On March 18, 2004, David Watson (Director, East Tennessee Community Design Center, or ETCDC) issued a memo to all traffic calming clients, Knoxville City Council, and others saying that they will be halting assistance in traffic calming planning until further notice.  The reason for this is that the City of Knoxville does not currently have in place a policy regarding enforcement, implementation or funding for neighborhood traffic calming.  Until such a policy is established, Watson said that they "cannot in good faith continue to facilitate such a potentially volatile process.  Joe Bailey is establishing an ad-hoc committee to study the issues and make recommendations on setting up an official City policy for managing traffic calming requests.  

ONK had previously made plans to conduct balloting of the neighborhood on March 23.  Now, it may be a few months before the City has ironed out how to deal with the many city-wide traffic calming plans under development.  This will push back implementation of traffic calming in ONK, should it be approved by the neighborhood, to the summer of 2006 at the earliest.  

ETCDC has been helping neighborhoods throughout the city work with traffic engineers, architects and planners to reach a consensus on ways to control speeding and cut-through traffic.  However, Watson points out, "Traffic calming is a quality of life issue taken very personally and seriously, enough so to cause irrefutable damages to neighbor relationships within the affected area."  He was undoubtedly referring to the most recent controversy that erupted in the Deane Hill neighborhood, where a group of residents went before City Council to request two streets be temporarily barricaded.  ETCDC had been working with Deane Hill prior to the request, but did not represent the small group of homeowners that convinced City Council to agree to the street closures.