Group works to regulate neighborhood representation

One group of East Brainerd neighbors is working to change the way the Chattanooga City Council listens to residents.

After feeling like they were misrepresented during a recent city council rezoning vote, approximately 50 members of the Audubon Neighborhood Association are partnering with the Chattanooga Neighborhood Association Council. They plan to work together with city council on drafting a policy to determine a verification process for people who address the council and claim to represent neighborhood interests.

"The city council should have a very good idea when they make decisions regarding property values in a neighborhood of who they're getting their information from," said Chattanooga Neighborhood Association Council president Lana Sutton. "People should be able to prove they represent the people they say they do. We don't want to see the city council asking the people who attend the meetings to raise their hands as a way of making decisions. It shouldn't be about who can get the most of their friends to come to the meetings."

The group decided to take action after the council rezoned three residential properties at the intersection of East Brainerd Road and Panorama Drive from residential to commercial, Sutton said. Property owner Matt Hullander plans to build a commercial mixed-use development on the site. During the rezoning vote, Sutton said a person claiming to be the president of the Audubon Neighborhood Association said he represented 500 homes in the area which were in favor of the development.

According to Sutton, the neighborhood association had been dormant for several years and no officers had been elected during that time. Chattanooga Neighborhood Services Administrator Beverly Johnson said she has records of an April 14 officer election for the Audubon Neighborhood Association, which was nearly two weeks after the City Council vote. Johnson said she could neither confirm nor deny whether or not the association has had regular elections in previous years and said she could not speak to whether or not the person claiming to be the president was the group's current president.

"What we do is we request, not require, associations to register with us so that contact information for neighborhood associations is accessible," said Johnson. "We don't govern neighborhood associations. We are just here for support."

Johnson said the Audubon Neighborhood Association is registered with Chattanooga Neighborhood Services, but associations run themselves autonomously and she does not know if it was active during the time Sutton said the group was dormant.

In addition to working with CNAC and the City Council, Sutton and a group of neighbors who also feel they were misrepresented plan to form their own neighborhood association. There is no minimum number of residents required for an association and Johnson said no one is assigned to a specific neighborhood association, even based on their geography.

"If there's a group out there who doesn't feel like their neighborhood association supports them, they are welcome to create their own association," she said. "The only time we get involved and contact a neighborhood association is when the geographic boundaries over two associations overlap. We just let them know and they can either leave it that way or do something about it."

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