Sunday, May 22, 2011

County Commission meets Monday

Just watched about five minutes of the Billboard Music Awards and now I feel a lot dumber. Anyway, on Monday the commission hold its regular monthly meeting, beginning at 1:45 p.m. in the big assembly room inside the Deathstar.

Here's the agenda right smack here.

It looks like it could be a pretty quick meeting. Relatively speaking.

I noticed that Chairman Mike Hammond has a hillside/ridgetop mess discussion item on the to-do list. I'm not sure if there will be a lot to discuss, since the commission has scheduled a June 9 meeting with the Knoxville City Council to talk further about the issue. But, you never know.

The commission on Monday also will talk about paying legal fees to commissioners. This stems, in part from former Commissioner Paul Pinkston defending himself from an ouster suit. He was successful, and the county reimbursed him to the tune of roughly $23,000. But, Commissioner R. Larry Smith also has a bill from a few years back when he had to go before the ethics committee. I can't recall how much it is, but it's not cheap.

And, of course, there's the budget.

I consider this separate from the actual commission meeting. This part might not go by so quickly. Commissioners aren't Happy about some of county Mayor Tim Burchett's proposed cuts. Heh.

There's been a lot of bickering, public and private, between the county's legislative and executive branch. That's pretty common. Happens every budget season. And usually the commission signs off on the budget as it was initially crafted anyway.

I'm not so sure about this one, though. But we'll see.

They don't plan to approve it until (I think) June 13, so there's plenty of time to work through it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think there will be changes. Just around the edges, but still changes.

Anonymous said...

In my view, the county can be progressive and move forward making it a great place to live. OR it can adopt Burchett's budget and watch the county deteriorate. If a tax increase is necessary, so be it. We haven't had one in YEARS!