This evening brings two meetings of interest in Oak Ridge; City Council will vote on the second reading of a rezoning ordinance for a proposed hotel in Woodland, and the School Board is set to approve — on second reading — the 2008-2009 calendar.
At the school board meeting, there is also the possibility that a hearing officer will be selected for a much-publicized personnel issue. It’s not on the agenda at this point, but board members were made aware on Friday that it might be added if additional information was received over the weekend.
City Council meets at 7:30 p.m. in the Municipal Building, and the Board of Education at 7 p.m. in the school administration building (also the Oak Ridge Preschool). Because I will be at the school board meeting, I won’t be liveblogging Council — anyone else interested in doing so? There’s open wi-fi access at City Hall.
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Tomorrow at 4 p.m., the Anderson County Ethics Commission (p. 3, bottom of the page) will hold their first meeting; one possible agenda item may be discussion of the County’s firewall policy. People who work in the courthouse (including state employees) are blocked from accessing several local sites, including yours truly as well as Atomic City Talk, while others more friendly to the current administration are not.
Alan Beauchamp’s PR platform, Inside Anderson County, has been offline for a few weeks now, so access from the courthouse only means that they can all see it’s not there. Nonetheless, there remains a glaring disparity between sites that are blocked and those that are not, and it certainly has the appearance of being based on whether or not the content is friendly to the County Mayor.
I wish I could be there, but due to other commitments, I cannot.
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I predict that the Woodland rezoning will pass, and that the addition of a small but nice locally-owned hotel will have a positive impact on the crime rate in the immediate area (not to mention a positive impact on the tax base citywide).
Two Woodland residents in close proximity to the property in question have indicated to me that they hope the rezoning passes. I have to wonder how many others there might be, who are simply keeping quiet to avoid conflict with their neighbors. I suspect there could be quite a few.
Jane Miller said we are becoming an area that is not business friendly. BECOMING is an understatement. We have had this reputation for a long time. Try to open up a business in this town. Road blocks are thrown up everywhere discouraging people from doing business in Oak Ridge. We will become a Bed and Breakfast town soon. Build a Senior Center and then we can really become a Bed and Breakfast community.
First meeting of the Ethics Committee has taken place and the ban on websites was not a topic of conversation. As I have been told there were no ethical complaints according to our ombudsman. So, I guess we have no ethical problems in Anderson County. What a joke!!!