Where do these ideas come from?

If you look at the lists of contributed proposed changes to the Oak Ridge Charter, you will notice two major groups of people proposing them. The first, represented by Robert Humphries, is the Tennessee Liberty Alliance, a local libertarian organization. The other, represented by Tom Burns, Don Hurtubise, Charles Jones, Commissioner Virginia Jones, Stella Schramm, Bill Schramm, and Commissioner Pat Fain, is Democracy for East Tennessee, a local splinter organization of Howard Dean's Democracy for America, although they are not listed as coalition group by DFA. DFET has also organized under the name Citizens Oak Ridge, COR, in the past.

These were the two local organizations that spearheaded the petition for the referendum to convene this Charter Commission under a combined effort they named CDAR, Citizens for District/At-Large Representation. CDAR ran a slate of candidates pushing for changes to the City Charter to revert back to dividing the city into districts despite the questionable record of districts in this city in the recent past.

That slate won 2 of the 7 Charter Commission seats with a total of 17% of the votes cast for the winning candidates with 83% going to the Oak Ridge Is One Neighborhood, ORION, candidates who won the other 5 seats.

Back to the proposed changes before the Charter Commission... If we look at the ideas that have gained support, the Tenneessee Liberty Alliance proposals have not gained traction while the ones from Democracy For East Tennessee have gained some, usually with some moderation from Commissioner Postma.

However, those DFET proposals seem to have a common heritage and that is the Model City Charter offered by the National Civic League. This proposed city charter takes on the very issues that were settled here in the last election. The CDAR slate campaigned on district representation and a directly elected mayor which are also planks in the Model City Charter of the NCL. Let me restate that these ideas got only 17% of the votes among the winning candidates here in Oak Ridge.

Now does that mean that we are a corrupt city? The kind of city that the National Civic League was formed to correct? Or does it just mean that a small town like Oak Ridge does not fit the assumptions that are the basis of the Model City Charter. After all it is never true that "one size fits all". For example, there is obviously a lower limit in the size of a population where geographical districts no longer makes sense. Our citizens believe that Oak Ridge is smaller than that limit as reflected by their vote. We also voted to support our process by which the Mayor is selected by the City Council members to represent them here in our city.

So what is going on? A majority were elected to the Charter Commission to not make these changes and yet one of the passed proposals is to strengthen the mayor. Another specifically leaves out how our elections are to be conducted pending some future considerations.

Even if you believe in the product of the National Civic League, why are we skipping the NCL's own steps to prepare for such Model City Charter changes. They offer a design for a visioning process to gain public consensus on where we want our city to go. They also offer a product named "The Civic Index" which is a process to measure our community's civic health. It only makes sense that if we are to adopt the Model City Charter we should first conduct a visioning process like that proposed by the National Civic League to confirm that this is what we want. Second, we should assess our community's strengths and weaknesses with a process like that proposed by the National Civic League's Civic Index. Only then should we try to adopt changes to our charter like the Model City Charter, as we see fit and where such changes are necessary.

So why are organizations like Democracy for East Tennessee and the Tennessee Liberty Alliance trying to push through these kinds of changes to our Charter? They know that they only won 17% of the votes among Charter Commissioners and secured only 2 of the 7 seats. I think the only answer is that they are doing this despite public opinion. They must believe that they are right and that 83% of the voters are wrong.

A better answer is to conduct a visioning process here in Oak Ridge. There appears to be near unanimous support for a cost effective and results oriented visioning process among the City Council members. Take the result of that process and revise the Comprehensive Plan accordingly. Use the annual Strategic Plan to be the incremental implementation of our vision. And finally plan on revisiting the community vision because as we make progress, we need to know what is next. And circumstances do change, you know. The Comprehensive Plan has not been publicly reviewed since the 1980's, and that is unacceptable.

As for the Charter Commission, we need an open process that allows majority public opinion to be considered. So far 83% of the voters are not being heard. And why are the questions that the election directly answered being deferred by the Charter Commission? Those decisions should be obvious.

Tomorrow, I will begin to outline the goals of such an open process that I believe the Charter Commission should consider adopting.