Don’t swap park for McDonald Farm
Enterprise South Nature Park is a treasure to Chattanooga and Hamilton County and deserves to be treated as such. It would be my hope that Mayor Wamp and those trying to push this through rethink the land grab, or swap, as they call it. It truly isn’t a swap. It is well known that the county spent far too much on McDonald Farm in the purchase without realizing it would cost far too much to develop it. So, telling us they are saving one by taking from another is really not truthful. McDonald Farm cannot economically sustain industrial development.
As for them wanting to take 500-600 acres from the Nature Park area to develop, why can they not develop completely the TNT property that hasn’t been touched? You know, the part that already has rail infrastructure and such. Or somewhere else? I see many dilapidated former industrial skeletons in the downtown area. Those would make prime development sites.
I say build the connecting road and move on. Stop trying to take more from an area (Ooltewah) that has and is losing green space at alarming rates. It doesn’t take but one day of driving in the area to realize how poorly the county has handled the growth and development on their end.
Please. Do the right thing. Leave our parks alone.
Jeff Moore
Ooltewah
Proud of success of Pride Festival
On Sunday, Oct. 5, I felt immensely proud to be a citizen of Chattanooga.
I thank all the civic-minded individuals who organized and participated in the Pride Festival held in downtown Chattanooga. Thanks goes especially to Mayor Tim Kelly, who showed up in his rainbow T-shirt, and all the city employees who aided in the organization and in the festival’s ultimate success.
These are harsh times, and all can feel pride in this community. All present shared a sense of dignity and belonging. The festival started with a parade on Fourth Street, down Broad Street to the river side, where vendors and multiple churches had booths set up in addition to a stage where there was a very fine show.
All there celebrated their true identity and showed a cohesive community, a task more difficult in the face of discrimination and attempts at repression.
Jay Ku
Nobel Prize deadline was Trump downfall
The current administration provides so many opportunities about which to write, it can be hard to narrow things down to just one.
As we all know, Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Instead of him and his MAGA sycophants whining about the process being political, they could tell the truth. Fact is, nominations for the prize closed on Jan. 31, days after his inauguration. Hardly enough time for him to accomplish what he claims to have. If he and his cronies had known about the deadline, it would have provided the perfect, and true, excuse.
Of course, it would be a travesty for him to win the 2026 prize since he is intent upon waging war on his own country. But that’s a subject for the future.
Cheers to Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela, who truly deserves the prize.
Cathy Dreger
Let mall ownership pay for Northgate fix
I agree with the recent letter writer that taxpayers should not be subsidizing the Northgate Mall infrastructure improvements. If the mall is worth saving, its owner (CBL) should be willing to fund the work.
Similarly, I would like to know how much CBL is contributing to the construction of the new entrance and exit ramps around Hamilton Place Mall. Again, taxpayers should not be footing the entire bill for a major project that will primarily benefit that mall and other CBL properties in the area.
Steve Beckham
Collegedale
Wamp not serving us by refusing questions
At the county mayor’s recent news conference announcing changes in how McDonald Farm will be used, the county spokesperson told the media reporters that no questions from the Times Free Press would be answered.
What? Wamp is not president; he’s supposedly elected to serve the people.
The Times Free Press let the cat out of the bag about the change to McDonald Farm. So Wamp is whining again. What’s new?
Pat Hagan
Greene’s ‘concern’ called ‘lamentable’
Hamilton County Republican Party Chair Gail Greene’s recent expression of “concern” over finding out that some Tennessee school voucher money is going to fund “Islamic education” would be laughable if it weren’t so lamentable.
The bill is called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, for goodness’ sake. It’s not freedom if only some perspectives are allowed. State Rep. Greg Martin, R-Hixson, gets this, as he showed in his patient response to Greene at a recent Hamilton County Republican women’s event, where he reminded her that, “in America, we believe in freedom of religion.”
Moreover, the bill explicitly states that schools that accept funds from the scholarship are to remain autonomous: “Private schools that enroll recipients must have the maximum freedom to provide for the educational needs of recipients without governmental control. A private school that enrolls recipients is not required to alter its creed, practices, admission policies, hiring policies, or curriculum in order to accept recipients.”
Let’s celebrate, rather than fear, the diversity of religious perspectives in our community.
L.B. Blackwell
‘We have met the enemy, and he is us’
The president is fond of the phrase “the enemy within,” by which he apparently means “rapists, murderers, drug dealers, all manner of criminals.” That phrase means something different to me. Rather than looking outward, we would do better to search inward. How are we complicit, tolerating or even promoting incivility, injustice, vitriol, violence?
I think of the quote from Solzhenitsyn: “The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.”
While we tend to prefer to blame forces outside ourselves, I also recall the old cartoon strip Pogo, where he famously said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Kate Stulce
Board authoritarian measures concerning
In the nine years I’ve been watching the Hamilton County school board meetings, I have never seen such authoritarian measures to control how the public interacts with the meeting.
I am alarmed and deeply concerned to have observed Chair Joe Smith and Vice Chair Gary Kuehn attempting to dictate who sits, who stands and implement heavy-handed, unprecedented censorship on students in the name of board “policy.” And I’ve definitely never seen a student asked to leave this public meeting space before — a public meeting of elected officials whose sole responsibility is to ensure students in our public schools can thrive without limits.
Public engagement, especially from our youth, is a valuable gift for elected officials, not something to be scared of and hide from. In their efforts to restrict and censor students who are on a righteous mission to advocate for themselves and their peers, Chair Smith and Vice Chair Kuehn have shown us exactly how scared they are to face those who will be most impacted by the decisions they continue to make.
Our students deserve elected officials on the school board who do not lead with fear, but are willing to meet directly and head on the difficult conversations that are a direct result of the choices they make as elected officials, just as we expect students to face the consequences of their actions.
Michaela Winter