Oak Ridge Today

B&W Y-12 donates $10K to Children’s Museum

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B&W Y-12 Check Presentation to Children's Museum

B&W Y-12 Public Affairs Manager Jud Simmons discusses ongoing projects with Mary Ann Damos, executive director of the Oak Ridge Children’s Museum, in the museum’s environmental center and gardens. (Submitted photo)

B&W Y-12 recently donated $10,000 to the Children’s Museum in Oak Ridge. The funds will support the museum’s programs, including its planned Healthy Living exhibit.

“B&W Y-12’s support has been invaluable to the museum,” said Mary Ann Damos, the museum’s executive director. “The financial donations have helped us provide more and better services to the area’s children, but the hands-on donations of manpower also have been helpful.”

B&W Y-12 employees and their families have donated their time and skills on various museum projects for the past 10 years, including painting, planting, and repairs and maintenance to the museum’s heating and air conditioning system. [Read more…]

Guest column: Concept paper concerning a housing policy for Oak Ridge

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By Pat Fain and Leslie Agron

Today Oak Ridge has a default housing policy that begins and ends with two modest grants from Housing and Urban Development consisting of objectives decided internally by city staff. Input from the public has been minimal at best, despite HUD requirements to hold public input meetings. These were held, minimally advertised and sparsely attended. In the past, these objectives were then approved by Oak Ridge City Council without holding Council work sessions to discuss real needs or creative solutions for those needs.

This year and this month, Council will begin an open and (hopefully) far-reaching discussion for a well-thought-out response to community concerns and the need to protect the tax base of the city from further erosion resulting from the deterioration of a significant portion of the housing built before 1945. This paper is to offer ideas and alternate thinking as the City Council proceeds to contemplate the path ahead. [Read more…]