Chris Howley Does Not Want Citizen Feedback - And Response

  • Thursday, August 27, 2015
Chris Howley, a member of the Signal Mountain Town Council, has voted with his fellow Signal Mountain Town Council members to move along a rezoning law that has potential devastating ramifications for the community of Signal Mountain that he represents. He created a page on Facebook to inform the citizens and to get input from them about what the Town Council is doing. 
He wrote on his Facebook page that the rezoning from 1/2 lots to 1/4 lots would only have an impact on 5 to 12 lots.
The Planning Commission, which is working closely with the Signal Mountain Town Council, said that the impact could be on 100 to 200 lots.
 
Chris Howley also stated that the reason for this legislation was to address an issue with a zoning law in 2013. It was stated clearly at the Signal Mountain Town Council meeting two weeks ago that these two issues were completely unrelated.
 
Chris Howley also stated on his Facebook page that there was a lot of misinformation going around about this issue. He did not address the fact of how misinformed the Signal Mountain Town Council was when citizens asked them questions about the language of legislation that they themselves had written concerning the re-zoning such as the definition of the word "contiguous", or "small subdivision" and many other words that they could not define. They also waffled about the number of lots that would be affected, or show a map of these lots. They could not state clearly a reason why this change would benefit actual citizens of Signal Mountain. They mayor, when asked why he would do such a thing, responded,"Why not?" He could not say how the Town Council would address adding population to at-capacity schools, if trailers would be necessary, if Signal Mountain High School students would be forced to go to Red Bank, how the sewers that don't work now will work better with more people flushing, or how the fragile road going up and down Signal will be buttressed to accommodate more cars.
When I challenged Chris Howley on his Facebook page which as a citizen I assumed he would be eager to engage with me, since it was he who encouraged citizen participation, his response to my uncomfortable questions about this particular issue was to continuously take down my posts and finally he blocked me from his page. This page was created to answer Signal Mountain citizen questions. Some politicians think they want to be available to engage with their constituents, until their constituents start going around asking "too many hard questions".
Bill Lusk is the only Signal Mountain Town Council member who voted against this re-zoning scheme. He understands that Signal Mountain is struggling with the population it has. Bill Lusk is not linked to real estate development, nor is he a builder or a friend of a builder who would wish to influence our Town Council to do something about the re-zoning that makes obvious sense to one of these types of businesses, but no sense at all to the Signal Mountain citizens.
 
Rachel Miller

* * *

This past March, I spoke at a Signal Mountain Town Council meeting.  When Councilman Chris Howley gave his followers an update of the meeting on his Facebook page, he gave an inaccurate account of my comments. I called him and asked that he correct my comments to reflect what I had actually said and he agreed he would.

I had a recording of the meeting and an article from the Community News that correctly covered my statements. Unfortunately,  this correction never happened.

After asking again for a brief rewrite,  Mr. Howley sent me an e-mail saying, “I will make no further changes.” He continued …” I suggest you get your own Facebook page…”.

Everyone makes misstatements at one time or another and Councilman Howley could easily have made an accurate report to his followers.  Instead he chose to tell me, “I will not be revisiting this subject again.” What I find ironic is Mr. Howley posts his contact info. asking for comments and concerns from citizens. Guess he doesn’t really mean it.

Claire Griesinger
Signal Mountain

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