With less than three months left in his 16-year career as an elected leader, Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said he still is eager to move ahead with two legacy projects.
One is the government spinoff of the county's biggest hospital to a nonprofit institution, and the other is to launch the redevelopment of the former Wheland Foundry site on the Southside anchored by a government-backed baseball stadium for the Chattanooga Lookouts.
Coppinger, who has served as Hamilton County's mayor since 2011, when he was first appointed to the job after serving as a county commissioner for five years, reflected on his political career Thursday during a wide-ranging talk to the downtown Chattanooga Rotary Club.
After the speech, Coppinger said in an interview he is still hopeful that county commissioners will vote to change the status of Erlanger hospital and agree to county support for the new stadium for the Lookouts before he leaves office Sept. 1.
In April, the Tennessee General Assembly cleared the way for Erlanger to be transformed into its own nonprofit organization to replace the government status under which it has operated with county support for 45 years. The shift to an independent, nonprofit hospital should help Erlanger raise more contributions and operate more efficiently, Coppinger said.
Erlanger trustees are still framing how the organization would be structured, and any change would ultimately have to be approved by the Erlanger board and then the Hamilton County Commission.
"Hopefully, we can have a plan to get in front of the commission by August," Coppinger said." We need to make this change to help ensure that Erlanger is sustainable financially for the long term. It is a very important organization serving our entire region."
(READ MORE: Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger announces he won't seek re-election)
Coppinger said he also hopes the city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County can work out an arrangement to aid in the development of a new stadium on the Southside to drive what could be up to $1.5 billion of new commercial and residential development along Interstate 24 at the entrance into downtown.
"This is not so much about the ballfield as it is helping to anchor and develop an entire site that will have huge community benefits," Coppinger said.
Although the legislature did not provide the $20.3 million of state grants requested by the Lookouts and the city of Chattanooga, the Southside site being targeted for the Lookouts is eligible for special tax financing to support infrastructure improvements, and the city and county are considering using a portion of their American Rescue Plan funds to support the development, Coppinger said.
While the outgoing mayor is still optimistic about the Erlanger change and stadium project moving forward in the next three months, he lamented that he was not more successful in convincing county commissioners to build another sewage treatment plant to help open up more sewer service throughout the county.
"I wish we would have handled the sewage treatment plant better because this county desperately needs to be able to handle wastewater better," Coppinger told the Rotarians. "There was so much misinformation that was put out, and therefore, we don't have a sewage treatment plant (outside of the city's Moccasin Bend Wastewater Plant) while places like Knox County have four. We're growing, and we're building these ugly-looking storage tanks instead."
County commissioners voted 6-3 against building a sewage plant on McMahon Road that was pushed by Coppinger but opposed by many neighbors in Ooltewah.
"Looking back, I think we could have gotten that done if we had rolled that out better," Coppinger said. "We had the engineers and experts telling us what was needed, but there were about a hundred loud voices in a community that answered for 366,000 people who live in this county. One of the few things that I regret is that we allowed a few voices to overwhelm what the the majority of people here really need."
Coppinger said growth helps to avoid the need for tax increases to keep pace with inflation, "but in order for our county to grow, we need to deal with our wastewater problems."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow him on Twitter @dflessner1.