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Eye on the Bumper
Making our weekly foray into bastions of bumper stickers to sort out the parking lot predilections for presidential contenders, we went to the movies. Bush-Cheney stickers outnumbered Kerry-Edwards stickers seven to four at the Carmike Wynnsong 16 lot out west on North Peters Road. Closer in, at the hipper Regal Downtown West 8 lot, Kerry-Edwards was the four-one dominator. But out east at the Carmike Cinema 10 on Millertown Pike, Bush-Cheney decals blanked Kerry-Edwards, four-zip. Locale is everything, it’s beginning to seem.
A Ramblin’ Man
City Councilman Joe Hultquist’s travel expenses total more than all his colleagues combined. Council records reveal that Hultquist has been reimbursed $5,498 for trips since his election in 2001. That contrasts with $5,372 for the rest of his Council colleagues.
A break down: Hultquist $5,498; Vice Mayor Mark Brown $2,499; Barbara Pelot $1,778; Marilyn Roddy $750; Bob Becker $345. There are no expenses reported for the rest of Council. All Council member expenses listed were to attend National League of Cities conferences. Hultquist went to three other conferences in Washington and one each in Memphis and California. A full-time city councilman has time to travel.
Lady Vols Light It Up
There’s nothing like planning a big party and then having the lights go out. It can even cost a lot of money.
Saturday was the first day of basketball practice for the Vols, but maintenance required that the power be shut off for most of the UT campus. Plans were made for the men’s and women’s basketball teams to go to local high schools for practice. The men’s team lined up Fulton High School.
Lady Vols Coach Pat Summitt said no way. And she said it very forcefully. And when Pat speaks, the UT administration listens.
The teams practiced at Thompson-Boling on Saturday. A local theatrical rental company lit the facility, as if for a concert, and ran it off a generator. The total cost of the first day of practice is estimated at $6,000 to $7,000.
The practice satisfied requirements, local sports media attended and oohed and ahhed over the “Madison Square Garden” and “Broadway” atmosphere. Final accounting is not complete, but sources say the expenditure is expected to be billed to the men’s basketball program.
Tax Impact Falls Elsewhere
County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and County Commission have been the focus of the wheel tax referendum, but the fallout is being absorbed by two other county offices.
Trustee Mike Lowe’s office sent out property tax notices the first week in October, to locals and to mortgage companies across the nation, with the current tax rate. If the wheel tax is repealed Nov. 2, Lowe’s office will have to ready a supplemental mailing with another bill for a property tax increase. County Commission passed an 18-cent tax increase to take effect if the wheel tax is repealed. This will not make mortgage company escrow departments happy, not to mention residents who get an additional notice. Lowe’s office will be spending about $125,000 preparing and sending out the additional mailings with about $65,000 of that in postage.
County Clerk Mike Padgett’s office is in the nightmarish position of finding everyone that purchased a car tag since July and sending them a refund. If the tax is repealed, there will be about 130,000 people seeking a refund check. Since the state sends out renewals, Padgett will first have to find the people due a refund, separate out those making less than $12,000 a year who are thus exempt, then prepare a mailing. The election commission will certify the election on Nov. 12, and if the wheel tax fails, Padgett plans to mail checks on Nov. 15. He is estimating at this point spending $25,000 to refund close to $4 million.
If the wheel tax is retained, everybody at the City County Building breathes a sigh of relief.
Down with Interstates?
The Nashville Civic Design Center has come up with a new vision for its downtown that calls for removing Interstates and replacing them with tree-lined boulevards with sidewalks. Through traffic would move out to Briley Parkway and Interstate 440. The plan has the support of the city’s planning director, but local officials say they want to hear more before making a commitment. Sound familiar?
That was a suggestion by a local group during the James White Parkway intersection planning in Knoxville. Move through traffic to I-640 and replace the downtown I-40 interstate with a boulevard. We suspect the Nashville plan will get about as much consideration as the Knoxville plan did, a la “Hmm, that’s interesting.”
You can read the proposed Nashville plan at www.tennessean.com/local/ssiboxes/04/plan.pdf.
Gore’s Youth News Channel
Looking for a television job? Al Gore is hiring. The former Tennessee senator, former vice-president and the former next president of the United States has purchased a cable television network and will offer news with a youthful point of view—sort of an MTV attitude that will supposedly attract young viewers, a group notorious for ignoring main stream news organizations.
The cable network is looking for young people to be digital correspondents. Those “DCs” will think, write, shoot, edit and potentially appear on-air, according to the company. “We welcome candidates who already have television industry experience, but we’ll train those of you who don’t,” it says.
You can get more info at the indtv.tv website. Gore and his investors bought the Newsworld International cable network from Vivendi Universal, a European media conglomerate, for a reported $70 million. It is carried on cable systems in 20 million homes. The group expects it to be on the air sometime in 2005.
October 21, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 43
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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