There’s a lot of information out there about the Crestpointe proposal, and I would hope that everyone in Oak Ridge will take time to familiarize themselves with the facts before voting in the June 5 election (early voting is May 16-31).<\/p>\n
It hasn’t been formally announced that there will be a referendum, as the signatures have not been certified by the election commission, but it seems all but certain given the number that was claimed by those gathering signatures.<\/p>\n
The City has a list of Frequently Asked Questions<\/a> on their website, which is a good starting point.<\/p>\n Councilman Abbatiello has produced a white paper<\/a> with a great deal of detail and analysis from a fiscal perspective (fig. 1 and fig. 2 are at the end), which he closes with the following very strong statement:<\/p>\n In my opinion, to do nothing is NOT an option! We must increase our non-property tax revenues within the very near future. Unless you have a better idea which can produce a higher General Fund return, you should support Crestpointe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Oak Ridger recently published an article detailing the conditions<\/a> which must be met before any funds are released — these are critical, as the conditions are quite stringent and represent the safeguards that previous endeavors were lacking.<\/p>\n I’ve previously posted<\/a> an e-mail from the City Manager with information about other sites that were evaluated, which many citizens continue to bring up as alternate locations.<\/p>\n Without question, there’s a lot more information to come, as a group has recently formed to help promote passage of this referendum (as a first step; their collective goals are actually much broader in helping Oak Ridge to grow and improve) and they’re gathering even more information to respond to questions in the community. This group is FOR: Future of Oak Ridge, and they’ll have a website up within days.<\/p>\n As Daco noted yesterday<\/a>, it’s an impressive group.<\/p>\n Read up and be prepared to make an informed decision.<\/p>\n P.S.:\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the Tennessean article about GBT’s similar development <\/a>in Spring Hill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a lot of information out there about the Crestpointe proposal, and I would hope that everyone in Oak Ridge will take time to familiarize themselves with the facts before voting in the June 5 election (early voting is May … Continue reading