The DFET-sponsored Meet the Candidates evening at the Civic Center Thusday night was an interesting and encouraging event.  All of the council candidates attended.  Most touched on a couple of core issues for the city.  I chose to introduce myself and let people come to me with their own issues and questions.  One extremely intense and elegant lady asked me several pointed and serious questions about my views.  She asked most of the candidates, I believe, but did not profer her own views on the matters.

    Here are some of my answers to her.  Abatements: I think we need to be extremely cautious when "giving away" the citizens' money.  If a project is worth doing, it needs to be financially viable in and of itself.  It looks to me as though companies have been reading our record and consider us an "easy touch."  At the same time, small businesses in Oak Ridge, small retailers and service businesses, play heck getting any consideration from the city at all.  We want retail but we don't support simple needs of small retailers.

     Applewood:  If people genuinely cannot afford decent housing, we as a city need to assist them in qualifying for subsidized housing.  But we cannot submit to the bullying of absentee landlords who would leave their tenants without resources to have a safe and decent place to live.  Whatever it costs on the front end will pay off over time if we stand firm against slumlords. (I get to use that term because I have been a landlord and know what is required.)

     Crime: Violent crime has, if Chief Beams is telling the truth, diminished here.  What has grown is vandalism and drug trafficking. It is very frustrating for the neighbors of drug houses to keep calling the police when they witness drug sales activity.  But we have to keep it up and believe that our officers want to arrest or drive away the sellers as much as we do.  The department has to follow rules of evidence and they are frustrated by the widespread nature of the problem, too.  But with Neighborhood Watch, good police officers, and persistent citizens, we can make these antisocial elements go elsewhere to try their trade.

I have much more to say but the point of a blog is for you to talk to me, too.  Have at it, neighbors.