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Seven Days

Wednesday, Jan. 28
Knox County election commissioners decide to allow 10 area voters to recast their ballots due to a counting mistake at the polls. Unfortunately, the miscounting was due to human error, so none of our Hanging Chad jokes apply.

Thursday, Jan. 29
In order to address ongoing concerns about the proposed Knoxville Beltway scheduled to raze Hardin Valley in the coming years, state transportation officials select 19 people to serve on a Context Sensitive Solutions Resource Team. If anyone has any idea what that means, please give us a call.

Friday, Jan. 30
Local officials announce that University of Tennessee music professor Michael Combs has been cleared of rape allegations. The Knoxville News-Sentinel, which did not reveal the nature of the allegations when the story broke on Jan. 17, later dutifully reports that what they didn't say wasn't being said anymore.

Saturday, Jan. 31
The University of Tennessee men's basketball team actually wins a game in the final seconds, edging the University of Florida 65-63. In other news: Pigs fly. Hell freezes over.

Sunday, Feb. 1
Thousands of Knoxvillians huddle around their television sets to watch the breast Super Bowl halftime show ever.

Monday, Feb. 2
Mintha Roach becomes the first female president in the Knoxville Utilities Board's 60-year history. KUB board members cite her sterling credentials, as well as the fact that they really enjoy saying "Mintha Roach."

Tuesday, Feb. 3
Two days after the "wardrobe malfunction" that rocked the nation, the Knoxville News-Sentinel posts a picture of Ms. Jackson's exposed breast on its website. Due to increased traffic, the publication is rumored to be considering a format and name change to the Knoxville News-Sextinel.

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:
This mural can be found just south of Walter P. Taylor homes in East Knoxville. According to Ashley Ogle of Walland, "The Shop" was an after-school program led by Goldie Simpkins and Trina Gallman of KCDC. Middle school children were enlisted in 1999 to paint this mural. Good work, guys! For her quick identification Ashley will be receiving a paperback copy of Immortal by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder, the latest in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

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

CITY TREE BOARD
Thursday, February 5
8:30 a.m.
Ijams Nature Center
2915 Island Home Ave.
Regular meeting.

Residency Controversy, Redux
Who should resolve residency issues for candidates?

Another election season, another residency controversy. This year's school board races haven't exactly captured the attention of the voting public, but that hasn't saved the Knox County Election Commission from getting caught in the middle of another bitter residency fight.

The current unpleasantness involves the contest between incumbent D.M. Miller and challenger Jeff Byrd for the District Three school board seat. Miller, a retired coach and principal with 30 years experience who has served two terms on the board, is refusing public comment on allegations that Byrd has failed to comply with a county charter-mandated, one-year residency requirement. At issue is Byrd's claim that he decided to run for the office out of a deep desire to improve Knox County's schools, only to learn that his family's home was a few hundred yards outside the district line. He says he complied with the residency requirement by moving into a condominium last September until he could find a permanent residence inside the district. Miller supporters have been poking holes in Byrd's residency story for several weeks now, with some success, but early voting has begun, and Byrd's name remains on the ballot.

Why, and whose job is it to untangle this knot?

Seems easy, at first blush. According to the county charter, if Byrd didn't live in the district for a year before the next term begins in September, he's not qualified to run for the office. Seems that the election commission would be the logical arbiter of such questions, but that body has opted to stay out of the Byrd residency issue on the advice of Law Director Mike Moyers—who has been called upon to deal with such questions before—and says that state law does not give the election commission the legal right to throw Byrd off the ballot, regardless of what the charter says.

Moyers bases this advice on research he did before the 2002 County Commission elections, when a schoolteacher named Leon Daugherty filed a qualifying petition to face incumbent Wanda Moody in the Republican primary for the Third District seat in northwest Knoxville. There was nothing wrong with Daugherty's petition, which was signed by 25 registered voters and filed in a timely fashion.

There were serious questions about whether he actually lived in the Third District, however, since his wife and children and dog and mailbox reside in Halls. Daugherty's contention that he had moved in with his ailing parents and was therefore a legal resident of Moody's district didn't ring true to a lot of people, many of whom suspected he had been enlisted to run by Sheriff Tim Hutchison (Moody being a longtime foe of the sheriff, who denied any connection to the Daugherty campaign). Lynn Redmon, a Moody supporter who was president of the Norwood Homeowners Association and a longtime political activist, challenged Daugherty's right to run. The election commission agreed with Redmon and took Daugherty's name off the ballot.

Daugherty filed suit in Chancery Court, and, on Moyers' advice, the election commission put Daugherty's name back on the ballot. On election day, the voters made short work of his candidacy.

Moyers says the issue turned on the fact that there is no state law giving election commissions the right to keep candidates who have filed valid qualifying petitions off the ballot, regardless of where they hang their hats. In a letter to the election commission chair, Moyers says, "I can find no other statutory requirement in the election laws for qualification to be placed on the ballot. TCA �2-5-204 states that each qualified candidate's name shall be placed on the ballot as it appears on the candidate's nominating petition. There is no provision in this or any other statute I have found that provides for an administrative protest procedure where a candidate may not be qualified to serve in the office which he seeks."

This doesn't mean he likes or agrees with this finding, Moyers says, calling the residency problem "a huge issue that begs to be addressed. But until the legislature remedies it, Tennessee has no law that precisely prohibits an unqualified person from running for office."

As fate would have it, Redmon is also a supporter of D.M. Miller and is as interested in the Byrd residency issue as he was in the Daugherty question. Not surprisingly, he disagreed with Moyers in 2002, and still does.

"Elections are not just deals between politicians," Redmon says. "They really and truly belong to the citizens of the district, and I was not going to sit idly by and watch a bunch of politicians make a deal to choose my elected representative. I felt strongly that this was a violation of residency requirements, and from my point of view, if laws are on the books, they need to be enforced. But Moyers came up with the Mike Moyers Theory of what election commissions across the state are empowered to do, and the election commission, once they got that opinion from Moyers, put Leon Daugherty back on the ballot."

Redmon says he is not disputing the fact that Byrd now actually lives in the district in which he is running, but believes there are serious legal questions concerning whether he has met the one year residency requirement. He believes the election commission should decide the issue.

State Coordinator of Elections Brook Thompson more or less agrees with Redmon. He says residency controversies are not unique to Knox County, and that they are typically "difficult issues."

"I think the Knox County Election Commission should decide these issues, but having said that, it is a very difficult call to make—whether a candidate has met the requirements. But I don't think the election commission has to put someone on the ballot who does not meet those requirements."

Greg Mackay, Knox County's administrator of elections, says he has been looking into this issue, too, and would like to have the laws qualified. He believes he has found a statute that sheds light on the subject, and that the law empowers Thompson to make the final call. Moyers disagrees with Mackay, and believes that a court challenge by Miller would be the only way to remove Byrd's name from the ballot.

—Betty Bean

Natural Foods Shakeup
Local organic offerings get boost from Southeast chain

When Earth Fare opens in Turkey Creek this summer, Knoxville will gain 26,000 square feet of natural and organic foods. The stores in this regional chain, located in Asheville and Greensboro, N.C., Charleston, Mt. Pleasant, Greenville and Columbia, S.C., and Athens, Ga., are the size of mainstream groceries but with all-natural content, offering organic dairy and meat cases, herbal supplements, vegetarian and vegan frozen foods, a lunch counter with sandwiches, salads, baked goods, plus a community room that hosts workshops and lectures. The store doesn't sell processed foods, like those containing hydrogenated oils.

Earth Fare moves into a market with at least three natural foods groceries and other specialty stores that carry organic and non-mainstream foods.

Troy DeGroff, director of sales and marketing for Earth Fare, says the company has already gotten positive feedback from prospective shoppers in Knoxville, a locale that DeGroff says is "near and dear" to Earth Fare, which is based in our "sister city" of Asheville.

"[Knoxville] seems on the cusp of wanting and desiring a larger-format natural-foods supermarket," he says, adding that the other natural foods stores in town "do a great job, but there's a lot of products out there and lots more people wanting them."

The store's location in Turkey Creek was chosen based on the area's population density, DeGroff says, and its accessibility. Easy access is an element of Earth Fare's other locations that the company values.

"I believe in what we sell, and if we can find a place that's accessible to as many people as possible, it broadens our mission," he says. DeGroff recalls that, early in their scouting, some people were eager to have Earth Fare locate in downtown Knoxville. But research conducted by the supermarket indicated that the Turkey Creek area "made sense."

Meanwhile, organic groceries and natural food stores don't seem to be sweating Earth Fare's impending arrival. Ann Yates, owner of Nature's Pantry located on Bearden hill, says she's continuing business—and progress—as usual.

"I will continue doing what we do, and do the best job that we can running a good business and continue to promote organics and healthy lifestyle," she says. "My philosophy is that there's enough business for everybody."

In response to customer requests, Yates plans to expand the store in late 2004 to make room for a juice bar, salad bar and sandwiches made from organic ingredients. She considers other natural foods businesses colleagues; having been in the organic food business for 27 years, she feels her store helped plant a seed and create a certain demand for whole foods and natural products. Earth Fare, she says "will expand the marketplace. I hope people will continue to support a locally owned family business and not just support venture capitalists."

"We haven't put people out of business," says Tracy Schneider of Earth Fare, which is a corporation owned by investors and run by a board of directors. She gives as an example Athens, Ga., where two existing natural food stores are "still thriving" within the market.

Nature's Pantry's customers drive from across the city, she says, and even from out of state. Most customers of the Knoxville Food Cooperative on Broadway live in nearby neighborhoods, says front-end manager Heather Pace.

"We expect some of them to go check [Earth Fare] out, but we expect most of them to stick with us like they have for more than 20 years." Pace's attitude toward natural foods is the more the merrier. "We think it's great to have more natural foods in our area even if it's a chain store," she says. She has reservations, however, about the Turkey Creek location due to the controversy over the manipulation of the wetland to accommodate commercial development.

Pace is encouraged by the increased demand for natural and organic foods in Knoxville in both specialty grocery stores, mainstream supermarkets and locally owned produce stands. The Co-op itself is outgrowing its space and plans, within the next two years, to relocate somewhere in the Fourth and Gill area. Downtown is also a possibility, she says.

The Fresh Market, a specialty grocery store that caters to cooks interested in quality perishables and hard-to-find pre-packaged foods, isn't fazed by the arrival of Earth Fare says Eric Blazing, Fresh Market's marketing coordinator for community promotions and outreach.

Fresh Market isn't a gourmet or a health food store, Blazing says. "We are a healthy store. We carry some organic products because they happen to be good products. We are appealing to the consumer who wants good healthy food for everyday cooking."

The Fresh Market and Earth Fare do compete for a certain segment of shoppers, but Blazing believes the two complement each other. He says the recent expansion of the store's Western Plaza location wasn't a defensive move in anticipation of the organic supermarket's arrival. The Fresh Market's stock didn't change to offer more natural foods, just more of the same product lines.

"We just want to do what we do better and to have more room," he says. The expansion to the Western Plaza store will add 6,000 square feet, making the sales floor space 11,500 square feet, making it more comparable to the Fresh Market's 39 other locations.

—Paige M. Travis