To the Editor:
Our city has over $168 million dollars in debt—that is a 168 with six zeroes after it.
We, as the citizens of Oak Ridge, owe this debt. The number sounds huge. But the size of this debt is actually not unbearable. It is like a mortgage, we just have to pay a little bit each year—and we can afford to.
But there is a key difference between this debt and a mortgage: With a mortgage, you pay off a little bit each year, and then you are done. Unfortunately, the city of Oak Ridge is not paying down its aggregate debt each year. Instead, the city is borrowing more money each year, just making the debt larger and larger.
