As a follow-up to the "Naked Men" post from yesterday, I received an e-mail from a Sequoya Hills resident who is also a KMS parent. The correspondent says that the house next to the school is in need of repairs and that the property owners have not acted responsibly in addressing problems with tenants, and that the school has been trying to find a solution for years. The e-mail goes on:

KMS has tried to buy the property repeatedly, but the owner has always balked, at least once literally walking away from the closing table.

I can tell you that the City and cops have been unwilling to do much to control the renters' behavior. Uncooperative landlord plus uncooperative city is a nasty combination that could probably only be solved with expensive litigation. If anyone has other ideas on how to handle the situation, I'd love to hear them.

Finally, two key points. First, KMS did not concoct a solution of having "other citizens suffer" this business's entry into the area. The school did not propose a salon or collude with those who did. But when the school learned of it, its leadership supported the salon as a sensible proposal that would, for a change, yield good neighbors.

Second, I'll grant that the salon supporters' argument about the house's configuration was weak. But what was far weaker and more darkly cynical was the Sequoyah Hills Neighborhood Association and Jim Bletner flat-out lying to the public when it sent its mailing saying that KMS opposed the salon. (This was consistent with citing admitted "gossip" to City Council last night.) That's reprehensible. Whatever slack you might be willing to cut a neighborhood activist with preservation intentions, when they lie they should lose it. To my knowledge, no one even called the school before publishing that lie.

The SHNA has no real power -- joining it is optional for SH residents, and there are few if any restrictive/preservationist covenants in the deeds in SH properties. But when someone proposes anything that doesn't square with the SHNA's crabbed view of their utopia, they rally the troops and pull no punches. This episode shows that the truth is no impediment to them, and for that they should be ashamed and should suffer a real credibility loss.

There's a new article in today's Knoxville News Sentinel about the properties in question and the controversy. The article fails to mention allegations that the neighborhood association misrepresented the school's position.