Thursday, August 27, 2005

The Center for Neighborhood Development held one of several neighborhood leadership development classes today.  Tom presented to the group on litter issues and what KKB can do for them.

- posted by KKB staff at 1:15 PM

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Tom met Bob Santore today at the Sam Duff Park in South Knoxville to look at progress on brush clearing and to inspect the work of the Sam Duff Park "cat lady".  Apparently, a significant number of feral cats live in the park and a woman who lives in the neighborhood puts out food for them every day in little food shelters made of styrofoam ice chests.  The are spray painted green to blend in with the woods.  Most likely the cats will be removed by City of Knoxville animal control. 



- posted by KKB staff at 11:30 AM

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

KKB executive director Tom Salter made a presentation today to the AmeriCorps class of 2006.  There were members there from all the teams including Earth Flag, Emerald Avenue and the Water Quality Team.  Tom covered litter basics and invited the group to get involved in KKB projects when their schedules permit.



- posted by KKB staff at 5:15 PM

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Today Knox County broke ground for the new Burlington Branch of the Knox County Library.  Everybody was there.



- posted by KKB staff at 11:30 AM

Tuesday, August 20, 2005

Former KKB Program Coordinator, Cortney Piper married Grant Rosenberg today at Crescent Bend.  Grant works in the Knox County neighborhoods office.  Cortney works for the Tennessee Clean Water Network.  They met while planning the first County neighborhoods conference last year.  We wish them all the best.

- posted by KKB staff at 7:30 PM

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Today we met with Sid Brown of the Tennessee Concrete Association.  The TCA is looking at promoting landscaping and other improvements around its members facilities.  Yes, these are the big facilities where cement trucks come and go to pick up their loads.  He said some of the sites do a really good job but they want to encourage more to spruce up and to give some recognition to those that make a good effort.  They may implement some type of beautiful business checklist and an awards competition modeled somewhat on Orchids & Onions.  We have offered to help in any way we can.

- posted by KKB staff at 3:15 PM

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Today was the BIG Junk for Jack promotion with 98.7 The River.  It was a huge success.  We accepted recycled material between 9 and 11 am at West Town Mall and then the fans could register for a chance to win two tickets to sit on stage during the Jack Johnson concert.  Preliminary totals show we collected 3,824 pounds of newspaper, mixed paper, glass, aluminum and some other stuff in two hours.  Tom got to draw the winning ticket (see "blue" series of pics).  The winner's name is Maira Garcia of Lenoir City.  We got help from KKB staffer Emily Ditty and volunteers Joyce Hausman, Larissa Jurand-Salter, Ryan Justice and KKB intern Caroline Johnson.  We filled all the bins we had and took the aluminum cans away on a PROPERLY SECURED trailer.  Many thanks to several off KKB's regular partners for providing the following:  City of Knoxville provided the multi-bin trailer, SP Recycling provided the newspaper bin, Waste Connections provided the little bins we used to weigh the stuff and UT Recycles, UT Cares loaned us the electronic scale.  We could not have done this event without all their help.  River staff included Mayor Joe, David Hendley, Gina Haas, Shelby Deck and lots of others.  Here are the pics from the event:












[our camera somehow got set to a "blue" special effects setting - interesting, but you won't be seeing this often...]

- posted by KKB staff at 12:00 NOON

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Tom got invited to go on 98.7 The River this morning to promote the Junk for Jack recycling event this Saturday a.m.  Mayor Joe and David Hendley were there.  It was a lot of fun.  The interview was between a U2 song and an Iggy Pop song.  I think there will be a big turnout just because of the people that have told us they've heard the promotion and think it's pretty neat.  Sorry no pics from the studio, Palm cam is still broke.  On the way out Tom ran into Ed Brantley and later sent him an email inviting Citadel to get involved with KKB's "next big thing".  You all know what that is of course.

- posted by KKB staff at 8:30 AM

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Today we (Tom and Emily) had a lovely visit from Dottie Dunn (pink blouse), new coordinator of Keep Roane Beautiful and two of her volunteers, Brenda Kimmel (blue blouse) and Carole LaSanska (white blouse).  We had a great visit, they picked our brains and then we had lunch at Barley's.  We also checked out KKB's two murals in the Old City.  Here are our visitors checking out the Historic Train Mural on Central.

- posted by KKB staff at 4:30 PM

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Tom Salter was notified today that he has been appointed to the Keep Tennessee Beautiful Advisory Council by Governor Bredeson for a 2-year term.  The Governor's office will be making the official press announcement at a later date.

- posted by KKB staff at 3:30 PM

Mary Lou Horner taped 4 more episodes of Be Pretty Proud with new board members Ray Clift, Gary Drinnen, new board president Cassandra McGee and KKB executive director Tom Salter.  Topics included litter (of course), the Orchids & Onions awards and a few other random topics.  You'll have to watch the next 4 weeks for details.

- posted by KKB staff at 3:30 PM

KKB's Gary Drinnen and Tom Salter met with County Commissioner Paul Pinkston at Ruby Tuesday's on the proposed cash incentive plan for youth groups to pick up litter.  The plan will look something like this:  KKB will encourage youth groups to become part of the Knox County Adopt-A-Road program.  After the youth groups complete their cleanups they can apply for a donation from the "Cash For Trash" program (btw the name is not final and if any of our readers out there can think of a good name for this program let us know).  Commissioner Pinkston has already lined up pledges of $7,000 and he thinks he can come up with $10,000.  Groups will get $75 per mile up to a total of $500 per year for a single group.  There will be an application form (to be finalized) and groups will have to be an established youth organization.  With the pledges in hand, we can involve 14 groups and cover more than 95 miles of roads. This program will kick off as soon as a few more details are worked out.  The palm cam is still broken and for this meeting you should be glad.

- posted by KKB staff at 10:10 AM

 Monday, August 8, 2005

Nominations for the 2005 Orchids & Onions Awards may be made on line by clicking here.  You can also download a PDF or MSWord version of the nomination form.  If you've got any questions about nominations drop us an email or call the office at 521-6957.

- posted by KKB staff at 8:15 AM

Thursday, August 4, 2005

Emily attended the mandatory Knox County Community Grant training session at the small assembly room this morning.  It makes me more comfortable having the only other staff person we have trained on how to administer this grant.

The Junk for Jack promotion spots are all over the radio today.

We crunched the number this morning on the survey we have been conducting on the financial impact of litter on Knoxville area Chamber Partnership members.  It is very interesting.  We had UT students call hundreds of Partnership members to conduct a 2 minute phone survey.  We got 148 responses.  The bottom line is that more than half the businesses reported that they had to pick up litter on their property and that when the time and labor are considered they spend more then $200 on average to clean up.  Ironically, only 16% of respondents said picking up litter was a financial burden on their company.  Picking up litter should not be considered a normal business expense like a lease or utilities.  KKB still has a lot of work to do to change attitudes in the business community about littering.

We had the regular monthly board meeting today and approved a model to implement the Pinkston Plan and assigned board members Gary Drinnen, Darrin Rhines, Ray Clift, Doug McGill, Page Pratt and Tim Wheeler to study what KKB should do, if anything, about the "first impressions" idea.

- posted by KKB staff at 4:30 PM

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

The rules for the Junk for Jack got posted today on 98.7 The River's website.  Click here for information. 

A lot of side discussions continued today on the issue of "Who is in charge of first impressions in our community"?  If you happen to be reading this and have thoughts on this issue call me (Tom) at 521-6957 or drop me an email at keepknox@korrnet.org. 

The Orchids & Onions committee had their regular meeting today at Chesapeake's.  We reviewed where we are and have confirmed a few new sponsors.  The group will begin meeting every two weeks until the event on October 11th.

Executive Committee met today.  Harold Byrd, Terry Faulkner and Cassandra McGee attended.  We reviewed the agenda for tomorrow's board meeting.  We had a nice discussion on the "first impressions" idea and we will likely assign a board committee to look at answering the question "who is leading?" on this issue.

Board member Ken Bodie of KelSan let us know today that his schedule will prevent him from continuing to serve on the board.

- posted by KKB staff at 3:15 PM

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Edith Heller invited me to a luncheon with 8 new KAB coordinators.  It was held at the Kingston Inn in Roane County.  It isn't far from Knoxville but I'd never been there before and it was a nice drive.  I met Pam Cox from Kingsport, Dottie Dunn from Roane County (I already knew Dottie), Joyce Petrak from Loudon County, Carla Sexton from Cocke County, Janet Wood from Coffee County, Jennifer Reynolds from Greene County (who I had already met), Joy Rymer from McMinn County and Lynsey Smith from Union County.  I had the chance to talk with Keep Roane Beautiful board members Bob and Mary Giltnane about who is in charge of first impressions in Roane County and the region.  Very enlightening and productive.  Also in attendance at this meeting were KAB national trainer Karen Wakeford, KTB staffer Laura Marzhal and David Nevin of Union County.  Here is a nice composite pic from the lunch.  I didn't even try to line up the centerpieces: 

- posted by KKB staff at 2:30 PM

Monday, August 1, 2005

It was the first day back after the conference and out of the blue we got a call from Shelby Deck of 98.7 The River.  Jack Johnson is coming to Knoxville and he likes to promote recycling awareness and encourage more people to recycle.  The promo will be called Junk for Jack.  Shelby asked if KKB would like to be the partner in a recycling promotion and we said sure.  By the end of the day we had gotten the commitment of a newspaper bin from Becky Ford at SP Recycling, the multi-material recycling trailer from John Homa with the City of Knoxville and a digital scale from KKB board member Sarah Surak of UT Recycles, UT Cares.  The promotion will kick off in a few days.  For every pound of recycle material you bring to West Towne Mall on Saturday, August 13th, you win a chance for two free tickets to the concert to sit on stage.  That sounds better than front row seats!

I made a bunch of phone calls today and asked some friends this question: "Who is in charge of first impressions in our community and our region"?  I got a lot of very interesting responses.  More on this later...