Atomic City Talk

It appears that a few are trying to hijack the Charter Commission to accomplish their goals. Whether you agree or disagree with district representation is not the issue here. The issue is procedure. When you start doing as you please to accomplish your goals you can cause chaos. Right now the Charter Commission has a task at hand. It is not to redo the Charter but rather make sure it is in compliance with the State. There are certain individuals that have an agenda and continue to push their agenda instead of doing what is the task at hand. Everything in it's time. You accomplish more that way.

With all due respect PI, it's the Charter Review Committee you refer to. The difference is that a Charter Commission is elected and as such, has much greater latitude as to the things they can examine for change (virtually anything). The Charter Review Committee is supposed to be limited to housekeeping items, as explained to me by several members of the last Charter Commission who put the provision for a Review Committee into place.

Of course, that difference complements your point exactly. The Oak Ridger kindly noted some names:

Thank you Tom, Aaron, Mary Helen, and Ella for putting an end to that nonsense. If we want to make major changes like that, we need an elected Charter Commission -- except that we just had one, and they addressed the issue thoroughly.

Thanks Netmom for correcting me. It was early and I read too fast.

"After some discussion Tuesday, four of five Charter Review Committee members voted to end discussion of the district representation request."

There should have never been any discussion.

The deadline for new Charter Commissioners is now past. There appear to approximately two slates with a few mavericks.

It will be interesting to see how the slates pick out the issues that they support. Since the Charter Commission being enabled is the only given will they:

• Actually vote on district representation?
• Tackle the referendum problem?
• Change the relationship with the school board?
• Others?
  

Will the silent majority remain silent? I expect not during a Presidential election.

Good question. If you think that city surveys are accurate, they want more local retail and it may taint those Charter candidates that always oppose it. Those who see that property taxes are on the way up might see the argument for local retail in a new, personal light.

But it will depend on the campaign and the issues chosen to run on. It probably will not be limited to districts vs at-large.

What do you think?

Probably next June, with the City election.

The Charter Commission, once convened, decides what changes they will propose. They need not consider anything or could consider anything consistent with state law.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/22...ter-panel/

17 people qualified for seven seats on charter commission. Leonard Abbatiello, Chuck Agle, Thomas Burns, Gene Caldwell, Steven Dittner, Ella Hawkins DuBose, Patricia Fain, Paula Flowers, Robert Humphries, Shafik Iskander, Virginia M. Jones, Scott Linn, Mike Mahathy, David L. McCoy, Pat Postma, Mary Helen Rose and William Schramm.

I've heard of Abbatiello, Caldwell, Jones, Postma, and Schramm, but the rest are not names I recognize (ok, I do recognize one name, guess which? ;-) . Anyone care to enlighten me on who the rest of these people are?

I found these statements quite interesting: "Members of CDAR at first thought they were petitioning for a referendum question on Nov. 4 asking voters if they wanted to have a charter commission election.
Krushenski on Aug. 6 pointed out to the election commission that the petition called for the election of charter commission members on Nov. 4." Uh? This makes it sound like CDAR didn't even know what their own petition was for.

Chuck Agle is an engineer at Y-12, and serves on the Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commission. He's thoughtful, deliberate, and competent.

Ella DuBose ran for City Council, but didn't win. She's thoughtful and articulate -- worth getting to know.

Paula Flowers is an attorney who served as the Commissioner of Commmerce & Insurance during Gov. Bredesen's first term. She moved to Oak Ridge, and I think she works for ORNL. I've met her once, and was extremely impressed.

Scott Linn teaches history at Jefferson Middle School. Great guy.

David McCoy was the advertising manager at the Oak Ridger for many, many years when the paper was locally-owned; he later served as the publisher of the Clinton Courier, and was the owner/publisher of Senior Living until the paper was bought out. In recent years, he headed the Methodist Hospital Foundation, and now works for Covenant.

Mary Helen Rose, I think, served as the volunteer keeper of minutes for the last Charter Commission in 2003. I heard that she did a great service for that group, so she should be fairly well-versed in the charter and the extensive discussions that took place about the issues just a few years ago.

That's not all of them, but it's a start. The League of Women Voters will have a forum in October, which should be a great opportunity if you haven't met all of them by then.