I attended the meeting tonight -- about 75 residents rattling around in the school auditorium at 7 p.m. Nobody (except Victor Jernigan) seemed to want the business park and therefore they didn't want the expanded sewer.

Somehow it seems that no one much cares what the folks up there think or want. I can almost hear Lumpy now, making the motion to build that new treatment plant to "open up" east Knox County.

An oddity is that no county commissioners were present. Were they still in court? -- s.

I attended the Midway Business Park/East Knox Sewer presentation by the Development Corp. of Knox County tonight at Carter School-- my observations:

1) It's clear that the ultimate goal is a sewer system that will service all of the southern sector of east Knox County thus opening east Knox County to sprawl.
2) There is no compelling reason for the Development Corporation of KC to fast track a sewer system since a) there is a lawsuit pending that could make the whole deal moot and b) any tenant occupation is years away
3) It's obvious that there are outside forces--NOT the needs of the planned Midway Business park--pushing the sewer treatment facility. Those forces are housing and strip mall developers.
4) The community is clearly against any kind of sewer treatment facility. A pole of attendees indicated that 80% - 90% are against.

If you are concerned about Knox County wasting $30 Million on creating a bonanza for a few developers while destroying the French Broad River please join the folks in East Knox who are fighting this boondoggle.

MPC fails to calculate the “cost of community services” for new development

When the Metropolitan Planning Commission (MPC) allows a property to be rezoned, starting it on the path toward more intensive development, there is NO EFFORT made to figure out the costs of serving the proposed development with basic services such as roads, sewer, schools, fire, police, etc. If we did this calculation we would see that development is occurring in parts of Knox county that are very costly to serve. If we did a calculation of this “cost of community services” for any new development, and then allowed growth only where those costs are minimized, Knox County could save as much as 500 million dollars each year. A report put out by Rutgers estimated that Nashville would save almost a billion dollars a year by managing all its growth so as to minimize the cost of community services. At half of Nashville’s size, Knoxville could probably realize half as much by doing the same.
By not integrating the cost of community services into the planning process, we are giving all of this money to real estate developers, who get to buy cheep land in far flung parts of the county, and then have services extended regardless of the costs to taxpayers.
The current controversy about plans to put a new sewage treatment plant on the French Broad is an extreme case of taxpayer funded welfare for developers. With the Midway Business Park going in at exit 402 the Development Corporation of Knox County, which is run by real estate developers, is trying to leverage the 4 million that they have budgeted for sewer towards a 13 million dollar sewage plant/handout for residential real estate developers active in the area. What will proceed is intensive real estate development at the very edge of Knox county, which will cost taxpayers millions in road upgrades and expansion of police and fire services. If this development were shifted towards the many vacant tracts of land in the parts of Knox county that already have sufficient services to accommodate new growth, 500 million tax dollars could be saved.

Can you imagine what Knox County could do with half a billion dollars more each year?

Here is a press release for the report on the cost of community services: (link...)

Thanks
Sugarfatpie

"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin