Candidate for District 2-B
Cortney Piper
Cortney Piper
789-2669
For her website
About Cortney...
Three Reasons to Vote for Cortney....
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I am committed to using my passion, energy and experience to transform county government into a truly citizen driven vehicle.
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My experience as a college athlete, community volunteer and local professional demonstrate my ability to focus on solutions and achieve the dreams we all have for this community.
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I have the strength of character to stand up to special interests and the grace and finesse to deliver nine other votes to direct resources to our community.
Cortney's
Thoughts on....
Knox County Schools:
Knox County Commission plays a major role in the
direction of education in the county. The School Board of Knox County
determines the needs of the school district, draws up a budget and submits
that budget to the County Commission. The Commission can either fund all
the requests or indiscriminately eliminate programs, materials, training,
employee pay and benefits. The County Commission has the final say on the
school system operating revenues.
My commitment to education is clear.
I graduated from the University of Tennessee with
honors both from the University and from the Southeastern Conference for
academic excellence during my swimming career. I continue my
professional education with the Institute for Charitable Giving.
My experience as a fundraising professional taught me you can have the best plan for moving a vision forward. But, if you don’t have the proper resources behind that vision, it will go nowhere.
Commission’s role in creating the best schools
for our children begins with focusing resources on teacher and
principal recruitment and retention, increasing accessibility to social
services so our children can come to school and learn and allocating
needed resources to our core city schools to alleviative overcrowding.
Other critical issues facing both the school system
and the county commission include:
The first issue, particularly here in the second
district, is the number of schools that have been closed as the school age
population shifted to other parts of the county, like Oakwood Elementary.
This shift means school buildings and property have
been abandoned because no action plan for using the property by the school
system or transitioning it back to the tax rolls has been formulated. This
decreases surrounding property values by 30%!
To remedy this I plan to organize a community action committee to:
Ø Determine whether the school sites can be used by the school district
o If not, to identify uses for the site that would help the neighborhood retain its character and property values
Ø Locate potential purchasers to buy the site and immediately convert it to new uses that would enhance the neighborhoods in the second district.
Ø A condition of purchase is that redevelopment take place and a fair market value be set on the property.
This plan would enable the neighborhood to have a say in the use of the land, bring revenue to the school district and return the property to the tax rolls to create a continuing stream of revenue.
The second issue will emerge when the new
superintendent is named.
The commission must work with the superintendent to achieve the goals that will allow every student to graduate with the knowledge and skills to be competitive in the workplace of this century.
A functioning task force with membership from the
Knox County community, school district representatives, and the County
Commission can define specific ways for the school board and commission to
work together. Some creative, outside the box thinking would bring vigor
to the commission/school board that currently does not exist.
The third issue facing the commission, who is charged
with funding the school board requests, is to structure salaries and
benefits to keep Knox County competitive with surrounding counties in
recruiting and retaining quality teachers.
Each year, Knox County is unable to recruit some of the best prepared teachers because the starting salary and increments are not competitive. Each year, Knox County loses some of its best teachers to neighboring counties and states because the salary is not competitive with our neighbors.
This cycle of continual recruiting and replacing teachers wastes the training and experience teachers receive here and take to our neighbors. We must stop this cycle.
I pledge to work not only with the new superintendent but also the business community on ways to generate additional revenues to locate the money to offer a competitive and attractive salary and benefit package.
Property
taxes:
Any responsible elected official can never promise they will not increase taxes. We do not know what the future will hold. Property tax is one method we use to provide resources and services to our communities. Should these needs change, all possible outlets for increasing revenue and cutting waste should be considered with citizen input.
Development
and the Environment:
The decisions we make on how to use our resources
must add to our quality of life in every possible way, not take away from
it by polluting our natural resources and flooding our property.
Knox County has over 350 miles of streams on the state’s list of most polluted and impaired waters. That is unacceptable.
The good news is we have Sector Plans in place created by professionals with the input of Knox County residents that plan for growth and preserve our rich rural and recreation traditions. I support the Sector plans because they serve as a good basis to meet the growing needs of our community.