Knoxville Politics and Lawnmower Boys

The recent hoopla over the new water tower in south Knoxville has pointed up the main problem with local politics. Petulant city council representatives getting mad every time they don't get to put their bootprint on a project.
Yes Joe Hultquist, this means you.
Because Baby Joe didn't get to sign off on the tower project we now have a new committee to preserve our precious hilltops from usurpation by the people that actually own them.
Next thing you know, we'll have a committee to preserve our precious valley floors and then our precious hillsides and then the precious intermediate zones and planar areas.
It's just another mechanism of control being siezed by our "progressive" (read communist) council members.
There is this mentality that pervades council that if it isn't sanctioned specifically by council and subsidized by a TIF that it should never be considered.
There is another mentality that pervades council, and Knoxville as a whole. It can be summed up with this statement: "We'uns wants thangs to git better but we don't wants nuthin' to change"
and "We'uns needs better jobs but we don't wants nuthin' built 'round hyere."
This suits the people in Sequoia Hills rather well. It keeps them in a supply of lawnmower boys.
If they can keep opportunity out of South Knoxville, it keeps wages low.
It is getting to the point that we can't even sell off decrepit old school buildings like South High School and Anderson elementary and Flenniken Elementary to add land back into the tax rolls without some jackass waiting to get a piece of the TIF pie. Not to mention the possibility of adding to the School Building Fund.

When we have groups like Knox Heritage lying in wait with a Fragile Fifteen, who's final five items are intentionaly non specific in order to make it possible to jerk up any building in town and start yelling"it's historic! you can't tear that down!" It is impossible to have any meaningful discourse on improving the lives of our citizens.
Knox heritage has NO specified criteria for declaring a structure as "historic".
You can just get up and say"it's historic...my grandaddy peed there." and it will be taken seriously.
They even declared part of a housing project as historic. Just what Knoxville needs...a monument to failure. Literally.
The next thing you know, they will try to declare one of Jim Clayton's Trailer Parks as historic!