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powell
VOL. 50, NO. 32
AUGUST 8, 2011
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New faces at Powell High Two administrators, 12 teachers join staff By Greg Householder Kaitlyn Hill, daughter of Lion Thomas Hill, among the stuffed animals donated by the Knox North Lions Club for Jackie Martyn’s Girl Scout Gold project. Photo by Greg Householder
Sending out smiles Lions Club donates stuffed toys for local Girl Scout’s project See page 3
Best athlete? Marvin West ponders the gallery of outstanding players who have worn the Orange. See Marvin’s column on page 7
When Powell High School students return next Monday, parents and students will notice a few new faces. Assistant principals Mark Majors and Bob Norton are gone – Majors to the North Knox Career Technical Education Center and Norton to Farragut. Replacing Majors and Norton are Jane Finley and Nathan Langlois. Finley, who will focus on special education, comes to Powell after a one-year stint as an assistant principal at Karns High School. She was an assistant principal at West Valley Middle School for eight years and taught at Central High for 15 years. Finley hails from Memphis and traveled all over the country growing up. Her father worked for an oil company and she describes herself as “an oil company brat” – borrowing on the term used to describe children of military personnel who move frequently. Finley graduated from high school in North Carolina and did her college time at UT. “My blood definitely runs orange,” she says.
The Powell High School administrative team: principal Ken Dunlap and assistant principals Nathan Langlois, Denise McGaha and Jane Finley. Photo by Greg Householder Langlois comes to Powell after serving in the metro Atlanta area for 16 years. He was raised in Michigan and graduated from high school in Grand Rapids. He did his bachelor’s work at Western Michigan University and received his master’s from Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. Langlois and his wife, Eiisha,
have two children, Maia, 12, and Christian, 8. Langlois will be handling athletic director duties and will oversee the maintenance and grounds as well as putting together a student handbook. Joining Finley and Langlois as newcomers to Powell this year are 12 teachers.
According to principal Ken Dunlap, the teacher turnover this year is about par for the course. Powell is only losing one teacher to another school system. According to Dunlap, teachers don’t come back for a number of reasons – spousal job transfers, retirements, maternity leave, health reasons or to transfer to anTo page A-3
Stormwater damage continues on Dawson Hollow Road
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news@ShopperNewsNow.com ads@ShopperNewsNow.com EDITOR Larry Van Guilder lvgknox@mindspring.com
Analysis
ADVERTISING SALES Patty Fecco fecco@ShopperNewsNow.com Darlene Hutchison hutchisond@ ShopperNewsNow.com Shopper-News is a member of KNS Media Group, published weekly at 4509 Doris Circle, Knoxville, TN, and distributed to 8,314 homes in Powell.
their “vacation” inside. There’s little to be done in the short run to change inmate attitudes, but there are steps that can be taken to keep down the cost of housing inmates. One is the electronic monitoring (ankle bracelet) program that Knox County has used increasingly for several years. Allison Rogers of the KCSO says the current cost per day for housing inmates is $74. The electronic monitoring bracelets are leased for $10 per day, but the offender reimburses the sheriff’s office for that cost. Currently, three KCSO employees supervise approximately 1,000 offenders on the program. “The offenders are able to work and therefore lessen the tax burden on the citizens of Knox County,” Rogers notes.
By Larry Van Guilder (First in a series) Crime doesn’t pay, but it does cost taxpayers. As Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett looks for ways to reduce government spending, it’s time to examine the high cost of incarceration and consider expanding the alternatives.
4509 Doris Circle 37918 (865) 922-4136
The water is coming down the hill in sheets now, digging gullies The estimate of the cost of in his yard and washing against, restoring David Dowling’s under and around his house. The county has dumped loads of riprap detention pond to along Dawson Hollow Road to keep functionality: $13,307.56. the roadbed from washing away. Dowling says a friend came by the work good.’ The pond would fill up house not long ago and asked him during a rain, then slowly drain, where his yard had gone. “I told her ‘Down the road.’ ” slowing the water down.” “Every time it rains hard for an But that didn’t last long. “Last July, we had a heavy rain, hour, you can look at your watch, and buddy, here came all that mud and in 20 minutes that pond is running over and coming through the and water. It was just gushing.” Now, his pond, which used to be yard like a creek.” The Dowlings said they are in the 8 feet deep, is plugged with mud and no longer drains. He estimates process of discussing their situation it’s only 8-10 inches deep now. He with attorney Rob Frost, who reprewants to fi x it and last week got an sents the Carters. estimate for restoring it to functionThe Rufus Smith Properties’ inality: $13,307.56. surance company, Acuity, has now And he knows that’s a tempo- put Gary and Marsha Carter in a motel. rary fix.
Balancing the crime budget
Recently a high-ranking Knox County Sheriff’s Office official was lamenting the attitude of prisoners who refuse to work even if it means an early out. Some with sixmonth stays at the jail were offered a chance to halve their sentences if they would join inmate work gangs. They refused, preferring to spend
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The damage caused by stormwater runoff from the Rufus Smithowned residential development on the top of Copper Ridge isn’t confined to the property of Gary and Marsha Carter, whose home and land were trashed by muddy floodwaters when a detention pond collapsed in June. Dowling Their next-door neighbors on Dawson Hollow Road, David and Patricia Dowling, have suffered water damage as well. “When they fi rst started, I walked up there to see what they were doing,” said David Dowling, a retired steamfitter. “They were digging on the front fi rst, and then they came around to the back where
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it’s a steep drop-off and they didn’t have a pond up there at all. “Then I walked over to my neighbor’s house and said ‘Man, they’re gonna drown us.’ ” Dowling said he kept watching as all the trees came down. He followed a dump truck hauling a load of topsoil to a site in Halls. “You take a big old oak tree, it’ll soak up a lot of water.” He said he tried talking to the Southland Excavation employees, to no avail. “I told them this was going to happen, told them to dig a pond. But they didn’t, so I dug a detention pond to protect myself.” His detention pond sits on the side of the hill where he keeps his goats, llamas, geese and a Great Pyrenees dog. At first, it worked to perfection, he said. “I told my wife, ‘This is gonna
By Betty Bean
Maynardville HWY.
FEATURED COLUMNIST SANDRA CLARK
The KCSO has dealt with a perfect storm of issues that began in the late 1980s when a class action suit was filed by inmates. The suit alleged overcrowding had resulted in conditions which violated inmate rights guaranteed by the Eighth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Subsequently, the court threatened Knox County with a $5,000 per inmate per day fine for exceeding the maximum capacity of the downtown intake center. An additional pod for housing prisoners at the Maloneyville Road detention center alleviated overcrowding downtown, but the KCSO is also dealing with problems that originated outside the county. According to Rogers, between 18 and 22 percent of prisoners suffer from some form of mental illness.
7228 Norris Freeway Knoxville, TN 37918
These include homeless persons typically jailed for minor offenses. Like hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the nation, the KCSO finds itself grappling with a problem that originated more than 50 years ago and grew through the 1960s and 1970s. State facilities closed and mental patients were “deinstitutionalized” by the tens of thousands in favor of treatment at local mental health centers. As far back as 1984, Richard Lyons was writing in the New York Times that the policy was “widely regarded as a failure.” Today, the numbers of the mentally ill have grown far beyond the capacity of local mental health treatment facilities, and funding for such facilities from state and local governments is shrinking as the Great Recession lingers. In Knox County, the entrance to the jail is a revolving door for many of the chronically mentally ill. To page A-2
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