Chickens were the main topic in the waning minutes of Monday evening’s City Council meeting. There’s been public interest in allowing backyard poultry-keeping (mostly for eggs — and in support of sustainability, the locavore lifestyle, and connecting kids with “nature”). Oak Ridge’s zoning ordinance doesn’t allow “livestock” (including fowl) except in the RG-1 zone, so poultry-keeping is illegal unless we change the ordinance. The Planning Commission is taking up the issue — and Charlie Hensley says it’s on their policy work session agenda for this Thursday, February 11 (5:30 pm in the Municipal Building Training Room).
Urban chickens (and other fowl) are “in” these days, and many jurisdictions have been changing their zoning laws to allow them (for example, here’s a news story from last year on Durham, North Carolina, legalizing backyard chickens).
Most prospective chicken-keepers suggest that the ordinance should allow no more than 4 to 6 chickens per household — and almost everyone seems to agree on no roosters (many people enjoy hearing “cock-a-doodle-doo,” but there are many more who don’t). One poultry proponent said in an e-mail that “What matters is … that the conditions are sanitary and that it does not stink, and it is not an eyesore.” The Planning Commission will also have to think about whether an ordinance would need to include specifications on things like setbacks from property lines, and whether the city can and should enact requirements on how these birds are housed. The Planning Commission can make a recommendation to City Council, and any change in the ordinance would require City Council action.
I expect that people interested in keeping chickens (or turkeys, ducks, guinea fowl, geese, pheasants, or quail) will be at Thursday’s meeting — and will be communicating their views to Community Development directory Kathryn Baldwin, Planning Commission members, and City Council. To help in reaching good decisions, we also need to hear the concerns of people who don’t like the idea — and I expect that we’ll hear from them, too. As issues go, this one should be an amusing one to discuss — already I’m hearing good stories about people’s personal experiences with fowl.
The Oak Ridge city staff and and the Knoxville Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) have been working quietly to get started on a process to update the city’s pedestrian and bicycle plans. City Council found out earlier this week that an advisory committee had been formed and several meetings have been held. Currently the city has a sidewalk plan for the center city and a greenways master plan, but neither of these is recent, and some sort of comprehensive pedestrian-bike plan is needed to qualify for certain grants.
A forum for public input will be held on January 5 at the Civic Center A/B Room. Here’s a classy announcement of the forum that’s being distributed.
The
Bicycle Pedestrian Technical Advisory Committee Invites
You to a Public Forum
January 5th, 2010 @ 6:00 p.m.
Oak Ridge Civic Center A/B Room
The City of Oak Ridge, the Bicycle Pedestrian Technical Advisory Committee, and the Transportation Planning Organization have joined forces to prepare a Bicycle Pedestrian Master Plan for the City of Oak Ridge. During the first public forum we will be seeking input for establishing policies, programs, and priorities for the plan. If you have any questions you may contact the Community Development Department at (865) 425-3531 or the Parks and Recreation Department at (865) 425-3450. We look forward to seeing you there.
“Solar 101”: Solar Basics for the Oak Ridge Homeowner will be held Saturday, November 14th, 2009, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm, in the Oak Ridge Public Library Auditorium. Sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board and the City of Knoxville’s Solar America Cities Program, this workshop will provide an overview of the solar technologies that are available for home installation such as solar photovoltaics, solar hot water, solar lighting, solar heating, and passive solar design. It will also provide an introduction to the step-by-step process of “going solar” in your home.
The workshop will review basic incentives and financing options, as well as best practices for hiring qualified installers. Although the workshop is not designed to offer technical or financial guidance to a specific project, it should help homeowners better understand the options and process for pursuing solar technologies.
For more information, contact: Athanasia Senecal (865) 425- 3574 or Erin Burns at (865) 215-2065
Since this blog has started getting search-engine hits from people looking for info about July 4th fireworks, here’s a link to the Oak Ridger story about fireworks this year: Oak Ridger article, July 3, 2009
The city-sponsored fireworks show is Saturday evening at 10 pm at the Melton Lake Marina. Traffic and parking could be a problem — unlike last year, Melton Lake Drive will be open to traffic, but there will be no shuttle bus to offsite parking.
Also, the Oak Ridge Community Band will be holding its traditional 4th of July concert at 7:30 pm in the pavilion behind the Oak Ridge Civic Center in A.K. Bissell Park. However, folks who used to like to go to the concert and stick around to watch the fireworks can’t do that. You’ll have to drive from the Civic Center to the Marina if you want to catch both shows.
I’ll be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on how the show location and other arrangements work out this year. City Council doesn’t make these decisions, but we can communicate public concerns to the staff.
Update on July 4: The fireworks show was impressive. It ran for 29 minutes with any let-up! Traffic seemed to flow pretty smoothly afterwards. How was it for you?
The City is holding several meetings about the State Route 95 improvement project –to discuss the options in TDOT’s recent letter (see my previous post). Here are some details from a message distributed by city staff:
Open Walk-in Review Sessions
Wednesday, July 1, and Thursday, July 2, 2009, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room at the City’s Central Services Complex located at 100 Woodbury Lane in Oak Ridge. There will be no formal presentation of the project design; however, the City Engineer will be available to explain the project’s original design and the proposed changes recently requested by the City.
(I’ve never heard of an “Open Walk Review Session” — I wonder if it might be a typo — but these should be good opportunities for folks to get details on TDOT’s design and possible modifications) Mystery solved.
City Council Work Session
July 6, 2009, at 6:30 p.m., the Oak Ridge City Council will hold a work session on recent developments with reference to the subject improvement project. Social Room of the Oak Ridge Civic Center at 1403 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
Special Meeting of City Council
July 13, 2009, at 6:00 p.m., in the Courtroom of the Municipal Building at 200 S. Tulane Avenue in Oak Ridge.
At this meeting the Council will consider formal action in response to a letter from the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation regarding options available to the City with reference to the subject improvement project.
The suspense has ended — the election results are in. That’s a relief. With the large field and low turnout, I didn’t know what to expect in the results, but I think the city made out OK in the end. My preferred Council candidates won, and I’m particularly pleased that Anne Garcia Garland will be joining the City Council.
I’m intrigued by the numbers — the unofficial results from local news media. Elected to Council were:
Tom Beehan 2,048 votes
David Mosby 1,902
Jane Miller 1,724
Anne Garcia Garland 1,503
Other people receiving votes: Eric Tobler, 1,353; Tony Turner, 1,052; Martin McBride 1,038; Jimmy Bouchard, 976; John Alex Groff, 792; Rick Hasbrouck, 460. Audrey Overbury, who withdrew but remained on the ballot, got 174 votes. There had been a strong current of anti-incumbent sentiment in the community, and non-incumbents actually outpolled incumbents by 7,348 total votes to 5,674 votes for incumbents. However, incumbent Tom Beehan was picked by more than 50% of the voters, and if there was an anti-incumbent vote, it was divided among too many different candidates to be effective.
Elected to the three board of education seats were:
Bob Eby 2,345 votes
Dan DiGregorio 2,227
Jenny Richter 1,793
Others receiving votes for school board of education: John Soldano, 1,765; Brenda Fellner, 1,331; and Brandi Funk (who had withdrawn but remained on the ballot), 186.
Turnout was low at 3,834, and the individual vote counts were much higher in 2005 and 2007. In June 2005 (when turnout was considered disappointingly low at 3,944 voters), Willie Golden was the top vote-getter for City Council with 2819 votes (he got votes from almost 71% of the people who voted), Tom Beehan’s total exceeded his total this year by more than 500 votes, and 5 of the 6 candidates had more votes than this year’s top vote-getter for Council:
Tom Beehan – 2597
Willie Golden – 2819
Martin McBride – 1225
Jane Miller – 2490
David Mosby – 2306
Ellen Smith – 2218
For School Board in June 2005, two candidates (DiGregorio and Richter) exceeded Bob Eby’s total as this year’s top vote-getter:
Dan DiGregorio – 2764
Charlie Hughey – 657
Jenny Richter – 2486
John Smith – 2107
Bill Zulliger – 2006
The June 2007 election had healthy turnout with 6,414 voters, undoubtedly due to the Crestpointe bond referendum. Five of the seven Council candidates (running for 3 seats) ended up with more votes than Tom Beehan had as this year’s top vote-getter:
Fred Childress 2,215
Ella Hawkins Dubose 806
Ray Evans 2,308
Tom Hayes 3,644
Charlie Hensley 3,074
Jerry Marrow 1,080
Ellen Smith 3,177
All three school board candidates in June 2007 (running for two seats) outpolled this year’s top vote-getter, Bob Eby:
Angi Agle 3,910
Keys Fillauer 4,436
Aaron Wells 2,366
Citizen Jeff Zink (jeff.zink@comcast.net) polled the City Council candidates on several topics. He got thoughtful answers from five of the candidates (Garland, McBride, Mosby, Tobler, and Turner) and a short reply from a sixth (Miller). He distributed the results this afternoon via e-mail. I received a forwarded copy of his message, which said “Please feel free to forward this e-mail to others in Oak Ridge,” and I am posting the answers here (click here to find them on a separate page) to help get them into the hands of voters.
For me as a Council member who is not up for re-election, this type of election-time discussion of the issues is worthwhile because it causes me to think about topics that are important but have not been on the front burner recently — and the candidates often bring fresh perspectives to the issues.
ADDED a few hours later: Skimming the Qs and As, I found myself wanting to add comments on a few items:
Centennial Golf Course – The golf course financial results are available to everybody (not just public officials, as Eric Tobler’s response implies), embedded in the city budgets and financial reports, which are published and are actually on the city website (click for budgets and financial reports). According to the draft budget for FY 2010 (and as Dave Mosby’s response notes), the golf course is turning a profit this fiscal year on operations (revenues of $1,293,000 versus $1,201,000 in operating costs), but debt service is almost $539,000, so taxpayers are still subsidizing the course at an annual rate of about $447,000. As Tobler’s response implies, golf courses generally don’t pay for themselves. Oak Ridge didn’t expect this course to break even, but hoped to make money from sharing in the gains from selling homes built near the golf course. (That arrangement didn’t work out.) I wish we didn’t own this golf course in the first place, and it would be nice to think that the city could save money by selling it, but I agree with Dave Mosby that we would need to look carefully at any offers — and sell it only if the deal is truly beneficial financially.
Traffic cameras – Not only should signage be erected to “inform” motorists that they are about to come upon a street camera, but notification signs are required by law. As several of the candidates pointed out, signs are in place at some of the camera locations. However, I’ve been concerned that the signage might not be sufficient — in particular, I believe that when a camera site monitors both red-light compliance and speed, it’s not enough for the sign to mention only the red-light cam. I asked staff to look into sign adequacy at a recent meeting, and I haven’t yet gotten a definitive answer.
Added June 2, 2009: City staff says that the signs are going to be replaced with signs that specify “Red Light and Speed Photo Enforcement” or “Speed Limit Photo Enforcement.”
With early voting under way, it’s high time for me to share my recommendations for City Council. I support the re-election of David Mosby and Tom Beehan, and I strongly recommend electing the newcomer Anne Garcia Garland.
Although I don’t always like their opinions, both Mosby and Beehan are knowledgeable, hard-working (not always in the public view), and thoughtful — I believe they both have the best interests of Oak Ridge citizens at heart. In my opinion, they have earned re-election.
Anne Garcia Garland is a smart and thoughtful woman whose diverse personal experiences, 20+ years of residence in Oak Ridge, and past involvement in and awareness of City affairs will stand her in good stead as a City leader. She will bring needed perspectives to Council as a proud cemesto homeowner (she lives in an “A” house on Outer Drive), an experienced small business owner, and someone who has worked as an accountant — and as a retiree, she has the time to devote to public service. Furthermore, I’m gratified by her personal commitment to greening Oak Ridge. Anne and her husband have installed a photovoltaic solar generator on home and will soon be in the position of selling back electricity to the city’s utility grid as Oak Ridge’s first participants in the TVA Generation Partners program. Also, they have made land on Warehouse Road available for a community garden project.
As for the other candidates, take your pick (or just vote for those you like). I have some preferences among the others, but I see potential merit in all of them — and I can imagine working productively with all of them as fellow Council members. The two voter forums I attended were informative — Angi Agle’s “live blog” of the recent League of Women Voters forum on her blog is a good resource.
Early voting for the June 2 City election started on Wednesday and continues through Thursday, May 28, 2009. Hours are 10 am to 6 pm weekdays (except Memorial Day, May 25) and from 9 am to 12 noon today (Saturday, May 16) at the Larry Dickens Office Building (aka Emory Valley Center or Daniel Arthur Center) on Emory Valley Road.
The Oak Ridge Police and Fire Departments are holding a “Child Passenger Safety Checkpoint” Saturday, May 16, from 10 am to 1 pm at Fire Station 3 on Tuskegee Drive (behind KMart). There will be technicians on hand to educate and assist parents and grandparents on the proper installation and use of child safety seats and booster seats.
There have been recalls of some seats, and they’ll have information on them, too.
Tennessee requires all kids between 4 and 8 years old, less than 4′9″ tall, to ride secured with a belt positioning booster seat, in the back seat if available, and they can offer assistance with how these are properly and safely used.
See http://orfd.com/ for additional details.
