The Anderson County Election Commission certified petition results today, making a referendum a reality for a planned City subsidy of a retail center on Pine Ridge. With the strong public support for a referendum, Citizens Oak Ridge is calling on the City to adopt an objective and transparent process for considering major public subsidies of private retail development.
“Giving $10.5 million of City money for a single site and developer is a highly unusual move,” according to Bill Schramm, president of Citizens Oak Ridge. “A gift of this magnitude requires more disclosure and scrutiny than a bank loan would. So far we have seen less.”
While the City’s rationale for its approach has changed over the past few weeks, there is still ambiguity regarding the actual deal and related transactions that would occur. There is a continuing need for the City to undertake an objective and thorough examination of the land deal itself and its cost to the City.
Promotion of the project has created a number of misperceptions regarding planned City funding. Early City statements stressed that giving voters time to evaluate the deal and to vote on the subsidy would cause the community to lose the project and the proposed retail occupants. Recent characterizations of the deal have suggested that City expenditures would be repaid to the City and would go for infrastructure, and that no significant increases in City services would be necessary. In fact, City officials have stressed that allowing more time for public examination of the planned expenditures would be devastating to the City’s economic future. “Such a threatening posture toward public scrutiny is inappropriate,” Schramm commented. “It is also misleading, as the deal’s newly extended timeline demonstrates.”
For Oak Ridge residents, there are many remaining questions regarding the deal and the City’s expenditure: Why GBT and not other developers? Why would citizens pay for purchasing and blasting away a ridge, when private business does not find it economically viable to do so? Perhaps most persistent: is the question of why the City is abandoning its master plan to do this.
