Note: The following is a copy of a letter sent to Oak Ridge City Council.
Dear City Council Members,
Over the last decade, while he was vice mayor and mayor, Mr. Tom Beehan accomplished some very noteworthy things.
Oak Ridge completed a major upgrade to its high school. The west-end turnpike was modernized. The Guest House (Alexander Inn) was preserved. And Oak Ridge was selected to host a brand new Kroger Marketplace store.
Despite these accomplishments, it’s time to recognize that the clock is ticking on our city’s economic problems and move to a fresh new approach.
In the decade that Mr. Beehan has occupied a leadership position, Oak Ridge’s median household income has fallen further behind its competitors—and the state average. Population growth has also been disappointing.
Oak Ridge property tax rates have continued amongst the state’s highest. And this year for the first time, Oak Ridge utility rates have also become non-competitive. Realtors in surrounding communities are hammering Oak Ridge with these rates.
U.S. Department of Energy payroll has also continued to migrate out of Oak Ridge at an alarming rate.
By 2008—the last year that the U.S. Department of Energy reported its payroll—the overall payroll gap between Oak Ridge and Knox County had reached $269 million per year. That’s $269 million more DOE payroll that Knox County gets each year than Oak Ridge. By 2008, the gap was worsening by nearly $13 million per year.
This payroll gap is a key reason why Knox County enjoys two Kroger Marketplaces, a brand new Costco, a brand new Trader Joes, an enormous Food City, a Sam’s Club, a Fresh Market, and an Earth Fare store while Oak Ridge struggles to get its first Marketplace.
Yet, Oak Ridge has continued to spend as though the payroll problem does not exist. City expenditures have exceeded revenues in each of the past 10 years.
Between 2001 and 2012, city debt rose from $101 million to an estimated $180 million this year—despite $112 million dollars in city debt payments.
The good news is that there are important areas where the Oak Ridge economy can develop a significant competitive edge over Knox County.
For example, Oak Ridge is one of only three communities on Earth that can take credit for helping to end global warfare. The world has not experienced a World War III, thanks largely to their efforts. The city could start thinking about an international peace monument—dedicated to the absence of Global War.
And Oak Ridge was the first community in the South to desegregate its public school system. Oak Ridge also has the fascinating heritage of its African-American Manhattan Project workers. America just re-elected its first African-American President. Now is the time to push for an African-American Heritage museum—to complement our other city museums.
These are but two of a variety of competitive advantages our city enjoys over Knox County.
I really appreciate Mr. Beehan’s many years of service as mayor and vice mayor. Yet in my opinion, the time has come to let someone else try to move the city forward.
It will take a fresh face and new ideas to get the economy rolling. The time has come to try a new mayor.
Martin McBride
Oak Ridge
Michael Beglin says
If Oak Ridge is forced to rest on its laurels, it will soon be a ghost town. Sink or swim.
WK Hyatt says
Regardless of who is Mayor, its time to move this town forward. We need improvements in the PILT and overall DOE support to help lower our property and business taxes to give us a chance to bring in new business and residents, and maybe get some Oak Ridgers who have left to come back, and to give our younger people some reason to stay. We need the support of the new plant contractor at Y-12 to encourage them to have their people live here that work here, the past contractor did not do this as most of their top managers lived in Knoxville, and almost none of their new hires choose to live here. We need a unified city leadership to take this on and not snipe among themselves, that sounds too much like Washington these days, Oak Ridge has been in decline since 1984, and its time to reverse that trend or we truly will not survive once the older population that dominates the city landscape is gone. Are we to be a two generation town??
Andrew Howe says
As a minimalist, I can live with a lot of corners being cut in town to help reduce the debt. Since I’m fairly financially secure, I could even handle higher property taxes, but I don’t think we should go that route. I think we just need to tighten our belts as much as we can at this point.
O.R. is far enough from Knoxville that it’s not quite as appealing as a ‘bedroom community’ than a town closer to Knoxville would be. In that regard, we pretty much do need some sort of industry in town to draw people, because our chain stores aren’t really a big enough draw.
Since the infrastructure is in place for a town of a much larger population than ours, it’s tough to make the budget work on those line items. We used to have many more people chipping in to pay for utilities, roads, police, etc, not to mention govt financial aid. In this regard, we pretty much do need to draw people, because we can’t ‘shrink’ our physical size or the infrastructure.
I agree with WK Hyatt, we should encourage Y-12 as much as we can to help keep those workerbase local. I think the best shot for the town to continue like it did 30 years ago is to get industry into the old K bldgs.
I’ve been preaching the gospel according to aesthetics this year. I think we stand a better chance to succeed if we make Oak Ridge look as nice as possible – strip out the stripmall-feel and replace it with some uniform style. That’s just one pipe-dream example, we have a lot of room for improvement in the look and feel area, but we HAVE been chipping away at that stone and more good things are in the works.
But… that chipping costs money and there’s that need to tighten the belt… and the cycle repeats…
Argh! You see what we’re up against. It’s what happens when you end up in the red. The tricks is the go black and not come back. Baby.
Right now, what we need to do, as a community, is let our council know what things we think we can live without for a bit, what things we think we might be able to get done with volunteer labor to save the city money (e.g. taking care of the greenways).
I can live with some potholes. I think we probably can do with less policemen on staff – we seem to have SOOO many officers for being such a small town. Something is amiss and quite possibly very wasteful going on there.
Angi Agle says
Although I disagree with the fundamental premise of the letter (that we need a different mayor), I deeply appreciate the positive and factual tone. Martin does point out some things that we need to work on, and I hope we will.