fly into the Knoxville airport and you are a tourist to Blount County. I question which part of that daily spending and those jobs are related to the airport.

Monroe County residents visiting the new WallyWorld are tourists, right?

Tomorrow night there is a Planning session open to the public.

The Blount County Planning Commission wants to know how the public thinks the county should deal with growth.
A public input session about the county’s 1999 Policies Plan and other guidance documents is set for 6 p.m. Tuesday in Meeting Room B at the Blount County Public Library.

(link...)

Before you go, you might be interested to go to the County website and read some of the stuff that we already have told committee after committee that we want.
(link...)

I am very glad they are having more of these public sessions but I can't but think it is a test to see if we, the general public of Blount County have changed our minds about what we most want to see in, of and for BC.

Yep, right now, I do have a bad attitude. I admit it!

Keep Townsend peaceful....if I wanted an airbrushed t-shirt or a cheap butterfly knife, I'd go to Gatlinhell.

As a newcomer to East Tennessee I've noticed some strikingly different approaches to tourism and development in Blount vs. neighboring counties. Sevier County has, quite simply, sold its soul to the devil. Ridgetop development, kitschy entertainment that encourages Northerners to mock Southern Appalachia, traffic disasters, no planning, etc. One reason for this may be the desperate poverty Sevier County found itself in before the explosion of Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge. Like American Indians and casinos, Sevier Countians probably see this overdevelopment as a way to make themselves financially whole after generations of poverty.

Blount County, on the other hand, has never been as poor. It was a fairly stable agricultural county, and has had a sizable manufacturing base in Alcoa/Maryville for decades. When I bike into the outer reaches of the county I'm struck by how little poverty there is. There are pockets of trailer homes and decrepit shacks, but they are far outnumbered by sizable homes on large lots. As such, Blount is not desperate for tourism or development money. Monroe County, interestingly, is more like Sevier County 20 years ago, and hopes to become another tourist mecca. Blount, with its classier veneration of its Appalachian heritage sees no reason to parcel every ridgetop to the nearest developer. I can think of no better county to live in in East Tennessee. I just hope citizens here remain vigilant in protecting what has made Blount beautiful. Having grown up in hyper-developed Northern Virginia, I can testify to the difficulty of maintaining the cultural and geographic integrity of such an attractive place.