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Knox County Commission gets all Shakespearean
Posted By katie allison granju
Larry Van Guilder on last week’s budget hearing:
Here’s one way to consider the outcome of County Commission’s budget meeting:
“… it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (William Shakespeare, Macbeth)
And here’s a more contemporary summation:
“How disingenuous can we be?” (Commissioner Mark Harmon)
Shakespeare was concerned with weightier subjects than the county budget; the speaker, Macbeth, had just learned of his wife’s death. But couple it with Harmon’s despairing question, and you get an accurate picture of the failed efforts to restore a measure of reason to Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s proposed budget.
Harmon’s posed his rhetorical question at (almost literally) the 11th hour of a budget meeting that had seen peanuts shaved from a $640 million budget. It came as commission again decided to micromanage the community grants recommendations.
Harmon noted that while the entire day’s labor had come up with a “whopping $300,000” in cuts, the body was now eager to add a few thousand dollars here and there to a commissioner’s favorite charity.
“This is the culmination of a lousy meeting,” he concluded
Jun 23rd, 2008
