Text of letter from Blount County Mayor Jerry Cunningham to Bill Hammon on Blount-Russian programs

Here is the text of County Mayor Jerry Cunningham’s letter to Bill Hammon concerning Blount-Russia programs.

Bill Hammon
City of Alcoa
223 Associates Blvd.
Alcoa, TN 37701

Re: Russian delegation

Dear Bill:

I am troubled by the manner in which the scheduling for the recent Russian delegation visit was handled. The Monday after Thanksgiving was the first notice I had relative to the fact that we were expected to entertain here at the Blount County Courthouse and Justice Center. I was not consulted with ahead of time to see if I was amenable to this or interested in doing it on behalf of Blount County. All I received was a schedule with a note attached that you and John would follow up. While it was a bit presumptuous, I did assume that you all would follow up and we could discuss it further. I put it to one side then and completely forgot about it because we have been addressing a lot rather time consuming issues here in November and December. When we were reminded of our “scheduled day”, we had an emergency that we were addressing that day and simply had not planned for this group because we had not been contacted as the e-mail indicated. Also, as I understand from Commissioner Monika Murrell, she was only contacted Sunday afternoon to be in a greeting committee on Monday morning. I guess Monika was able on last minutes’ notice to accommodate. I understand she, too, was concerned by the lack of notice.

I will be very frank on this whole issue. I am hearing, not just a little, but a lot of comment that people are rather weary of all of the Russian delegations coming through here. I think it is in a lot of folks’ minds, including mine, that it is too much of what originally started out as a small good thing. Now I understand that there will be an expansion, not only of Russian delegations, but from other countries as well. I was elected to be the Mayor and to try to address the business of the County. I try to be in the entertaining business just as little as possible. Additionally, there is a lot of adverse comment about all the Russian kids coming here in the summer. They are competing with out kids for jobs, etc. and I have heard story after story relative to displeasure over the deluge. We need to take care of our kids first when it comes to jobs, The Russians, as far as I am concerned, can do likewise. Enough is enough.

I realize that the delegations are a passion with some here, but I would respectfully request consideration be given to the remainder of those of us who are not so passionate about Russia. I personally, together with many others, am very disturbed by what is going on in Russia right now. Putin is simply old line KGB, and the country certainly seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Also, I have trouble forgetting close buddies of mine who were killed by Russian armament in a forgotten place called Vietnam. Russian advisors operated with the VC and NVA. Accordingly, I have little love lost for the Russian government in particular.

Having said all of that, I do feel that this entire situation was not handled correctly and we were put in an embarrassing scenario because of just an abject lack of communication and follow-up. I did ask Dave Bennett if the matter had just simply been thrust on us like this in times gone by. He said “absolutely not”. I do not know what went astray, but I know that we are not at fault. I hope that those so involved in scheduling these kinds of events will take into consideration what I feel to be the vast opinion of the majority of folks in Blount County that these kinds of visits need to be few and far between.

Sincerely.
Jerry G. Cunningham