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.

What City Council accomplishments from the past year are you most proud of?

Before I answer, I should point out that the City Council cannot and does not function in isolation – it’s difficult to distinguish the accomplishments and shortcomings of the City Council from the accomplishments and shortcomings of the city government as a whole. Accordingly, my answers consider the accomplishments of the city government, not just actions taken by City Council during the year.

I’m proud that, in these difficult economic times, Oak Ridge enacted another budget that both maintains city services and avoids a property tax increase.

I also take pride in the rebuilding of the Cedar Hill Park playground – not only did we build a new playground, but the volunteer project helped build community. The start-up of the new Recreation and Parks Advisory Board is bringing citizen leadership and fresh ideas into some city programs that are important to residents’ lives, and the hiring of Jim Akagi as police chief is bringing fresh approaches to law enforcement.

I’m proud that Council “bit the bullet” regarding the U.S. EPA wastewater order, rather than trying to fight the requirement to upgrade our sewer system. This big expenditure will increase everyone’s sewer rates and it’s not something that we would chosen to do on our own, but it’s the right thing to do to protect water quality, and I believe that fighting the order would have left Oak Ridge in a worse position over the long run.

Finally, I’m pleased to see the new wheelchair-accessible entrance at the Municipal Building and the improved accessible parking spaces at the Civic Center. I hope that the local businesses that are also subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act will follow the city’s example by making their facilities more accessible.

What areas do you feel City Council fell short on and how do you wish those particular areas would have turned out?

1. I am very concerned about actions of the City Manager and the City Council majority that may indicate a failure to appreciate the size, complexity, and importance of the environmental legacy from seven decades of federal government activities in Oak Ridge. I refer to the initiative – which is still in progress – to terminate the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee (LOC) and divert its funding to a variety of purposes in the local governments in the LOC region. This is funding that has been allocated to our region to help local governments (and the communities they serve) understand the implications of legacy conditions and DOE actions, provide credible information to the public, and communicate local concerns to state and federal governments.

In spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that these are technical matters outside the normal expertise or jurisdiction of local governments, it appears that several of the region’s officials believe that the kind of technical expertise that the LOC has provided is not needed to help the region ensure that environmental cleanup and other DOE activities are conducted on a schedule and in a manner that protects the interests of our region and our constituents. I do not believe that we can count solely on the political communications skills of our city and county mayors to deliver messages about matters like the need to restore the Oak Ridge Environmental Management budget (which has now fallen below the level that the DOE Oak Ridge office has said is minimally adequate to maintain the program – and far below the level needed to make meaningful progress on cleanup, at the same time that other DOE sites have seen significant increases in EM funding), much less to reassure the public that our region’s environment is safe whenever some piece of disturbing news turns up in the media or on the Internet.

Area mayors have brought forth some good ideas about placing the LOC function under the legal and fiscal umbrella of a local government, thus reducing administrative costs and burdens. However, instead of diverting the LOC funding for purposes like paying a jurisdiction’s dues to a national organization and augmenting salaries for county staff who attend meetings of volunteer advisory boards (ideas I’ve seen from some of the local governments), I believe that the region needs to continue to employ someone with appropriate technical expertise who can stay focused on monitoring and interpreting developments related to DOE’s environmental footprint on our region, communicating with concerned members of the public as the need arises, and assisting local governments with their political messages.

2. I’m getting impatient for visible progress on some initiatives that have been announced and approved by Council. Early in the year Council authorized staff to use traffic camera revenue on some measures for pedestrian and traffic safety, but little has happened so far. Similarly, the “not in our city” initiative is supposed to include more effective enforcement of laws and ordinances against nuisances like vehicles being abandoned on city streets, but residents are not seeing hoped-for results.

3. I’m dismayed that essentially no progress has been made on implementing the Climate Action Plan that the Council adopted in December 2010. The city has had several opportunities to demonstrate leadership in reducing energy consumption, but instead has maintained a “business as usual” approach., replacing gas-guzzling vehicles in the city fleet have been replaced with newer models (including conventional SUVs to be used solely to transport people over paved streets), refusing to consider the option of piggybacking onto an energy services contract negotiated by the City of Knoxville, and passing up the opportunity to obtain electrical vehicle charging stations that were being made available through DOE at next to no cost. (I’m pleased to read in the newspaper that the City of Gatlinburg is getting charging stations, but I’m disappointed that the City of Oak Ridge is not showing similar energy leadership.) [UPDATE on January 7: I've learned that the city staff overcame its concerns about electric vehicle charging stations,  so the City put in an application for two charging stations before the December 31 deadline! The proposal is to install them at the east end of the library parking lot, near the Commemorative Walk.]

4. We’ve not done nearly as good a job as we could have in communicating within Council and within city government, nor in engaging the citizenry in the business of the City.

As a Council member, I’m bothered by the fact that there is little communication regarding the external situations where the mayor, other individual Council members (myself included), or city staff represent the City. Tennessee’s open meetings laws severely restrict private communications between Council members, and if we don’t have time during public meetings to exchange information about our activities, the exchange of information never happens.

On the citizen side, the large number of highly qualified applicants that come forward when we advertise for candidates for advisory boards are indicative of the quality of our community and our residents’ high level of interest in participating in making Oak Ridge an excellent place to live, work, visit, and do business. I’m pleased that the Recreation and Parks Advisory Board has reached out to involve people who weren’t appointed to that board in their activities, but other opportunities for productive engagement have been missed. For example, the program requirements for the Transportation Enhancement grant opportunity (which the City responded to with a proposal for improvements to the Jackson Square parking lot) called for one or more public “design” meetings, which could have given citizens a chance to feel (and be) engaged in the decision process at an early stage, but staff chose instead to meet the requirement with a rather perfunctory public hearing during a City Council meeting.

What are you most looking forward to working on and accomplishing in 2012?

As my answers to the last question indicate, I see plenty of unfinished business left over from 2011. In 2012, however, I particularly look forward to accomplishing some improvements in the areas of Council communications and citizen engagement.

Decisions are coming up fast: The Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board holds a public hearing Monday (12/5) at 4 pm (not my notion of an ideal time for a public hearing) at the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce. Approval also is needed from both Oak Ridge City Council and Anderson County Commission. City Council addresses it on Monday, December 12 (7 pm at city hall) and County Commission expects to vote on Monday the 19th.

If approved, this will be Oak Ridge’s first TIF. A TIF is a development incentive, similar to a property tax abatement, but with features and restriction that (in my opinion) make it a better deal for the public than the tax abatements that Oak Ridge has used in the past. The idea is that the increased property tax collections resulting from a new development are designated to pay for public improvements to be built in the development area. The city (through the Industrial Development Board) would borrow money to construct improvements in the development area, and any increased property tax revenue from a defined TIF district would be dedicated to paying off that loan. When the public improvements are fully paid for, the property taxes go into the public coffers. As with a tax abatement, there are clear benefits to the developer.  Unlike a tax abatement, there is an explicit contract-type arrangement that sets out both the costs of the TIF and the benefits the community is supposed to derive from it. Also, Tennessee law requires that any TIF  be specifically approved by the governing bodies of the affected local governments (in this case, both city and county) whose property taxes would be dedicated to the TIF. (In contrast a city could establish a tax abatement that affects both city and county property tax without any county say-so — or a county could do that to a city.) I see TIFs as preferable to tax abatements because of greater transparency, the requirement for a public purpose, the clear definition of public costs and public benefits, and the requirement for approval by the elected officials of the affected local governments. Also, they don’t put property owners in the ticklish position of having to deed their property to an IDB (notably, the developers of the Holiday Inn Express that’s now under construction had to relinquish the abatement it had negotiated because it was preventing them from getting a needed loan).

This proposed Woodland Town Center development, between South Illinois Avenue and South Purdue Avenue, across from the former Dean Stallings car dealership, was approved and rezoned as a planned unit development a couple of years ago. Although it’s on the edge of the Woodland residential neighborhood, residents seemed pretty comfortable with the proposal because the developers have been sensitive to their concerns. The developers acquired several properties and took down the houses on them, but the development stalled with the bad economy. Now Panera Bread wants to move there in order to have a bigger location and more parking (Panera is very popular in Oak Ridge) and Aubrey’s Restaurant wants to establish an Oak Ridge location. Those two restaurants would occupy about half of the buildable land in the planned Woodland Town Center area. The TIF district would include the entire Woodland Town Center area plus some nearby properties along South Purdue and the former Dean Stallings dealership.

As people  have read in the newspapers, the public improvements to be funded by the TIF are removing the part of Quincy Avenue between S. Illinois and S. Purdue, building a new road between Illinois and Purdue that would connect up with Phillips Lane (a short cul-de-sac) on the north side of Purdue, installing a new stoplight on Illinois at the intersection with the new road (which would serve as the entrance to Woodland Town Center), storm drainage improvements, and some electric infrastructure. These clearly benefit the development, but I also see some direct benefits for the public at large. The road relocation should mostly eliminate the use of Quincy Avenue as a fast cut-through across the Woodland neighborhood — a benefit to that neighborhood. The storm drainage improvements are needed to correct chronic flooding that affects residents on South Purdue near Quincy. Additionally, the whole package benefits all of us by helping to ensure a higher-quality development than we might see if the developer and the restaurants had to foot the whole bill for the infrastructure supporting their project. I’ve heard from residents who are dismayed by the idea of another stoplight; it bothers me, too, but I’m afraid that it’s inevitable.  I keep hoping for an “intelligent system” to control the series of stoplights on South Illinois to help traffic flow more smoothly — not only to reduce drive aggravation, but also to make it easier for people to get to these businesses.

City staff has estimated the overall TIF cost at $605,000, and they estimate that combined city and county property tax collections would increase by $46,000 per year (split 50-50 between city and county, including $6,000 in tax on “personal property” of the businesses) as a result of the two restaurants, which means it could take 20 years to pay off the TIF.

People ask me if a 20-year payoff is a good deal for the city and county. I can’t say for sure because I can’t predict the future, but I’d be surprised if it took nearly the full 20 years to pay this off. Staff estimates $4 million private investment in the project. If that full investment got reflected in the tax assessor’s appraisal (it probably won’t), I guesstimate that it would yield twice as much property tax as they are projecting, so I am pretty sure that staff is lowballing their estimate of taxes in order to be on the safe side. Furthermore, if the rest of Woodland Town Center gets built or there’s new development on the Dean Stallings site, property tax from those projects would help pay off the TIF faster.

Staff also estimates an additional $165,000 in “direct and indirect” local sales taxes to city and county each year, over and above what Panera collects  now, which sounds like a valuable thing for the city ’s coffers. I’m not entirely clear, owever, on how much of that sales tax goes to city vs. county vs. schools, and I don’t know what staff assumed to come up with that number. I want to know more about what they are assuming, because I want to make sure it makes sense.

Other questions I’m hearing:

* Why involve the IDB? It’s my understanding that state law authorizes IDBs to “do” TIFs, but they aren’t allowed for city governments, but I want to verify this.

* What risk do the IDB and city face if tax collections aren’t high enough to pay the TIF bills? I’m not sure — this depends on the form of the security that must be pledged to obtain the loan. Attorney Mark Mamantov explained TIFs to City Council a few months back; if I remember correctly, he indicated that the lender assumes most of the business risk on these deals.

* Why can’t the city insist that these restaurants locate in some of the vacant buildings we have here in town? In general, a government can’t tell businesses where to locate (at least not in the United States) — and it does seem that the two restaurants were attracted to this particular site by the developers’ conceptual plans for the project.

* What will happen to the building where Panera is now? I hope it will be reoccupied quickly. Panera has done very well there, so the location should be attractive to another eatery.

* How will this affect the value of other property nearby? The conventional wisdom is that this project should boost the value of unoccupied commercial property close by. Interestingly, I’m told that it’s also likely to increase the property-tax assessments of other commercial property. I hope it doesn’t inflate the already-too-high asking prices of some of the properties that are currently being offered for sale or lease — excessive prices seem to be one reason why some sites in town are chronically empty. I’m told that it should not affect the tax assessments for residentially zoned property in Woodland. However, there may be some adverse effect on value of the houses closest to the development. That adverse effect can be minimized if the developer does a good job of screening the property to reduce its effect on the neighbors — and for some residents, being close to attractive commercial businesses is a plus.

* Why is the Dean Stallings property part of the TIF district? The new stoplight would improve access to the Dean Stallings property, and could even allow development of a road to connect to undeveloped land behind it.  Because the Dean Stallings property could directly benefit from the TIF improvements, any increased tax revenue from its future use is legally eligible for use in paying for those improvements.

* If the project pays off early, can the tax revenue from the TIF district be used on another project in the district instead of being added to city and county funds? I don’t believe revenues could be diverted to new uses without approval of a new TIF, but this is something I need to know more about.

*Doesn’t subsidizing these two restaurants give them an unfair  advantage over existing local competitors? Maybe… The restaurants will not directly benefit from the TIF improvements, as those improvements will only build the kind of infrastructure every business needs. In general, however, locally owned restaurants (which I generally prefer over chains) are at a disadvantage compared with chains, as the chains (even a fairly local chain like Aubrey’s) have access to more management know-how, as well as high-visibility advertising that builds brand awareness. However, the conventional wisdom says that when there are several restaurants located in the same area, they all benefit. I believe that — if the restaurant where I wanted to eat has a long line or is unexpectedly closed, I like knowing that there are other good options nearby. More restaurants in Oak Ridge increases the chance that people will choose to dine here, particularly in the evening.

* Aren’t TIFs supposed to be used to help with development of brownfields, low-income areas, and urban redevelopment areas? It is true that TIFs were originally conceived (this was decades ago) as a way to help facilitate development or redevelopment of areas that could be described as “social challenges”. The concept has been adapted for other situations over the years, so that’s no longer true. Also, the TIF rules vary a lot from state to state.  In the future, I think that Oak Ridge could use TIF arrangements to help make good things happen in older commercial neighborhoods like Grove Center and Jackson Square.

* How will this affect the “City Center” (former mall) property? I can’t say, but I think this development is close enough to that property that the City Center would share in the general benefits to local business that are expected to result from this new development.

* Why would the City subsidize restaurants, since this kind of business that doesn’t generate high-paying jobs? It is true that the 100-plus jobs expected to be generated by this development are mostly fairly low on the pay scale, but job-generation is not the only purpose of economic development. Retail centers are important to residents and visitors,  the sales taxes they generate are an important source of local revenues, and there are plenty of people who would be happy to get those jobs.  Also, comparative statistics indicate that Oak Ridge is unusually well supplied with good-paying “primary jobs”, but it lags in offering the kinds of retail opportunities and eating-and-drinking opportunities that help convince well-paid workers and their families to live in a community. Most of the people I talk with would like the city to have more of these kinds of businesses.

What questions have a missed? What else should I be thinking about? (Please comment below!)

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.

At any rate, the NY Times article tells the “right story” on why Cornelius expects to save money. A similar story could be told about Oak Ridge: those iPads save a lot of paper and a lot of staff time. Another benefit is less wear and tear on the city’s photocopiers — and fewer emergency calls to technicians when a copier breaks down in the middle of agenda production. One difference between Oak Ridge and Cornelius has to do with the delivery of agendas: Cornelius was using police officers to deliver agenda packages to Council members, but Oak Ridge hasn’t done that sort of thing for some years now. (Before the iPads arrived, Council members had to go to city hall to pick up our paper agenda packages.) The iPad isn’t perfect for reading documents (in particular, it is inconvenient to navigate back and forth between documents, or to move quickly to different pages or sections within a document), but it works fine as a reader — and it is far more portable than those paper agenda packages used to be.

The Times article touches on a question that some Oak Ridgers have asked: Are the iPads playthings for Council members? The answer is “no”, in both Oak Ridge and Cornelius. Our Oak Ridge iPads are set up to download and read documents, read email, access the Internet (over a WiFi connection), and access an calendar. We don’t have access to the iTunes app store, so we can’t install other applications that aren’t related to City business. If you see me fooling with my iPad during a meeting, I’m not playing “Angry Birds.” Chances are good that I’m trying to navigate to a particular page of a city document.

Thirty years ago we moved into our new house on Labor Day weekend. We were astonished when the trash collectors arrived Monday morning (Labor Day) to collect our trash. In our previous life in the northern U.S., we were accustomed to service workers getting the day off on days like Labor Day. It’s hardly surprising that the modern innovation of holidays has arrived in East Tennessee, but surprising that it took so long.

After a holiday happens, the trash will still get picked up, but pickups for the rest of the week will be one day later than usual.

Here’s the press release:

Waste Connections, the City of Oak Ridge’s waste contractor, will be expanding their holiday schedule for residential solid waste collection and curbside recycling pick-up to include more holidays as provided for in their contract with the City.
The holiday schedule will now include News Years Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day in addition to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Waste Connection’s new holiday schedule will start on Monday, July 4, 2011 (Independence Day).
Saturdays will be used as a make-up collection day for weeks that have a holiday. As this year’s Independence Day falls on a Monday, collection services would not take place until the following day, with Tuesday routes collected on Wednesday and so on with Friday routes being collected on Saturday.
“This eliminates the confusion for residents as to when to set their refuse and recyclables out when a holiday is involved. It will also allow Waste Connections employees to enjoy holidays with their families,” explained Gary Cinder, Public Works Director.
If residents have any additional questions about the new holiday schedule, please contact the Public Works Department at (865) 425-1875.

I hope the trash collectors and their families enjoy having an occasional day off!

Update at 8:30 pm – Sadly, the worst has been confirmed regarding the missing workers — the concrete wall of a basin collapsed on them.

I’m disturbed to see that the Census reports that 1,722 of the city’s 14,494 housing units were vacant as of last year’s census — that’s a vacancy rate of 11.9 percent. I think that’s “too high.” I guess the good news there is that the city could accommodate plenty more people without needing to clear any more land, build any new buildings, or extend any roads and utilities.

One item on Monday’s agenda was a resolution supporting the use of traffic camera revenues for traffic and pedestrian safety improvements. I am under the impression that I have repeatedly endorsed this in the past — for example, I was quoted in the Oak Ridger supporting this back in January — and I recently made a comment to the same effect here on this blog as well as on Facebook. My position has been that the camera revenue should be used for one-time purposes (because we should not depend on having this money forever — there is a chance that the cameras will be discontinued as a result of a political or legal decision, and if they remain drivers ought to start behaving better and paying fewer fines) and because the stated purpose of the cameras is safety, the first priority for use of this money should be safety improvements. And as the newspaper reported in January, I have commented that some  safety improvements  could eventually eliminate the need for some cameras.

The resolution presented to City Council on Monday would authorize using “the Special Programs Fund [that's the city account where the FY 2011 traffic camera revenue has been directed] for traffic capacity/safety, school crossing, and bicycle/pedestrian safety improvements.” I pushed for the creation of this separate fund in City budget discussions last year, and whenever the topic of the use of this money arises I have mentioned improvements related to traffic safety. Accordingly, I fully intended to vote for this resolution, but I (along with the rest of Council) was prevented from doing so on Monday because fellow Council member Charlie Hensley was convinced I was going to vote against it — and he managed to get Council to delay action for 5 weeks (until the next City Council meeting) to avoid what he was sure would be (in the absence of Council member Jane Miller) a 3-3 vote.

I’m not entirely sure what I said Monday evening that led Charlie to firmly believe that I had switched 180 degrees on this topic (and I don’t have access to a video recording of the meeting), but I do know what my position is — and what I thought I said.

The City staff has generated a list of projects for which the traffic camera money could be used, and that list was attached to the resolution. City engineer Steve Byrd and his staff have developed conceptual designs  for some of the higher-priority projects. I have a few questions and doubts about design details (many of which are subject to change before implementation), but I believe it is high time to move forward on the highest priority projects.

• The top item on my priority list (and number 2 on the staff’s “major” project list) is installation of a “pedestrian signal” (i.e., stoplight with walk light) at the crosswalk between Oak Ridge High School and the Oak Ridge Civic Center. I believe there is strong community support for making this crossing safer (the main disagreement being from people who would prefer a pedestrian overpass), and I have a hunch that this stoplight could eliminate the need for the speed camera and crossing guards currently deployed at this location.
• I also think it’s appropriate to move forward on the staff’s number-one “major” enhancement project, which is a package of pedestrian safety improvements at the intersection of Oak Ridge Turnpike (SR 95) and Illinois Avenue (SR 62). That complex intersection is not friendly to pedestrians in its current form, but staff has defined ways that it could be made much safer without detriment to traffic.
• Those two projects could absorb all of the funds currently available, but there are two projects at the top of the staff’s “minor” enhancements list that are related to the locations where cameras are installed and that I think should be pursued without further ado: a northbound left-turn signal (traffic-activated) on Illinois Avenue at the intersection of Robertsville Road and a walk light and pedestrian crosswalk at the intersection of Oak Ridge Turnpike with Tyler and Administration Roads.

Monday evening I said that those four projects should move forward, but that I thought some of the other projects on the staff list (lower on the list than these) reflected the loudest voices in the city and were not necessarily the highest priorities, so I wanted additional public discussion regarding the priority list before proceeding on those items. Since I expressed disagreement with some elements of the staff proposal and since two other Council members were calling for public discussion before passing the resolution, Charlie misinterpreted my remarks as indicating that I would vote against the resolution.  He announced that the resolution was going to fail by a 3-3 vote (mystifying me, as I counted at most 2 votes against it) and moved to defer action for one month to allow for a public meeting on the proposed traffic enhancements, and his motion passed 5-1 (I was the only one to oppose it).

I’m disappointed in this result, as it means an unnecessary 5-week delay in making something very positive happen in Oak Ridge. Next time, I must remember to repeat “I intend to vote for this item” in the beginning, middle, and end of my comments — and hope that Charlie is listening to what I am actually saying and not what he thinks I am saying.