My First Campaign Promise

Well it had to happen.

Eventually every candidate does it and so here I am to make my first promise to my constituency.

I, John Cullin Spellings, on this the 20th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 2008, do hereby solemnly vow to never vote to allow the use of Red-light Cameras in Knox County.

Whew, there I did it it's done. I've been fretting over what would be my first promise and I fell this is one that I can certainly keep. I despise those cameras, I don't understand how they can #1 be legal, and #2 be accepted by any freedom loving group of people. I won't go into my rant about them here, you can read my many rants on the Wigshop blog if you like though.

This came about from Sunday while listening to George Corda's (sp?) show on 100.3 FM and the entire show was about these cameras. I did call in and speak my peace, or at least ask a few questions of one of the city judges who upholds the cameras lawfulness, such as it is.

It was a typical enough discussion until he mentioned that the county had not YET approved the use of the cameras. Wow, so this could happen to us, well that's what I thought at least. It just takes a few greedy commissioners to decide that what's good for goose is good for the gander.

So I am here to say that if elected I will fight tooth and nail against these things on the basis of their fundamental disrespect for so many of the traditions of law enforcement and because of the clearly questionable civil rights issues they arise.

So there you go, the first and long anticipated campaign promise, kind of anti-climactic isn't it.

my two cents

I think it's good for the interests of Downtown to be represented in Knox County Government. While we hold on to our redundant two-government system here, we need to make sure that the whole county is fairly represented. Downtown Knoxville is well represented in City Government (as it should be) but very often District 1-A is overlooked or mishandled by the County Government.

The County has A LOT to do with Downtown. Let's use the County's State Street property as an example: the whole Baseball Stadium/Justice Center/Transit Center fiasco might have been averted if an educated pro-Downtown voice had been heard from within County Government. If someone who was really looking out for the interests of the center city had been in the 1-A seat, I might be able to walk down the street and catch a Smokies game this summer, ala the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium. Instead, our team is out in All-You-Can-Eat Pancake Buffet Sevier County.

The City, unfortunately, isn't the sole authority in the city. If it was, I think we'd have a stadium here as well as more projects like the Riviera. So while we have this flawed system, we need someone in County Government who understands Knoxville's central city and will work in harmony with the City Government. In my humble opinion, that someone should be John Spellings.

A Downtown Citizen Representing Downtown