Troyer Keeps the County Books
From lacrosse player to finance director, he'll need his toughness now
John Troyer became Knox County's senior director of finance in a palace coup July 12 that saw John Werner resign, effective Sept. 1, from the post he'd held throughout the administration of Mayor Mike Ragsdale.
Werner, he of the $7 Smoothie breakfast and the $2,000-plus reimbursement for county credit-card charges, isn't bothering to come around his old office.
So Troyer, a six-year county employee as comptroller in the Finance Department, can now run it as he sees fit. He sees that duty well, according to Frank Leuthold, the veteran county commissioner who came out of retirement early this year to serve as an interim member until the term-limited Commission seats are filled by election.
“He was the logical choice,” Leuthold says of Troyer, with whom Leuthold says he's worked in the past as the Commission's expert on budget and finance issues. “I've also known him because we go to the same church. We've played softball with his family.”
Leuthhold says of Troyer, “He's not a political type. He's not going to take positions. He's going to handle the budget,” Leuthold says. “He's a good person, too.”
Troyer, a slender, bright-eyed father of two sons who once played club lacrosse at UT, says he was happy in his job at Bartlett, the Shelby County community where he went to high school, because it is, in his words, “a great town, great people.” But he answered Hamilton's call back to East Tennessee because his wife is a Maryville native and missed the home turf.
LINK:
http://www.metropulse.com/articles/2007 ... ybeat.html
