A recent letter to the editor referred to a legal judgment against GBT Realty. I was not aware of the judgment, but an article about the issue has arrived in my e-mail inbox.
The question asked was whether GBT is an entity that the city should place its complete faith in, as proposed in the [...]
Posts from ‘May, 2007’
GBT Realty’s record
Say what?
I usually shrug it off when a newspaper quotes me in a way that I think does not effectively represent my statements, but some of the comments attributed to me in an article in today’s paper have only a vague resemblance to what I remember saying to a reporter over the telephone.
The article describes my [...]
Why Crestpointe won’t prevent people from continuing to shop at Turkey Creek
Tim Holt has submitted a letter to the editor about a statistical analysis of shopping centers. This post is borrowed/modified from his to-be-published letter…A 1996 paper by by two university researchers, published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, examined the question: “How Critical Is a Good Location to a Regional Shopping Center?” The research [...]
Lobbyists and TVA land — are Oak Ridge’s leaders tuned in to us?
This is a partially written blog post that I filed away last October and failed to finish — until now.
At its October 2006 meeting, City Council extended both of the city’s lobbying contracts for more than a year — through the end of 2007. That same evening, Council voted to lodge a strong [...]
Misdirection in the west end of Oak Ridge
I’ve noticed this out of the corner of my eye on several recent occasions, but I finally focused long enough to be sure that I was seeing this correctly:
Westbound travelers on Hwy 95, approaching the interchange with Hwy 58 (where a right turn on 95 takes you to Lenoir City, while straight traffic takes 58 [...]
The public’s unanswered questions on Crestpointe
The League of Women Voters forum on the Crestpointe proposal ended before some (most, actually) of the audience-submitted questions could be addressed.
The LWV provided a list of the unasked questions, with the idea that the groups could provide and publicize our answers. It turns out that all of the unaddressed questions were directed primarily [...]
Links for election research
For the benefit of voters trying to research the other candidates, I’ve added links to the other-candidate websites I am aware of (look under Other City Election Websites on the right).
See http://citizensoakridge.com/ for some analysis of the Crestpointe bond referendum issue.
Visualizing Crestpointe
As I stated at Tuesday night’s public forum on the Crestpointe proposal (when I spoke on the topic of “site selection and planning”), Oak Ridge is trying to make a decision about spending more than $10 million in public funds on a development project that will have long-term effects on the character of our community, [...]
What does $10.5 million really cost the taxpayers?
The “Future of Oak Ridge” group is saying that the city’s $10.5 million input to the Crestpointe project will be paid back in just 15 years by property taxes on the shopping center.
That claim is not consistent with the City’s analysis, as presented in several different public venues and posted on the City website. That [...]
Public forum on bond referendum (about Crestpointe bonds)
On the eve of early voting comes a League of Women Voters forum about the referendum for the Crestpointe bond issue:
Tuesday, May 15, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Pollard Auditorium (on the ORAU campus, above the hill from the Oak Ridge Civic Center)
LWV’s announcement says “Representatives of Citizens Oak Ridge (COR) and Future of Oak Ridge (FOR) [...]