Calendar year 2020 is officially in the past. Knoxville Mayor Brian Hatch says it was a year marred by the challenges of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as a public official. “Up and down all year, it was so hard, so many unknowns, so many new things for us, just so new. Nobody knew where to go with it, and that was a little scary. I feel like in our society today, we feel like we have the answers to everything, and for the first time in a long time, everyone was looking around saying ‘What do we do, where do we go with this?’ So it was a lot of first steps for us, quite a learning process. It was really difficult for the whole community. Everyone knows that, not to state the obvious, but it was a difficult time. And we’re still going through it, we still have a long way to go. Hopefully we can weather this storm and get somewhat back to normal.”