Publisher’s Positions
Citizens Should Be Represented By Districts
City Councilwoman Amelia Parker is having a community meeting on September 14, 2024, at the Clinton Chapel AME Zion in Mechanicsville at 546 College Street in Knoxville. Parker will speak on questions coming to Knoxville voters in referendum and just what they mean. After educating voters, Councilwoman Parker will tell voters precisely why they should vote NO on ballot Question #1. That particular question would change the voting system of the Knoxville City Council where every seat on the council would be elected at-large.
Amelia Parker is certainly right that insisting the two top voting getting candidates in a district run citywide was a mechanism used to keep Blacks off the council. It was also a mechanism used by city mayors to try to influence elections and elect more candidates who would rubber stamp their policies. In fact, that was exactly what Indya Kincannon attempted to do by backing Matthew Good and then Tim Hill against Amelia Parker in the last election. Neither Indya nor some of Parker’s colleagues much liked her asking questions or dissenting.
The majority of city council, all of whom claim to love representative government, are doing their best to dilute district representation with their bogus referendum question. We have at least one member of the city council who was not the choice of the voters inside the district she supposedly represents.
The present majority on council has no real argument for wanting to eliminate the districts. The equivalent of the same idea would be to elect every congressman and U.S. senator nationwide. It would mean every state legislator should be elected statewide.
The Knoxville City Council has THREE members who are all elected at-large by every voter in the city. Nobody has proposed getting rid of them, but three out of nine, a third of all the council people, is more than enough. The other six council members should be elected by the districts they are supposed to represent. There is no reason in the world why voters citywide should be able to veto the choice of the people of the district. I believe in district representation because people elected by district are closer to the people that they represent. Also, it does not give any section of the city disproportionate influence.
Congratulations To All The New Officeholders
The winners of the 2024 local elections were officially sworn into office last Tuesday. New members of the Knox County Commission are Andy Fox, Adam Thompson, Angela Russell, Shane Jackson and Damon Rawls. Rawls replaces Commissioner Dasha Lundy in the 1st District; Shane Jackson takes Commissioner Kyle Ward’s place in the 4th District; Angela Russell was elected to succeed Commissioner John Schoonmaker in the 5th District; Adam Thompson was elected to succeed Commissioner Richie Beeler; and Andy Fox has replaced Commissioner Carson Dailey in the 9th District.
The Knox County Board of Education also saw four new members take the oath of office: Travis Wright, Lauren Morgan, Patricia Fontenot-Ridley and Anne Templeton.
Law Director David Buuck was out of town and sworn in last week for a second term. Phil Ballard is once again Knox County’s Assessor of Property. John Whitehead and Phil Ballard have now been elected leap-frog style for the past 24 years.
Both the county commission and the board of education elected their leadership. Gina Oster, county commissioner from the 3rd District, was elected chair. The new vice chair of the county commission is Kim Frazier, who holds one of the two at-large commission seats elected by all Knox County voters.
Betsy Henderson, who represents the 6th District on the Knox County Board of Education, was reelected to a second term as chair by her colleagues. Steve Triplett, who represents the 6th District, was also reelected as vice chair of the board.
Oster has been deeply involved in her own community and has taken a “hands-on” approach to helping constituents inside her district. Chairwoman Oster has predicted zoning and development issues will be front and center during the next year and that seems spot on.
Betsy Henderson has been a very able and articulate spokesperson for parental rights and issues. Congratulations to all the new officeholders!
Election Turnout Matters
There are more armchair political strategists in the country than even football coaches in waiting. The fact is, the outcome of the 2024 election is going to come down to one thing: turnout. All talk about the presidential race, as well as those below the presidential ballot, mean little or nothing with fewer and fewer people participating. You get what you vote for.
