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.
At this time of year, I’m often concerned about storm drain grates getting clogged with leaves, since that can add to problems from snow and ice storms. Now a City press release reports a rash of thefts of storm drain grates! Here’s the text of the release:
Recently, the City of Oak Ridge has had numerous [...]
Monday night, April 4, at 6:30 pm (corrected) the City will conduct a public meeting for input on the use of traffic camera revenue. The meeting is at the Civic Center social room. I’ll be there, and I will be interested to hear what residents have to say. I’ve already shared some of my views [...]
The New Year is past, but Monday night’s Council meeting indicates that I need to make and follow a resolution for future meetings: Whenever I’m commenting on or asking questions about an agenda item, I should always mention (probably more than once) how I intend to vote on that item (unless, of course, I still [...]
Although I didn’t vote for the city’s Redflex contract that led to the installation of traffic cameras, one of these days the nastiness contained in the letters that City Council members receive regarding the cameras might just inspire me to head out on the streets carrying a sign in support of those cameras. Insulting remarks [...]
The Traffic Safety Advisory Board held a long and thoughtful discussion of the west Turnpike speed limits, deciding to recommend sticking with the TDOT limits, but continue to monitor the situation.
Based on the 85th percentile speeds, city engineer Steve Byrd opined that the 50 mph limit is appropriate for the section that has that limit, [...]
They’re back (west Oak Ridge Turnpike speed limits, that is)! The Traffic Safety Advisory Board (TSAB) discusses them at its meeting Tuesday evening at 7 pm. The city engineer has conducted motorist speed surveys and is recommending that the city not make any adjustments to the state’s speed limits.
How we got to this point
In [...]
I was out of town for a couple of days, and I’m catching up with news. WATE-TV reported that the Tennessee Dept of Transportation didn’t recommend those speed limits, after all. A TDOT spokesman said that the Oak Ridge city government (not TDOT) has the authority to establish speed limits on this road. The most [...]
As Friday’s paper reported, City Council has been asked to approve new speed limits for west Oak Ridge Turnpike (SR 95) — to take effect after TDOT’s seemingly interminable widening project is finished. This portends an end to the construction that we west end residents have endured for the last 2-1/4 years (reportedly, TDOT has [...]
The PBS website has an article about automatic license-plate reading devices, a new technology being offered to police departments. The vehicle-mounted device scans the tag numbers on passing vehicles, records the GPS location and time, and runs a check against a database of Amber Alerts, cars reported stolen, etc. — all fast enough that the [...]
Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Bob Fowler asked Oak Ridge City Council members for our views on use of the revenue from those controversial cameras that enforce speed limits and red-light compliance. His article on the answers that he got from five of us is in Friday’s paper. My full answer didn’t make it into the [...]