The Chattanooga City Council took care of business Tuesday night, voting to lessen stormwater protections on South Chickamauga Creek and to allow the city's first urban farm, but members spent much of the evening celebrating.
Council members and a packed audience rose to their feet in applause after a 9-0 vote to put up commemorative street signs honoring the late civil rights icon James R. Mapp on University Street between McCallie Avenue and East 1oth Street.
Mapp's widow, Bettye, and family members were in the audience, and Councilman Anthony Byrd, the sponsor of the resolution, told them it was "an honor and a privilege to be a part of something so amazing."
Other council members also praised Mapp, the longtime NAACP president whose community service stretched over seven decades.
James R. Mapp"I'm so honored to have known your husband. .... He was a man of vision," Councilman Erskine Oglesby said.
Councilman Russell Gilbert called Mapp "a wonderful, wonderful man [who] made a difference in our city."
Audience and council alike also applauded when Tech Town CEO Chris Ramsey described the success of a grant-funded program to train adults in coding for web development. Ramsey said of the initial class of 20, 15 graduated and 10 are now in jobs.
"This is what success looks like," Ramsey said, thanking the city for adding $40,000 to the program to sponsor an additional class in the coming year.
And some longtime city officials, including former mayor Ron Littlefield, showed up to help send off city traffic engineer John Van Winkle, who is retiring after 31 years. Van Winkle got a proclamation and his own green city street sign denoting Van Winkle Way.
The stormwater runoff proposal for South Chickamauga Creek was controversial. The details involved reducing the maximum amount of rainfall allowed to reach the creek from 1.6 inches to 1 inch in any 24-hour period, among other changes. Proponents said the 1.6-inch maximum was raising the cost of building homes and businesses and wouldn't by itself be enough to protect the creek from sedimentation, erosion and habitat destruction for two endangered species, a crayfish and a snail darter.
Opponents painted the proposal as a giveaway to builders and a blow to the environment, and urged delay while the city's public works department finishes an analysis.
Helen Burns SharpThe council voted 9-0 to adopt the 1-inch maximum rule. During the public comment period, Helen Burns Sharp, head of the good-government group Accountability for Taxpayer Money, gave council members what she described as a "wish list," asking them to consider and adopt stronger policies for programs that use or forgo tax revenue to benefit private development.
The group has criticized some of the city's payment-in-lieu-of-taxes and tax-increment financing agreements for not holding companies accountable for development and job promises.
In other business, the council:
» Voted 9-0 to rezone property on Davidson Road as the city's first Urban Agricultural Zone. The owners want to grow products and raise animals organically. Neighbors were worried that a required barn to shelter livestock was too close to the property lines, but a revised site plan eased their concerns.
» Approved rezoning for a residential development on Dayton Boulevard just north of the Red Bank city limit.
» Agreed to accept 1.1 miles of former CSX railroad track from the Trust for Public Land for a paved trail. The 9.88 acres starts at the Southside Park in Alton Park and goes to the Tennessee Riverwalk.
» Accepted a U.S. Department of Justice grant of $376,950 to fund the Hamilton County Elder Justice Coalition, which will be managed through the Family Justice Center.
Contact Judy Walton at jwalton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6416.