Oak Ridge North City Council meetings are held the second and fourth Monday of the month.[/caption]

Senate Bill 2, the upcoming Oak Ridge North election in May and Robinson Road were all discussed at the Monday night Oak Ridge North City Council meeting.

1. Senate Bill 2 resolution

Oak Ridge North City Council approved the creation of a resolution against Senate Bill 2 and property tax revenue caps. The proposed legislation is a property tax reform and relief bill and would trigger an election whenever a 4 percent increase in property tax revenue from the previous year is reached or passed.

"We have always as a city been adamant in lowering our tax rates," City Manager Vicky Rudy said. "Statewide, there is a push to reform property taxes. This year they are pushing us to lower the cap to 4 percent. Our effective rate and to the rollback rate is from 0.4509 to 0.4689 so it's just over a penny. That penny gets us $53,000. If we go over that because we need more than $53,000, we'd have to have a [ramification] election. Our sales tax right now is on a downward spiral, that's our primary source of revenue."

Council members agreed to put a resolution forward and consider it at the next City Council meeting.

"Our representatives are for this," Mayor Jim Kuykendall said. "We are not for this. I'm in favor of the resolution."

2. Election forum

Although there is only one contested race in the upcoming May election for Oak Ridge North, City Council members decided to hold an election forum for candidates Michelle Cassio and Dan Broyles, both running for Place 4.

"I'm in favor of a forum because I think our citizens need to have an opportunity to ask the candidates questions and hear what their answers are," Kuykendall said.

The forum has been tentatively set for April 13.

3. Robinson Road

City Council decided to move forward with the Robinson Road preliminary engineering plans with Klotz Associates as well as look at minor changes in the plan.

"We had our workshop and there was some feedback about moving the route slightly north and reducing lanes from 12 feet to 11 feet," Rudy said. "In order to study that further we need to have permission to go back to Klotz and ask them to proceed."