Scott McColpin
District 4 City Council candidate Scott McColpin told members of the Pachyderm Club on Monday that the city should sell the Tivoli Theater and Memorial Auditorium.
He said the Chattanoogan hotel is already property that should be considered for sale.
Mr. McColpin said the new Main Terrain Park - located next to where the GOP club meets - should have been sold to a developer instead of main a park "without parking."
The speaker, who is a title specialist who grew up in Collegedale, said his city property tax has seen a 28 percent increase since 2008 - going from $654 to $845.
He said he has lived in the same house on East Brainerd Road for 23 years.
He said he is unhappy with a switch in city brush pickup to a system involving calls to 311. He said his neighborhood of 19 homes has two brush piles. He said city crews will answer a call on one of the piles, but ignore the other pile less than 150 feet away.
Mr. McColpin said city officials should be more cautious about granting PILOT tax exemptions to businesses.
He expressed displeasure about a new setup in which city sewage bills have to be mailed to a small town in California. He said EPB should have been recruited to do the billing for the city.
"We have a lot of places where we need to cut out the fat," he said.
But he said city officials should be "pro-active instead of reactive" in regard to road repairs. He said District 4 "has been overlooked on road improvements."
On the crime problem, he said the answer is not more police officers but to start incercerating offenders for longer periods of time.