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.
Wow… Frank Munger’s blog post “Who’s making the big bucks in Oak Ridge?” is attracting a lot of attention today among staff at ORNL. I have a hunch that the information that the top managers of certain local government contractors are receiving annual compensation on the order of half a million dollars or more is [...]
“Solar 101”: Solar Basics for the Oak Ridge Homeowner will be held Saturday, November 14th, 2009, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm, in the Oak Ridge Public Library Auditorium. Sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board and the City of Knoxville’s Solar America Cities Program, this workshop will provide an overview of the solar [...]
It turns out that DOE’s conference call (see previous post) was not really an “initial public outreach activity” (other than the fact that it was their first public outreach on this topic), but rather was a belated damage-control job: the Department wanted to see whether it would be a bad idea to follow through [...]
I don’t know whether to castigate DOE for thinking of this in the first place, or congratulate them for having the good sense to drop the idea — I’m talking about the idea of sending radioactively contaminated soil from New York state to the Chestnut Ridge landfill in Anderson County, documented in Saturday’s News Sentinel. [...]
Thursday’s Oak Ridge Observer reported that Alex Moseley is circulating a petition to force a referendum on the matter of whether handgun carry permit holders should be allowed to carry guns in Oak Ridge city parks. The strange thing about this news is that there is no provision in the city charter — and apparently [...]
After headlines earlier this year about Tennessee local governments suffering losses after getting involved in interest rate swaps for their municipal bonds (see New York Times on April 8 and April 10, the Associated Press on April 8, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Chattanooga Times-Free Press on April 10 ) people are talking about [...]
Phew! This year’s Secret City Festival was a big success but it’s a relief that it’s over, and a relief that we made it through last evening’s marathon City Council meeting.
We had a long agenda and a long meeting. Kudos to John Huotari for quickly spinning out reports on two of the major business items [...]
The suspense has ended — the election results are in. That’s a relief. With the large field and low turnout, I didn’t know what to expect in the results, but I think the city made out OK in the end. My preferred Council candidates won, and I’m particularly pleased that Anne Garcia Garland will be [...]
According to a press release from the City, the 30-day warning period for the City’s first traffic safety camera has ended. This is the camera that monitors southbound traffic on Illinois Avenue at the intersection of Illinois Avenue and Robertsville Road. It monitors red light and speed violations. Violations “caught” by this camera will [...]
Oak Ridge, we have some candidates this year — candidates for City Council and school board in the June 2, 2009 city election, and possibly even a local candidate for U.S. Congress in fall 2010.
Before talking about the candidates, I must stop and remember the two long-time public servants who decided not to stand for [...]