Bradshaw said he’d like for the letter to go to Gov. Bill Lee, state Reps. Lowell Russell, R-Vonore, and Kent Calfee, R-Kingston, and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge.

Russell and Calfee are “behind us 100%,” Bradshaw said.

“I’d like to see it go to everybody at Knox County Commission, Knox County Board of Health, the governor, our state representatives,” Shaver said. “That would be the shortest list I could think of right off the bat.”

According to a resolution considered last month, Knox health board members would have requested an executive order from Lee to allow the six metropolitan health departments to “initiate public health orders for the surrounding public health region in which they reside in an attempt to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19, hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 and deaths attributed to COVID-19 infection.”

“Just the idea that another county’s body of any kind — but this time it’s the board of health — that another county would want to interject themselves into a neighboring county is just a real alarming thing,” Shaver said. “We want to be proactive and set the standard up here, ‘No, we don’t need another county telling us how to operate’.”

Matthew Tinker, county commissioner, agreed with Shaver.

“The elected officials here representing the people who live in Loudon County. We definitely don’t want people from Knox County dictating their policies, which are a different set of people who have elected them, to make the people in Loudon County follow a set of guidelines and procedures that they want in Loudon County,” Tinker said. “I’m 100% in favor of the resolution going to the governor, the mayor of Knox County and the health department.”