I cannot upgrade town.

I've been lagging on upgrading the town. The port, mine, recombinator, and disenchant are all upgraded but never bothered to try upgrading town.
I took my verisium smelters off so I can gather ore.
I hit 3 nodes, totaling around 2100 verisium, and it showed up on the town roster as "ore to mine".
I leave for a couple hours and come back thinking "ok I can upgrade the town now! :D"
WRONG. Somehow the ore smelted itself. I DO NOT have verisium smelters on job. Why is it smelting itself? I cannot upgrade town because it requires ore.

There is an in-game tooltip that explains smelters that are assigned but do not have work will work on other ore. If you are trying to upgrade your town, I recommend removing ALL smelters from all jobs. Have zero smelters assigned to anything. Finish the Verisium upgrades, and then re-assign them wherever you want.