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.
Forbes magazine ranks the Knoxville Metropolitan Area (which includes Oak Ridge) #6 in its list of the best “mid-size” metro areas for jobs (and we’re number 33 overall among the 398 U.S. metro areas), with healthy job growth. Interestingly, Knoxville seems to be bucking the trends described in the Forbes article, which says that that [...]
Folks around Oak Ridge are enthusiastic about the prospects for small modular reactors (SMRs) at the southwestern Oak Ridge location known as the “breeder site”, but we need to be aware that there are other project sponsors and communities aiming for financial assistance and quick regulatory review as the first SMRs. A New York Times [...]
A press release from the City of Oak Ridge Public Works Department announces that Quincy Avenue between South Purdue Avenue and South
Illinois Avenue (State Route 62) will be closing on Friday, April 27, 2012, to allow construction of the Woodland Town Center commercial development, whose first tenants will be Panera Bread (relocated from its current [...]
This thought-provoking analysis by Nobel economist Paul Krugman probably has implications for the decisions that Oak Ridge needs to be making on various aspects of the city budget. He says that state and local budget cuts are “exerting a powerful drag on the economy as a whole.” He compares government spending during the Obama-era economic expansion [...]
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 [...]