Oak Ridge Today

Letter: Gooch wants to be mayor, make city efficient, business-friendly

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Warren L. Gooch

Warren L. Gooch

Dear City Council colleagues,

I am submitting this letter to express my interest in being elected mayor. I believe our next mayor must provide bold leadership, vision, energy, and a commitment to excellence in our schools, city services, and quality of life.

During the recent campaign, I spoke about my vision and goals for Oak Ridge and my expectations for city government to become more efficient, responsive, and business friendly. The voters, across our city, clearly embraced my message.

As mayor, I pledge to be a consensus builder and to work with each of you, the Board of Education, and city staff to help move Oak Ridge forward. For over 70 years, city leaders have dared to undertake initiatives that have made Oak Ridge a great place to live, work, and raise a family. I am confident that working together our best days are still ahead.

I respectfully ask for your support.

Warren Gooch

Oak Ridge City Council member-elect

Guest column: Changing the economic development game in Oak Ridge

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There’s no nice way to spin it: The results of our city’s bad decisions for the past decade are catching up with us.

In addition to having high debt and property taxes, our sales tax revenues continue to decline, we are exporting more than $727 million per year in U.S. Department of Energy payroll (1), and we have a comparatively stagnant population growth. Even with all the new restaurants opening, these projects won’t fully replace the revenue we’ve lost from the countless businesses that have closed up shop or left town for greener pastures.

Continuing down this path is not an option. Thankfully, our city manager understands this and wants to strategize a more competitive position for Oak Ridge. He is proposing that we change our approach to economic development (2) by finding other uses for the $1-2 million we’ve been spending annually on nearly 20 different external organizations like the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce.

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