Reeves nominated for U.S. judge gig

Pam Reeves

Not sure if you've seen this one, but President Obama nominated local legal eagle Pam Reeves for U.S. District judge for East Tennessee. If confirmed by the Senate, she would replace U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips, who retires this summer.

Local porch readers and those who keep up with county business have probably heard of Pam as she is the author of the eponymous “Reeves report.” (I do believe that is the first time I have ever used that word. Wonder if it was used correctly. Eh, whatever.)

Anyhoo, the 58-page report, released in March 2010 looked inot the Knox County Solid Waste Department and targeted former director John Evans, who is deceased, and Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee, the management firm formerly charged with operating the county's Solway greenwaste facility.

It also criticized Evans because he waived the revenue-sharing fees - about $311,000 - the firm owed the county. The investigation also chastised Engineering and Public Works Director Bruce Wuethrich for not disciplining Evans.

You can find that report, right smack here.

County did actually pay waste water fine

Yesterday I posted – click right smack here for the riveting conversation – that the county did not pay a fine for waste water stuff. Apparently, that's not the case. (Thanks, Michael Grider.)

County folks got back to me last night (actually, Grider got back to me last night), letting me know that – yes – the county did actually pay some coin.

And it was due to our old pals at Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee. I think

Grider said the details are outlined in the Consent Agreement and Final Order between the company and the county. You can read that bad boy by clicking right smack here.

Look under section II.

The county – according to Public Works and Engineering Director Dwight Van de Vate via Grider – paid $4,000 and NRRT paid $8,000.

That other green-waste contract. Or not.

Ah, yes, that ol' pesky green-waste contract. Or is it contracts?

On Monday the commission in a 7-3 vote approved two deals – one with the NRRT (under a different name and, yeah, it was all legal) and another with Knox Ag Inc. Shamrock Organics Products.

I'm not going into the specifics of it. Here's the first story I wrote awhile back – click right smack here – about NRRT winning a county bid (along with the other company) and here's the commission work session story from Oct. 17 – click right smack here.

I figure this was a rubber stamp. Maybe a little showboating here and there.

Nope.

It took an hour. The five-minute “now shut the heck up” clock is really just a decoration.

Anyhoo, you can read my boy Anthony's story over here. Yup. Click right smack here.

I think what's key here is that Randy Greaves – the Shamrock guy – got pretty upset at one point and said he was backing out if the NRRT folks were awarded part of the contract.

I don't know if that was neck-talking or not. County purchasing Director Hugh Holt told me this morning he had one of his minions email Greaves, asking whether he really wanted to rescind his proposal and not enter into a contract with the county. He'll need that sucker in writing.

So far, Greaves hasn't replied.

If I hear anything, I'll let you know.

County, NRRT to sign another contract?

I’ll have a story in tomorrow’s paper about a proposal that could lead to the county signing a new contract with Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee. (Click right smack here for the bad boy online version.)

Although, the folks that operate NRRT aren’t calling it NRRT.

They’re calling it Nature’s Best Organics. Or something like that.

But, I don’t blame them. You know, after all the controversy and all.

That, and it could get past the Knox County Commission. Not that, that’s what they wanted to do or anything. But, a number of commissioners I talked to about the contract said they didn’t realize it was NRRT.

(The proposal before the county also asks the commission approve a contract with another green-waste intake operator as well.)

The county administration told me it hoped a bunch of companies would bid on the contract. Only two did.

And you can check out their scores by clicking right smack here.

I was curious, however, about one thing, and it didn’t make the article.

I included the following in a story I wrote back in July when the county auctioned off the Solway plant and NRRT was the highest bidder:

Interim Public Works and Engineering Director Dwight Van de Vate said Wednesday he expects any brush the county collects on its own to be taken to a 15-acre Forks of the River site, which the county owns, and "three or four times a year have a contract grinder come out and grind it." He said the materials will then be used on public facilities.

Obviously, that's probably not going to happen.

(And I didn't remember to ask Dwight about this until after I filed the story.)

So, here's his response:

We originally planned on this approach, but quickly concluded that any savings we might achieve using our own facility for green waste drop off would be offset by the time and distance issues created by using a single location, as well as the expenses involved in managing the material. It’s essentially the same reason we want the ability to use multiple vendors and multiple locations for drop off. The less time we spend transporting waste material, the more we reduce our fuel and personnel costs. Obviously that will vary depending on price, size of the load and so forth, but the more options we have, the more efficiently we operate.

Also, by using the new contract as proposed, once we drop off the material, we are done with it. This alleviates the need for us to store, grind and manage green waste. There are a whole host of issues associated with green waste storage, including risk of fire, management of runoff, and various environmental considerations. We will let the private sector deal with those, and for a price significantly less than we were previously paying (Our most recent price per ton under the old contract was $27.46).

Regardless of the reasons, some folks are going to take a PR hit for this one.

Burchett on land sale: hero or goat?

Knox County is on its way out of the mulch business, now that county Mayor Tim Burchett sold the Solway plant.

So, is he a hero or a goat?

(Damn, I just can’t resist that quote. County Property Assessor Phil Ballard used it the other day, I blogged about it, and , yeah, I like Phil, but that quote? Hahahahaha. That was a good one. But I digress.)

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yeah, earlier today, Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee was the high bidder ($2 million in scratch) to buy the 160-acre Solway plant.

And people reacted.

Some loved the deal; some used it to attack the mayor.

Interestingly, I talked to a number of Burchett supporters who didn’t like it, some opponents who did, and vice versa and all that.

In other words, it was a polarizing move.

Some thought (and rightly so) that the economy wasn’t right to sell the land. But, they also felt that the county – besides the bad timing – didn’t get enough for what it put into it. They didn’t, however, mention NRRT and some of the controversies that have surrounded the company in the past.

The other school of thought is that the mayor did the right thing. And in fact – because he got $800,000 more than the land was appraised – he REALLY did the right thing.

Here’s the deal:

The county, including the initial land purchase, has spent $4 million on the property during the past 12 years. That includes the upkeep, improvements, fixing sinkholes, whatever, that ran about $245,000 a year. The county received, on average, about $72,000 a year under the contract it had with NRRT.

So, it’s easy to see why folks don’t think it was a great move. But, as the county’s financial minister – John Troyer – pointed out: That IS one heck of a reason to get rid of the property!

(On a side note, the county commission awhile back debated whether the property could be used for anything other than a recycling facility and felt it couldn’t. But that’s a different argument.)

Putting the property back on the tax roll at this point means about an extra $18,880 in coin that heads to the county coffers. That’s not a lot when you compare it to the overall budget, which is somewhere just south of a zillion dollars.

But the plan is to use the money from the sale to buy the Carter community a new elementary school (this is also a different argument about whether it should be used for that), which will run close to $14 million. So, the top bid – that $2 million? – that is a lot if you want to purchase a new school.

So. Hero? Goat? Or just another dumb blog post?

(Heh. I know the answer to this one.)

Mayes calls out Salter. Again.

I guess county solid waste director Tom Salter thinks he’s a funny guy.

You know, supposedly making up email accounts, pretending he’s his own arch nemesis Brad Mayes, then sending a note to an attorney.

Funny stuff, I tell you.

Until you get caught.

And in one of the most ironic/dumbest ways possible (not that emails can’t be traced anyway).

You see, Brad Mayes, pictured above, talked (and still does) some trash about Salter. And Salter, I presume, got tired of it.

In fact, he got so tired of it, he decided to sue Mayes for slander. And therein lies the problem.

Lawsuits require depositions. And attorneys can pretty much ask anything in a deposition, even if it really isn’t that germane to whatever the heck the lawsuit is about. And you don’t want to lie in a deposition. Because then the opposing attorney gets you on the stand and – sort of – asks you the same question later on. And your answer better match up. (Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said if you never lie you never have to remember anything? But I digress.)

Anyhoo,Salter sues Mayes. Then Mayes' attorney turns the whole thing around on Salter.

Salter pretty much had to confess that he’s the one who sent out the email that was supposedly from Brad. It was back in 2008, under the fake account: brad@plumbcreek.com.

It was sent to David Draper, the attorney for Natural Resources Recovery of Tennessee, the county’s mulch operator. Mayes, right or wrong, has been pissing off NRRT and solid waste director Tom Salter for quite some time.

So, Mayes during today’s county commission meeting turned over part of that deposition to commissioners. The one where Salter – when asked about the email – said “I just thought it was funny.”

Heh. Heh. Hahahahahahaha.

Oh man. That’s rich.

Here’s the email along with a page of the deposition. You can decide whether it’s funny.

In response to Brad’s presentation, commissioner and good doctor, Richard Briggs, said:

“(Brad) has been criticized by members of this commission as being inappropriate . . . and I’d like to point out that in the (Pam) Reeves report (which laid out all sorts of screw-ups going on in the solid waste department – albeit mostly under Salter’s predecessor) and the audit report we received April 26, we found almost 500,000 the county did not receive that was pointed out by Brad Mayes, and Brad is like a rock in your shoe if you work for Knox County because he’s pointed out a number of things people are uncomfortable with, but he pointed out that there was 500,000 that is owed to the county . . and I know a lot of people make fun of him, but that is a fact.”

Here’s a story I wrote about NRRT and the solid waste department. It details that fairly scathing audit. Most of which Mayes investigated and found on his own.

Also during today’s meeting, Commissioner R. Larry Smith – just as county Mayor Tim Burchett was approaching the podium to address the commission on an unrelated matter – said: “We’ve got some real hard evidence about some things and we’ve had some hard evidence (in the past).”

He then asked Burchett what he was going to do about it.

The mayor, who had nothing to do with this mess because it happened before he took office last September, said: “We’re not stalling and we’re not covering up for anybody, commissioner. I ran on transparency and we’re going to get it. We’re going to get it all resolved.”

Said Smith: “We need to send some messages out to county employees. We’ve had some other things happen during this past week and this seems to be a lot more damaging.”

Yeah. No kidding.