About William....

Occupation/ Work: Business Owner and Realtor

Owner of Covenant Enterprises, Inc., Covenant Refreshment Inc.

 

Three Reasons to Vote for William... 

 

   1) SERVANT MINDED: I've always been a servant to the public, not for personal gain, just because I believe God wants us to help each other and I thoroughly enjoy this.  The things I do never show up in the news, but shows up on the faces of those I help.  We teach our children how important it is to serve other also.  I have extremely high morals and values and I have an accountability team that holds me accountable for what I do and how I do my job as a commissioner.

 

   2) STRONG EDUCATION: To be a successful commissioner, I believe you have to have the educational knowledge to handle issues such as budgeting, negotiating, understand how to prioritize, insurance, procurement funding, etc.  To that point, I have an MBA and two undergraduate business degrees.

 

   3) STRONG BUSINESS BACKGROUND: Education is vitally important to be successful, but knowing what to do with that knowledge can be even more important.  I've had the opportunity to use my education and gain some great business experience with companies like TVA, Westinghouse, Entergy, American Electric Power and I currently own Covenant Enterprises, Inc. and Covenant Refreshment, Inc.  This experience will serve me and community well as we tackle some really tough issues the next couple years.

 

William's Thoughts On....

Knox County Schools:

 First word that comes to mind...Inadequate.  Throwing money at the situation or moving students around only to level scores to keep your funding is crisis management and does not work.  We need a total overhaul of our structure and strong management.  Red tape must be cut in the area of procurement for the school and guidelines defined.  Red tape costs money and creates inefficiency.  We have good teachers who leave every year for more money at neighboring systems, we must be able to creatively keep our good teachers and bring in the best when we have an opening.  I have two daughters who attend Knox County Schools so I speak with hands on knowledge.

 

Property Taxes:

 Could be lowered if we would stop trying to spend every dime we take in from tax revenue.  The job of government is to deliver to the taxpayers value for their tax dollar, to give them their needs; good schools, protection, safe streets and neighborhoods and some of their wants, parks, libraries, etc.  However, counties can't provide everything for everybody.  A healthy balance has to be maintained.  Right now our tax base has been on a sharp rise, which means more tax revenue every year....it's the reason we haven't had a tax increase while we continue to spend more.  Somewhere in the future that will stop and the only way to continue delivering all the wants and needs is to increase taxes.  Curb spending now, stick back for the rainy day over the next few years and reduce taxes.

 

Development:

As I mentioned above, development is the reason we have more tax money to spend and have not had to endure yearly tax increases.  However, development cannot be uncontrolled.  It must be done responsibly and with regard to the environment and long term affects to an area.

 

Environment:  

We are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  God has made us the stewards of Knox County and we MUST take care of it.  We have to find ways to make use of our refuse, reduce the amount of refuse, control runoff from developments and control development in a responsible way.