City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'd like to call to order the July 28th meeting of the Chattanooga City Council. And it's my turn to do the pledge and invocation today, but I have asked a young man who needs no introduction, Jack Dooley, who is here with us just about every week, I believe. I just asked him if he would honor us by leading us in our pledge and invocation this afternoon, and he's graciously agreed. So, Jack?

Please say the pledge with me, as you will. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well, all righty. First of all, 1 Timothy 2. First of all, then I urge supplications, prayers, intersections, and thanksgivings be made for all people. For kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet, godly, and dignified in every way. Please pray with me and bow your heads as you pray. Father, we thank you for all your blessings. We ask that your wisdom is given to these council people, that they can make wise decisions for the people of Chattanooga. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Redeemer. Amen.

Thank you very much, Jackson.

No problem, man.

Well, welcome, everyone. If you haven't been with us before, I'll just give kind of a rundown of how our meetings operate so you'll know what to expect. First, I would just ask everybody would silence or turn off your cell phones so we don't have any distractions during the meeting. Our meetings operate in two parts. So the first part is what we call an agenda session where we will have some special presentations approval of our minutes from our last meeting and then council will go through items that are on our agenda to be voted on this evening as well as items on our agenda for next week and then items further out three or more weeks into the future and that's a time for council up here on the dais to ask questions or raise any comments that they might like to make about any particular item After that, we have committee and department reports, which we don't have one of those today. And so we will take a recess at that point. And when we come back from our recess, that will be the business portion of our meeting where we will vote on all the items on our agenda for this evening. At the end of that business meeting, the very end of our meeting in total today, There will be a time for members of the public who would like to address the council on any topic that you'd like to address us on. And when the time comes for that, we would just ask that you line up at the podium down front here, and our city attorney will read some rules at that time. So with that being said, we do, by way of special presentation today, have some guests here from the Chattanooga Housing Authority. So yesterday was a pretty busy day for our HEB board with some affordable housing proposals across the city. And one of those was in my district, and I know there were some in other districts as well. And so I just asked them to come today, and I think they have a few short slides to present and some information, and then they'll be gracious enough to answer questions we might have.

Thank you, Chairman. As most of you know, my name is Joe Kelly. I'm the general counsel for the Chattanooga Housing Authority. Betsy McGrath, our executive director, is also here to help answer questions. But I'll take the lead since I was the person that discovered yesterday inadvertently spread confusion throughout the city of Chattanooga over the weekend. And I appreciate the opportunity to come here today and try to clarify where things stand with CHA in these projects for both the council and the public at large. But I want to, first of all, apologize for any confusion that I have sort of wandered into, which happens to me from time to time. So I'm sorry I brought you all with me. I've got just a couple slides to give a very high-level view of what has happened and why it happened and where we go from here. A lot of this the council has already heard. As you know, the CHA has what is called 1,287 units of what is called Faircloth Authority. and that comes from a law that was passed at the federal level in 1998 that caps all public housing across the country at the number of units that existed as of that date. What it further provided though was that to the extent any units that existed on that date were later demolished and taken out of service, those units became what is called faircloth authority or availability for a housing authority. Chattanooga, for the size of our city, we have a very large faircloth availability of 1,287 units. And just as a way of background, a big part of the reason we have that large availability pool is the demolition of some of our legacy older public housing sites in the first few years of this decade. Harriet Tubman Homes is the largest, and then also Maurice Posse Homes. Those two make up over 700, approximately 700 units. And then with other demolitions in smaller areas across time, that's how we get to the total of 1,287. So those are essentially a possible public subsidy that is available for the city of Chattanooga that's been sitting there since the early 2000s. And it is either allocated to Chattanooga or it goes somewhere else. So in essence, it's either use it or lose it. If I go to the next slide. So the first question I'm sure you're asking is, why haven't we used it? Why has it been sitting there for this long? And the reason is simple, is while the 98 law created this availability, the law did not create any mechanism to utilize those in new construction. So there was no way to take those vouchers and turn it into something that lenders can loan money against to actually build apartments. So it was there, it was nice in theory, but there was no way to monetize that and turn it into actual housing. That changed in 2025. The HUD issued guidance for what it now calls the Restore Rebuild Program. And this program, for the first time, allowed public housing authorities to take their faircloth authority and then through a very convoluted series of transactions that I'm not going to put anybody to sleep with here today. I'll be glad to follow up with anybody later. turn those into financeable construction projects so that affordable housing could be built. And just to give a sense of the scale of what 1,287 vouchers means, that's a fairly abstract number. But what that translates into, even at the most conservative valuations over a 20-year income stream for these projects, for those vouchers, that's $340 million in subsidy. That $340 million, which is available to Chattanooga, if we utilize it, can then be utilized to put into a capital stack and construct new units that will generate $500 to $600 million in new construction, new jobs. And when you combine that with other financing tools that are available, we think that we have a financeable ceiling of up to 2,000 units. I don't think we'll ultimately... Construct that many because we're going to have limitations on site sizes, things like that. But it's going to be a sizable number, somewhere between 1,200 to 2,000 units. So what is all that for? Well, it's for the citizens of Chattanooga. We all hear about the problems we have with affordability. Who does that mean? Well, that means the nurse you see when you go to the doctor, the nurse's assistant who sees to you in the hospital, teachers and teacher's aides who teach your children, the police officers that answer calls, the firefighters. Lots of those folks that provide the day-to-day work here in this city are being priced out of Hamilton County. and particularly the city limits. And this is a program that allows those folks to enter into the market again and have good stable housing here in the city. And it's particularly exciting for, say, young families who need a starter home that may rent before they ever own. Well, this gives them an option to do it close to where they work as opposed to two counties over. We go to the next slide. So what did we do at CHA in response to that opportunity? When this first came on the radar in 2025, we immediately started planning of how we could utilize this authority and how it could be deployed to benefit Chattanooga. Late in 2025 and early 2026, we rolled out what is called our Faircloth Master Plan. Originally, this plan was a very well-considered 10-year rollout for projects incorporating these vouchers on a neighborhood by neighborhood, section of the city by section of the city basis that would build in plenty of time to socialize this idea with all the stakeholders in the community. And that is in the terms of our original plan. What's happened since then? In early spring of this year, CHA started receiving credible reports, not official, but credible, we deemed credible out of Washington, that the administration in essence planned to cancel the Faircloth program for all projects that weren't already underway. In essence, CHA was going to lose those vouchers and lose the $340 million net present value of investment that's possible for this city. Based on just those rumors, we decided it was better to act than not act. We went out and noticed up essentially in an emergency request for proposals from developers for potential projects throughout the city where we could deploy these vouchers. We went out with that in April. We had a very robust response from the developer community and were able to award a number of projects that utilized our entire voucher availability. So that's where we were in late April and at that point we decided we were going to continue on our process. However, if we go to the next slide, On May 12, HUD issued a memo that set hard guidelines, excuse me, deadlines for the entire Faircloth program. And this was sent out by HUD at an administrative level that essentially in anticipation of the Faircloth program being wound down next year if the current administration's budget is passed as written, which may or may not happen, But if that happens, HUD, in essence, put in a series of earlier hurdles that have to be met in order to preserve that Faircloth availability. The most hard deadline of all that we have to face is by August 12th, we have in our planning August 10th, but August 12th of this year, we have to present as a city evidence to HUD that we have met one of two or three very narrow thresholds to enable us to continue to pursue these projects. The most viable way for us to do this is through showing HUD that we have a viable LIHTC project under consideration by THDA. We've been in contact with THDA since May discussing this, and in essence, THDA has been very cooperative with us and very helpful. And where we are now is THDA has said that it will issue the requisite conditional approval letters for our projects if we have a bond inducement and submit an application. This is where the HEB meeting yesterday comes in. As you can imagine, all of these were pipeline projects that originally we thought we were going to stage out over the next two or three years. But we were forced to start pulling together financing and plans on an accelerated basis. And as part of that process, now we have to be able to show THDA that we have a bond inducement. We were able to have bond inducement hearings for some of these projects at the regularly scheduled HEB meeting, I believe on the 20th of July. Then HEB, at our request, very, very graciously scheduled a special meeting yesterday. And what happened yesterday was we had the bond inducements for the balance of our projects. And with those bond inducements now in hand, all of those projects will submit to THDA, receive a conditional approval letter, which then we can submit to HUD by the deadline and preserve these potential projects for the future. If we do not do that, we will lose them. and the $350 million in investment. So what happened yesterday? It was essentially an administrative box checking maneuver, not maneuver, but activity to preserve these vouchers so that we can continue on in the development process, which has literally, I want to say just started, but it's not really even started yet. What didn't happen yesterday? No development got approved. There were no bonds issued. No funds were committed. There's no construction authorized anywhere in the city. There's no zoning, land use, or any other step in this process that's been bypassed or waived. If we go to the next slide. So what does that mean? Well, that means we've essentially jumped through the federal hoops, assuming we get everything in by August 10th, which knock on wood, we will, to preserve this value for the city of Chattanooga. And from this point forward, everything then will run its normal course. Over the fall, there will be requests for rezonings and land use approvals, community and neighborhood inputs solicited in meetings. meetings with council members on any of these projects that you want to meet about, a site plan review by the Regional Planning Commission, all the THDA and HUD approvals that normally come along with this, and all of the council and public discussions that we also normally do. So in essence, we have preserved our ability to move forward We haven't committed the city or anyone to any specific course of action, but we've allowed ourselves to try to keep this value for the city. I'm glad to answer any other questions.

Yesterday, I'm very familiar with all of them because we were doing them in our office here. Yes, sir. And there were two that were withdrawn yesterday, correct? That's correct.

The Northgate Phase 1 and Northgate Phase 2 were withdrawn. So there were six that were approved at least preliminarily yesterday by the body? That's correct. And then there were, I believe, two earlier. So we have eight approved. And how many total units is that? Do you have a... Of the total units that we have approved or out there, we have 1,000. Hang on, I wrote it on the back. I did the math. It is, we essentially, as of right now, 144 units of that 1,287 did not make it through to have a bond inducement. So theoretically, those we're not going to be able to go forward on at this time. But again, that is only based on the current guidance. No statute has been revised. So it's always possible, and hope springs eternal, that we'll circle back around to those. But our stance is we're not going to leave anything to chance that we don't have to. So that's why we went through all of these steps to preserve everything for sure that we can now. All right. Thank you.

And we do have several questions from council members. So I'll start with Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Joe, I think the biggest pothole that we hit yesterday was communication and the fact that we, I say we, I mean, we didn't do a very good job of communicating at least to the council people so that we could communicate to the public. Because I know I had many constituents calling me in a panic. And, you know, trust is something that we don't want to break. in the community's eye and they felt like they were sort of being bypassed by a lot of this process.

we need to do a better job of communication. Lesson learned on this, and again, that's a mea culpa on my part. It just did not occur to me that an HEB docket would be something that would be press-worthy. But that's me. I now have a different view of that, and we'll make sure we communicate better.

Well, And we're all there, but experience is something that you get just after you've needed it. Now you have that experience. Yes, sir.

Are these bond inducements tied to a specific project location? The bond inducements themselves for the moment are tied to a specific location. However, the vouchers are portable that can be moved around and THDA understands that these are preliminary sites that we're discussing and we may or may not go forward at that site. So just because the site

a particular site is not approved doesn't mean that those bonds are lost, correct?

We have preserved an argument to keep them. It's not certain what would happen in that case. I mean, ideally, everything matches up, everybody loves the projects, and they move forward in whatever size everybody thinks is appropriate. But that's the other thing to keep in mind. All of these inducements are up to numbers, and so this isn't necessarily indicative of the eventual scale of any individual project. They may be smaller than what We went in for the inducement. But we believe that those two things can be divided between THDA and the HUD requirements. But since we're constructing this airplane as we're flying it, I can't guarantee that that's the case. But we're doing everything we can to put ourselves in a position so that essentially it's a no-brainer that we could do that.

And I wonder if We call these affordable housing. I'm wondering if we could rephrase that term to maybe workforce housing because many people tie affordable housing to low-income housing. That conjures up a different scenario and picture in their mind. You had a screen earlier that showed teachers, firefighters, police officers. That's right. I don't think anybody objects to having a firefighter or a police officer live in an apartment next to them. But, you know, I'm just saying the perception is out there that... No, and we try to be sensitive to neighbor concerns.

All of these projects are mixed income projects, and so we may have folks at different levels of income, and it may go all the way. We may have some people that need more subsidy down at, say, 30% of AMI, but then we'll have other folks making almost 100% of AMI in the same project. not project, but site, so that then you average out that overall it looks like just any other middle-class neighborhood in the city. Okay. That's all I have, Chair.

Okay.

Councilwoman Hill.

Thank you. Joe, I appreciate the information. It's very helpful. 1,287 vouchers is a game-changer for for our city, and I know we don't want to lose them. So, Betsy, thank you for leading an organization and thinking through that 10-year plan, that great plan that then you had to fast-forward. I am concerned about the 144 units, the 144 vouchers that we potentially took out of play yesterday, though as soon as I read the headline, I thought, this is completely undermining the trust of the people who have been participating in the Northgate TIF conversation. So, you know, we have a big project happening in District 3 that Chairman Davis has been a real leader on and gaining trust there. That said, we know... that 100 of I know, anyway, that 144 vouchers is incredibly valuable for a project. So is there a way to bring another of the RF the emergency RFP projects out of the icebox and bring get it in front of HEB in the time allowed?

Yeah, I don't think that there's an avenue to do anything between now and August 13th. That said, we're very sensitive to the TIF district and the affordability component that went in with that, and that's something that we're going to continue to work through. We're going to continue to work that problem, and I believe there will be a solution out there at some point.

Okay. That's all. Thank you. Okay.

Councilman Clark. Thank you, Chairman Davis. Quick question. I think like Chairman Davis, we're all shocked that these sites even existed. So what are the other sites?

Yeah. Well, currently, the sites are spread throughout the city. I believe that with a number of you, we generally refer to different zip codes as part of the plan when we've discussed this with you all in the past. And that wasn't being coy. It's just because that's all the detail that we had at that time. The specific bond inducements that we have now do have physical addresses attached to them because we're required to do that. And essentially those are spread through five or six different districts. And I'll be glad, I can go through them now. I would like for you to go through them now. Sure, sure.

Would it be helpful if I just give you the street addresses? Do you know how the street addresses are associated with what district? I mean, we know our streets, but I don't know why you guys would not know that.

I'm pretty confident I know which districts go with which. Okay. We have 819 Runyon Drive, which is in District 1. We have 113 Kinsey Drive. And again, before I go, some of these projects are very small. Some of them are larger. The actual spread of units is fairly even around the city. But one district may have more projects, but they're smaller in scale than some others. But I'm sorry. All right. So I was at 819. The next one is 113 Kinsey Drive. That's in District 4. 7453 East Brainerd Road, that is in District 4. Then there is what I call Old Lee Highway, and it is 8022. There's a number of street addresses that go with this. This is a church-owned property, and that is in District 6. We have 7997 Shaliford Road, which is in District 4. We have 1123 Mountain Creek Road, which is in District 1. We have 7610 Stander for Gap, which is in District 4. We have 5026 Old Godsey Lane, which is in District 3. And then we have... 5211 uh highway 58 which is in district five five say that again district five the last the address oh i'm sorry that is 5211 highway 58. okay of course we'd like that list

My question, so there's an August 12th deadline by HUD. Do they require these preliminary sites to be decided upon with the bonds attached to them by August? I think your deadline was August 10th, but the actual HUD deadline is August 12th.

What we have been informed by HUD, and I will... Step back a second. The staff folks that we're working with at the federal level have been very cooperative and helpful. We are all dealing with a page and a half guidance that was fairly short on detail. And so HUD folks at the staff level are filling it in. Again, a lot of this is an airplane in the air that we're still hammering on. What we have been told as of today is that after August 10th, whatever we have submitted, there is the ability to change within that zip code, but not necessarily outside that zip code. So we have been told that there will be some geographic flexibility after that point. But again, that's just oral advice at the moment. There is no HUD guidance on this other than discussions that I've had with HUD officials. So the answer is no. Answer is unknown. They strongly believe that they're, I mean, I've been told that we can move around within a zip code. But I plan for what I can say. But there's no written guidance.

I've written grants for HUD. As you know, it's urban development. Right. And if there's no written guidance on it, then we know that it's a no. So if they're asking you for the preliminary sites to be approved and to go through the community neighborhood input process by August 12th,

they will not have to go through the community input process by August 12th. HUD understands that the sites, when I say HUD understands, I'm going to, let me be careful. These are discussions that I've had with the restore rebuild department at HUD and other ones. I've talked to two or three different, as you know, HUD tends to be siloed off in their different departments. I've talked to two or three different departments that touch on this. The consistent answer that I've, been given is what we're telling you as the minimum that we will need in order to preserve these vouchers. That's all you need to provide at this time and then we will work through the process after August 12th. Do I have that in writing? No. Well, I have no choice but to rely on that for now, and it's so far so good. Well, you know documentation beats conversation. You're an attorney.

There's documents. Okay. I know. The question is so we're not caught with our pants down on this again is that if these are the sites, right? You didn't know about your site. I didn't know about this D5 site. what do we tell our community that if these sites are submitted as preliminary sites to hud and but we're not sure if there's officially in writing if it's can be moved around and we get stuck with these sites without the public i think i understand i understand your question now

It is our current intent to utilize these sites as I've listed, but that's still subject to council approval, public review, public input, and so I guess I was skipping a step that if after that process the answer came back from the community and the council or regional planning, no, you can't put a development here, but we might let you put one two miles down the road, I believe we will have that flexibility. But currently, these are the sites that we intend to try to proceed with. August 12th is in two weeks. So, you know, I guess my curiosity is. The filings are already in process with THDA. THDA is keenly aware of the August 12th deadline. We've had multiple discussions with Ralph Perry and his folks over there. So I would say this is something that's been discussed around the clock for the last few months by the folks that have to try to make something work. Except with the city council. Except with the city council and again, that's that's that's on my okay. All right, mr. Chair.

You'll be okay councilman Harvey Thank You mr. Chairman, I have several questions I'm trying to wrap my head around all this Yeah, there there's a lot in my district. I think you listed three addresses Four addresses

uh first question is are all of these that are in my district subject to rezoning i can't answer that you know again that's how early we are in this this process i i cannot answer that question i i would imagine at least one of them I believe of the four, two are not. They've already been zoned for the type of project that is going in there. In fact, it's already been approved for exactly what is going to go in there. It's just the difference that we're going to have workforce housing available there that wouldn't have been there before. But from a build perspective, it's not different. The other two sites, I don't know the answer of whether. I believe the answer is more than likely yes. What are the two that have already been approved? Is it Kenzie? Is Kenzie one of those? Kensington and Brainerd Row. East Brainerd Road? Yeah, which are probably a couple miles apart as you're driving down East Brainerd Road and you pass the gun barrel exit about a mile past that. On the left, there's a vacant lot. That is Brainerd Row. And then you go another couple miles down to Kinsey, which is next to the Walmart, which was the side of the old farmstead. That's the Kensington side.

Yes, okay. Yeah, well, so for the other two, my point being, especially the one on Chaliford, goes completely against Plan Chattanooga, which we will be voting on eventually. So I have certain hesitations there. I would encourage you all, the developer, whoever it is, to take a look at plan Chattanooga and make sure it's compatible. Otherwise, it's not going to work.

How many units are in District 4? Do you know? I would say the total... Well, again, I can't say with certainty what the total unit count will be because it's all going to be subject to construction. But I would say the total unit count spread over all of the developments will be somewhere between 300 and 400 units in that district spread around over different sites.

Okay. Back to Chairman, or Chairman, Councilman Henderson was asking earlier, I thought it was an interesting question I had also listed down. You had some positions that, jobs that were listed, nurses, aides, teachers, police and fire. I mean, shoot, I'm a nurse myself. Okay. Are these developments only to serve those folks? Is that a requirement that they must hold one of these positions, or is it open to more?

It's open to anyone who meets the income spreads. That's right.

Okay. What happens, and this is probably just another way to ask what Councilman Clark was asking, but What happens if you get down the road and it's denied in the zoning process?

Well, that will be a problem for us, and we'll just have to address that at that time. We will do our best to shift those vouchers to another site, but as I've said, there's no guarantee that we can do that. Again, though, this is a current interpretive guideline that was very clearly hastily written on May 12th. It's enforced now. It may not be enforced two years from now. But we just have to go on what we have now. And so I'm trying to preserve everything that I can given the law as writ today.

Okay. I assume all these meet the current zoning code?

Yes. Okay. These properties are going to be very similar in style and quality to, say, the Shallerford Point project, the Bluestone Terrace, what we're doing on the west side. When you think of what we're building, that is what it's going to look something like that.

Sure. Let me just say I'm not opposed to the style of affordable housing. I think it's something we need. Like I said, I'm a nurse and my wife's a nurse. That was and is our career. I just have a problem, again, with the communication. And then the placement on some of these just does not – is not compatible with our neighborhoods. And so I would appreciate if that was taken into consideration.

Everything that you're saying is fair play, and I will only say this in defense. Because of the very compressed schedule that Washington forced on us, we have had to move at a very accelerated speed. pace just to get to where we are today. And so, in essence, we were taking sites that we could find that were available in that one month window that we had to find a site. We didn't have the luxury of going around and cherry picking sites. And the second, and again, it's mea culpa to me, I didn't anticipate that what I saw as a procedural step yesterday that didn't bind anybody would raise the level of interest that it did. But in fact, I left you a voicemail earlier today I'm happy to talk with all of you at any time. I'm always available. And, uh, because as I've learned some stuff from you guys today that I'm going to go back and think about, but we, we haven't been able to really get into that process the way we normally do just because we're just trying to keep this alive.

Totally. Yeah. I completely can appreciate that in the chaos that you're having to deal with. Um, with the HUD process. I can only imagine. I mean, just for time's sake, since time is something that is important, I mean, I'd encourage you not to pursue the Shaliford Road. I mean, I don't know if this is the forum for that, but I would encourage you not to find another place because that one's not going to work, and I don't want you to waste any time. So that's my two cents. I think that's all the questions I have right now.

Thank you. Okay. I have a question, Mr. Chair. Oh, sure. So what happens if you're receiving this public input that we have issued with these sites before August 12th?

What happens? I don't know that there's anything that we can course correct between now and August 12th because of the steps to get here has involved a lot of people at the state, federal, and private level. industry working pretty hard. But it's something then that we know how to plan for in the coming months. And for example, the concern about the Chaliford Road site, then that's something that we will need to go back and take a look at and see if there's something that we can work through. Between now and August 12th? Well, I don't think that we can do anything, but realistically, I don't think I can tell you that I'm going to solve that problem between now and August 12th. I mean, if I can, I will, but... Will the vouchers be lost? What we are going to do, just so in the interest of transparency, because that's a fantastic point, we're going to go ahead and submit this address to THDA and get the inducement and then preserve those vouchers at THDA, excuse me, at the HUD level with the understanding that I have from HUD that there's some flexibility on location after we get past August 12th. That is my internal monologue of how I'm going to try to address it.

I think that's a great idea, but would you be able to submit that in writing to HUD to get that type of assurance that you would have that flexibility? Because if not, you're just submitting an oral argument that doesn't mean anything.

I understand. I guess the best way to put it is we're getting every written commitment that folks are comfortable giving us and we're continually talking with them and it's evolving over time and we're getting more assurances in writing over time.

Okay.

Not the first time we've done this. So we were just working. That's why I'm shocked because this is not the first time you guys have gone through. Well, it's the first time we've had, um, It's the first time that we've been given essentially a two-month deadline to complete what is normally a two- to three-year process. Because what this does...

It almost creates the perception that you guys have just created public housing scatter sites in our districts and we haven't had the opportunity to inform people. Then what that happens, i.e. what happened in Hickson, everybody's like, oh, what is it? What is it? So between now and August 12th, like I'll now have to, because it's in public record, have to explain to my district what's happening on Highway 58. And I don't know. And neither do you, apparently. I do, no, and I'll be glad to sit down.

Councilman, I will sit down with you for as long as you want to sit down, and I'll go through the whole project. I'll bring the developer in. That works. I think you guys might have a bigger problem than you. It's our apologies. We're doing the best we can in the circumstances we were dealt.

On Highway 58, I would be interested in knowing if the site development plan included multifamily or if it did go against our single family plans. Thank you for your apologies, but what I'm interested in is what the course of action is for Christmas. That's why I'm asking these questions. What can we do between now and August 12th if we'll be stuck with some oral or verbal agreement that we cannot change these sites around?

We will do our best, and I commit to you, I will do my best to bring you... Well, you'll lose these vouchers, and it'll be on the Housing Authority. It is on us, and we're doing the best we can, and I commit to you, I'll do everything I can. We would have already lost these if the Housing Authority hadn't taken the steps that it did.

That's it. Okay. Councilwoman Hill.

Thank you. So in hearing this conversation about what might happen between now and August 12th, I acknowledge that you all have taken what was originally a 10-year plan and collapsed it into almost one month, right? That's correct. I mean, granted, there's time to build. But what I am hearing... and I believe you all, to be honest, players, because you have been good partners, at least for me, is that the rules were that you could never until 2025 take the actual street value of a voucher and use it to get financing on a project.

That's correct. Actually, we heard rumors that the change was coming and we started working on it in anticipation of the change.

So since 1999, we've had this little bank of vouchers that's been growing and yet no way, no real way to finance a project to build something new. You can't just dink a dink your nose and bring a 35 unit small apartment building out of the ground. Somebody's got to say this is a worthy business opportunity. objective, I can finance it. So that's what I'm hearing is that as of 2025, that became a conversation that you could have with bankers. And then we layer it upon new HUD guidelines of doing mixed income housing and bringing it into a capital stack, which takes a $300 million federal, federal becomes an incentive in some ways, but a federal commitment toward housing and could leverage it for our community into a $600 million commitment. That's a heck of a thing in my book when I think about the kind of housing that our city needs. And I did some quick back of the napkin math just taking $300 million in vouchers and dividing it by $1,287. And my quick math is that every voucher in terms of financing is worth $233,100. So the 144 that we sat aside for that were the controversial addresses due to the cuckoo-ness of this whole chaotic federal administration, we lost $33,566,433 in affordable housing subsidy by putting those projects to the side, potentially. Now, August 13 could roll around and somebody could roll over and be like, you know what, I think I will help pay for some doing the thing that I said I would do in 1999. Who knows? But in my book, like in the conversation between about what might need to change if a given address isn't the right address, I say, I would encourage my council members to say, all right, right now, I know that the Housing Authority is an up-and-up player. They're not trying to mess over anybody. They're just trying to make sure that we can, in the space of this insane month-long schedule, preserve $300 million in federal subsidy for affordable housing. And let's let them do that. And then on August 13th, start having the conversations about how you sharpen your pencil and make sure the projects are the right projects in the right place. You know, we don't know if one of these projects is a 35 unit or a 12 unit or a 100 unit. You know, I mean, there's so much to be known. And so I'm sure y'all have lost a lot of sleep over this. And I will do whatever I can to help you get things over the finish line. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Council, are there any other questions for Joe? Okay. Well, thank you very much again for being here. We appreciate it.

Certainly. And again, I'll reiterate, I intend to talk to everybody on the Council about these different projects now that we, as long as we can just clear the next hurdle so that we have a project to talk about. Sure.

Okay. All right, Council, can I get a motion on the minutes from our last meeting, please? So moved. All right. Minutes will stand as published. Look with me, if you will, at this week's agenda. There are no ordinances of any kind on this week's agenda. Councilwoman Dutton, you're recognized.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Have you moved into resolutions? I do want to respect where you are.

Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, we're going there just by virtue of not having any ordinances.

Thank goodness for that. But I did not address this last week. But I did want to go ahead and bring in my comments again for this exact resolution that we talked about in strategic planning. I had several concerns about it. When we talked about in strategic planning was unaware that it was going to come to an agenda, you know, We talked about a strategic plan with no conclusion, and then it came to our council agenda.

And you're talking about 9A at the bottom.

9A, I'm so sorry.

Just make sure we're on the same page. That's right.

We are, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. 9A, a resolution to repeal a resolution. So I did talk to our great attorney earlier today regarding this and wanted to get some clarity about how this is presented to us. I know last week it said a resolution to reform the And this week is a resolution to repeal. In addition, the information that was on last week is not the information that was on today. So could you give some clarity about the Open Meetings Act and how this process should play out, especially coming from our leadership?

Yes, ma'am. The initial resolution that we had was adopting, it had been on the agenda the week before here, as a resolution adopting a city council reform proposal committee structure and legislative process and substantially the form attached. There was some confusion, at least in our office here, regarding the form of what that document would be. We learned, I believe yesterday, that there was, I guess, a resolution adopted that wanted to be, I guess, amended instead of that. And that resolution to repeal Resolution 32800 that was adopted back in February of this year and adopting a new rules of operation for the City Council was involved. And because of that, we provided that to y'all on the agenda here for today. I guess the question in our mind here is that the provisions of your current procedures require at least a time period of at least one week before you can put it on the agenda. That's in the current provisions here under B1A, saying that all proposed ordinances and resolutions must be submitted no later than 1130 a.m. on the Tuesday of four or two weeks prior to the city council meeting. For some reason, there's been a screw-up in our office as to the version of that that is on the code. And because of that, we would submit that it's not ripe for hearing this evening. It probably should be done next week.

Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Ophelia. I appreciate that. In addition to that, I did want to reiterate my points from a few weeks ago. Like I said, we talked about strategic planning. There's been no other discussion. And then it appeared on our agenda, which seems, I keep my comments to myself. So the first one is, and I'm going to read, not in brief, I'm going to read the whole thing, of what I've written out regarding this because I still have the same issues. And then I believe in the new version, it has additional accountability. I do want to note that Each council member is elected by 50% plus one. That means we all have equal authority. The chair is in place to keep the meetings in order and to do the things that we need to do. But we all, nobody, Chairman Davis is not my boss, Vice Chair Elliott, no other council person on here is anybody's boss because regardless of if you ran unopposed like myself and Councilwoman Hill was so lucky to do, or you had three or four opponents like some other people up here, either way, 50% plus one is how you get elected. And that makes all of us equal, not hierarchical. And I'm sorry, Councilman Elliott, this is so boring to you that you're yawning. But I did want to note that, colleagues, as I did before, I want to express serious concerns regarding the proposed governance reforms. And I ask for your thoughtful consideration before we take any action. While I appreciate efforts to improve our operations, this proposal has four fundamental flaws. It creates workload disparities, mandates unnecessary bureaucracy, structurally excludes members from leadership, and shifts the burden of its divisive consequences onto others. A couple of things in there are noted. For instance, the committees. If you're on a committee, like there are six committees, mind you, if we go back to what I previously mentioned, there are nine committee members. Our chair never has a committee because he doesn't, you know, they're busy. Chair is busy. But there are eight other members of this council that should be serving in leadership roles. When each council member has a committee, if we have something in our committee that we want to address, then we all address it together and decide what we're going to do. In this format that is being proposed, if the council members there don't get a vote after, I think, two or three members, The chair of the committee and maybe two or three members. And if you're any of the rest of us, nobody else gets to vote, which is wrong. That is unjust to every single one of our districts. So if you're not a council person that's on that committee or a member of that committee, you're pretty much your 20,000 people or so you represent don't have a voice in that decision. Right. And as a Chattanooga, I am born and raised, and I am passionate about this because when I see an injustice and I see this stuff creeping up through council, I have to say something. And as a born and raised Chattanooga, as a part of a minority class, a couple of minority classes, as a black woman, as African American, as a woman, when I see things like this, get ready to try to take away our voices, that doesn't sit well with me. So my first issue, the workload. Traditionally, the vice chair has served as the legislative chair. carrying the significant responsibility of council governance. But this right here, this reform, it is difficult to justify this kind of reform. This proposal effectively strips those duties from the vice chair and redistributes them to the newly created government operations committee. And it's difficult to justify a council person, a vice chair bringing a reform that takes away their duties. And it's brought forward by the current vice chair that actively reduces the vice chair's responsibilities while increasing the burden on the rest of this council. Again, we were all elected with 50% plus one. We lived in our district over a year and I believe it's 21 and up to be a council member. Is it 21 and up? Those are the three primary criteria. And we all should share the burden of council, not try to remove our burden and give it to other council members. That is wrong. Second, the proposal mandates that committees meet at least once every two months, regardless of whether there's actual business to conduct. As the chair of community development, there's a lot of restructuring, a lot of redevelopment, a lot of development going on. They're doing a phenomenal job. But I wouldn't dare bring them up here now because we're not ready to meet yet. Are we scheduling a meeting for September? Absolutely. But I wouldn't bring them now. And this will force a committee meeting. that has nothing well we have something to report but forcing a committee meeting unnecessarily taking away their time and my time to have a meeting because the calendar said so committee chairs already have the authority to convene when necessary uh forcing meetings simply to satisfy an arbitrary procedural requirement demonstrates a lack of operational understanding good governance is measured by tangible outcomes and oversight not by checking a box on the calendar just because because this is not the administration We are not Mayor Kelly and his office. We are the city council for Chattanooga. We are the city council for Chattanooga, Tennessee. We don't have that type of operational. We don't have to do that. We meet. If we're following what the charter says and we're doing what the charter says, the committees will work the way they need to work. the third issue and most concerning is the inherent exclusion in this new structure i mentioned this before by reducing nine committees to six and excluding the chair and vice chair which chair is fine we all understand and we know that uh as a former chair myself uh but i know as vice chair it is not as stringy was it just like being everybody else um and excluding the chair and vice chair from chairing them, we are left with only six leadership positions available for the remaining seven council members. As a result, at least one elected member will be systematically excluded from a leadership role. Furthermore, which then puts the burden back on everybody else to carry their load while they're sitting back not doing anything. Furthermore, the specific elimination and absorption of the affordable housing and community development committees, I mentioned this before, that I currently chair diminishes the voices of District 7 residents and creates, I'll leave that what it is, that diminishes the voices of District 7 residents, which is why I'm saying what I'm saying, because I come in with 20,000 plus people behind me. It's not just me. And believe me, if this goes forward, every council member is going to hear from this district and your district should be concerned too, because what if somebody, you know, I'm going to leave it right there too, Fourth, there is a distinct lack of accountability in how this will be implemented. The sponsor of this proposal is creating a structure that guarantees exclusion, yet shifts the difficult and divisive task of actually making those exclusionary committee assignments onto the current chair. Again, taking away the workload for themselves, then giving the decision to our current chair who has already made committee appointments. One must ask, why create a proposal that is inherently exclusionary? And why should this council support a plan that asks other members to do more while asking the vice chair to do less? Chattanooga residents did not elect us to create a hierarchy among council members. Again, this is not the administration. The chair of council is not our boss. Every single member up here got elected by 50% plus one, 21 years or older, some of us are older, and live in your district for over a year. That's how we got into these seats. So nobody here is nobody's boss. So one must ask again, why create a proposal that's inherently exclusionary and why should this council support a plan that asks other members to do more while asking the vice chair to do less? That is a problem. I don't know about you all, but I'm working very hard in my district. And then to come into a council that says, well, either I am not in a leadership role or the vice chair just shifts it off to somebody else, that's not right. Chattanooga residents did not elect us to create a hierarchy among council members. They elected nine representatives to bring nine equal perspectives to the table. That's why we are a body. Yes. Small governance changes often have large consequences and centralizing authority in the hands of a few is a slippery slope that risks on division Instead of adopting this device this device of structure and I recommended this before and I believe our chair Has put that on strategic planning for August 18th to talk about our priorities. I believe I proposed an alternative First of all, we know if anything happens, it's got to be moved next week anyway, but let us establish legislative priorities, which we are going to do through our strategic planning process through the leadership of our chair on August the 18th, and align our committees and resources around those shared goals. So if we know we want to see more activities in our community centers, or we want to keep the the rating for the the fire department we know we want those things and let's add that to the oversight that we do we should let purpose not calendars drive our meetings and focus our focus on strengthening coordination between the legislative and executive branches leadership should be about empowering colleagues and building consensus not creating winners and losers for this reason i strongly urge this council to reject this proposal And it's sad that it's come up again. And it's sad that we have to address this again because it is exclusionary. It is shifting workload. And it's not about titles. It's not because whether I'm on this council or not, I'm still Rakita Dottley. It makes no difference to me. I'm going to continue to do the work like I was doing before I got on city council. And when I'm done with this, I continue to do the work I've been doing. So it's not about that. But it is about when I see an injustice taking place, whatever this council decides is what y'all decide. I'm just one vote. but do know that my constituents will hear about this. They will know this because at the end of the day, I represent their voices, not just Reketa's voice. It is the voice of the 20 plus thousand people that I represent in District 7. And when the person they elect's voice is being diminished or minimized, or if any of y'all, it ain't even just me, if anybody's voice appears diminished or minimized, I got a problem with it. And I'm going to speak up on it every time because this is very wrong. especially coming from the vice chair who is moving responsibility to other people, diminishing voices, and in essence, creating a hierarchy or chart among council members when no, the same, my yes, her yes, your yes, all equals the same thing. And nobody's voice should be taken away. I don't care who it is. And I will stand 10 toes down on it every time. So that is what I have to say before I start saying what's not in this speech. So thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had talks with Phil earlier today regarding this issue, and there was a clerical error on exactly what was supposed to be posted, and so with that, I do intend on motioning to defer this for a week. I want to give some background as to the purpose about this piece here. you know, this is an idea I had coming into council, right? For no other reason to say, how can we help build out systems to make this council more productive, more effective, to make sure this city is working for us, right? While also acknowledging that this is a part-time council, right? And while it is incredibly important that we have a good relationship with our executive branch, sometimes balls get dropped, right? And I had seen coming in that, you know, we hadn't really utilized these committee structures too often or mostly when there was pressing legislation that came up. And I saw it as an opportunity to create bandwidth, right? Um, How it stands now, all nine council people serve on each committee as it stands. That's not really a committee. That's a council as a whole talking about each item, right? And while I have numerous projects that focus on my district, I have items as well that I would love to pursue that may not just impact the folks of District 9. And I have many colleagues that may share that. So what does it look like to increase capacity for all of us? knowing that this is a part-time job, many of us have other responsibilities. If it's homelessness, for example, right? We've been trying to make some headway on that, for example. What does it look like to assign a committee to work on that or what we discussed early on as a working group? So you have a team of council people that can spearhead, really find some direction on that and bring that before the council as a whole. But how do you also set up a structure so even if I'm not on that committee, I can still participate? And that's what this proposal does. It doesn't necessarily try to strip any one council person's voice, because we're all elected. All nine of us represent approximately 27,000 folks, and that is our vote, right? And ultimately, anything that needs to be decided by this body ultimately comes to any business meeting, and all nine of us have an opportunity to cast a vote up and down for every single item. The thought was, how do you expand the capacity of working groups and making sure if council people want to lean in, they can do that. But if it's not something that is on their priority list, they don't have to necessarily be obligated to go as a committee, right? You know, there may be some council people that want to work on noise ordinances, right? And a committee may decide to take that as a working group and tackle that. That may not be a priority for another council person. So they may not necessarily look to lean in on that conversation.

All this essentially does is

In essence, too, it helps us realign buckets for the work of government. What we have done quite often in the past is adjust our committees to fit the departments that the mayor and administration may set up, right? And those change. At one point, the mayor had a department of innovation, delivery, and performance. And we had a department of education and innovation. Innovation, delivery, and performance doesn't exist anymore. But for a while, we had that on our committee structure. So how do you set up buckets that fit the functions of government so there can be a little bit more consistency amongst this council so they understand what working buckets we can tackle, but as administration, as this prerogative, may reorganize and everything else, that those items can still be captured. You know, I have a strong philosophy as legislators. This conversation has come up quite a bit. As legislators, if I vote to approve something, whether that be a budget, an expense, a policy, I have a responsibility to make sure that that has been carried out as if it was passed. And that level of oversight is something that you see at every single legislative body in this country, from Congress to state legislatures to other municipalities. That's it. But it's a fine line. We walk a very fine line between being legislators and operations. It is not my place to tell public works how to do their job.

It is not my place to tell parks how to make sure we have great parks for our community.

But as District 9 cast a vote, for budgetary items how do we make sure that those monies are being spent for they're supposed to right how do we make sure that um policies have been executed as we voted on them right that's that's an oversight ability and so you know i don't want anybody to think this is something that has been a personal attack against anybody because that's not it and you know there's been a lot of um difficult dynamics these last couple weeks on this council. And the intent of this is not to deepen that any further. The intent is to simply help create systems to make sure that we can continue to be better for all of our people, right? I look forward to the day when we're able to get back to a closer camaraderie amongst all of us. But I don't want any of my colleagues to think it's attack because that is not it. You know, I tossed this idea out. Actually, before I even got elected, I think Councilwoman Hill and I, before we, I even took office before I got inaugurated, we had lunch and I had tossed this idea. And I think she said, well, you should probably wait a little bit, fill it out to see how it works. You get firsthand experience and then you pursue it. And, you know, I did that. I've been in here since April of 25, and it is all about how do we make sure we as colleagues work better for Chattanooga. We also provide oversight that is necessary. I had to have difficult conversations today with the administration. I appreciate them being open enough to lean in about projects that our district got in past budget cycles. And that in itself is oversight. I'm not telling them how to do it. And, you know, they were incredibly gracious, probably more gracious than I deserve sometimes. And I know many of them, all of the folks who work for the city, wake up every single day to say, how do we show up for our people? And I have no doubt that all nine of us as well wake up every single day and say, how do we show up for Chattanooga? And sometimes we fall short. Sometimes we don't always follow through on things, and that's okay. But that is the beauty of how this democracy works, provides checks and balances. We can lean in, have difficult conversations today like I had with Jay, Mandy, Darren, and Kim, and say, hey, I need your help over here because I feel like we're falling short. And them being open and saying, Councilman, let's figure out how we do better, all right? And that's what it's about. And this is what the intent of these conversations about and to be able to increase capacity of us being legislators. You know, this does not stop anybody from pushing up any legislation. I hope this encourages it. But I remember we had a conversation, and I'll wrap up here soon. We had a conversation not too long ago about CARTA and some of their parking reforms they were looking to do. That would have been a great conversation to peel that off to a committee to really dive into that and say, does this work for Chattanooga? What needs to be tweaked? How can this be approved? And then that eventually come to the floor. But we saw when it got presented to us, it wasn't completely baked out or there were some questions that had some loose ends that needed to be tied up. That's all we're looking to do is to have fruitful conversations on the things that are brought to this body because they have true consequences. And if we don't get it right, they can go left really quickly, right? Like I have questions today about something on the agenda involving downtown storefront dollars. And, you know, those are conversations I'm looking to have with River City, economic development, about how do we make – our work impact all of Chattanooga, right? And help close the gaps around our knowledge. And sometimes it takes a little bit more than all nine of us being here, but also it's about transparency as well. When you can have these conversations on these dioceses where they're live streamed and you can have those fruitful conversations, increase the capacity of our colleagues, where if you want to join every single committee, that's bled in the rules, right? Every council person can participate in every single committee if they want to. But if they don't want to, if they're passionate about public works, parks, or community development, that can be your focus. But if you really want to lean in with Councilman Burris, who's been doing a great job with planning, and get to know more about that, you have an opportunity to do so. But also understanding that we as a council, we get stretched thin sometimes. But that doesn't mean the work should stop. How do we maximize that work and increase efficiency? And that's all it is. That's all this work is. And that's all, Mr. Chairman.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Burrs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate your comments. I think that the comments that have gone back and forth at least the information that I shared with all of the council and that you reviewed, it seems like has provided the opportunity to step back and think about how we look at this a little bit differently. And I think it would have been nice if the original approach had happened a little bit differently, but then we live, we live and learn, you know, we don't always have the opportunity to talk things out like we'd like to, you know, when we're in these forums, being able to sit around a table, like when we do in strategic planning and, being able to hash things out. It would be nice to get to a situation where we can do that, even with the public watching, where someone can bring an idea and talk about it more openly and say, what do you all think, without feeling like someone's being threatened. But I do want to share some comments that I had some or reinforce some of the things that both of my colleagues have said and also make some recommendations. I know this is going to go to the agenda next week, but I'd like to go ahead why the topic's hot because I think it gives us all something to think about. For the next week to decide where we're going to go from there. I do want to ask one point of procedure, Mr. Attorney, and this might have been part of the typo or the error where on our agenda it says added with permission of the vice chairman, Vice Chairman Elliott. And it's my understanding that that. can't happen correct so that is is that one of the typos well that is that is a typo but the chair did actually send an email saying the resolution could be added here gotcha okay because i know that's happened that's popped up twice now on our agenda where something was written as added with permission of the vice chair but according to our rules we can't do that right so i just wanted to verify that procedure okay all right thank you for clarifying that um As I said, Vice Chair Elliott, I do support improving the committee work, and I, like you, want to help make sure that the work has real weight and makes a difference. I mean, that's why I ran for office, you know, for this seat, because I wanted to do those things, whether it's out in my district or up here and working alongside the eight of you. As I mentioned, I'd hope that the questions and comments I'd previously shared would provide some clarity regarding the proposal. And you have provided a little more clarity. And I think just having this. Additional conversation has helped, but it really led to more questions about whether we're addressing the right problem. And as I've thought about this for several weeks now and trying to figure that out, I went back to your executive summary that stated the goals of this proposal, and this is directly from the summary, are to make work more substantive, more visible to the public, and more manageable for members serving in a part-time capacity, which I think are worthwhile goals. And I believe they can be accomplished without fundamentally restructuring the committee structure or the committee system, which I suggested. I made some suggestions, which I hope all of you had a chance to. I shared it. It was shared with all of you all through the clerk. I think the recommendations that I made would strengthen our committee process while ensuring that every district continues to have a voice, as several of us have expressed. The workload remains balanced, which has been also an issue among all council members, and our focus stays on our legislative responsibilities. My first question is this. If committee work is not considered substantive today, is the problem really the committee structure or how we manage and support the work of our committees? So that's where I kind of find, are we really trying to do too much to accomplish what your goals have said we want to accomplish? So rather than reorganizing the committees, why not establish clear expectations for committee leadership? For example, each committee chair could be asked to submit a work plan at the beginning of the term that includes priorities, anticipated legislation, educational topics, and a proposed meeting schedule. Several of us have shared the fact that all committees don't necessarily need to meet as often or maybe it's more seasonal depending on what the topic is. The council chair could then provide regular oversight by reviewing progress and following up with the committee chairs throughout the year. Simply establishing expectations and ensuring accountability I think would go a long way toward improving committee effectiveness if that's the true goal. During last week's strategic planning meeting, I had the opportunity to go back and watch and there was some discussion about new member orientation. that conversation really resonated with me because when i first took the seat i didn't know what i didn't know i mean how many of us were in that seat you think you know what you what you know but you don't always so looking black back in regards to the committee structure i believe a structured orientation and clearly defined expectations for committee chairs would have been more valuable than changing the committee structure itself When I was asked to chair the Planning and Zoning Committee, I wasn't handed a guidebook or a roadmap. I had to create one for myself. I sought advice from previous committee chairs, built relationships with departments connected to planning and zoning, listened carefully to concerns raised by fellow council members, identified potential ordinance changes, and looked for opportunities to educate both council and public. That experience taught me that successful committees are driven by engaged leadership, clear expectations and accountability, not simply how committees are organized on paper. Before we undertake a significant restructuring, I'd like for us to consider, and I believe we should first strengthen those fundamental elements. I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, I think, you know, I have not received feedback pro or con to my approach to leading the the planning and zoning committee and to know that this structure was not substantive nor do i recall being audited so going forward i'm interested in hearing about who conducted the audit referred to in the executive summary and i think we should further discuss that i continue to have concerns that this proposal um and i shared share the sentiment with councilwoman dotley that it unnecessary limits both district representation and meaningful partners participation in the committee process i'm also concerned about the emphasis on expanding committee oversight when i still do not have a clear understanding of what that oversight would entail as the proposal is currently written it appears to blur the line between the legislative role of the council and the administrative responsibilities of the executive branch but i think you exp explain that a little bit more but i'd still like to hear a little bit more about that and but i still believe we have to be careful not to create a committee structure that extends beyond our charter defined scope of work or encroaches on the executive authority So to use your terms, I don't see this as fully baked. I think we still have a little ways to go. Has there been a cost-benefit analysis? Will there be extra costs to hold the committee meetings, as you've suggested? Will department heads be required to attend? These are just some questions that have, as I said, it's led to more questions. It really hasn't clarified things. How many committees will each member be asked to serve on in addition to chairing? Okay. Furthermore, I just, and I've already said that, I just don't think we're there yet. You know, I think it's a, we're heading in the right direction and I think we're hearing kind of some of the pros and cons, but I'd like to see, and I'm glad that the decision has been made to at least postpone this for one week so we can have some additional conversation and ideas before we decide to move forward to repeal something or reform something fully when I think it's not totally broken. I think it just needs a little, a little more restructuring within the current system. So thank you again. Thank you, colleagues, for listening, and I look forward to furthering discussion more next week.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Clark. Did you say Councilman Clark? Yes. Okay. Thank you all for those comments. And I want to rebuttal some of yours. I don't have a typed-out speech or a long... know a lot of time because a lot of us are actually busy putting out legislation and what i want to say is i want to commend vice chairman elliott for this proposal because i can remember when he was elected so thank you uh chairman uh vice chairman elliott i do believe you lead the council in producing legislation which is which is our jobs i know you there's conversations about what the difference between the authority of the executive branch and the legislative branch uh this committee structure allows us to have those conversations because if you remember we were sued because we were not having those conversations in the public correct okay i just want to make sure because i think there's this arbitrary there's i believe there's some arbitrary assumptions that have been made one let's talk about workload for one i just want to say you can have my workload i won't take a committee so those of you who are concerned about if you're going to be in leadership if you're the voice of your committees or your community is not going to be heard. It's actually impossible because our council rules still exist that two of us, including you, the councilman or myself, if I didn't attend a committee meeting, which we're not required to, you still come here on Tuesdays and with a second council person, you can put any resolutions on here at any time to discuss, to represent your district at any time. So, you know, I want to say that the committee structure is just one element to where legally, so we don't get sued again, that we can discuss things that maybe some council members want to go more in depth on, which is your choice. You don't have to come to council. You'd have to come to committee meetings. But I do not want it to be an attack or an assumption that because someone's introducing legislation that I believe is efficient, because I come from a world where we operate in committee structures, where we discuss things more strategically. Some of you do not host committee meetings. Some of you don't attend strategic planning meetings. I think this is an opportunity and should be looked at such. I wish more energy was put into y'all producing legislation other than the critique of us just condensing our committee structure. Because you can have my committee structure. You can have my committees, and I guarantee you District 5 will not lack their voice on this dais because our council rules still allow us, if y'all are reading the rules correctly, right? It still allow us outside of committees to participate with one voice and one vote. That's all you get up here. One voice, one vote. in or out of committee. If you come here on Tuesdays, you get to vote one time. So if it comes out of committee, if you attend or do not attend, it still has to come before this nine-member body, and you can use your one vote, and that's all you get. So if you don't like what happens in committee, if it was nine committees, three committees, two committees, you have one vote, one voice on Tuesday during the business meeting, not the committee structures. That's it. Thank you, Vice Chairman Elliott, for doing your duty. Thank you for coming to work, for one. Secondly, let's talk about the workload, because I've heard that thrown out before as if he created this to take the workload off of him. When he was elected, I remember him being innovative. and being thoughtful about his job as a legislature and said, how do we include more departments that are not represented in our current committee structure? So government services was created so that we can actually debate on matters and our oversight role when it comes to how we create policies that's implemented by the executive branch. That's actually our job. It's the same system with federal government. The executive branch, the legislative branch. All we're doing is creating legislative policy. It does not encroach on their abilities. The workload happens when you're at the table and when you're part of the discussion. Again, some of you don't attend strategic planning meetings all the time. If we go back and pull your attendance records, some of you have not even hosted a committee meeting when you did have a committee. And so what I would encourage you to do is to look at the positive of this and the opportunity that allows us to say, you know what, maybe some of us want to be more involved and have more dialogue in the public. about what we should be doing. Because I, as a newly elected council person, and I unseated a council person because my district felt they were not being represented. I don't have to do that in committee. So y'all can have my, give it to somebody who does not have a committee structure. If that empowers them and makes them feel like a leadership title or role gives them their voice, please give them mine today. Because I don't know how anybody else knows who is getting what. I don't know. But if that's important, then you can have mine. Because I guarantee you, I went to a school that taught me civics, and my voice will be heard with or without a committee assignment, because I get to come to council meetings on Tuesdays. But as far as workload, you don't get to, the contradiction to me is that my voice only matters if I'm doing what your voice says. Like, we all have, to your point, we all have one vote, one We represent one vote with one district. And there's been this idea that we're taking away from somebody who's not in a leadership role. You're still in a leadership role because you're a council person, because you do not serve as a committee chair. In the House of Representatives, there's almost 432 legislators. They all do not serve in a leadership role. And so what we're doing is not uncommon to condense and make our committee assignments more efficient. So we include more dialogue on departments that are currently not represented in our committee structure. And I commend Vice Chairman Elliott for taking as much time as he has, as much time as you all have, to look in to dissect this and to make these assumptions that somebody's, your voice is not being represented or the chair is doing less work. Remember, the chair leads us all in legislation. The vice chair does. Including this one. Now, I don't always agree with Vice Chairman Elliott on everything, but guess what we do in committees when we have them or when we decide to show up? We use that time to debate it legally. And I think that this is all this is. And to make it something that's not, I think that it's just counterproductive to what we're trying to do. Because trust me, if there were a motive in this, and I'm going to alleviate it, again, have my committee assignments. Here you go. District 5 is going to be good. We have been good. We will continue to be good without me being a committee chair. But I get it if that matters to some people. But do not make assumptions that someone's doing less work, that someone's trying to take away your voice because the chair has not made any appointments yet. So I don't even know what those are or why anybody would assume that there's less being done because the appointments have not been made yet. We haven't even voted on this. And I understand that we're putting it off for a week for whatever screw up happened in the paperwork. It happens all the time. And I look forward to voting for this next week. And I look forward to more council members pushing out more legislation and committee through strategic planning. That's what I look forward to in committee or not. You don't have to show up to committees. So I like some of you do anyway. So I support this and I'm so sorry that the assumption is being made that you're doing less work. I don't believe that. So I had to defend that and you didn't ask me to, but I don't, I believe that this is opportunity to do more work and I hope our council colleagues on my left and my right sees the opportunity to be more critical of in our pieces of legislation that's on our agenda. I've seen some of y'all ask more questions about our committee structure than some of the agenda items. So please lean in. Use this as an opportunity to actually lean in and have that public debate so we don't get sued again. And I wasn't on the council when that happened. So kudos to the vice chair for coming up with an efficient way for members to lean in and actually produce legislation because that actually is our legislative duty. Hopefully this structure will help. Matter of fact, while I have the floor, I have some legislation, Mr. Chair, that I'll be introducing with Preserve Chattanooga for preservation for landmarks in each of our districts. That'll be on the agenda for August the 18th. I look forward to the many questions and to dissect that. Because we have had town hall meetings. We've had strategic planning meetings. You can email us without getting sued, without sending it to the clerk. You can actually talk to us right here on the diaries right now. We can open up the floor. Anything you want to discuss. Or a committee. I'm taking a break. I yield back.

Okay. Okay. So Councilwoman Dotley, you're on the queue next, but not everybody has spoken about this particular topic. So I'll come back to you.

I just wanted to let you know.

Councilwoman Ngo. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have waited patiently here. And I hate that Councilman Clark had stepped out because I do want to address him personally on some things. So but he's not here. So I will still address When you called me chair, you gave me a committee. My committee was public safety. Now, I'm just going to put it on the record. You can add three or four or even five things underneath that. I will not do it. Because I agreed to public safety. That's what I agreed to. Now, the fact that I have an issue with the fact that you, I'm going to use your terminology, Vice Chair Elliott, your bucket. What you put in that bucket only seems to benefit the six of you all, which I call the click six. Because you're going to vote it the way you want it and how you want it. And you're going to dismiss what the other three who got their 50% plus one. And we are the ones that represent our people in our district. Now to take control over nine districts and A sign, I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong, three people to make the decision on what you're going to discuss and the other council people can attend, but they don't have a vote. That's not going to work because they did not place us here for that. That is controlling. I won't be controlled. I've made the statement before. No one up here is my mama, my daddy, or my husband. to tell me what to do. I'm too old for you to be telling me what to do. I'm not going to do that. Now you all know that you're going to vote with the way you're going to vote because you have aligned the six of you all have aligned yourself together. So whatever it is that you want, whether it's good, bad or indifference, then you're going to push it through. Dismiss what the other three of us here, has to say and and vice chair ellie i have had a conversation with you and i told you you are the one that has disappointed me the most we campaigned together we had meals together point of order mr chair we have Listen, you know what, Vice Chair, I mean, Councilwoman Hill, I don't care what your point of order is.

Y'all stay out of order all the time. Councilwoman, if I could just say, if we could just stay on the resolution.

Okay, so I'm just saying, this has to do.

Point of order, Councilman Clark started talking about preserved Chattanooga and nobody said anything.

Now, if you're going to point of order, don't just point of order because you may not like what Councilwoman Knowles is saying.

Councilman Clark said, I could talk about preserved Chattanooga committees or anything, not nobody, including myself.

Nobody has said anything. He's talking about legislation that would come under the new committee structure.

He said, I want to talk about, not about what Mr. Elliott introduced, because it's okay for us to have this debate. It's fine. He talked about, he said, and while we're speaking, I want to talk about preserved Chattanooga committees. but nobody's going to order him.

And so don't do... No, no.

Well, let me finish. I am entitled to finish what I have to say. Do not break when it's time for me to speak. You let me have my say. Mr. Chair, do I still have the floor? You have the floor, ma'am. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So what I'm saying is... The six have aligned themselves, and that's not anything that I have made up. Let me tell you, I don't care what your point is. You don't have a point of order here. You don't have a point of order here.

If you speak indirectly...

we are back in session thank you everyone for bearing with us so what we're going to do is move on in our discussion of other agenda items and when the time comes for item 9a I would appreciate a motion to defer that until August 18th to be on our agenda for that day And when we do take it back up again, and as we discuss any other matters tonight or any other night or day, of course, it's my job to maintain order in the meeting, which is what I did in recessing. earlier and to make sure that we stay on topic. But it's all of our jobs to abide by the rules. And part of that is to have a total sense of respect for the office and for the council and according to the rules and Robert's rules to avoid any personal attacks. We can debate and criticize legislation and ideas all day long. That's what we're here to do. But what we have to do, counsel, is avoid personal attacks, whether here or I would hope outside of here as well. Of course, we're all adults and we all have, of course, First Amendment rights as anybody does. But when we go away from here as well, just to have a sense of respect for the office, for each other, and to be able to debate these things in a civil and orderly way where we stay on the topic. So having said that, we'll move on. And if there are any questions from the council, questions or comments on any of the other motions, I'm sorry, resolutions that are on our agenda for this evening, please hit your lights. We do have Parks and Outdoors resolution as well as several public works resolutions. Any questions on those or comments? Don't be shy. Seeing none, we will move on then and we will look at our purchasing, I'm sorry, next week's proposed agenda items. And we do have some ordinances on first reading, a couple of public works ordinances, and resolutions from different departments, as well as the council office resolution pertaining to our clerk. Any questions or comments about any of those? Councilwoman Dotley.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I know we discussed the office of the Clarkson Council, I think last week, and we were saying that we wanted to add or adjust a few things. I just wanted to confirm that, I guess with Nicole, with you, Mr. Chair, if I share the items that we were discussing last week, I think in relation to... I don't know if it was administrator roles and things like that. I think it was just a few things we were discussing that we want to make sure was in there to cover for for Nicole. As far as like the administration, I guess, you know, we were talking about how I think Councilman Clark had brought up, you know, the pay. And then we were talking about. This not necessarily being an administrator's role, maybe, or something like that?

There were some changes made, and the version that went out includes those changes as the city's attorney's office made them, as I understand it. Would it be helpful to have a redline version to see where we started and where we're at now? Yeah, that would be very helpful. A redline version.

Okay, that works. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes. Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was wondering if we could get SOMEBODY FROM ADMINISTRATION TO WALK US THROUGH UNDER HUMAN RESOURCES THE DEMOTION POLICY CHANGES

Good evening, Council. I'm Amy Green, Chief Operating Officer. What would you like me to go through?

Well, just kind of walk us through. I mean, I've got the backup documents here, but I think just kind of go over what this is doing, what the changes are that they're making.

Okay. So this is clarifying the language on what a voluntary demotion is. It also talks about a salary change. The biggest change is about appointed positions or civil service reversion rights. So we had a 6% and a 12% demotion, maximum of 12% demotion prior to this. So with this change, with an appointed position, if they are returned by their civil service for virgin rights, they will be placed in the pay range of the position that they take. It has to not be less than they made prior to when they went to the appointed position and places their salary within that range of the new position. So for instance, if someone was a deputy or a chief operating officer and I were to revert back to a previously held position as a director of operations, my salary cannot supersede the range of the director of operations and I would be placed back into the director of operations salary range. Okay.

All right. And currently, right now, the way it's written is they would not receive a reduction in pay. Is that correct?

I'm sorry. I'm hard of hearing. I'm sorry. What did you say?

Currently, how it's written, they would not receive a reduction in pay in the demotion?

They do receive a reduction in pay, but the maximum reduction is 12% currently. And so that can place them above the range of the position that they actually take. Okay. So this would be a further reduction. Okay.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We just didn't have, I just didn't have a red line version of what we were changing it from. Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. I can get you a copy. Okay. Right now. Anyone else have any questions?

Councilwoman Hill.

Thank you. I just want to shine a point of clarity on that. And then I have a question about something else. But I think the key word here is a voluntary demotion. This is someone who's been appointed and chooses to step back from that role they would no no not just looking at voluntary demotions no 7.6 b is voluntary demotion 7.6 d is appointed positions uh civil service reversion rights specifically so that's voluntary or involuntary okay then yeah i definitely need that documentation as well thank you yep not a problem i'll send it out because the link the link that we have in our agenda only goes to the resolution it doesn't have the follow-up information in it will send that to you as soon as I walk away thank you and then mr. chair I wanted to come back to the clerk of counsel I respect the ideas that were brought forth in strategic planning about examining the way that salary is determined and moves forward within our council office. However, I think that needs a lot more thought and budget planning. and HR examination before those changes are made. As I see it, the way that our clerk to counsel brought this resolution to us, it was to formally establish the authority of that office. Frankly, I see it as a point of importance as we bring in another member of staff. In the past, we've had issues with that of our of our clerk staff being seen as administrative assistant to someone like legislative, which is not their job. So as I see it, our clerk to counsel worked with legal to craft a resolution that meets the needs of our clerk to counsel at this immediate time. And I would suggest that we not muddy the waters, go ahead and get this passed and take a hard an intentional look at the salary piece in a separate conversation. And I would see Mr. Chair, that that would be something that might fall to you, sir, to work with HR and our attorney to consider and bring counsel ideas. I personally don't love talking about all of that and just big grand ideas in strategic planning. I think it just needs a little bit more thoughtfulness. Thank you. That's all. Okay.

All right, Council, are there any other questions on resolutions on next week's agenda? We'll look then at the purchasing items on our agenda for this evening. We do have four and also a sole source purchase. Are there any questions or comments about any of those? All right, seeing none, we'll turn them to items on future consideration. Vice Chair Elliott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the sake of brevity, I am going to reserve most of my comments on for this item for next week. But I have some concerns about our some questions about our storefront program for River City. I think some folks have gone away, but please expect those next week just so we can discuss them in the public. But I won't go into them tonight for the sake of brevity, but next week.

All right.

Council, any other questions or comments about any items on future considerations? All right, seeing none, we are, in the interest of time, since we recessed earlier unexpectedly, we will move right into the voting portion of our meeting. And so, Madam Clerk, if you would please read item 9A. We approved the minutes before we, yeah. Yeah, we did handle that. Okay. That's my fault. So item 9A, Madam Clerk.

A resolution to repeal resolution number 32800 adopted on February 17, 2026, and adopting new rules of operation for the Chattanooga City Council.

Vice Chair Elliott. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move to defer this to August 18th.

Council, we do have a motion properly seconded to defer this item to August 18th. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution will be deferred until the August 18th agenda. Item 9B, please, Madam Clerk.

A resolution authorizing the mayor or his designee to enter into a conservation services agreement for 2026-2027 with trust for public land and substantially deforming tax for a term of one year from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 for an amount not to exceed $150,000 to be paid in full quarterly installments of $37,500. Second.

Council, we do have a motion properly seconded on this resolution. Are there any questions or comments before we vote? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution is adopted. Item 9C, please, Madam Clerk.

A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS TO AMEND THE SUBRECIPIENT AGREEMENT WITH THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND FOR THE ALTON PARK CONNECTOR PHASE THREE PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED BY RESOLUTION NUMBER 32412 TO INCREASE THE SUBRECIPIENT AWARD AMOUNT OF $444,069 due to added scope for environmental site analysis, regulatory review, and planned development for a revised amount not to exceed $1,087,069.

Council, we have a motion properly seconded on this resolution. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution is adopted. Item 9D, please, Madam Clerk.

A resolution authorizing the administrator for the Department of Public Works to award contract number M25002201, Facilities Management Roof Replacement to Genesis Roofing Company, Inc. in the amount of $149,955 and authorizing a contingency of $14,300 for a total amount not to exceed $157,255.

Second. Council, we do have a motion properly seconded on this resolution. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution is adopted. Item 9E, please.

Resolution renaming the 2200 block of East 21st Street west of South Lowry Street to the 2200 block of Pickleball Court as shown on the attached map.

Move to approve. Second. Council, we do have a motion properly seconded. And as far as questions or comments, Councilwoman Hill, you're recognized.

Thank you. So this item came with a recommendation for denial by Public Works. So just wanted to understand the thought process on moving forward with naming it Pickleball Court.

Vice Chair Elliott, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. If I understand correctly, Public Works has these set procedures and rules they outline as far as road changes. And if I'm not mistaken, this was along 21st Avenue, 21st Street, whichever one it is. And they don't like breaking up some of those streets. For me, I felt comfortable with that because this leads to a dead end. It runs straight into a private property, but they have certain criteria and stipulations that it did not meet. But using my judgment, I feel like this is appropriate. The property owners in that area who are looking to rezone it, they own like two-thirds of it, and that's like one of the house on that street that has also agreed to the change. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions or comments, council, before we vote?

One thing your attorney will advise you on, you need all nine people here to vote on this item. No problem. Okay.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I think that was nine. That was nine. You're good. All right. The resolution is adopted. Item 9F, please, Madam Clerk.

A resolution authorizing the appointment of Michael Slider as a Special Police Officer Unarmed for the City of Chattanooga Department of Public Works to perform the duties expressly limited to the performance of the duties in the Land Development Office.

Second. Council, we do have a motion properly seconded on this resolution. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution is adopted. Item 9G, please.

A resolution authorizing the appointment of John Adam Barnett as a special police officer unarmed for the City of Chattanooga Department of Public Works to perform the duties expressly limited to the performance of the duties in the Land Development Office.

Move to approve. Second. Council, we have a motion properly seconded on this resolution. Are there any questions or comments before we vote? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And the resolution is adopted. And that takes us to purchases. Welcome, Debbie, to the podium. Sorry you've had to be here so long this evening.

No problem. Thank you, sir. Good evening, counsel. Good evening. I have four purchases recommended for your approval tonight. The first one is for technology services. This is a year for renewal. Technology services is requesting an amount increase of $4,140 for agreement PA100555 to add one additional claims admin user license. The new annual amount limit will be $71,190. Number two is for Technology Services. This is a new agreement for RecTrack WebTrack Workgroup Advanced Software Subscription Bundle. This will be a three-year agreement with an annual amount limit of $52,960.13. This single source agreement will be awarded to Vermont Systems. Number three is a new agreement for software project management platform. This will be a three-year agreement with an annual amount limit of $89,626.68. This single source agreement will be awarded to monday.com. Number four is for public works. Fleet management is requesting an increase of $25,816.00. for purchase order PUR 148920. This purchase was originally awarded to Environmental Products Group in the amount of $1,040,131.60. and approved by Council on March 15, 2025 for two 2025 Libre side-loading garbage trucks. This increase is necessary to cover two 2026 chassis installed on the trucks, bringing the new total spend to $1,065,947.60. Move to approve. Second.

Council, we do have a motion properly seconded to approve these purchases. Are there any questions or comments before we vote? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? And the purchases are approved.

I have one sole source to report. This is for technology services. This is eProval permitting software. Access to eProval web-based portal for a period of one year with an unlimited number of users in the amount of $45,000.

Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll go around the dais for committee reports. We'll start with Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have sent you an email requesting that Chris Acuff come on the August 18th during our strategic planning committee to go over some remaining items that we had on that report that he had. One is our comparable cities that we would like to establish, as well as a couple of other things. So just to point out that he, well, I have requested that he come on the 18th. Sure.

All right. Yeah, and just so the council remembers, that day is open for any council member who has legislative concerns priorities or policies or things of that nature to discuss with the council. So please let me know. I'm happy to add those to the agenda. And Councilwoman Hill.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't have an economic development report, but I did want to say a public thank you to Public Works who gave us a really informative and council session on the Birchwood landfill and the expansion that we're going to need to do today. I learned a great deal and certainly became aware that garbage is the issue of our time. It's something we have to take really seriously, and I'm very grateful for the work and the thoughtfulness with which our public works team is approaching that. Thank you.

and councilman harvey councilman clark no report mr chair councilwoman dotley councilwoman burrs thank you mr chair we will have a planning and zoning meeting next week all right thank you and vice chair elliott thank you mr chair um i'll say this and i appreciate everybody leaning into tough conversations As we move forward as a council, I implore us to all remember that we serve the city. Sometimes we have heated conversations and don't always agree, but I think we owe it to ourselves. and our districts to keep these conversations about the substance of what's presented and just keep that focus. I look forward to us moving to brighter days as a council where we can push some of these animosities behind us and really lean in to serve our city and our districts to the best of our abilities. That's how much it's true.

We're now to that portion of the meeting where we're happy to hear from members of the public who are here and would like to address counsel. And so if you are here for that purpose, if you would please line up at the podium down front and listen while our attorney reads the rules. We would just ask that you listen carefully and abide by the rules. Thank you.

Yes, sir, and at the end of each council business meeting, the chair will recognize members of the public who wish to address the council, and here's your rules. Each speaker wishing to address the council can only be recognized up front at the microphone provided for that purpose. You can't have more than three minutes to speak, and you can address the council only upon matters within their legislative and quasi-judicial authority. and not on matters which are not under their authority or regulated by other governmental bodies or agencies. Do not engage in any vulgar or obscene language nor use the floor to personally attack or personally denigrate others, and address your comments to the council as a whole and not make comments directed towards individual council members. Lastly, do not engage in disorderly conduct or disrupting a public meeting, which is prohibited by Tennessee law, and someone commits that offense if a person substantially obstructs or interferes with the meeting by physical action or verbal utterance with the intent to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting or gathering. Having stated those rules, please state your name and your district, sir.

Jacob, District 9, Menlo Park. I'd like to start by saying I was really enjoying the live stream. Whoever's back there running it, please don't cut to break so quickly next time. Nonprofits of Chattanooga is the topic I'd like to address you all today. and kind of walk through a case study on the Chattanooga Tourism Company. I think that we're not funding them anymore, but last year they received a million dollars in tourism tax funding, and their executive compensation from their most recent 990 for five people was over a million dollars. Everyone else employed by them was paid a cumulative $1.8 million, and add in the benefits, taxes, et cetera, and the annual personnel cost for this nonprofit comes to just shy of $3.5 million. They, of course, will tell you that they're paying the city back tenfold with the tourist tax revenue that it has brought in. However, I believe the other projects that we have funded with the tourist tax, such as the Riverfront Park and the Walnut Street Bridge, are truly what draw in tourists and make Chattanooga a wonderful place to live and play. I don't think that Chattanooga Tourism Company or other bloated, expensive nonprofits like it should receive any more taxpayer dollars. How about Caleb or Chattanooga in Action for Love, Equality, and Benevolence, the organization that is supposed to run the land trust? They had an annual budget in 2024 of about $800,000 and annual compensation expenses of $400,000, twice as much as they spent on their primary stated purpose at the time of bail funds and voter education. does not sound like an organization we should be putting in charge of a perpetual land trust to me. I know the lady at the River City Company has a salary of 250K, and the second in command has a salary of 150K. I surmise those two do the work of eight average Chattanoogans. It sounds like the most profitable job in Chattanooga is to be running a nonprofit. I can't help but wonder how many $200,000 plus salaries the taxpayers of the city are funding. I'm not against spending, but I would rather see transparent programs run through the city, like the Down Payment Assistance Program, over funding a permanent ecosystem of nonprofits. I'm confident that these taxpayer-funded organizations are not outliers and that those looking will find inflated compensation at most every nonprofit that comes before you begging for our money. I encourage council to review personal compensation of nonprofits seeking funding and that tax funds should not be contributing to any nonprofits profits where more than 25% of the budget is spent on admin. This is industry standard. As a side note, I support the plan Chattanooga's vision for the Brainerd Germantown road intersection and the development of a sidewalk along Germantown road and the wider plan Chattanooga vision as a whole. Thank you.

Thank you, counsel. My name is Graham Bonnington. I am in District 1. I came here tonight. Well, I came here this afternoon from my job in Amnicola, District 8. I came here because I've been talking to a lot of people around the city and they're very concerned about the actual time that we actually hold public meetings, 3.30. I had to take off time from my job to come down here to talk to you people. I understand there was previous calling workforce housing is what Chip over here said about the affordable housing. And I'm thinking maybe Chattanooga needs to be a workforce city. It needs to take into consideration the workforce of our people that work here in the city that have the concerns of what is a very tumultuous time, not just in Chattanooga, but federally, nationally, around the world. And there are a lot of people in this city that cannot come to these council meetings because of the time in the middle of the day where we are working our shifts, working on the factory floor. we cannot come to these city meetings to voice our concerns. Just a simple Google search will show Signal Mountain, East Ridge, Red Bank, Knoxville, Tennessee, Nashville, 630, all the rest 6 p.m. So I'm really curious as to why The city of Chattanooga holds their meetings at 3.30 in the middle of the day when the workers cannot come and voice their concerns about the place where they live. I've been working in this city since the year 2000. I was born here. And now it's the time that I feel that I want to get more involved with all of the issues that I'm learning about from the people that I work with. people that I live with and uh it's it's I think just making the simple step of changing the meeting time so that the workforce of Chattanooga has a chance to voice their concerns to the council with these various issues that are surrounding us on a daily basis and thank you thank you

Good afternoon. My name is Antonio Boston. I'm the CEO of All-Star Foundations here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I own three businesses here in the city of Chattanooga. It's been amazing with me with the city. I'm going through something with y'all right now. I wish y'all could just speed it up. It's costing me a lot of money. I'm almost $100,000-something in the hold in the turning fees, playing around with the city. But as my foundation, I would like to say I thank y'all for letting me use Miller Park on Father's Day weekend. I bring the biggest one, the biggest minority festival. It's for everybody. Black, white, it's for the city of downtown Chattanooga. Y'all ain't had a crowd like this since River Band. I brought the barbecue festival. It was a success. I think the Chattanooga Police Department and Public Works, they came through. They did what they said they was going to do. I don't have a problem with that. The problem I have is I have a big non-profit here. I just had the Lakers here yesterday at East Hamilton High School. I'm bringing these celebrities into my city, and I got a non-profit, but y'all throwing all this money around in city council, AR funds, y'all finding money. I listen to y'all every week on YouTube. I got about 20 people watching y'all. We keep paying some money, but there's nothing happening in our city. Crime's still going up. How do I know that? I'm a bail bondsman. I bond out 85% of the people in the city of Chattanooga. I'm the owner of an all-star bonding company. We say we're going to do things and do things right. It ain't happening. It look good on paper, but reality, I'm in these streets for real. I see everybody all day, white, black, and Hispanic from all over the city. If you live in Chattanooga and you don't know me, you don't live here. I throw a lot of events in the city coming out of my pocket because I love my city. But we've got to do better. And I'm going to send emails to the mayor's office, to somebody named K-R-O-I-G, my secretary, my assistant, keeps sending emails. They tell me they're going to get back with us. At this point, I don't need to send all money because we're going to make a difference regardless. I don't want to be played with. We keep throwing the money. I can save the city so much money. I've got so many connections. I'm working with the world's biggest NIL deal. We're going to draft some people from Chattanooga and put them in the NFL and NBA. I travel every week to different cities. But my city I live in, I own property here. I own businesses here. I bring celebrities here. I spend a lot of money. A couple years ago, I brought $2 million to downtown Chattanooga. I bring the River City football tournament here. 50 teams from around the world come to Chattanooga playing different high schools. I just want to sit down with somebody at the mayor's office, tell them what they're doing with this money. I see a lot of money going out, but a lot of things in my community is not happening. Y'all see this? I'm out there. The wrong people is getting the money. It ain't doing nothing with it. We got to stop giving out money. I love y'all. Stop giving the money out. Have restrictions. They can't do the work. Stop paying them. I don't pay my employers. They can't do the work. But I love y'all. God bless y'all. And I hope we can get some understanding some kind of way. Because I'm losing money in the city I live in. And I love y'all. Bye. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Evelina Rancute. I think I call it technically a resident of its side as a temporary thing, but I've lived in China my entire life pretty much. Firstly, I will echo my sentiments to my friend and reiterate my statement from the previous week encouraging the city council to move the meetings to after work hours. The way that the council has set up is that the actual time period can vary really wildly. In fact, it's almost an hour and a half different from what it was last week. And so if you don't have a consistent time to give to people... They don't show up because people need to know when they're available. I'm saying it will move some, but again, this was a solved issue. Some members of the council spoke earlier on making sure the voices of the constituents were being represented. What better way to ensure that they're being represented than having a consistent time period to access after work? Secondly, to address something earlier, I would like to encourage you all to approve the maximum amount of public housing available. It sounds like the process it is. Approving this right now is that this is time sensitive and that if you don't approve it, it's potentially that public housing option gets lost. The fear expressed at times about low-income housing I find is distasteful. We need housing. We want a government that delivers. And that is a great place to do this. My generation is increasingly unable to afford even basic rent. um simple support law supply demand says that we need more housing to lower the price and the federal government is offering money through this process free money doesn't come around office office so i really encourage you to to approve as much public housing as possible in this upcoming process thank you thank you is there anyone else who would like to address the council this evening

Move to adjourn. All right. We do have a motion to adjourn, seconded. All in favor?

Aye. We are adjourned.