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	<title>Ellen Smith for Oak Ridge</title>
	<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog</link>
	<description>I&#039;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. 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 &#34;Categories&#34; (in the sidebar) or use the &#34;Search&#34; box in the sidebar. Look under &#34;Archives&#34; to see collections of past posts organized by date.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:32:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Cougars again &#8212; if they&#8217;re in Wisconsin, why not East Tennessee?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve blogged in the past about rumors and sightings of cougars in and near Oak Ridge. Somebody always debunks the reports, but it&#8217;s hard to stop wondering if these big cats are really &#8220;out there&#8221;. Now here&#8217;s a credible tale (DNA-confirmed, even!) of cougars  in Wisconsin: Wisconsin DNR News: DNA analysis confirms four cougars in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/09/01/cougars-again-if-theyre-in-wisconsin-why-not-east-tennessee/</link>
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		<title>Climate Action Plan &#8212; it&#8217;s time to comment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board&#8217;s long-awaited Climate Action Plan is available in draft form for public review &#8212; download it here. The plan describes recommended measures for reducing energy consumption (and thus emissions of greenhouse gases) by city government and by the community at large. I missed last Tuesday&#8217;s public meeting about it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/08/21/climate-action-plan-its-time-to-comment/</link>
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		<title>YES to household energy efficiency, NO to imposters taking advantage of TVA program</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;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&#8217;t be surprised that unscrupulous [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/08/09/yes-to-household-energy-efficiency-no-to-imposters-taking-advantage-of-tva-program/</link>
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		<title>July</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Wow, July is almost gone, and I haven&#8217;t blogged here even once! I have managed to post a few pithy (or at least I thought some of them were pithy) comments on places like Facebook (Ellen Smith&#8217;s Facebook profile) and the Atomic City Talk online forum. I&#8217;m overdue to share my thoughts on Fred Childress&#8217; [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/07/31/july/</link>
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		<title>What&#8217;s next now that the &#8220;Orange Route&#8221; is dead?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s true &#8212; as the Knoxville News Sentinel predicted Friday morning, TDOT killed the Knoxville Beltway project! This means it&#8217;s now up to the region to  find creative solutions to congestion on the highways &#8212; but it should mean that money that might have gone to the road project will now be available to help [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/26/whats-next-now-that-the-orange-route-is-dead/</link>
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		<title>AMSE&#8217;s flattop evokes memories for an Oak Ridge visitor</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This piece on the Roane Views website is a nice feel-good story about preserving little bits of local history: Number 68 Comes Home
The author lived in a flat-top house on West Outer Drive around 1950, and was able to visit the flat-top that&#8217;s now on display at the American Museum of Science and Energy, apparently [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/23/amses-flattop-evokes-memories-for-an-oak-ridge-visitor/</link>
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		<title>UK government report connects with my vacation photos</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On Tuesday the UK government released a long-awaited report on its investigation of the &#8220;Bloody Sunday&#8221; 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, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/16/uk-government-report-connects-with-my-vacation-photos/</link>
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		<title>The League of Women Voters is busy this summer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Phew! The Oak Ridge League of Women Voters will be busy this summer, holding a bunch of candidate forums before early voting starts on July 16 &#8212; plus a public forum to meet the finalists for the position of Oak Ridge city manager. Here&#8217;s the schedule:
June 22 &#8211; Roane County Forum
Candidates for County offices
Oak Ridge [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/13/the-league-of-women-voters-is-busy-this-summer/</link>
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		<title>Are license-plate readers in our future?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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. &#8212; all fast enough that the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/10/are-license-plate-readers-in-our-future/</link>
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		<title>Signs too soon and signs too flashy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Traveling around Oak Ridge, I&#8217;ve been seeing two disconcerting trends related to signage, one temporary (&#8220;signs too soon&#8221;) and one more permanent (&#8220;signs too flashy&#8221;).
The temporary trend is political signs going up too soon. Oak Ridge&#8217;s sign ordinance (part of the zoning ordinance) specify that political signs can&#8217;t go up until 30 days before the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ellensmith.org/blog/2010/06/06/signs-too-soon-and-signs-too-flashy/</link>
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