If I offended anybody about this article, which I didn't think, personally, that I did, I apologize."
SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. — A recent article in a local newspaper about South Pittsburg Commissioner Paul Don King’s first few months in office caused a few hurt feelings among some board members.
At the March meeting of the City Commission, King took a moment to apologize four times for any offense his statements may have caused.
King, who calls himself the commissioner who “always has something to say,” said the reporter who wrote the article was accurate with his statements, although some of them may have been misconstrued.
“The way she wrote it, I mean, it’s fine,” he said. “I thought it was OK.”
King was quoted in the article as saying the City Commission “mishandled funds.”
“I said ‘the board,’ and I didn’t say ‘this board mishandled funds,'” he said. “If I offended anybody about this article, which I didn’t think, personally, that I did, I apologize.”
King’s comments referred to a December 2009 situation in which former Mayor Mike Killian sent a letter to the city’s utilities department asserting that it owed the town $20,000 per year since 1990, which he calculated to be $744,802 with interest.
Commissioners then voted unanimously to move $441,170 from the city’s utilities department to its general fund on Dec. 31, 2009.
Vice Mayor Jimmy Wigfall said King’s statements in the article weren’t very clear.
“That’s what I had a problem with,” he said. “It wasn’t this administration. It was the last [one].”
“If I made it sound like it was [this board], I apologize,” King said. “That’s all I can do.”
Wigfall said King’s expressions of regret were good enough for him to end the matter.
King said he thinks city leaders “forget who put us here” sometimes, and that he should not be the board’s focus.
“It’s not all about me,” he said. “It’s about us as a community and us as a board. Sitting on this side of the table, I’ve got to make up for [my comments]. If I was sitting over there [in the audience], it would be different.”
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.