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by Joe Sullivan

For a time this year Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale was getting buffeted by a tempest of opposition to a wheel-tax increase he proposed to fund an ambitious county agenda. Nearly 30,000 voter signatures on a petition forced a referendum on the issue, and the wheel-tax increase seemed doomed to be defeated until the county mayor managed to outmaneuver its opponents.

Reaching deep into his store of political capital, Ragsdale got County Commission to approve an 18-cent property-tax increase that would take effect if the $30 wheel-tax increase got voted down. Each would raise the same amount of money ($12 million), but property-tax increases aren’t subject to a referendum. Faced with a choice between the two taxes, voters on Nov. 2 opted for the wheel tax by a considerable margin. But the lingering question is at what political cost to Ragsdale.

The answer is that Ragsdale appears to have weathered the storm with minimal damage done. There’s no prospective opponent to his almost certain bid for re-election in 2006 anywhere in sight. As a major deterrent, he’s already raised more that $200,000 in campaign funds, and he adds that, “I feel confident that whatever our campaign plan says we need, that we can raise the money to do it.”

When asked if he’s concerned about a loss of political capital with County Commission, Ragsdale responds that, “Anytime this administration has come forward with a positive idea, County Commission has approved it. If we’re coming with good ideas to move the community forward, Commission will be supportive of us.”

The notable exception and casualty of the wheel tax donnybrook was the new downtown public library that Ragsdale had proposed as a centerpiece of his agenda for the year. Its $40-million price tag served to galvanize opposition to the wheel tax, especially in outlying sectors of the county where most citizens seem well satisfied with the county’s 17 branch libraries.

County Commissioner John Griess took the lead in getting Commission to reallocate the $40 million for construction of a new West Knox high school to relieve overcrowding that’s projected to get much worse at Farragut and Karns.

It’s almost inconceivable that Ragsdale will renew his library proposal anytime soon. But he still asserts a need for it. “If you go in the downtown library most evenings and most weekends, it’s readily apparent that the facility we have doesn’t work very well. I’m proud of the branch libraries we have, but I don’t think you can go forever without a strong central core facility,” he says. And he holds out hope that most of the money could be raised from private donors with the county participating on much the same basis that it contributed $6 million toward the $23 million renovation of the Tennessee Theatre. Charles Anderson of Anderson News has pledged to raise $5 million for a library, and Ragsdale says, “I think there are lots of people out there that we can talk to and see where we can go.”

For the most part, though, the county mayor remains focused on the four goals he’s been espousing ever since his original campaign for the office in 2002: making every school a great school, more and better jobs, more programs for senior citizens, and making county government more efficient.

With great fanfare, Ragsdale unveiled a Great Schools plan last spring that would provide additional funding for several initiatives aimed primarily at boosting student performance at struggling inner city schools. These include pre-school and extended-hour kindergarten programs as well as bonuses for teachers at schools where student test score gains exceed benchmarks for improvement set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Ragsdale has earmarked $6.8 million for these initiatives in the fiscal year ahead and sought to keep the money separate from regular school funding to assure it goes for intended purposes. But the school board balked at the way in which the money would be channeled through a foundation, insisting that all school funds should go directly to the school system.

At a pivotal school board meeting earlier this month, Ragsdale relented. “I’m not so hung up on how the money travels but where it ends up and then in the results,” he said. And school board Chairman Dan Murphy offered assurances that the board would embrace the Great Schools plan. “To a member, the board approves [its] spirit and a lot of the programs,” Murphy said.

The $6.8 million would be incremental to revenue growth the school system can expect from its dedicated share of county property and sales taxes. These figure to add on the order of $5 million to the school system’s operating budget that totaled $312 million for the current fiscal year. And Ragsdale has gone further yet to accommodate schools financially by agreeing to have county government assume the cost of a $40 million new high school rather than charging it to the school system’s dedicated revenue streams as has been the case with previous school capital projects. Beyond that, he’s also sympathetic to a school board request to have the county cover the cost of $15 million in building improvements at older schools.

“I think it’s needed, and I’m optimistic we can do it, but I can’t guarantee it at this point,” Ragsdale says. “The key will be whether our economic growth is sufficient to support it.”

In any event, next year will bring the biggest increase in local school funding that Knox County has probably ever seen if Ragsdale has his way. And there’s also a new spirit of collaboration between the county mayor and the school board, whose relationship has often been contentious in the past.

December 23, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 52 © 2004 Metro Pulse