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.
My email to State Senators Randy McNally and Ken Yager:
As a scientist and an elected official in the city of Oak Ridge, which trades on its scientific reputation, I urge you both to vote against SB 0893, the “critical thinking” bill.
Professional science teachers and the scientific community as a whole correctly interpret this as [...]
This is “to all Tennessee voters” from the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge:
A new law passed by the Tennessee State Legislature requires that registered voters present a GOVERNMENT ISSUED photo identification in order to vote. There are about 500,000 Tennessee citizens who do not have a valid photo ID and will [...]
Today I went online to file my annual “Statement of Interest” with the Tennessee Ethics Commission, but found myself colliding with a dysfunctional software interface. The Statement of Interest is supposed to provide some transparency in Tennessee government. All elected officials and candidates for elected office are required to disclose their financial interests and those [...]
It’s great news for local homeowners that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is promoting home energy efficiency through in-home energy evaluations and rebates for certain kinds of energy improvements. Details are on the TVA website (and there are also tax credits available for work done this year). I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that unscrupulous [...]
E-mail from State Representative Jim Hackworth’s office urged me to read the proposals that Governor Bredesen presented to the General Assembly yesterday (here’s the press release) and give him my views. Education is not one of the topics I typically contact my legislators about, but the governor’s proposal to transform the state’s education system has [...]
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 [...]
The issue of guns in municipal parks has aroused a lot of emotion and is generating a lot of e-mail to City Council members. On one side are people are strong proponents of gun rights and residents who believe that having a concealed gun when they are in a public place helps to ensure their [...]
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 [...]
There’s some favorable news on the turnpike widening project.
City Council members learned last evening that the project was not included as a stimulus project, but is instead expected to be funded in TDOT’s FY 2010 work plan. That reduces the urgency a bit and gives TDOT a chance to improve the design.
Also, Southwood residents who [...]
People are griping (for example, on the new Sustain Oak Ridge Google group) about the Hwy 95 widening projects (the ongoing one from Illinois Ave. to Westover Drive and the next phase from Westover Drive to the Hwy 58 interchange). These are not City of Oak Ridge projects, but are Tennessee Department of Transportation [...]