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 [...]
Stan Mitchell of The Oak Ridge Observer asked the city manager and members of City Council for our thoughts on the year past (2011) and the upcoming year (2012). The responses he received (from the manager and 6 Council members) were published in Thursday’s paper. Here’s are his questions and my answers (to see the [...]
People are talking — and asking me lots of good questions — about the proposed Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) plan for the development of Woodland Town Center on South Illinois Avenue. I have some questions, too, but I can share some information and thoughts.
Decisions are coming up fast: The Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board holds [...]
While the LOC is still in business for now, the future is uncertain. As Frank Munger describes in his blog and in today’s newspaper, under Mayor Beehan’s resolution, the mayors are supposed to convene to decide where they want to go in the future. Ironically, that’s exactly the way the LOC was set up in [...]
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, [...]
Oak Ridge wasn’t the first city to distribute agendas electronically, but somehow the New York Times got the impression that Cornelius, North Carolina, invented the idea of issuing iPads to City Council members instead of sending out paper agendas. They didn’t invent the idea… Oak Ridge City Council members were issued iPads last year, and [...]
A City of Oak Ridge press release today reports that our trash collectors are going to start taking holidays — basically, joining the rest of modern workers. Until now, Thanksgiving and Christmas have been the only weekdays when trash wasn’t collected. Starting with July 4, they are also going to get a day off on [...]
Wow — a tank failed this morning at Gatlinburg’s sewage treatment plant; lots of sewage spilled, two workers are missing and the Little Pigeon River is contaminated! Sewage treatment is one of those things that people take for granted, but it is important — and failures can be serious business. The tank rupture in Gatlinburg [...]
The first 2010 Census data for Tennessee have been released — and they confirm that Oak Ridge is no longer “about 27,000 people.” The total population as of 2010 was 29,330 — an increase of nearly 2,000 people since the 2000 census count of 27,387. After decades of stability (the official population was 28,319 in [...]
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 [...]