Does Chattanooga city government need to be reorganized every eight years or every time a new mayor is elected?
Current Mayor Tim Kelly and his predecessor, Andy Berke, have evidently thought so. Both men spent parts of their first couple of years in office changing the structure of government, saying in essence the previous administration had been a mess.
The pair’s three predecessors, while putting their own stamp on city government, felt no such compunction.
Kelly was particularly pointed in remarks to the Times Free Press Sunday, saying “it had been a long time since we had a mayor who was willing to tackle the hard stuff,” that some departments his administration inherited were in a “miserable, terrible state,” that his administration is having to “fix a lot of past sins that were allowed to fester for essentially organizational neglect and a lack of active management,” and that past administrations have “been in many cases kicking the can down the road, sweeping the hard stuff under the rug.”
Officials in the mayor’s administration said all of his changes are being made to help implement his One Chattanooga plan, which has a goal of closing socio-economic gaps in the city.