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.
This coming Saturday, area residents can drop off fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, and cell phones for recycling at the Oak Ridge Wal-Mart store, where Keep Anderson County Beautiful and Anderson County Solid Waste will be celebrating America Recycles Day with a collection event and educational activities for kids. It’s scheduled from 10 am to 2 [...]
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 [...]
It’s true — as the Knoxville News Sentinel predicted Friday morning, TDOT killed the Knoxville Beltway project! This means it’s now up to the region to find creative solutions to congestion on the highways — but it should mean that money that might have gone to the road project will now be available to help [...]
On Tuesday the UK government released a long-awaited report on its investigation of the “Bloody Sunday” events of January 30, 1972, when British troops fired on unarmed civilian street demonstrators in Londonderry (Derry), Northern Ireland, killing 13 people (BBC news story). We visited the Bloody Sunday sites while on vacation less than a month ago, [...]
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 [...]
I can’t choose the best word to describe my thoughts on media reaction to the City of Oak Ridge comments on the draft request for proposals (RFP) for DOE’s Oak Ridge environmental management (EM) contract (the successor to Bechtel Jacobs). OK, I’m tickled to see that Frank Munger likes my own main addition to those [...]
City Council passed the budget unanimously on first reading at our meeting Monday night. Discussion was lengthy, and many amendments were proposed, but the only actual change in expenditures from the proposed budget was a $3,500 increase in funding for a social services program operated by Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties (ADFAC). 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 [...]
Two front page stories in today’s Knoxville News Sentinel make me eager to see similar press releases from Oak Ridge:
1 – The full schedule for the “Sundown” concert series was announced. Oak Ridge will be having another “Secret City Sounds” free summer concert series on Friday evenings in Bissell Park (in [...]