Please join the leadership team of Northshore Corridor Association in offering congratulations and best wishes to Judge Kristi Davis who has been appointed by Governor Lee to the Court of Appeals.

Just a note to say that in spite of shutdowns and social distancing Knox County processes continue. Meetings of the the planning group and county commission continue by remote. Rezonings are taking place. Developers are very busy. A dedicated group of volunteers is working valiantly to monitor, keep up with zoning and planning issues. It is tall task – especially for people who already have jobs and families to see after. We will do our best to keep you informed when important matters come up.

NCA neighbors,

We hope you are well and safe – as we are.

Just a little update. As you recall, we have had good success in court. From the outset the plaintiffs have vowed to appeal. In light of the COVID situation the judge allowed them through May 6th to do that. We now have notice they intend to do so.

Today we heard from Hugh Nystrom, Knox County Commission Chairman and also from Kevin Murphy of Knox County Planning Alliance informing us that County Commission has shifted funds from a mothballed project to help address the Bluegrass Lake flooding problem. A $500,000 line item transfer was approved by commissioners.

This will help but does not guarantee a solution to the flooding as the cost for a fix is much higher. Complicating the question is that the City of Knoxville is the owner, through annexation, of the land where a pumping station might be installed.

Dear friends and supporters,

We so hope you are all well and we know you are making the best of this forced downtime.

Our leadership team is still working – with caution and distance. Those of our team in business and science are greatly challenged. Still, they are giving time to NCA.

Dear Northshore Corridor Friends,

We have again heard from Clayton Wood. Mr. Wood has once more accused us of lying.

If you are a regular reader you know that we have worked to profile the Commission candidates of the fourth and fifth districts in the Knox County Republican primary and to share that information here.

A Farragut homeowner has asked us to share this letter.

COMMISSION DISTRICT 5 PRIMARY ON MARCH 3, 2020

A great deal has changed in Farragut since my family moved here in 1976 and the city was incorporated in 1980. The community life, school quality, traffic, and parks have achieved a high mark of excellence. My children, who were the contemporaries of the children of a generation of leaders in the community such as the McGill‘s the Dick’s and many others, are in their 40s now and have their own families.

What has not changed is the dumb, unplanned, residential development we see in rural Knox County. Just open your eyes to the chaos, traffic congestion, flooding, overcrowded schools, and out-of-place high-density residential we see on South Northshore Drive, in Harden Valley and elsewhere. The cumulative impact on infrastructure and services is being ignored

On March 3 we will make a choice between incumbent, John Schoonmaker, and challenger, Clayton Wood, in the Republican primary for District 5 Knox County Commission. The winner in this primary will go on to win the general election.

Your generation is in charge now – so act like it. What you have in Farragut did not just happen. It was born out of a battle with Knox County over zoning, cronyism and backroom deals. You have lived a nice life under the protection of a State Growth Policy Plan law that largely prevented residential developers from outrunning infrastructure and services in rural Knox County – but you and residents of un-incorporated Knox County are now in danger of losing that protection.

I have attached, by permission of CompassKnoxville (our local in-depth online newspaper focusing on Knoxville and Knox County),a recent article comparing and contrasting the two candidates for District 5,

Please read it and ask yourself which of these men HAS represented, and WILL best represent your family, Farragut and rural Knox County, with energetic diligence, honesty and deep knowledge of both zoning issues and the inner workings of Knox County Government. Which man has proven his wisdom and integrity as demonstrated by the long-term trust he has earned from dozens of homeowner associations? Which man will take an unpopular stand when it is best for Knox County? Which man will work to champion industrial and commercial development which brings outside money into Knox County? Which man will work to calm excess high-density residential developments, which are possible to be securitized and/or sold to absentee money center investors? Which man will be obligated to the group which has so richly funded his campaign ( https://knoxcounty.org/election/candidate_info/index.php )?

It is generally accepted that, when the projects are complete and the developers are gone with their profits, our citizens will be left to pay with increased taxes and utility fees the substantial shortfall between the cost of the utilities and services gifted to the development and the considerably smaller amount of property taxes the county will receive over the 50-year life of the project. Yes, a residential development by itself makes our developer friends richer and the county poorer.

Please note that one candidate is a staunch supporter of County Mayor Glen Jacobs’ Amendment gutting the Knox County Grow Policy Plan. This is the very same amendment voted down 4 to 1 by the Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen on 1/23/3020 and approved only by a split vote at both Knox County Commission and Knoxville City Council. If Mayor Jacobs destroys the existing Growth Policy Plan, we are told that it will take 1 1/2 years for Knox County to construct their own Growth Plan – and with zero input from the City of Farragut. in the interim, It is not clear just what, if any, rules would regulate development in rural Knox County.

It is best to decide at the ballot box rather than in court because, even if you win, no matter how badly Farragut has been injured, lawsuits cost over $100,000 and Knox County will not pay your legal fees.

Now that your generation is in charge, Please DECIDE WISELY.

John Gulley
Phone: (865) XXX-XXXX
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Primary 2020: 5th Commission District

In Farragut and Concord, an incumbent with roots in homeowners’ groups faces an energetic and well-funded challenger.

BY JESSE FOX MAYSHARK • FEBRUARY 11, 202

CLAYTON WOOD (L) IS CHALLENGING INCUMBENT JOHN SCHOONMAKER (R) IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

Knox County’s 5th District is in the densely populated southwestern corner of the county, taking in most of the area west of Pellissippi Parkway between the Tennessee River and Interstate 40.

Growth and infrastructure are on the minds of many West Knox voters.

It includes all of incorporated Farragut, as well as the Concord area stretching along Northshore Drive by the river. It is among the most affluent areas of the county, with median household incomes ranging from the mid-$60,000s up to nearly $140,000 in some areas near the Loudon County line.

John Schoonmaker has represented the district on County Commission since 2015 when he was appointed by Commission to serve out the remainder of Richard Briggs’ term after Briggs was elected to the state Senate.

Schoonmaker, whose political roots are in the powerful Council of West Knox County Homeowners, easily won re-election to a full term in 2016. His initial partial term doesn’t count against him under the county’s term limits law, so he is seeking a second full term this year.

He is facing a vigorous Republican primary challenge from political newcomer Clayton Wood, a pastor, and lawyer who runs the nonprofit organization Thrive Lonsdale and has raised a lot of money, including from some GOP heavy-hitters. The winner of the primary will face Democrat Kimerly Peterson in the Aug. 6 general election.

Schoonmaker: Eyes on the Roads

Schoonmaker was already a familiar face in county civic life when Commission appointed him to fill out Briggs’ term in 2015.

He settled with his family in the 5th District in the 1980s, after moving to Knoxville for a job. He worked in sales, first for a furniture manufacturer and then later for a binocular manufacturer.

His road into local politics began like many before, through involvement with his local neighborhood group, in this case, a homeowners’ association. From there he eventually ended up as an officer of the Council of West Knox County Homeowners, a group that has been advocating for area residents since 1971. He was president of the organization for 12 years.

“We helped homeowners and homeowners’ associations navigate through Knox County government,” Schoonmaker, who is 65, said in an interview at Vienna Coffee House in the Regas Building. “We dealt with a lot of zoning issues that were coming around.”

As a homeowners’ representative, he was deeply involved in the long process of formulating the county’s Growth Policy Plan, which was mandated by state law in the late 1990s. The plan, which had to be approved by Commission, Knoxville City Council, and the Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen, has been in the news again in the past year as County Mayor Glenn Jacobs has sought to amend it.

Growth and its consequences are much on the minds of 5th District residents, who see daily traffic back-ups on roads from Northshore to Campbell Station.

“I think our biggest problem now is our road infrastructure,” Schoonmaker said. He noted that it took three years to get a $7 million improvement to Canton Hollow Road through the county’s capital spending plan, and that’s just one of many needs in and around the district.

“We have got to do something with Campbell Station interchange north to Hardin Valley, but the problem is, there’s been no action taken,” he said.

Schoonmaker said he’s not anti-growth or development, but he thinks the county has to do a better job of balancing growth with existing infrastructure and resources.

“I’m a firm believer, as most people are in Tennessee, that you have a right to sell your property,” he said. “The next part of that is, it’s got to be within the guidelines of what it’s zoned for. If a development is zoned for three homes per acre, and it has been that way, then that makes sense to me. But what happens now is the developers are coming in and saying they have to have five. Well, then again you’re back to the infrastructure.”

Schoonmaker often votes on the side of homeowners when there are zoning disputes with developers. Recently, for example, he reversed course on a provision he had originally supported to allow a microbrewery into a Neighborhood Commercial zone. He said he was concerned that a late-night bar could create a disturbance for nearby residents.

He has sometimes ended up voting with a coalition of commissioners in support of Law Director Bud Armstrong in Armstrong’s legal disagreements with Jacobs. But Schoonmaker said he’s not part of any faction, and he scoffed at the idea that he is beholden to Knoxville Focus publisher Steve Hunley, a staunch Armstrong supporter. “He doesn’t own a newspaper in the Farragut district,” Schoonmaker said of Hunley.

He is active in the Tennessee County Commissioners Association and chairs Commission’s Government Affairs Committee, which often places him in a liaison role with the county’s state legislators. If re-elected, he said he would continue pushing for a bill at the state level he has been working on for a few years, which would return a portion of the state fee imposed for sales tax collection to local cities and counties.

He is also eager to see the results of the state’s new approach to collecting and distributing online sales tax, which Schoonmaker believes will be a boon to Knox County. He thinks the county should consider designating new revenue from online sales to a special infrastructure fund.

“Say that new portion should go towards engineering and public works, whatever we need to do,” he said. “It shouldn’t just be, let’s throw it over here and spend it for whatever.”

In his Jan. 31 financial disclosure, Schoonmaker reported that he had raised no money for his re-election. He had $1,245 on hand from prior funds.

Wood: Following a Calling

In contrast, Wood reported raising $15,425 in last month’s financial disclosure. Donors included Haslam family member David Colquitt, developer Scott Davis and former school board Chair Doug Harris, as well as investor Jordan Mollenhour, Wood’s campaign treasurer.

Wood graduated from college at the age of 19 and sometimes it seems like he’s barely slowed down since. A conversation with him at First Watch on Lovell Road was wide-ranging and fast-paced.

He grew up in Sevier County’s Wears Valley, where his parents ran — and still run — Wears Valley Ranch, a Christian children’s home and school. His father is a pastor with a daily radio show on SiriusXm.

After Wood’s early graduation from the University of Tennessee, a high score on the LSAT entrance exam was enough to convince him to try law school.

“I borrowed a pencil to take the LSAT,” he said with a laugh. “My mom actually signed me up for it. I was a senior English lit major.”

He attended Washington & Lee University in Virginia, where he nurtured an interest in constitutional law. This was partly thanks to a friend of his parents who became a professional mentor: attorney Jay Sekulow, who has been in the news a lot lately as one of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers. (He helped lead the president’s defense in the just-concluded Senate impeachment trial.)

After law school, Wood said, he worked in various capacities for Sekulow for 10 years. He started as a sort of office assistant and took on duties that over time included writing briefs for major cases.

“Jay’s won a ton of Supreme Court cases, I was involved in a few of them,” Wood said. “I loved it.”

He helped Sekulow open an office in Nashville, which is where Wood met his wife, Danielle. They now have five children, ages 3 to 10.

A stint with a tech company in Atlanta followed, and then Wood’s career took an unexpected turn. Partly because of his parents’ experience running the children’s home, he was recruited to work in international children’s care, advising organizations and orphanages around the world.

“God sent me to do that,” Wood said plainly. He traveled extensively, often in poor countries in Africa and Asia. “It was just, over and over, going where I didn’t think I was going to go, where I really, in my flesh, didn’t want to go, and then seeing that God was using that time in a really beautiful way.”

From that job, it wasn’t much of a stretch to Thrive Lonsdale. Wood was already volunteering at the Christian organization, which runs after-school and summer programs for low-income students in the Lonsdale neighborhood.

He took the reins as executive director in 2012, when the organization was struggling to maintain a $200,000 budget. Now, he said, it has a $1.2 million budget and 16 full-time employees, and it serves 180 children in Lonsdale and in a smaller program in Parkridge.

The ministry offers homework help, snacks and Bible study, with programming tailored to all grade levels from elementary to high schools. In his eight years with Thrive, Wood said with satisfaction, “We’ve had no kids arrested from our program.”

His civic engagement came initially from all the contacts with local officials he made in the course of his work in Lonsdale. Although Thrive receives no public money, Wood is active as an advocate for the neighborhood.

County Commission first piqued his interest more from a legal than a pastoral standpoint. He was bothered by Law Director Bud Armstrong’s lawsuit challenging the county pension system; Wood supported Jacobs’ efforts to dismiss the suit.

“If you want to know one of the ways we could save money in our county, it’s by not suing ourselves,” Wood said during a Commission candidates’ public forum at the News Sentinel last week.

He also supports Jacobs’ efforts to amend the county’s growth plan, which he said would lead to more efficient, less sprawling development. In talking to 5th District voters, he said he’s gotten a good sense of their priorities.

“Low taxes, good schools and infrastructure,” Wood said. “Those are the consistent themes that people talk about.”

He adds a shout-out for another county amenity: “The library system is just a jewel, and I love it,” he said. “My kids literally every week are in our libraries. Every single week.”

One thing Wood said he is not running to do is be an evangelical voice on Commission. Although he spoke strongly in favor of religious release time at the Knox County school board’s December meeting, Wood said that was because he thought people were misconstruing the legalities of the issue.

“I’m not eager to make that a big platform for county government,” he said of his pastoral work. “Part of that has to do even with job (recruitment). Corporate culture is pretty hostile to Christianity, and will increasingly be. It’s not the right place and time. It’s like, my calling is over here, my nonprofit doesn’t take any money from the government. On the other side over there, I think the government has important roles that are vital and matter a lot.”

Judge Davis affirmed her ruling.

Today we were in court again as Judge Davis heard the request from Safe Harbor Development and Knox County that asked the judge to amend her own ruling.