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.
Publicity in town hasn’t exactly been overwhelming, but Thursday night the Oak Ridge High School Masquers organization takes the stage again for the first time in several years, performing “Better Football Through High School Chemistry” in the ORHS auditorium. Different sources give different schedules, but I think the show starts at 7 pm 7:30 pm [...]
This coming Saturday, area residents can drop off fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, and cell phones for recycling at the Oak Ridge Wal-Mart store, where Keep Anderson County Beautiful and Anderson County Solid Waste will be celebrating America Recycles Day with a collection event and educational activities for kids. It’s scheduled from 10 am to 2 [...]
Phew! The Oak Ridge League of Women Voters will be busy this summer, holding a bunch of candidate forums before early voting starts on July 16 — plus a public forum to meet the finalists for the position of Oak Ridge city manager. Here’s the schedule:
June 22 – Roane County Forum
Candidates for County offices
Oak Ridge [...]
It’s FY 2011 budget time for the Oak Ridge City Council. Although I’ve attended myriad meetings of the Council Budget & Finance Committee, I face a stack of budget reading: City budget and Schools budget — and audit report for FY 2009. The Council audit committee meets Monday at noon, and Council meets that same [...]
Two front page stories in today’s Knoxville News Sentinel make me eager to see similar press releases from Oak Ridge:
1 – The full schedule for the “Sundown” concert series was announced. Oak Ridge will be having another “Secret City Sounds” free summer concert series on Friday evenings in Bissell Park (in [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]