Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise expects to award contracts to weatherize as many homes this week as what the city’s Department of Human Services was able to do in more than six months.
CNE took over the federally funded program in June after the city department repeatedly failed to meet performance standards and lost the remainder of its $3.6 million contract.
Mayor Ron Littlefield accepted the retirement of city Human Services Director Bernadine Turner last month and dissolved the city’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships so that the director of the faith-based program, Al Chapman, could take over other programs at the city human services agency.
“The state was about to pull the plug on our weatherization program, and I managed to convince them that if we switched it over to Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise we could do better,” Mr. Littlefield said. “It was really a pretty easy call because we either talked the state into switching the money over to CNE or we lost the money.”
The decision reflects both a change in how the local stimulus program will operate and Mr. Littlefield’s approach to CNE.