Sun
Jan 6 2019
08:35 am
Is Knox County Mayor a full time job?
By: R. Neal

Knox Co. Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a/k/a "Kane," has a lot of side hustles. He's a famous WWE wrestler who travels to wrestling events in Saudi Arabia and Australia. He also owns an insurance company. And, he recently opened a wrestling school and training facility.

Jacobs also makes $180K working for the County. (The county's charter says he must be paid more than any other elected official.) It's hard to imagine how he finds the time for what is ostensibly a full time job. On the other hand, he has a lot of help. He added two new administrative staff positions and recently promoted his finance director to "deputy chief of staff." (The finance director now does both jobs with no raise in pay.)

Even with all those people working for him, the Mayor's office still doesn't seem to have much to do. There's no police department. Law enforcement and the jails are the domain of an independently elected sheriff. There aren't any schools to run. That's handled by an independently elected school board and a superintendent hired by them. There's no fire department or ambulance service. Those are outsourced. Waste collection? Outsourced. Independently elected officials handle tax collections and property records.

That leaves parks and recreation, road maintenance, a health department, the library, and accounting. All of them have directors who run the day to day operations and report to the mayor.

So maybe Knox County doesn't even need a full time mayor, or the $180K salary that goes with it. And Jacobs would be free to pursue his professional wrestling career and other side hustles.

Topics:
calloway1972's picture

Good God, this is pathetic.

Submitted by calloway1972 on Sun, 2019/01/06 - 11:58pm.

Good God, this is pathetic.

You should stick to bitching about Trump.

bizgrrl's picture

You have an opinion.

Submitted by bizgrrl on Mon, 2019/01/07 - 6:23am.
(in reply to calloway1972)

You have an opinion.

cafkia's picture

Perhaps you would like to

Submitted by cafkia on Mon, 2019/01/07 - 11:53am.
(in reply to calloway1972)

Perhaps you would like to elaborate. Exactly what, if anything, did Bubba get wrong? What is it you take issue with? Is this the only conversation you are afraid people will have? If not, what are the others?

danandrews's picture

Jacobs is doing a phenominal job according to almost everyone

Submitted by danandrews on Fri, 2019/01/11 - 7:04am.

So yesterday I was at the City County Building and I had a chance to ask around about how Glenn Jacobs is doing.
This has been the first time I have had a chance to just walk around the CCB and catch up with people. For those of you that don't know I am a Reserve Federal Response Official with FEMA.

So since I have some free time and I was downtown anyway, so I decided to see just what the hell is going on.

To be honest, I too had some concerns, so let's take a look at how it is going...
office
The short answer is it is going phenomenal however, many are waiting to see how his budget shapes up.

The general consensus, is people realize that Glenn Jacobs listens, and he has done a number of positive things differently that have helped him gain the support and respect of the City County Building.
to let's look at one area where the Glenn Jacobs style of Mayor is different from Tim Burchett's.

One of the biggest gripes throughout Mayor Burchett's time in office was lack of diversity in his office.

It is and was a serious glaring problem. That problem no longer exists.

The tone of the office is way better and much more business and professional.

Under the Burchett administration, especially in the beginning, it was really bad. The office was divided, chaos, infighting, and really just a lot of bad stuff was happening.

The public got a small glimpse of just how out of hand and crazy things had become when a police report was filed

http://www.timesnews.net/News/2013/05/03/Police-reports-released-in-probe-of-mayor-s-cash

However, at the same time you had a campaign finance investigation, a divorce, and a ton of other drama...like "Bigfoot Day."
The office was a mess, and to be honest it wasn't until Michael Grider, was finally given the keys to run the office that things started to become normal.

You don't see or hear any of that craziness. So Randy, um yeah Glenn is doing a great job

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