I'm Ellen Smith, member of the Oak Ridge City Council. Thank you for visiting my blog and reading my views on public and private life in and around Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This website is my own; content here does not represent the official policies or views of the City of Oak Ridge. To add your own comments, click on the topic title to open a comment box. To read posts about a particular topic, scroll down to "Categories" (in the sidebar) or use the "Search" box in the sidebar. Look under "Archives" to see collections of past posts organized by date.
I had a great time at my campaign open house — connecting with some old friends and meeting new folks.
We displayed a couple of posters on which people entered their answers to a question worded something like “IF the city had $10.5 million to spare, how should it be spent?” The responses were [...]
Oak Ridgers who want to “study up” in preparation for the upcoming June 5 election have several opportunities to do so.
Several candidates and the pro-Crestpointe group “Future of Oak Ridge” have already held campaign kick-offs or rallies, and the local AARP held a candidates forum last week. Upcoming opportunities include:
Tuesday, April 24 (that’s today) – [...]
Now for something completely different…
A “Thinking Blogger Award” designation (image at the right) has been spreading around the “blogosphere.” Blogger CE Petro at Thoughts of An Average Woman (a strong lady who sells herself short when she calls herself “average”) included me on her list of 5 “thinking bloggers.”
In order to mention this award [...]
This is interesting: “Community Impact Analysis, Proposed SuperTarget Store, Waconia, Minnesota” (PDF file, dated September 2006). This small town in Minnesota commissioned an independent consultant study to examine community impacts of a proposed store. They did this merely to see how the store would affect the town and local businesses; there is no suggestion that [...]
Residents of the South Lansing Road area got some good news* yesterday when the Board of Zoning Appeals denied an application for an exception to allow a for-profit halfway house for recovering substance abusers to continue operating in the neighborhood. This means that the second of two for-profit halfway houses in the area will have [...]
An article and editorial in this past week’s editions of The Oak Ridger reported that Doug Janney of the city’s Industrial Development Board (IDB) had asked the owners of Oak Ridge City Center LLC if they still wanted the $5 million in development assistance promised earlier.
These articles confused some people who remember the 2002 referendum [...]