The vast majority of the opposition were Tellico Village residents, but to be fair, there were some non village residents in the audience too. For instance, the lady who's husband is making $276,000.00 per year from his government job living in a million dollar home on Fort Loudon Lake. The man who ran for county commission a few years ago, and lost, living in a 1.4 mil home on the lake. One villager said he just learned about this a week ago, but already knew more about what the school board should do
than they did.

Contrary to what most of the loyal opposition wants to believe, the Loudon County board of education and administration is made up of some pretty bright people. They're not just a bunch of bumbling hay seeds that have never run a school system. Some how they have managed to run the entire school system very well all these years, until the last two weeks, when our village residents and others have now deemed them incompetent. And along those lines, the director of schools, Mike Garren, is one of the most honorable, honest men I've ever had the pleasure to work with. It's shameful that a handful of disgruntled villagers, former property owners and others would work so hard to disparage the man's reputation because they disagree with him.

But let me tell you just how hypocritical some people are. Less than 24 hours after they showed up at the commission meeting with their preverbal pitchforks and torches, screaming and yelling, many of the same ones showed up at a Tellico Village Property Owners Association meeting. The POA board announced that they were going to implement an $80.00 per month surcharge on every resident's water bill for five years, maybe longer. That's $960.00 per year on the 6,000 homes in the village. That would be two, three four times higher per year than the 25 cent property tax increase in most cases. After the announcement of the $960.00 per year increase, there was no screaming, yelling or name calling, they didn't even threaten the director of the POA with his job. But just the night before, some of these very same people were ready to revolt over the 25 cent property tax vote. By the way, the $960 increase is on top of what is probably the highest water and sewer rates in the county and of course, on top of their $177.00 per month POA dues.

According to the POA board, if you can believe what they said, (I'm using the logic of the school opposition here) the new surcharge is needed because the water and sewer system is inadequate to provide the services the villagers need because of the age of the system and the growth in the village. Sounds a lot like the same situation with the school system.   

Again, using the logic of the villager's school opposition, where's the study this surcharge is needed, have they looked at alternatives like providing bottled water to all residents, or recommending they pee off the back porch? What about the poor people who can't afford the surcharge? They may have to choose between buying medication or eating. Is there a surcharge assistance program in the village to help them? There's a lot of non village residents, workers, yard maintenance men, home builders, ETC, who use the water and sewer systems. Has anybody looked into how we can keep non villagers from using the water and sewer? How did this just come up all of a sudden, who's pockets are being lined? How did the POA sit around and let this happen, why wasn't actions taken long ago to prevent this? Is the POA sure this is legal? Was it the same attorney that said the POA could take PPP money that said they could charge a surcharge? So many unanswered questions. The surcharge needs to stop until we get more answers.

I have no idea if the village has bad water and sewer systems, but apparently the POA does and all they had to say, to sell the 36 million dollar rebuild plan was, we have to do this and the villagers all said OK.

If I had the option to believe the TVPOA board and administration or the Loudon County School Board and administration, I would put my confidence in the BOE every day.

I want to be as clear as possible, the vast majority of village residents are great people and bring so much to their community. It's just that tiny minority that that gives the whole community a bad rap. As is the case in most communities.