I have been overwhelmed with kind words and expressions of support since Monday’s forum and Wednesday’s county commission meeting. Please let me take this opportunity to thank all of those persons for being active citizens and demanding better government, one that is accountable and responsible, as well as open and honest. We all may come up short on some occasions, but it is nice to be recognized for trying to move in the proper direction.

The hundreds of posts on the commission’s actions, expressed in several threads, almost always have been informed and polite. I have learned from them and thank the authors, though I do want to address certain points:

1) The Forum. I called all eight candidates for the second district position. Seven showed up, and all did well. Regrettably, the commission chose the one candidate who did not show or participate in much public process. Charles Bolus was co-treasurer of Chairman Scott Moore’s campaign and has a rather thin resume beyond his assistant principal duties at Gresham Middle.

2) Operation of the Forum. The thirteen commissioners who attended were invited to sit on the stage and take notes. Several did. Some chose to remain in the audience or the back of the room. I followed the same procedure for all contests, one I announced in advance on several listserves and this blog: three-minute speeches from candidates followed by audience questions. For the second district and county-wide seats we went in alphabetical order. When I called the other districts to the stage, they sorted themselves out as to who went first, etc. The timekeeper was a volunteer with the League of Women Voters. Generally candidates kept to the time; I recall only three incidents when I asked them to wrap up—and in each case the Stop card had been up and swinging. Two volunteers from the mayor’s office helped me identify raised hands during the early Q&A periods. This became unnecessary as the forum progressed. The questions were few, but generally direct and revealing. We shortened the time to minute-and-a-half speeches for the other districts, and still just barely kept the forum under three hours in length.

3) The Preference Poll at the Forum. No one had advance notice of my intent to do this. The only clue to anyone was my very open advocacy for a non-binding referendum as a way to squeeze greater public input into commission’s process. A commission secretary helped me photocopy it, sometime between 3:30 and 3:45 the day of the forum. I still wasn’t certain I’d use it, but when the forum began it looked like I had just enough volunteers to distribute it so I decided to do so. Two volunteers with LWV tallied the results at the end of the forum. I sent those results to this blog, several listservs, and news organizations—all with stated cautions about the reliability and value of the measure, and noting that other factors such as candidate qualifications and quality of responses should play a role in decision making. Most respondents were from the second district and most followed the directions to indicate a preference only in their own district and the county-wide offices. Some did mark in more than one commission district, accounting for an overall number that initially seems larger than the attendance (if one were to add all votes cast for commission candidates together, as one sharp-eyed blogger apparently did).

4) The Votes on Wednesday. I followed a pattern of nominating and sticking with the candidate of my choice until that candidate was eliminated. Then I’d go to my highest-rated choice left in the field. In the clash in the Fourth District, my choice was Elaine Davis, but the options narrowed down to a less-than-appealing choice between developer Scott Davis and sheriff-envoy Lee Tramel. I opted for Scott Davis only because of his public vow only to serve the interim period until the election. The 9-9 deadlock on this set off waves of re-votes and recesses. I thought of passing because I did not like the choices, but could not in good conscience switch one candidate to the other. During one break I met Bolus for the first time and was underwhelmed. Our district’s reward for the noble behavior of not dealing to swing another district (also see the newspaper article on Jonathan Wimmer’s refusal to deal) was the Bolus ascendance--which succeeded after likely arm-twisting and the selective swearing-in plan later used. It should be noted that my first choice, Amy Broyles, was still on the table when the pressured switches to Bolus began. Even if I’d abandoned past practice and cast a vote for Wimmer (and somehow Schmid’s vote followed me) that would not have gotten him to ten; and by then both those choices were verboten because they didn’t advance the apparent “you’re in, but you must be sworn in early and break the tie in our favor” plan.

5) The Days to Come. The past few days have seen many more disturbing revelations about some of the commission’s choices and practices. I hope we can keep the conversations focused not on personal attacks on the people, but the repugnant procedures and poor policy choices made. I encourage people to contact the County Commission office (commission@knoxcounty.org, 215-2534), to sign up for the public comments section, and to show up at the next meeting (Feb. 26th, 2pm). Find and support good candidates. Point out when commission violates the spirit and possibly the letter of any law or our newly approved ethics code.

Sorry for the long post, but there was a lot to cover. –Mark Harmon