'Year of the crane'
River City Co. President and Chief Executive Officer Kim White said 2015 would be the "year of the crane" in Chattanooga, and with the downtown building boom the line makes sense.
It's both new construction and renovation, and it's both hotels and apartments, too.
Two of the most intriguing plans are the proposed $31 million conversion of the vacant Chattanooga Bank Building at Eighth and Market streets into a 150-room hotel and the conversion of more than 90 hotel rooms at the Chattanooga Choo Choo into apartments.
It's a clear sign the city is finally feeling recovery from the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009. In reality, the recession lasted much longer with depressed wages, a lag in building, fear of starting big projects and years of worry over what the effects of the Affordable Care Act would be on businesses.
The Obama administration never understood the latter concern, and, while some of its ramifications are yet to be revealed, businesses at least can see the way forward now and know what bite the health care act will have.
With the building boom, though, comes the necessity for parking to be matched with dwelling space and enough retail establishments to make it convenient for those who choose to live downtown. So, perhaps like suppliers choosing to locate near Volkswagen, other needed businesses will spring up in 2015 as well.
It's an exciting time to live in Chattanooga, especially for those who can remember the not-so-distant days when the city rolled up its sidewalks at night.
A little something for the effort
A unanimous Supreme Court ruled recently that workers at Amazon warehouses do not have to be paid for the time they spend waiting to go through a security screening at the end of the day, so Amazon should take that as a signal to do something itself about the problem.
With a treasure trove of items of all kinds and sizes to send out to buyers, the company -- which has warehouses in Chattanooga and Charleston -- understandably does not want any of its merchandise walking out in the pockets, purses and lunchboxes of whatever tiny minority of employees would consider doing something like that.
Since workers say the process can take up to 25 minutes, well-heeled Amazon should invest in technology that allows employees to be screened practically as fast as they walk out of the building. If courts and airports have screening systems through which people walk, Amazon surely could have one that picks up a bar code or in some way recognizes when a product leaves with an employee.
Lacking that, the giant retailer could keep track of the days screenings take longer than 10 minutes, for example, and kick in a little something for the employees. If the employees are important to the company, the company should acknowledge that fact, even if it understandably has to check to be sure the employees are not taking advantage.
And the winner is ...
The city of Sioux Falls, S.D., is this year's winner of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's Ebenezer award, its lowest honor, which is given to the government and/or official that makes the most egregious affront to the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays.
Sioux Falls, it seems, notified two private schools that the city snowplow blades its students were invited to decorate would be censored and painted over. Why? The students made the apparent egregious mistake of deciding to let their artwork celebrate the religious nature of Christmas.
Turns out, the city had accepted religious art before but was swayed by one offended member of the Siouxland Freethinkers who filed an informal complaint.
Before the students could repaint their blades, or have them painted over, Mayor Mike Huether stepped in and told the local paper, "We are not going to be painting over those plows ... those plow blades ... unless, I guess, I get some Supreme Court case [that] says that I have to."
The other five contenders for this year's award were Montgomery County, Md., schools, which removed Christmas, Easter, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah from next year's school calendar after the request came to give equal billing to the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha; Merced Elementary School in West Covina, Calif., which told a first grader "Jesus is not allowed in school" after confiscating candy canes -- with a religious message about the Christian origins of the "Legend of the Candy Cane" -- he was giving his classmates; Andrew Peabody School in Cambridge, Mass., which notified parents Santa would be removed from the program at a winter concert because of "a complaint"; a Dallas, N.C., courthouse which removed a nativity on its grounds after a 40-year run following a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation; and the University of Maine, which banned decorations of Christmas trees, menorahs, candy canes and presents in the name of diversity (but ultimately rescinded the ban).