What’s Inside: Latest police news (see City Hall) ... Summer reading programs kick off at libraries (Calendar) ....

Help Your City Flourish  

Norris residents who’d like to sign on as volunteers in city government can apply to fill openings on any of the following: Archives Committee, Norris Little Theatre Board, Recreation Commission, Recycling Commission, Tree Commission and Watershed Board.

If you’re interested in serving on one of these, please send a letter of interest to: Mayor Chris Mitchell, City of Norris, P.O. Box 1090, Norris, TN 37828.—Frances Hamilton Oates

TDOT Gives Norris
A Welcome Surprise
And 2 Annexations Proposed

By Frances Hamilton Oates

The Tennessee Department of Transportation has presented an unexpected answer to Norris City Council’s recent cogitation about whether to raise property taxes.

TDOT’s gift comes in the form of an incentive reducing the city’s required match for the grant that paid for the new Dairy Pond Road sidewalk, City Manager Tim Hester told the council at its monthly meeting on Monday, May 14. Because the job was finished before TDOT’s scheduled completion date, Hester said, Norris is saving $32,246 of the $66,243 the city originally expected to pay in matching funds—more than offsetting the $30,000 shortfall in revenue projected for the current fiscal year.

As a result, Hester said, the city most likely will not have to borrow from the Norris Watershed Board’s undesignated fund to provide cash flow in late summer, and the city should finish the 2011-12 fiscal year with $40,000 to $45,000 in its own undesignated fund.

At an April 9 budget workshop and the council meeting that followed, council members had debated whether to raise property taxes. At the May meeting, however, the council passed on first reading a budget ordinance that would keep the property tax at its current level of $1.55 per hundred dollars in assessed valuation.

The city general fund budget (which excludes state street aid funds, the Norris Watershed Board fund, the refuse and recycle fund and the drug enforcement fund) totals $1,036,293.
Picture
Students from Christian Academy of LaFollette gauge the health of Clear Creek on May 14 by studying its insects, led by Buzz Buffington of Clinton, foreground, and Terry Douglas of Jacksboro, background, members of the Clinch River Chapter, Trout Unlimited, which meets in Norris. Students at the Academy and at Norris and Lake City middle schools raised rainbow trout in their classrooms this year in programs supported by the chapter; the other two schools will also release their baby trout in Clear Creek. (FHO photo)

The budget does not contain any of the new projects that have been discussed in the last year, such as a warning siren to alert residents to emergencies, striping for Norris’s narrow streets or more parking spaces for the library. Council Vice Chairman Tommy Mariner expressed particular concern about the lack of funding for a siren; Hester said he is looking for grant opportunities to pay for one.

All council members present—Mariner, Jack Black and Chris Mitchell—voted in favor of the budget (absent were Loy Johnson and Joy Wilson).

A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on June 4 at Norris Community Building, 20 Chestnut Drive.

In other action at the meeting in Norris Community Building, the council:

* Learned that the city has hired a new public safety officer, Dustin Henderson, to replace an officer who left. Henderson comes from the Oak Ridge Police Department and joined the Norris force on May 7.

* Approved a resolution supporting the City of Harriman in its efforts to get a Veterans Administration hospital for Roane County.

* Approved a proclamation celebrating the 25th anniversary of Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties (ADFAC), a nonprofit organization based in Oak Ridge.

* Authorized replacement of the roof at the McNeeley Building, home of the library and museum on Norris Square, where investigation of a small leak over the museum led to the discovery that the entire roof had suffered wind and hail damage. Cost of the new roof will be covered by insurance.

* Approved on first reading an ordinance to rezone part of a parcel approved for subdivision by the Planning Commission. The realignment affects two properties owned by Joseph Ottaviano of 29 E. Norris Road—several acres are being taken from the East Norris Road parcel where he lives and added to a Laurel Place parcel which he also owns. The East Norris Road parcel is zoned R-1 (Single Family Residential) while the Laurel Place parcel is zoned FAR (Forest, Agriculture and Recreation); the Planning Commission had recommended rezoning the acreage added to the Laurel Place parcel as FAR so that the entire Laurel Place property will have the same zoning. A publie hearing on the rezoning was set for 6 p.m. on June 11, with the City Council meeting to follow at 7.

* Learned that candidates for Norris City Council can pick up the required paperwork starting Friday, May 18, and must submit it by noon on Aug. 16 to qualify for the Nov. 6 election.

* Agreed to leave on the table a proposed ordinance defining and regulating “unlawful clutter” until all council members are present. At a workshop on the ordinance, Mariner said the University of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS), represented by Margaret Norris, had told the city that a clutter ordinance was achievable, but that no other municipality has drafted such an ordinance containing an explicit definition.

Black and two residents in the audience, George Miceli and Harry Shatz, all recommended looking for more precise, less trivial terms than “clutter” in the new draft.

Frances Hamilton Oates is a lifelong journalist who lives in Norris. Contact her via the form on the Contact page.
At top: The Norris Elm, shown at center on Norris Commons, is a Tennessee Landmark Tree planted in the mid-1930s by the then-new Tennessee Valley Authority. With the tender care of the Norris Tree Commission, the elm has survived decades of severe weather and Dutch Elm Disease.
All text and photos copyrighted by Frances Hamilton Oates unless otherwise noted.