Chattanooga City Councilman Yusuf HakeemChattanooga Council Chairman Yusuf Hakeem’s reaction Tuesday to an email from city transportation administrator Blythe Bailey, in which Bailey said he wouldn’t attend a meeting where it appeared a sweetheart deal was being proposed for a private taxi company, was akin to a child having a favorite toy taken away from him.
Not only did Hakeem say in a letter that the low-key Bailey’s email called him a “crook” and “disrespected him,” but he said the administrator was “unmanageable and a loose cannon” and “should be eliminated from local government.”
Further, the council chairman asked Councilman Jerry Mitchell, the council’s Human Resources Committee chairman, to have Bailey come before his committee next week because of his email, but that meeting was canceled late Wednesday.
Bailey’s email, which was posted online in Wednesday’s Times Free Press, was direct but respectful, thanking the council chairman for his previous email, indicating his reservation, declining to attend the meeting and offering himself for any subsequent discussions that didn’t include a specific vendor.
Unless there is information about the situation Hakeem didn’t bring to the Council, the transportation administrator absolutely did the right thing not only by turning down attending such a meeting but noting that “naming a specific vendor on the front end of a policy discussion involving significant financial expenditure may be a violation of purchasing policies.”