VOL. 53 NO. 52
www.ShopperNewsNow.com |
December 31, 2014
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The nativity comes to life Welcome in the New Year on Market Square Mayor Madeline Rogero and city employees invite everyone to greet the New Year Wednesday, Dec. 31, on Market Square. ■ Ice skating on the Holidays on Ice Rogero skating rink from 1 p.m. until midnight ■ Festival foods available at the ice rink ■ Music on the Square beginning at 10:30 p.m., with a big screen showing events from 2014 ■ Countdown beginning at 11:59 p.m., with a ball drop and fireworks ■ Join in the singing of “Auld Lang Syne” following the fireworks. Sponsored by 93.1 WNOX.
Audrey Brown and Don Dixon portray Mary and Joseph during Christ United Methodist Church’s living nativity scene. See more photos on A-3. Photo by Robert Heydasch
Jones joins Smith to run Food City By Sandra Clark The Halls community is losing a good family as John and Jennifer Jones move to Abingdon, Va., where they will build a new home. John Jones is Food City’s new executive vice president/director of store operations, replacing Jody Helms, who retired. He’s actually handling his new and current jobs now but expects to have a replacement by March as director of store operations for the Knoxville division. “People tell me I’m going home, but we’ve been here 11 years and raised our family here. Halls is our home,” he said. Both kids graduated from Halls
Promoting hope Grant Standefer, executive director of Compassion Coalition, put out a call for donations as the year ends. He quotes Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the Standefer heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” And says 71,000 people in Knox County live below the poverty line with many of them worn down by “the oppression of seemingly hopeless life situations and circumstances. They are indeed heart-sick.” Compassion Coalition, a collaboration of area churches, agencies and individuals, offers hope through “getting ahead” classes. Those who become a financial partner in the mninistry may do so online at www. compassioncoalition.org or by mail at 107 Westfield Drive, Knoxville TN 37919. Info: Facebook: CompassionCoalition; Twitter: @CompassionKnox
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High School. Tyler is now a secondyear pharmacy student at East Tennessee State University. Brianna is a junior at UT-Chattanooga, planning to attend medical school. Jones jokes that he started working in the grocery industry in 1980 in the bottle room. “You had to get promoted to be a bagger.” Food City CEO Steven Smith offers high praise: “John is a forward thinker with high expectations. He is extremely committed to our associates, customers and the communities we serve, and I am confident that he will do an exceptional job serving in this key position within our company.” John Jones announces the petition Jones quotes Smith’s dad and drive for wine in grocery stores. Shopcompany founder Jack Smith, per file photo
whose mission was to “run the best store in town.” Now Jones can move that mission forward, overseeing 105 stores, Gas N Go fuel centers and in-store pharmacies. In Knoxville, Jones helped raise funds to buy land for Clayton Park in Halls. He served on the board of directors for the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation and several committees at his church. He serves on the UT Retail Hospitality board and as treasurer for the executive committee of Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association. He says he will always remember the friends he made here, and related how the late Mary Lou Horner introduced him “to everybody in town.” “That first year she asked us to sit at her table (at the Halls Business and Professional Associachallenge viewers to rediscover tion banquet). The next year I told the beauty and complexities that her we had bought our own table. can be found all around Knox- ‘Why do that?’ she asked. “It’s cheaper,” said Jones. ville.” He settled in East Tennessee Seems Horner had spent the evewhen he was hired by All-Ameri- ning soliciting Food City donacan gymnast Ginger Temple Bax- tions for her various charities. John and Jennifer could have ter to help her coach gymnastics. In 2010, he became the only Ju- lived anywhere in Knoxville, but nior National Team coach in the they chose Halls. It was a good decision for all concerned. history of Tennessee.
Phil Savage at Bliss Home on Friday “Phil loves to explore the endPhotographer Phil Savage will be featured at an opening recepless possibilities that photogration 6-9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 2, at Bliss Home, 29 Market Square. His phy has to offer, work will remain on display at Bliss by embracing through January. black and white panoramic phoSavage was born in Mexico City and is a world traveler, which has tos with handtinted touches. helped him hone his ability to “turn the ordinary into the extraordiHis First Friday nary,” according to event planners. Phil Savage exhibit aims to
Plaintiffs press tree-cutting lawsuit despite TVA concession By Betty Bean The property owners who filed a lawsuit in 2012 challenging the Tennessee Valley Authority’s treeremoval policies will press on with their case despite TVA’s announcement that it has ended the practice of destroying vegetation that grows taller than 15 feet on its easement zone. The utility contends that suspending the 15-foot rule renders the case moot and asks that the lawsuit be dismissed. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Tom Varlan ruled in favor of TVA, which maintained that easement rights acquired 70-80 years ago give the utility permission to remove vegetation (by cutting or spraying herbicide) within 150 feet of its power lines, including the right to execute the “15-foot rule,” which it put into place in 2012. In October, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that
ruling and sent the case back to Varlan with instructions that TVA must produce documentat ion that it conducted an environmental-impact study before implementDon Vowell ing the 15-foot rule, as required by the National Environmental Protection Act. TVA responded that the 15-foot rule wasn’t really a material change and therefore it hadn’t violated the NEPA. In Dec. 16 court filings, plaintiff’s attorney Don Vowell said that TVA’s about-face is illusory, since it proposed to end the 15-foot rule only in the “buffer zone” (on the outer edges of the easement) while reserving the right to continue to cut in the “wire zone” (beneath the lines), where TVA power wires are typically suspended some 60 feet high. “The area that TVA plans to effectively clear-cut is approximately 280,000 acres, or more than
437 square miles,” with this area being ‘approximately half the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.’ “The stated area is the area of the entire right-of-way, not just the buffer zones. The buffer zones, considered alone, would be a much smaller number of acres and square miles, approximately 25 percent of the stated amount,” the brief, filed Dec. 16, said. “The Court of Appeals quotes the letter of the TVA official in which he states that ‘our policy requires TVA to cut down all trees 15 feet or higher’ with no indication that the policy is limited to the buffer zones.” On Dec. 23, TVA filed two new documents. One declared the property owners’ lawsuit moot because the 15-foot rule is no longer in effect. The other was a statement from Jacinda B. Woodward, TVA’s senior vice president of transmission and power supply, who said she has “completely suspended” the use of the 15-foot rule in transmission rights-of-way and will do an NEPA review of any new
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buffer zone maintenance practices before implementing them. She said this applies to both buffer and wire zones. Vowell made an appearance on WBIR news to discuss TVA’s apparent reversal. He said he was speaking out “to debunk the idea that this is a voluntary suspension of the 15-foot rule by TVA when it is really being done to comply with the ruling from the Court of Appeals.” In his Dec. 16 brief, Vowell said a case is moot “when there is nothing left for the Court to decide. The case at bar is not moot because the issues stated in the complaint have not been decided.” The plaintiffs contend that the 15-foot rule has had a substantial environmental impact, which means that TVA should have submitted an environmental-impact statement, which it did not do. Admitting to an NEPA violation could have serious consequences, including being ordered to pay legal fees and costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act.
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