FEBRUARY 7, 2004 JELLICO NEWS/MAYOR'S COLUMN From all reports Punxsutawaney Phil, the "official" groundhog weather predictor in Punxsutawaney, Pennsylvania saw his shadow on February 2nd which means that we will have six more weeks of bad weather. But as I wrote at this time last year, a lot of us around here don't accept the word of that fancy eastern groundhog in predicting our weather and we would rather depend upon our local groundhogs for their forecasts. (Whether or not our Jelllico area groundhogs saw their shadows this year may have depended upon what time of the day that they decided to emerge from their holes. The sun did try to pop through the clouds on occasion although the rain and cloud cover didn't allow for much sunshine - if any.)

If in the event that our local groundhogs are not capable of doing the job of predicting our weather, Mississippi has "Dixie Dan" for the job and Georgia has "General Beauregard Lee" who are entrusted with the tremendous responsibility for long range weather forecasting in those states.. We can always consult with those groundhogs if need be - for far better to trust a southern groundhog with such important matters rather than some pampered Yankee woodchuck

If you don't like the weather here, just consider what has been going on in Canada! Last Sunday I went for a good walk without a jacket and some folks in Indian Mountain State Park were out in short sleeves. And the fellows at Rocky Top Arbys told me that they had seen some folks in shorts. (Probably northern tourists thinking that they were in a heat wave after the bitter cold that they have been experiencing.)

In the meantime the Sunday edition of the Knoxville News-Sentinel was reporting that temperatures in some parts of Canada had fallen to -52.6.. And some other media reports had wind chill factors in those areas in the -80 to -90 degree range. Brother that's cold and I would sure hate to see their utility bills for heating!

Following those tough losses to Kentucky and Louisville and with our difficulty in winning basketball games on the road, Tennessee's win over Florida has been termed the biggest win that Buzz Peterson has had as coach of the Vols. And although he has defeated much higher ranked teams in the past, this year's Florida game involved some things not previously known by many.

Last year's high school class reportedly had two outstanding guards that wanted to attend the University of Tennessee - one living almost in the shadow of the campus in Maryville and the other all the way across the state. The local boy, Lee Humphrey, was an outstanding student and athlete with a tremendous shooting range and without question possessing Southeastern Conference level skills. Dane Bradshaw was the point guard on a two-time Tennessee state championship team from Memphis in the highest level of competition. And he followed up that achievement by leading his AAU team to the national championship.

The Tennessee point guard, C.J. Watson, last year as a freshman had been forced to play most games for long periods of time (the entire game on one or more occasions) with no one in reserve who could provide adequate relief. So the very tough decision was made to sign point guard Bradshaw as a backup for Watson which seemed to most Vol fans the logical thing to do (although Peterson was quoted as saying that the call on awarding the one scholarship had actually come down to a decision been between Humphrey and a player other than Bradshaw.)

But many fans in Knoxville, Maryville and other areas questioned the by-passing of a good local player like Humphrey who ended up signing with (of all places), the hated rival University of Florida 'Gators. And when he came to Knoxville on Saturday, there had been great hype in view of the situation and the scene was set for some high drama.

To top things off, in an interview with Humphrey played on a local radio station Saturday morning prior to the game, Humphrey said that it had been his childhood dream to take the last shot in a big game and win it for his team. He emphasized that the dream had been around for years and that it did not pertain solely to Tennessee. And I am sure that that was true. But an awful lot of Tennessee fans who heard the interview read that very meaning into his remarks. And to them (and probably the coaches), the thoughts of such a thing happening was a nightmare!

It would have taken a Hollywood scriptwriter to have dreamed up the scenario that developed at the end of the game. Leading by two points and with only a fraction over 4 seconds to play, a Tennessee player missed the back end of a one plus free throw situation and the ball was rebounded by Florida. But the 'Gators had had no timeouts remaining. So the ball was quickly gotten out to Florida's designated three point shooter - and just like in the movies - it went directly to whom else but Humphrey? And true to his dream and the script, he put up a shot that the lead official indicated would be for three points and the win. But there his dream and Tennessee's worst nightmare ended - at least for this year. He missed the shot to the relief of an awful lot of folks attending the game, watching it on television and listening on radio. And I was one of the latter! I was attending an activity at Whitley County High School and could not attend the game although I seldom miss home games - and especially games of the magnitude of a contest with Florida. (However Jenny said that it was a good thing that I was not at the game. She said that I might have had a stroke about the time he let the ball leave his hands!)

In that pre-game radio interview, Humphrey sounded like such a nice young man that you had to feel for him as well. And who knows? He will possibly get his chance to do it several times in the future -unfortunately for Vol fans. But Bradshaw is also playing very well for us!

The City Council is now starting those long dreaded workshops to insure that this year's budget is in balance and to begin preparing our 2004-2005 city budget. The reduction in state funds available to us, the slowing of the overall economy, some expensive non-anticipated expenditures such as a very large increase in the cost of employee health insurance, a required emergency generator for city hall, and other such sizeable fund outlays have forced us to take a very close look at this year's budget now that the revenue and expenditures are in for the first six months period.

And following that, in spite of everything involved, we must develop a budget for 2004-2005 that is totally in balance with no consideration of any reserve or "rainy day" funds. To complicate matters, we have been reminded on numerous occasions by several agencies that Jellico has not had an increase of any kind in the property tax rate for many years. And certainly no member of the Mayor/Council wants to enact such a raise because we all pay taxes like everyone else. But municipalities - as well as most if not all governmental entities - are required to show proof of "maintenance of effort" that locals are footing their fair share of the financial load and it may come to the point where a tax increase must be taken whether or not the Council prefers to do so.

This is a very slow time for tourism but hopefully March, April May and June will be good months and increase our revenue from sales tax, beer tax, etc that we can add to our current budget. However we cannot depend upon that happening and we must anticipate the worst case scenario when working on both our present and future budget. We had hoped to implement some of the recommendations by the "Task Force for the Revitalization of Downtown Jellico" but we will now have to rely on the possibility of grant money for that purpose - if we have the match.

I was not very interested in who would win the Super Bowl this year and I sure didn't want to see the half-time show that typically is so awfully bad. And like President George Bush, I fell asleep just after the end of the first half and did not see what took place during halftime.. However I have seen plenty of replays since then. In fact over and over and over!

CBS is notoriously biased toward the liberal side of things but this year's halftime show according to all reports had to have reached an all-time low in sleaziness and that network is now "apologizing" to the American people. And well they should! The now infamous incident featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake (whoever that is) was bad enough since families with children were watching. But for someone on television that encircled the entire globe to utilize the American Flag as a poncho in such a scummy exhibition was one of the most disrespectful and disgraceful acts imaginable to the military veterans in this country.. One can only imagine the reaction of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan watching the entire thing with their very lives on the line at that same moment.

But sometimes good things come out of bad things. It is long past time that federal legislation is enacted to stop such desecration of our nation's most hallowed symbol and national veterans organizations are currently fighting hard for a Constitutional Amendment to make it a crime to treat the flag in such a manner. That halftime show is almost sure to add support for their drive.

And to their credit, even a large number of liberals around this country seem to be upset with what happened and are demanding an investigation of the entire incident.

Gosh only knows why! But there has been a tremendous increase in this country in recent years in so called "psychics" who purport to be able to see the future. And according to George Hackler, Jr., they are even becoming "certified" in that field. One spoof commercial cites the fact that someone identifying herself as a psychic knows current happenings in a person's life as well as "guaranteeing" that she is able to forecast future events that will affect them. (I doubt seriously that anyone has ever collected on that guarantee.)

And I am reminded of the night at home two or three years ago when I received a telephone call from a female who identified herself as "Lisa". According to Lisa, she was a psychic from some group of psychics with a title of something like "The American Psychic Association". She asked if my wife was at home.

My response to Lisa was that since she was psychic that she should already know the answer to that question. There was a prolonged silence and then the unmistakable sound of a phone hanging up. To the best of my knowledge, Lisa has never called back to our house.

I received a little good natured ribbing over my last article when I incorrectly referred to presidential candidate Howard Dean as John Dean. I have not had much time to follow all that is happening in the race for the Democratic nomination and until only a few months ago, I had only heard Dean's name a very few times. (And of course the name John Dean is very familiar to many Americans from years ago for an entirely different reason. I guess it had stuck somewhere in my mind's very limited memory bank and just happened to come out.)

But what's wrong with the name John for him? It's a presidential name and we have had Johns in the White House before (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, John Kennedy).

John! For some reason or the other, it sounds to me like a very good name for a president!