The mayor’s role as city manager might be stunting Chattanooga’s growth, City of Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly told the Chattanooga Rotary Club on Thursday.
As the mayor laid out priorities for his second term, he also criticized the city’s administrative structure that gives city manager powers to the mayor. Mayoral turnover causes major disruption in city government, he said, and he told the crowd he’s keen to change the balance of power without demoting the mayorship to figurehead status.
“It’s a perilous, perilous thing,” he said, and that the city is “skating on thin ice.”
“Is there a Goldilocks point?” he asked. He’s looking ahead to his own departure.
“I’m not going to do another term, come hell or high water,” Mayor Kelly said.
Second-term priorities:
Mayor Kelly told the group he has honed his priorities after testing for viability in his first term. On Thursday he discussed economic development, quality of life, and a bridge between the two: lower home prices.
Affordable housing is Chattanooga’s worst policy problem, he said, and, with it, homelessness. Teachers, police and firefighters can’t afford to live in town anymore, he said, and he sees zoning and tax incentives for development as major solutions.
Mayor Kelly greeted new UTC Chancellor Dr. Lori Mann Bruce from the platform and said Chattanooga is the biggest city in the country without an R1 research and doctoral university, a designation for UTC that would attract jobs and strengthen the workforce, he said.
“This is a structural impediment,” Mayor Kelly said. He also mentioned that Chattanooga’s labor force participation is 60 percent.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said.
The R1 designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutes of Higher Education indicates Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production.
While the Chattanooga airport continues to break enplanement records and add new service month after month, Mayor Kelly said he’s raising money to fund minimum revenue guarantees to attract even more service, more industry, more technology and next-level federal investment. He has said that air service development is economic development.
Mayor Kelly said he will push for Hamilton County Schools to focus on STEM education, training in the trades, and a new micro-credentialing system to market graduates. He’ll do it the “Chattanooga Way”: teamwork amongst state, county and city; public, nonprofit and private sectors.
Mayor Kelly said the new downtown riverfront park plan unveiled earlier Thursday morning was also made possible by the Chattanooga Way.
“Projects like this should be the expectation, not the exception,” he said.
Mayor Kelly urged the group to be “Chattanoogans first.”
“Look, folks, you need to put on your Chattanooga jersey,” he said. Sports events, concerts and festivals bring people together, and Mayor Kelly said he’ll fill out community centers as resource hubs to bring more life to neighborhoods.
“There has never been a more important time to talk about place,” he said.
Other:
A plan to make class A biosolids fertilizer at the Moccasin Bend Environmental Campus sewage treatment plant and deliver it to Tennessee farms, announced in November, is under threat if federal funding is pulled, Mayor Kelly said. A plan revision to sell the fertilizer in local stores instead of moving it to farms would save $40,000 in fuel annually per delivery truck, he said.