East Knoxville Community Meeting BLOG:
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East Knoxville Lives versus Knoxville Historic Preservation
This was the working title for an effort being formulated to establish a debate pitting East Knoxville residents in desperate need of healthcare service access against Knoxville’s legion of historic preservationists desperate to save three (3) old houses. It could have been an interesting skirmish complete with letters to the KNS editor, guest editorials, interviews with local media and a parade of public forum speakers at numerous city council meetings. The skirmish is highly unlikely now.
Like anything else, especially as it relates to local government, once the emotion is removed from the intensity of situations that critically impact communities, it’s much easier to arrive at solutions. More importantly, the aforementioned civic debate designed to rally public sentiment and persuade the city council to vote one way or another is avoided.
Absent fanfare, Covenant Health has responded to our advocacy of healthcare service expansion for East Knoxville and East Knox County by proposing an expansion of their downtown campus. The specific expansion of Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center, though not a technical expansion of beds, expands their emergency capacity by 67% and facilitates the designation of more existing beds for critical care.
Though this expansion falls short of providing additional hospital beds for the eastern most segment of Metropolitan Knoxville, more residents will be kept alive in emergency/critical care situations that’ll increasingly befall the aging population of this region. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, especially if you’ve not followed the hospital migration to West Knoxville but trust me, a healthcare crisis is on the horizon for EK/EKC whether its acknowledged by those most at risk or not. #VoxClamantis
Vox Clamantis (“the voice of one crying out”) is an approximately 10,000 line latin poem that singles out corruption of society and chastises government for being evil circa 1381. This mantra would have served as the perfect backdrop for a showdown between one East Knoxville voice crying out about the value-of-life corruption of the historical society. In this avoidable model, the Knoxville City Council eventually votes down the zoning request of the hospital in favor of preserving three old houses.
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