Rogero donned a big-hair wig) That's why you lost, Madeline—because you didn't have highlights."

—Betty Bean