McMillan refuses closed door confab

James McMillan wasn’t expecting much when he walked into the county mayor’s office last Thursday for the meeting Commissioner Michele Carringer set up to talk about stormwater problems on his family farm. He’s been to many such meetings over the past five years, and all he’s gotten for his attempts to get the county to enforce regulations on upstream development is a polluted creek and well water that runs bright orange after a hard rain.

This time he wasn’t in the mood to take on a room full of bureaucrats alone, so he brought backup – lawyer Stephanie Matheny, Tennessee Clean Water Network executive director Renee Hoyos and a reporter from the Shopper-News.

Laura Cole, an MPC commissioner whose East Knox County farm has similar problems as McMillan’s, was there at the invitation of Ragsdale caporegime Mike Arms. Carson Dailey, a Board of Zoning Appeals commissioner and a member of the ethics committee, was there too.

But Mayor Mike Ragsdale refused to meet with anyone but McMillan, Carringer and Cole.

“This meeting is closed to the media,” said Ragsdale spokesperson Susanne Dupes.

While Carringer attempted to cajole McMillan into walking into Ragsdale’s office with her, at least a half-dozen county officials – including codes chief Grant Rosenberg, stormwater manager Chris Granju, Engineering and Public Works director Bruce Wuethrich and his wife, Becky, an investigator with the law director’s office, and Rob McConkey, an assistant law director – gathered in Arms’ office behind a closed door.

When Matheny recommended that McMillan not go into Ragsdale’s office without her, Carringer protested: “I set up a meeting for James to talk to the mayor.”

“I’ve had a dozen meetings like this,” McMillan said. “When you asked what you could do to help, I told you that the only thing that could help would be to get a stop work order” (on the Legends at Oak Grove, a development that County Commission had approved next door to the McMillan farm. It recently was assessed a $50,000 fine by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation).

After a few minutes of wrangling between Dupes and the McMillan entourage, a couple of elderly Public Building Authority security guards arrived, whereupon Laura Cole excused herself, saying, “this is a little too embarrassing for me.” Dailey also left because he said he didn’t want to jeopardize any ongoing ethics investigations.

Afterward, Matheny, who recently moved to Knoxville from Seattle, said she was perplexed by what she’d just seen.

“I’m sorry to see what passes for public process in Knox County. The fact that they wanted to exclude James’ attorney is contrary to due process. Rob McConkey was there – they had their lawyer, why can’t we have ours?”

Hoyos, who has been here longer than Matheny, said she was “disappointed but not surprised.”

“I don’t know why he wants to exclude anybody. A citizen walks in and is greeted by an unknown number of unfriendly county employees. His staff is pushy and aggressive. Does he instruct them to act like that? Here we suited up, out of respect, because we were going to meet the mayor.

“That door,” Matheny said. “What’s behind it? We don’t know. Maybe it’s the Wizard of Oz.”

McMillan, who gave Carringer a quick hug before he left the mayor’s office, had second thoughts afterward.

“Michele was acting as Ragsdale’s advocate, not mine. She should have been there fighting for me, not Ragsdale.”

Stormwater debate returns

Laura Cole delivered a message to County Commission last week about the destruction of her farm. She told the commissioners that stormwater runoff from an upstream development has polluted the once-pristine stream that runs across her pastures.

“This is destruction of one person’s property for another person’s profit,” she said.

Commissioner Bud Armstrong, who represents Cole’s district, called county stormwater manager Chris Granju to the podium and demanded to know if anything is being done to help this responsible citizen defend her property.

Granju gave a halting defense of his department’s failure to protect Cole from the consequences of her neighbor’s actions.

When asked what the county could do differently to help, Cole had two simple suggestions: come out to inspect when it’s raining, and try issuing some “stop work” orders to get the attention of negligent developers.

Granju nodded and seemed to agree. Mike Arms, who is the mayor’s chief of staff, mentioned a big meeting in August when everybody could talk some more. They both spoke of the difficulty of collecting fines from developers and builders who are going broke, and they both pretty much ignored Cole’s suggestion to employ SWOs.

If Cole looked skeptical, it was probably because she’s heard it all before. In fact, the speech she gave was the same one she delivered at the April 16, 2007, County Commission meeting, and Granju’s excuses were eerily similar to those he offered two years ago, as well.

This time, however, there’s a sliver of hope. The commission has changed. The “Black Wednesday” appointees, who were heavily dominated by developer-friendly representatives like Lee Tramel and Richard Cate, have been replaced by elected commissioners who think that people like Laura Cole have property rights, too. Two years ago, her 8th District representative Phil Ballard gave a good speech supporting her, but soon got busy running for property assessor and failed to follow through on his criticism of how county regulators had failed her.

This year, Ballard has been replaced by Armstrong, who not only said that Cole’s situation is intolerable, but said that he has a lot of other constituents who are in the same situation. He said he spent Father’s Day visiting homeowners who were knee-deep in mud, watching hay bales and riprap wash past their homes.

Tony Norman, who championed Cole two years ago, did so again last week, and insisted on seeing action, not words, from Granju’s staff this time around. He said the county has approved “dozens of stormwater covenants with new developments, and I think they are all deficient.”

Norman suggested that his colleagues should look out the south windows of the City County building and observe the Tennessee River next time it rains.

“It’s orange because every stream and creek in Knox County is in violation,” he said. “We are not even close to sequestering all these particles that are washing into our streams. … The people who are supposed to prevent this, we are them.”