GOVERNMENT/POLITICS A4 | OUR COLUMNISTS A6-7 | YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS A9 | HEALTH & LIFESTYLES SECTION B | BUSINESS SECTION C
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karns / hardin valley
VOL. 5, NO. 35
AUGUST 29, 2011
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twitter.com/shoppernewsnow pantry or recite the Apostles’ Creed. It voted to disband after 124 years of service. Knoxville native the Rev. Dale Peterson writes in his book, “Leave a Well in the Valley,” of a similar situation. The congregation of the oldest Baptist church in Michigan dwindled to fewer than 200 members and risked what Peterson called “death by default.” Instead, it voted to merge with another congregation, giving away approximately $11 million in assets and ending its historic mission. The Tennessean story concludes: “Four Methodist congregations in Tennessee have closed this year, and 16 Tennessee Baptist Convention churches closed last year. All were small with well under 100 members. It has been extremely hard for church leaders to close down their congregations. … Not only is it hard for church leaders and attendees, but also for the communities that these church closings are occurring in. Many compare their church closings to the death of a friend. Many have hopes that the tenacious and steadfast faith of church members won’t be forgotten.”
Churches challenged Declining revenue forces review, innovation By Sandra Clark
The crazy world of robots ‘RoHawktics’ team kicks off second year at HVA See page A-9
Grand openings A look back at Vols’ season openers See Marvin’s story on page A-7
FEATURED COLUMNIST BETTY BEAN
Godspeed, Superman Betty Bean says goodbye to longtime friend James Anderson See page A-4
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10512 Lexington Dr., Ste. 500 37932 (865) 218-WEST (9378) news@ShopperNewsNow.com ads@ShopperNewsNow.com EDITOR Larry Van Guilder lvgknox@mindspring.com ADVERTISING SALES Darlene Hacker hackerd@ShopperNewsNow.com Debbie Moss mossd@ShopperNewsNow.com Shopper-News is a member of KNS Media Group, published weekly at 10512 Lexington Drive, Suite 500, Knoxville, TN, and distributed to 33,237 homes in Farragut, Karns and Hardin Valley.
Recently, The Tennessean profiled Nashville area churches that have closed or modified their outreach since the onset of the economic downturn in 2008. We tasked Shopper reporters to talk with church leaders to discover the impact of the economy on their congregations. While each Shopper-News paper has interviews from its community, readers can find all interviews on our website, www. ShopperNewsNow.com/. What did we learn? Smaller churches are hurting worse than larger ones, which seem better able to absorb flat or declining revenue. Some churches are growing, such as Concord United Methodist which just hosted a three-day celebration of its new contemporary worship center. Oth-
Weathering the storm more needs so they look to the church After many years of growth, Grace more. We’re doing more ministry with Baptist Church has seen their giving fewer dollars.” In 2008, Grace stopped outsourcing flatten in the last several years. “Our membership has definitely been custodial services and hired a facility affected with jobs,” said manager to do cleaning and mainteExecutive Pastor Stacey nance, which cut the budget by 15 percent. The following year, the church cut Bearden. To maintain the pro- three full-time positions. A recreation grams the church of- director, graphic arts designer and a fers, they have made position in the children’s department budget cuts every year. were eliminated and the staff was asked The church has also to pick up those responsibilities. Those seen more opportunity cuts resulted in a 4 percent decrease in to serve in the economic the budget. Bearden “We are blessed with a great congrestruggle. gation,” said Jason McCarter, director “We’ve cut as much operationally as for budgeting and finance. “If there is a we can,” Bearden said. “During the economic downtime, the community has To page A-3
By Natalie Lester
ers have been challenged to become “better stewards” of the Lord’s money. According to the Tennessean, most of the state’s residents belong to congregations with fewer than 100 people, and many of
those actually number fewer than 50. A 2010 survey on church giving showed small churches endured a heavy 40 percent drop in donations during the economic crisis. With far less money for building maintenance
and an MBA from Florida Institute of Technology. He and wife Paulette have two grown sons. Paulette also is involved in Lions. Bailey brought greetings from Dr. Wing-Kun Tam, international Lions president from Hong Kong. Both men have goals for their tenure. Bailey wants to grow both the number of clubs and the number of members in Lions District Chuck Bailey Wing-Kun Tam 12-N. Dr. Tam wants Lions By Sandra Clark ganization was founded in District Gov. Chuck Bai- worldwide to plant one milLions Clubs are known 1917 in Chicago by Melvin ley spoke to the Halls Lions lion trees. “Lions in their commuworldwide for their work Jones. Now its 46,000 clubs Club last week. A resident with vision, particularly and 1.35 million members of Tellico Village, Bailey nity are our foundation,” with vision screenings for make it the world’s largest grew up in New York and said Bailey. He wants to kids and support of the service club organization, holds a bachelor’s degree charter three new clubs, in electrical engineering have a net gain of 60 new blind. The international or- according to its website.
The present (and future) of Lions
To page A-2
Carter proposal: What might have been By Larry Van Guilder The Devon Group’s announcement that it was withdrawing its proposal to build a new elementary school in Carter shook Knox County
Analysis Mayor Tim Burchett’s office and left most observers scratching their heads. Now a review of the scores awarded to the project finalists by the county’s evaluation committee reveals how close the competition was and how the rankings of one evaluator changed the outcome for the runner-up, Partners Development, and may have sealed the fate of the project. The six-member evaluation committee was chaired by Mitch Steenrod, a senior executive with Pilot Travel Centers. Developer Buzz Goss, Mathew Myers from county purchasing, Doug Dillingham with the school
system, local executive Kevin Wilson and UT architecture professor Tricia Stuth rounded out the committee. The finalists were the Devon Group, Hewlett Spencer LLC, Municipal Capital Markets Inc. and Partners Development. The proposals were rated in five categories: cost, adherence to program standards, time to complete, innovation and “identification and complete understanding” of any proposed financing arrangement. Cost, which considered the long-term operating costs of the facility in addition to the contract amount, was worth 35 points. Program standards was assigned 30 points and time to complete 15. Innovation and understanding proposed financing were worth 10 points each. Thus a perfect score was 100, and a proposal could receive a maximum score of 600 when the individual evaluations were totaled.
Hewlett Spencer and Municipal Capital Markets finished with scores of 541.63 and 539. 2 respectively. Both lagged the leaders by a fair margin. The Devon Group edged Partners Development 558.22 to 552.5. In order, these were the individual scores for the Devon Group and Partners Development: ■ Goss – 98, 97 ■ Dillingham – 96.8, 97.5 ■ Steenrod – 94, 97 ■ Stuth – 94, 78 ■ Wilson – 93.12, 96 ■ Myers – 82.3, 87 A glance at the list reveals that Myers was not as impressed with the proposals as his fellow committee members. His rankings for all the finalists ranged from 82.3 to 87.1. But Stuth’s score of 78 for Partners Development leaps off the page. Statistically, it’s an “outlier,” although not a “significant” outlier.
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members and leave in place a team committed to revitalization of Lions. Last year the District inducted 90 new members but lost 169 members and three clubs. “That’s 169 fewer pairs of hands to do the work of Lions, and the workload on those remaining just got harder,” he said. So to start three new clubs, Bailey first targeted four towns without a Lions club. He then wrote to civic and church leaders, asking what are the needs in their communities and who supports those needs. People with a common bond around
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and fewer people volunteering, more congregations are considering closing down. An example is Nashville’s LaVergne Presbyterian Church. With a congregation of seven, it will no longer collect canned goods for the food
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The Shopper-News asked purchasing director Hugh Holt if he considered dropping Stuth’s score from the ranking because it differed so markedly from the others. “We looked at that,” Holt said. “We’re numbers people.” In the end, he said, “everybody on the committee” felt Stuth had performed conscientiously, that her ranking was not “arbitrary or capricious.” A closer look at the evaluation shows most of the difference in Stuth’s scores for Devon and Partners derives from two areas, cost and innovation. Innovation encompasses nearly any aspect of the design that could reduce costs, increase efficiency or “greatly enhance the educational experience.” Stuth awarded the Devon Group 32 points for cost and 8 for innovation. Partners Development earned 27 points for cost and none for innovation, a 13-point swing that
clinched the top ranking for Devon. Although Partners’ proposed cost was roughly $1 million below the $13.8 million price tag negotiated with Devon, Devon’s proposal included innovations in energy efficiency. Municipal Capital Markets also rated a zero in innovation on Stuth’s scorecard. It was a judgment call to retain Stuth’s ratings. While her integrity and good faith efforts are not in question, the unintended consequence of retaining the outlier ranking may be to quash the effort to build rather than renovate in Carter. The school board reluctantly came to the table the first time. The second time around may prove a harder sell for the mayor. The Shopper-News attempted to contact Stuth about her rankings. She did not respond to our questions.
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