Rich Bailey
American flags and a dotted white line denotes the area where the Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center would be located in Coolidge Park.Living in Chattanooga since 1991, I’ve joined in a lot of public participation and community visioning meetings, from ReVision 2000 to design charrettes for specific areas to meetings about children’s and senior services. Last week’s public meeting at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre about the proposed use of land in Coolidge Park for a new museum was a pale shadow of those meetings and an insult to Chattanooga’s history of civic engagement.
A few weeks ago, the question of whether to lease a piece of Coolidge Park to a private group that wants to build a new Medal of Honor Museum – at $1 per year for 99 years – began drawing opposition after getting several approvals. Eventually, the City Council put the brakes on – but only partially, voting 9 to 0 to authorize the mayor to negotiate a lease but reserving final approval – and called the Aug. 3 public meeting.
Despite having some of the trappings of public participation, this wasn’t the kind of honest public engagement where an idea is presented and members of the public are invited to look at it from all sides and make suggestions for improving it or doing something different to achieve the same objectives.
We saw a sales pitch, with no opposing viewpoints, and then were invited to write our opinions and suggestions on three-inch square Post-Its. How far we’ve come from the days of Chattanooga Venture and Vision 2000.
To Mayors Andy Berke and Jim Coppinger, members of the City Council and County Commission – Chattanooga deserves better. This kind of meeting should have happened at the beginning of a public thought process, not the end.