Crossville city council recall battle keeps escalating (part 2)

Late this afternoon, Crossville city councilman Danny Wyatt issued the following press release in response to the recall efforts that he describes as "a handful of over-zealous and uninformed people." Wyatt responds to some of the accusations and accuses the recall effort of being instigated by councilman Pete Souza.  

PRESS RELEASE FROM CROSSVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER DANNY WYATT

As some may know, a small group of people who are displaying ignorance of facts has begun a campaign of sorts with the intent of recalling myself and Pamela Harris from the Crossville City Council. The issues brought by the group simply are not accurate.

 I cannot speak for Council member Harris, but I sure can speak for myself and I have an important message for those who would try to slow down progress of our city: Your actions, no doubt instigated by Council Member Pete Souza, is achieving nothing but hurting Crossville and will continue to cast a shadow over our town for some time to come.  For the life of me, I have never understood Mr. Souza's motive for doing everything in his power to disrupt the progress of Crossville with continuous investigations and  allegations of wrongdoing by our public servants and citizens (32 so far by my count) and yet none, not one allegation, has ever proved to have any merit. His ranting and raving has only proved to be a colossal waste of time.  Time that could have been spent on Crossville projecting a positive and lucrative image for new industry and businesses looking at Crossville for locating and employing our citizens.

 We have some very good things happening in Crossville and as a representative of city taxpayers, I will continue to look after the best interest of the City.  If that means voting against a program that I feel is wasteful or ineffective, that's what I'll do.  Where the Horizon Initiative was concerned, it simply is not what it started out as and, as time went on, it became clear to me that the changes taking place were not using taxpayers money wisely and effectively. Period. If spending $90,000 on Golf Tournament promotion continues to bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue for our City and schools as it has done over the years, then I'll vote yes every time. Also, in my opinion if a City Manager is not exercising sound, conservative monetary policy, he or she needs to go.  And remember, the vote to dismiss our City Manager was 4 to 1 in favor.

 It greatly disturbs me that a handful of over-zealous and uninformed people would spend the time and energy to put our City in a negative light.  As far as the recall is concerned, I'm doing my job with a clear conscience that my actions reflect the best interest of Crossville's citizens - if they get the votes needed for a recall and it passes on a ballot - then yes, I need to go home.  Otherwise, I'll be right here working for the betterment of Crossville and its people.