On January 29, 2007, the City of Oak Ridge made public its plan to provide a $10.5 million subsidy to a developer to build a shopping center on Pine Ridge in hopes of attracting a Target store. The City proposed issuing general obligation bonds to raise $6 million of the $10.5 million needed and stated its intention to pull the other $4.5 million from various City reserve funds. On February 19, the City Council voted to authorize the issuing of up to $6 million in bonds.
The next day, Citizens Oak Ridge (COR) came together to organize a petition drive to protest the City's decision to use public funds to subsidize a private entity. Under Tennessee law, citizens have a legal right to force a referendum on the issuance of general obligation bonds by a municipality if they can obtain the signitures of 10 percent of the municpalities registered voters within a period of 20 days of the publication of the authorizing resolution. COR mounted a petition drive to obtain the required signitures (about 1950 were needed) and on March 13, COR submitted more than 3600 signitures. Signitures of more than the requisite number were certified by the election comission and the results of the petition drive were certified. This obligated the Oak Ridge City Council to put the bond issue to a referendum vote which is scheduled for June 5, 2007.
The June 5 referendum makes reference to the $6 million bond issue only (it does not mention the $4.5 million in other funds) because it is only the general obligation bonds that citizens have a legal right to protest. Tennessee law does not grant us a legal basis for challenging the City's intent to use reserve funds as part of the proposed subsidy.
