presstalk 671-TALK

• I’m calling about the empty buildings that are all throughout our city of Farragut. I’m really ashamed of them. I think that it makes our village, our city, look really tacky. Personally, I think the solution is with the person who owns the [given] building. [The owner] should be responsible for the upkeep of the building. If the shingles fall off like they do over at the old Ingles store, then that should be repaired.

There should be no boarded-up windows. If they don’t do something in three to five years, then they should be required to tear them down. I think they are an absolute disgrace to this Town. This is supposed to be one of the nicest towns in the whole area of Knoxville. But we have so many empty buildings, and I really believe that we need to take some kind of responsibility through the government of our city, that we make sure that these are kept up so the outward appearance is nice. … Perhaps what we need to do is call a Town meeting, where residents of this Town could actually come together in a forum, at a meeting, and make suggestions that possibly would be taken by our governing factors as to what we can do about these disgraceful buildings.

• I’m calling in regard to Virtue Road and the need for improvement of that road. It’s an extremely dangerous road; there’s not much line-of-sight when pulling from Evans [Road] onto Virtue Road. I’ve seen a number of accidents there. People don’t slow down. The road is not conducive to the traffic volume or to the speed people are going. It definitely needs improvement.