Atomictumor

This morning I woke up with a king hell headache.  My neck wasn’t sore, my sinuses weren’t raging, just one of those kick-in-the-balls headaches that comes out of nowhere, punishing you for something heinous you’ve done in a past life, or the recent nights.

I racked my brain, trying to think of how I offended God so miserably as to afford being smote while my head’s still on the pillow.  I concluded that God probably isn’t pissed, so I ruled him out of my headache hit list, and let my mind wander.

It wandered out, and drifted around, and finally started settling on the election last night.

Now, I’m content with most aspects of the thing.  The only candidate race that went against my predictions were Ellen Smith’s ascension onto council, but, I still like that with my liberal Naderish thinking, and I think she might do well.  I would hope, based on seeing her speak a few times in the past, that she kinda ropes her long winded tendancies, but not her sensibilities.  Oak Ridge hasn’t had a hippie on the council before, so really she might just be the closest thing to direct representation for my sorry ass that I’ll ever have.

Additionally, she’s an online type, keeping and carrying a blog, as well as dealing with the circus down at the Oak Ridger Forums, which is a big plus in her favor.  I hope she keeps this internety accessibility into her coming job.

No, I think whats giving me a headache is the bond thing.  Oak Ridge decidedly smacked down the idea that the city will ever spend public money on any kind of private enterprise, and woe be to he that try.  I think we just saw ourselves relegated to a retirement community.  Or worse, a job farm, where 14000 federal employees head out and head home.

Now, as with the candidate thing, I’m trying to see the silver lining in something that I didn’t hope for, but I really don’t see it here.  I think we’ve neutered ourselves, stagnated any possibility of major growth on a retail side, and for what?  Claims of transparency?  Fear of debt?

Those are valid, but this thing appeared as transparent as any government endeavor, and folks, I don’t think debt is going anywhere in this town.  I’m afraid we’re looking forward to a nice future of property tax increases, which will start spiraling upwards as the elderly in this town die, and their kids (who left Oak Ridge, naturally) rent out the property, driving land values down, driving property taxes further up, until this town is squalor bordered by a big chimney, hills, and federal installations.

Maybe thats just the headache talking.

That said, I’m betting that GBT unveils this amazing new plan for putting retail elsewhere in town without city money, on a smaller scale.  Then again, Oak Ridge has roundly said that it doesn’t need retail, and with Harden Valley and Midtown growing, retails finding ways to make getting our dollars less effortlessly outside of Oak Ridge.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:52 am and is filed under Rant, Local, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.