A new law passed by the Tennessee State Legislature requires that registered voters present a GOVERNMENT ISSUED photo identification in order to vote. There are about 500,000 Tennessee citizens who do not have a valid photo ID and will be turned away from the polls, if they come to vote. Of these about 130,000 registered Tennessee voters do NOT have a photo on their driver’s license. Registered voters who do NOT have a photo on their driver’s license or a passport (an expired license or passport will do) or other government issued photo ID, may visit their local Department of Motor Vehicles OR their County Clerk for a free photo ID, (by the way, a college ID or other non-government issued ID will not be accepted). If you need assistance with this issue, contact the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge at telephone: 865.685.5989 and E-mail: lwvor@comcast.net. Elections in 2012 are March 6, August 2, and November 6.

The local news media have had little coverage of this matter, but my series of blog posts should help fill in some of the details. Frank Munger of the Knoxville News Sentinel interviewed me after the January 9 meeting and described the interview in his Atomic City Underground blog: Oak Ridge environmental leader: ‘There’s been a lot of heavy-handedness’. As I told him, I feel like I was treated like a non-person. Adults in public leadership positions could have spoken directly about concerns that they may have had about the LOC’s management and direction (for example, they could have attended some of the regularly scheduled public meetings of the LOC Board on which they held seats). Instead they plotted in secret to dissolve the LOC and divert its funding to other uses, and their only communication with the rest of us was very impersonal, consisting primarily of emailed notices (I started to think of them as summonses) of special called meetings whose purposes were limited to dismantlement of the organization. As far as I know, the leaders of this effort (the Oak Ridge and Anderson County mayors and the Roane County executive, supported by the Oak Ridge City Manager) did not speak directly with the organization’s executive director about this matter until after they had finally obtained an LOC Board vote (last week) to terminate her employment. And I’ve heard reports, mostly fourth-hand and thus unverifiable, about stories exchanged by some area officials regarding the alleged misdeeds of the LOC bear only the vaguest resemblance to any actual events that I’m aware of.

I probably will never know if I’ve been one of the targets of character assassination in relation to the LOC (how can the victim ever be sure?), but I do know that this episode has seriously damaged my working relationships with some of my “teammates” in Oak Ridge city government. Furthermore, as I told Frank Munger (and as Leonard Abbatiello told the mayors, but to no avail), I believe that the death of the LOC has diminished this region’s access to the technical resources and the regional interactions that we need to make sure that the legacies of the Manhattan Project, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and Department of Energy (DOE) are appropriately addressed.  I also expect political damage to the various elected officials who were determined to eliminate the LOC, in the face of a diverse variety of citizens telling them (over the past several months) about the unique value it has had for them.

And what benefit do the individual mayors and local governments expect to get to balance against these losses? Indications are that the governments want to divide the LOC funding between them. The LOC grant has been about $170,000 yearly. If that gets cut by 10%, it becomes $153,000. Divided between 8 jurisdictions (7 counties and the city of Oak Ridge), that’s a bit more than $19,000 each — not a very big prize when measured against the damage that has been done.

I hope that the LOC-affiliated volunteer citizen groups that survive (Oak Ridge’s Environmental Quality Advisory Board, Roane County’s Environmental Review Board, and the successor to the LOC’s Citizens’ Advisory Panel (which was rebuffed on its request to hang on to the LOC’s nonprofit charter and IRS 501(c)(3) status) will be able to recreate some of the value — and potential value — that we are losing with the LOC. I think Oak Ridge and the region need them, even if certain political leaders don’t think so.

As we move into another new year, I propose a resolution for everyone involved in Oak Ridge’s public life in 2012 – that all of us resolve to communicate better. In particular, we need to resolve to do more listening, rather than assuming that we know what other people are thinking.

I got to musing about the need for better listening after a recent interaction with one of the most active observers of public life in our city. He commented to me about where I stand with respect to “the two major groups in Oak Ridge.” I had to ask: “Only two major groups? I thought we had a lot more than two.” He explained the “two major groups” as “those who are basically for growth (often dangerously) and those who are basically skeptical of much of city government and prefer to act very cautiously.”

I see a lot more than two “major groups” in Oak Ridge (one might say that our city has as many opinions as it has people). If informed observers perceive that we have just two major factions regarding such a broad topic as growth and development, I think it means that people are not hearing each other, but instead are making erroneous assumptions about the opinions and motives of people who disagree with them.

From what I hear from citizens, I don’t believe there is anybody in Oak Ridge who is all-out opposed to development. People do oppose development that adversely affects resources they care about. For a significant number of people, the resource they care about is tax money — they don’t want a penny of tax money to benefit any private developer. For some other people, it’s the quality of their neighborhood or a tract of green space (which in both cases might translate to an adverse effect on the value of their property). There are some people in town who don’t like development that will create competition, particularly if they perceive that the new competitor will get an advantage at public expense. For still others, the resource of concern is free-flowing traffic (they don’t want traffic congestion to reduce their mobility).

Much of this opposition never forms – or melts away quickly — when a development project is one that does not push people’s buttons the wrong way. There have been two great examples of this in Oak Ridge in the last couple of years. I heard nary a peep from the residential neighborhood when Eddie Hair announced his major expansion near Georgia Avenue, and Woodland neighbors have generally very favorable to Terry Wheeler and Walter Wise in their plans for the Woodland Town Center development facing South Illinois Avenue. However, people in those same neighborhoods have been strongly against some other development proposals in those same areas because they expected adverse impacts on the quality of their lives. These neighborhoods are not part of an anti-development faction; rather, they are communities of people respond negatively or positively to proposed projects depending on the quality of the specific projects and the quality of the developers’ interactions with the neighbors.

Here’s the guest column that I wrote for the Oak Ridge Observer this past week. It’s in Thursday’s print edition

One powerful source of opposition to much development in Oak Ridge – particularly development with public subsidies — is our residents’ long memories. Many Oak Ridgers are suspicious of new development proposals because of past promises that were not kept and previous development/subsidy schemes that turned out bad (or that residents considered to be bad ideas from the start). Different residents have different lists of the past “mistakes”, but “mall wars” and “golf course” are on the top of many lists. Regardless of what’s on a person’s specific list, the litany of past mistakes and betrayals has convinced them not to trust city government, various individuals and businesses, the Chamber of Commerce, CROET, or other allied entities.

As for the pro-development “group,” I know that business leaders and city officials evaluate each proposal critically, but I have the impression that some people from this group feel that they must express wholehearted support for each new development proposal that gets publicly announced, without revealing any private misgivings they might have. I assume that this uncritical cheerleading is aimed at silencing opposition, but it doesn’t work because it doesn’t respond to the reasons for opposition. In fact, it seems to me that this cheerleading is almost guaranteed to arouse the concerns of folks who are deeply suspicious as a result of Oak Ridge’s past mistakes. Both good proposals and bad will continue to look bad to a large fraction of Oak Ridgers if the proponents don’t hear and respond to their specific concerns and objections.

Public life in Oak Ridge would be less likely to turn into public combat if people (this includes me) listened to each other more, instead of making assumptions about other people’s opinions and motives – particularly when those other people appear to disagree with us. I resolve to listen better in 2012; I hope that other community leaders will do the same.

Recently, the City of Oak Ridge has had numerous reports of metal storm drain grates disappearing from streets at various locations throughout the City. They are city-owned
property and are there for your protection. They are costly both in time/labor and in tax payer dollars to replace.

City Staff is asking area residents and the general public for their assistance. If you see any unusual activity on city streets including anyone removing lids or metal covers
from city-owned property, please call the Oak Ridge Police Department immediately at 425-4399.

Questions or comments can be directed to the City of Oak Ridge, Public Works Department at 425-1875.

Apparently metal prices are getting too high — and people are getting too desperate. I guess we need to add “messing around in storm drains” to the list of potential suspicious activities to watch for in our neighborhoods — and remember that if a grate goes missing, the drain becomes hazardous to humans, pets, and vehicles. I hope our local scrap metal dealers are on the alert for these things!

Added: This spate of thefts ended with several arrests, but I’m not impressed to read that a Coalfield scrap dealer bought the metal from these guys and resold it to a processor.

City Council meets Monday evening with a full agenda. I expect that many agenda items will be uncontroversial, but several will generate discussion, and there are a few items that I will either oppose or seek to amend:

1. Local Oversight Committee. I believe that regional cooperation is vital for dealing with matters like the challenges our region faces as the host of Department of Energy nuclear facilities, legacy contamination, and the radioactive waste industry that has come here because of DOE. However, I don’t like the proposal to discard the 20-year-old Local Oversight Committee and start all over again with a vague plan for a committee of regional mayors (ironically, the same type of group that set up the Local Oversight Committee in the first place).

The LOC was established to provide technical resources to help the region’s communities with the particular challenges of DOE environmental cleanup and waste management activities. Because these technical matters are outside the expertise and interest of most local governments, technical resources (funded from federal coffers) have been thought necessary to help governments and communities deal effectively with these challenges. The LOC employs a technically qualified professional executive director who works with the organization board of directors (nominally consisting of mayors and chairs of some technical advisory boards) and volunteers on the LOC Citizen Advisory Panel to stay abreast of current developments, determine how situations affect the region’s communities and local governments, and communicate on various matters to local, state, and federal entities and the public. Now several mayors (including Tom Beehan) want to scrap the LOC in favor of a new, apparently politically oriented, entity to be directed solely by mayors.

Whatever shortcomings the LOC has had in recent years are attributable in large part to a resounding lack of interest by the mayors who have nominally been members of the LOC board of directors but chose not to participate — and in several cases (notably, Knox County) did not even bother to designate alternates to serve on their behalf. With little participation from elected officials, it sometimes was difficult for the LOC to stay focused on local government priorities. The mayors’ demonstrated lack of interest in the organization and its functions is not a good omen for the success of their plan to trash the LOC and start all over again. (The mayors have not suddenly developed interest and expertise in technical matters.)

After hearing from citizens about the unique value of the LOC (largely at the September 9th special meeting of the LOC board), including being told by four former chairmen of the Oak Ridge Reservation Site Specific Advisory Board that the SSAB is not a substitute for the LOC, I foolishly thought the mayors recognized that the political damage they would suffer from trashing the LOC — including firing the various citizens who have volunteered their efforts and expertise as board alternates and advisory board members — outweighs the value of any money they could get out of that action. Foolish of me. Now Oak Ridge City Council and several regional county commissions are being asked to sign on to an “interlocal agreement” (effectively a contract) that gives little indication of the purpose and direction of the proposed new entity, beyond saying the mayors will be in charge.

The proposed interlocal agreement is said to be patterned after the charter for the Hanford Communities (see page 21 of this package),  considered by other local governments to be a successful model of regional cooperation among DOE communities, and one that is well-integrated with local government.  The fact that the Hanford Communities organization is well-integrated with local government could be explained in large part by the fact that it is financed  by membership dues from member governments, in contrast with the Oak Ridge LOC, which is funded with federal cleanup money. Accordingly, it makes sense that the agreement under which the Hanford group operates is structured as the charter for a membership organization, but it does not make sense to have copied those elements for the structure of the proposed East Tennessee entity. I also note that the Hanford agreement has many details regarding the purposes and functions of the organization that were not copied into the proposed interlocal agreement for East Tennessee.

I’d like to support continued regional cooperation, but I can’t endorse an “interlocal agreement” that contains little more substance that the statement that the mayors of several entities “desire to meet on a regular basis.”

2. “Not in Our City”. This is a package of ideas and initiatives that our city needs. Still, the proposed program of inspection of residential units before the utilities are turned on, which is a major element of this package, needs to be implemented very carefully to ensure that the city does not act “arbitrarily and capriciously” against the interest of any property owner.  The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines proposed to be used for this inspection program is long and detailed, and it includes a number of vague or subjective items.  Until the guidelines are tightened up to make them both unambiguous and easier to understand, I am not convinced that this new program is ready to implement, even on a trial basis (as staff proposes). I also have some reservations about the “sewer laterals” element of the inspection, which is a whole ‘nother story.

3. What is “Fast Food”? Staff is proposing a new definition for “fast food” in order to allow “fast casual” restaurants with drive-up service, but not “fast food” restaurants, in the Woodland Center Planned Unit Development. I’m all for the concept, but it appears to me that the staff’s proposed new definition — based largely on restaurant size –  would exclude some small non-fast restaurants (such as Homeland Cafe, Razzleberry’s, and Connie’s Natural Gourmet) by calling them “fast food,” while potentially allowing other businesses with drive-through operations that might not be kind to the adjacent residential neighborhood. I think this proposal should be vetted by the Planning Commission before Council votes on it at first reading, rather than after.  In the meantime, I will ask for more details on the proposed wording changes (the package provided to Council lacks some needed context) .

There will be an interruption in internet services beginning Friday,
November 4th, 2011, at 5pm and continuing until 7am on Monday, November 7th.
This will include access to our website and all services found within.
Some services could begin to reappear on Sunday.

During this period we will be in the process of changing internet
service providers. This move will increase our internet bandwidth from
9mb to 50mb. Multiple other changes will also be accomplished in
conjunction with this changeover.

Catherine V.A. Smith, known to family and friends as “Bobby”, died on October 25, 2011, in Hamden, Connecticut.

Born in Kane, Pennsylvania, on June 22, 1925, the daughter of Homer L. and Helen Wingard Van Aken, she grew up with her family in Amsterdam, New York. She graduated from Middlebury College in 1947 and received a Ph.D., in zoology, from Yale University in 1952. In 1951, she married David M. Smith, Morris Jesup Professor of Silviculture at Yale, and resided in Hamden ever since.

Active in many community and civic affairs, she considered herself a professional volunteer board member. She served as an elected member of the Hamden Representative Town Meeting and later the Hamden Board of Education. She was appointed to the Connecticut State Board of Education, which she chaired. Among the many other boards on which she served were the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, which in 1978 gave her its Distinguished Service Award, the National Association of State Boards of Education, board of trustees of the Connecticut Educational Television Corporation (now Connecticut Public Broadcasting), the Health Systems Agency of South Central Connecticut, and Council for Emergency Medical Services of South Central Connecticut. She was an honorary life member of the Connecticut Parent-Teachers Association and of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. Most recently, she served for over 25 years in various capacities, including President, on the board of the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut.

She was an avid gardener, growing flowers, vegetables, and berries, saying “happiness is a full freezer”. She also enjoyed traveling, studying landscape, vegetation, birds, and relics of the past from rock formations to old houses, in the places they visited.

She is predeceased by her husband, and survived by two daughters, Ellen D. Smith (husband Richard Norby) of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Nancy V.A. Smith (husband John Stewart) of Carbondale Colorado, one grandson, Karl M.S. Norby of Chicago, a sister, Janet V. Gauthey (husband Richard) of Springfield, Virginia, and several nieces and nephews and cousins. She was predeceased by a sister, Elizabeth V. Kent of Amsterdam, N.Y., and a brother, Dr. John L. Van Aken, of Kent, Ohio.

A memorial service will be held in Hamden.

The new sign

This has been a long time coming, but it’s finally here: There’s now a nice information sign in front of the Oak Ridge Welcome Center (located in the historic Midtown Community Center on Oak Ridge Turnpike at the corner of Robertsville Road), complete with brochures and maps for after-hours visitors to take away.

I’ve been asking for this for years (at least the 5 summers since I was elected to City Council), for the benefit of visitors who arrive outside the center’s business hours and want maps or information on attractions, restaurants, etc. On my own travels, I often find myself looking for local visitor information outside of the local tourist office’s operating hours, so I know the value of making information available to after-hours visitors. Now I can stop asking when my own town will have this kind of thing! Congratulations to the Oak Ridge Convention Visitors Bureau on the completion of this project.

The sign is very attractive, and I’m pleased to see how nice the flower beds look behind the sign (garden plots sponsored by Keep Anderson County Beautiful). Welcome Center staff tell me there will be a hanging sign added at the bottom of the frame to list their hours.  I have a hunch they will also soon find themselves needing to figure out how to install more space for additional brochures and maps, as I expect this to become a popular resource.

I expect that this matter will become a  subject of discussion (although previously unscheduled) for tomorrow’s Oak Ridge City Council retreat, as it has significant implications for relationships among the mayor, other members of council, and the city manager.

Here’s a slightly revised version of the guest column that I submitted to the Observer:

With my expectation that the Local Oversight Committee LOC will be dismantled as a result of a meeting to be held Friday afternoon, I’m reflecting on the purpose of this unique organization, what it has accomplished, and what its abolition might mean for our region in the future.

From my close involvement with the organization as a board member (and current board chairman), I am keenly aware of its shortcomings, but I’ve also seen many positive contributions, and I expect that the LOC will be missed when it’s gone.

The LOC was an invention of the Oak Ridge region and the state of Tennessee, established to represent the interests of the public in communities most affected by the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation via the involvement of the local government officials who were elected to serve the interests and needs of their communities.

There is no other entity that is engaged with the process of cleaning up DOE legacy contamination around Oak Ridge and has a duty to ensure that local concerns and needs are addressed. Mission-driven organizations like DOE aim to do the right thing, but history has shown that DOE needs a “push” to ensure continuing progress in cleaning up its environmental legacies. U.S. EPA and state regulators work for the public interest, but their focus is on laws and regulations and federal and state goals, not the specific needs and concerns of local people. Local governments are not well-equipped to respond to the kinds of challenges that can be created by DOE contamination and environmental management efforts, because these are not the kinds of things that local government normally confronts.

The LOC is led by a board that represents the elected officials of eight local jurisdictions in the region and has provided direction via policies and position statements that were deemed consistent with the interests of the member jurisdictions and their citizens. The organization’s staff and the volunteers on the LOC Citizens Advisory Panel (CAP) provide technical expertise and devote considerable effort to monitoring DOE’s activities, budgets, plans, and findings — to identify negative and positive implications for area communities and their governments. Working together, the three components of the LOC organization have tried to provide well-reasoned, technically valid, and balanced perspectives on various matters related to DOE cleanup and related DOE activities, documented in communications distributed to member jurisdictions and outside organizations. When a specific need arose, the LOC conducted public education, both to promote awareness of conditions and to dispel inaccurate perceptions about the region, or helped run public meetings where citizens could express concerns and meet the state and federal officials whose job it is to help address those concerns.

The LOC seems to have won the respect of area citizens who follow developments related to DOE and the Oak Ridge site. I think its existence may have reduced the incentive for antinuclear organizations to make this area’s environment a target for high-profile criticism, as has happened at some other DOE sites.

Mayor Tom Beehan and others have suggested that the DOE’s Site-Specific Advisory Board serves the same purpose as the LOC. The SSAB does also include citizen volunteers, including some people with impressive expertise, and with a budget several times the size of the LOC budget, the SSAB certainly has greater visibility, but I don’t see the two organizations as equivalent. The SSAB is directed by DOE, is chartered to respond to DOE priorities (not local priorities), and its members are selected by DOE. The SSAB has no representation of local elected officials (with the occasional exception of individual officials such as Councilman David Mosby who have served as citizens) and no arrangement to ensure that the concerns of the people’s elected representatives are addressed.

Also, the SSAB charter limits its scope of activity to a specific set of topics related to DOE Environmental Management activities on the Oak Ridge Reservation. It is not authorized to address some of the kinds questions that turn up on the LOC’s agenda, such as whether there could be adverse effects on residents’ health from combined exposures to the cluster of DOE and private-sector waste processing facilities in western Oak Ridge and adjacent Roane County (the combined exposures seem to be very small, but it’s a challenge to get the information needed to provide the kind of reassurance that residents deserve). The SSAB also could not have played a role in preventing another DOE office from deciding to send radioactive waste from New York state to this area for disposal in the Chestnut Ridge Landfill, as the LOC did a year or two back.

Mayor Beehan’s proposed resolution to dissolve the LOC would summarily dismiss the organization’s citizen volunteers (both the CAP members and the volunteers who have loyally represented some jurisdictions on the LOC board), while “encouraging ongoing citizen participation through organizations such as” the SSAB, the Roane County Environmental Review Board (RCERB), and the Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board (EQAB) “to contribute to DOE and State decisions affecting the local governments.”

I don’t believe that the authors of the resolution recognize what this means. If the mayors truly want EQAB and the RCERB to “contribute” in that fashion, the charters for both boards will have to change radically, as both are currently constituted to advise their local governments, not to contribute to DOE and state decisions. Also the boards would need to reorient their focus away from local matters and towards DOE. DOE was a large focus (and time sink) for EQAB during some of my years while I was on that board. The formation of the LOC CAP and the SSAB allowed EQAB to give more attention to local matters – and memberships on the LOC board created opportunities for EQAB, the RCERB and CAP to consult and collaborate on matters that crossed city and county lines. Furthermore, there’s been a special kind of magic in the way citizens have engaged with this regional entity. The LOC has allowed technically minded newcomers from different parts of our region (from Oak Ridge to Oakdale to Ten Mile and Tellico Village) to come together and get involved in studying and working to resolve not only their own questions about personal safety, but also community concerns about matters like postings against fish consumption on streams and lakes.

The aspect of DOE contamination and cleanup that most interests most of the mayors is not the technical details, but rather is the EM budget. On September 1 Mayor Tom Beehan said that the city’s membership in the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) provides Oak Ridge city government with the resources it needs to engage with DOE regarding matters like the cleanup budget. It’s certainly true that the ECA, based in Washington, DC, is a savvy organization that is well-positioned to advise on goings-on around Congress and to facilitate networking with other DOE host communities. However, from its offices in Washington, the ECA can’t alert us about the special situations here that ought to convince DOE and Congress of a need to devote more resources to Oak Ridge – like the evidence that contaminated groundwater from waste disposal areas near ORNL may be moving under the Clinch River toward private wells in Roane County.

I think we still need the effort that the LOC was established to provide, and I think I’m going to miss this organization when it’s gone. For one thing, I have a feeling I’m going to need to devote a lot more of my time to tracking DOE activities and cleanup progress because the community won’t be able to depend on the efforts of LOC staff and volunteers to alert us to things we need to know.

Clay Bennett cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press

With school starting up for the year,  everywhere I turn somebody is talking about standardized testing in schools. Oak Ridge schools are making TCAP test scores count for a fraction of kids’ grades (not the school board’s idea — it’s a state mandate!), Tennessee is requesting a waiver from the No Child Left Behind requirements, and Clay Bennett’s editorial cartoon from the Chattanooga paper reminds us that testing often seems to be what today’s schools are all about. Outsiders and residents both evaluate a community on its kids’ test scores, and I have no doubt that test scores are increasingly affecting kids’ sense of self-worth. I was pleased to read that the State of New York is working to improve its standardized tests by eliminating “gotcha”-type multiple-choice questions and requiring use of a readable font. I hope that other states (like Tennessee) follow suit. As a kid, I was a “great test taker” who was good at those “gotcha” questions, but as an adult I’ve learned that multiple-choice tests can be a minefield for many  students who are well-prepared — particularly those with dyslexia or similar challenges. Making tests more straightforward is one small step toward reducing their tail-wagging-the-dog dominance of our school systems.