For a plethora of reasons, we voted to remove a board member from a couple of boards. No need to go into the reasons or details now, nor to impune or disparage anyone, they know the reasons. But this decision brought out four or five folks who opposed the removal.
Tellico Villager, Richard Anklin, from Michigan, has been addressing commission for several years. Mostly telling us how we do everything wrong. Anklin ran for county commission in Tellico Village in 2014 and lost badly.
A new comer to the commission meetings is Michelle Fritz. She's been to a couple of commission meetings now. She had a linty of issues she didn't like. And like any good liberal democrat, even tried to bring racism into the discussion. Fritz vows to bring change at the ballot box. Suggestion to Ms. Fritz, you'll need to start voting. She did set me straight on one issue, she said I had been saying that Loudon County had the second lowest county property tax rate in the state and that was just not true. She's correct. With the newest information available, Loudon County is now the fourth lowest county property tax rate in the state, with no tax increase since 2010. Still not too shabby.
The best one of the night was Snowball from Pennsylvania, Susan Gingrich. This woman has some serious issues and apparently a scary obsession with me. She hates everything about Loudon County and has said several times how sorry she is that her and her husband, who also spoke, regret moving here. Snowball ran for county commission, in Tellico Village, in 2018 and lost badly. She had vowed back in February that she was never coming to another commission meeting and we would never hear from her again, she was moving back to Pennsylvania where everything is good. As you can see, that didn't happen, she's still here and still showing up at meetings and still talking. I've heard there are some in the village wanting to set up a go fund me page to help her move.
Ms. Gingrich has stated many times that people don't like her because she's a woman and from Tellico Village. I can assure you the reason people don't like her has nothing to do with her gender or address. She once posted on one of her social media outlets that she had heard that I was working covertly to close the deal between the school board and the church on the land deal so I could be a deacon and get my son on as the pastor. I'm not kidding. Ms. Gingrich has written a couple letters to the editor and now thinks she's a writer. She stated she was working on an old west satire piece and she was going to call it Shaver Town.
Gingrich's idea of Shaver Town sounds good to me. But we all know, if I did it, Tony Aikens would try to annex it.
If you have a little time to kill, watch some of the meeting. You'll enjoy it. It's better than any reality show on TV. The Gingrich part starts at about 51:00 minutes in.
Public comments at the meeting on a lot of different issues from animal cruelty to gun control to county policies and jail conditions lasted more than two hours. While most commentators are respectful, there's always those who just can't help show their true colors.
Then there's always those keyboard warriors that take to social media to spew. Like the lady who titled me, bum-ignoramus-bully Shaver, several times. This being the same peace loving liberal democrat who once told me I should be taken out and shot. This after a debate with a democrat opponent in the 2018 election. Oh, the hypocrisy.
Just because someone gets elected to a position certainly doesn't make them suddenly smarter, but elected officials often have more information available to them on some topics than the general public. It's just the nature of the position.
Nothing in the constitution or our oath of office says that we have to sit by quietly while being berated, browbeat and lied about without responding.
Enough's enough.