What a concept! Hamilton County's courthouse government and our school board and some mover/shaker community members are going to work together -- not just talk for lots more years, we hope -- about our decades old and growing nearly $1 billion in deferred repairs for school facilities.
Pardon us if we seem cynical and sarcastic. Or at least sarcastic, still. We are, however, cautiously letting our cynicism turn to excitement.
You see, for years we have been writing editorials here about the fact that our county mayor, county superintendent, county commissioners and county school board members only met with each other about once a year -- usually around budget time when the county would sourly tell the school board to take its request for more money back to the drawing board.
Sure, a given district's commissioner and school board member would sometimes make nice together -- at least long enough to say they were working together for their constituents. But did the folks in these two groups ever really work together as leaders -- or even as parents -- to find a way around their constant tug and pull? No.
Former School Board Chair Tucker McClendon -- now one of Wamp's deputy mayors and the one in charge of helping with education -- told the editor of this page last week that in his recent four years on the school board, he recalled school board members and county commissioners meeting as a group together only twice.
Twice in four years.
And one of those times was about redistricting. About taking their respective districts and seats from nine to 11 -- a procedural thing which had virtually nothing to do with taking care of schools or school budgets.
But here's where the cynicism cautiously gives way to excitement:
Last week, 20 days into being our new county mayor, Weston Wamp and Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson teamed up to announce a newly formed County School Facilities Working Group "to evaluate both urgent needs and future opportunities across the Hamilton County school system."
"Plans for the future of our school facilities should be developed with a focus on excellence and efficiency, paving the way for our students to thrive in college prep and career prep pathways," said Wamp. "This working group will establish a roadmap for Hamilton County to go from a laggard to a leader in the region in the quality of our public school facilities."
No mincing of words there: Bring us back "a roadmap ... to go from a laggard to a leader."
Besides Wamp and Robertson, this working group will include new school board chair Tiffanie Robinson who also founded Second Story Real Estate Management, new county commissioner Lee Helton who also is owner of Lee Helton Construction, another former school board chair Kenny Smith who also is the retired director of the Chattanooga Electrical Apprenticeship, CPA Kyle Bryant who is managing partner of accounting firm Market Street Partners, and Chattanooga State men's basketball coach Jay Price who also is a Brainerd High School alumnus.
McClendon and Dr. Robert Sharpe, the school district's director of operations, will serve as staff to the working group as it plows its way through a 2018 MGT school facilities study commissioned years ago by the board at a cost of about $487,000.
The massive work initially identified more than $1.36 billion in capital needs across the district's 74 schools. It recommended renovations at 11 schools, additions to 10 schools, building three new schools and closing 15 school buildings.
After consultations with commissioners and school board members, MGT came back with a revised $855 million, three-phase, 10-year renovation and rebuild plan.
That was three years and a pandemic ago.
Clearly, the first question out of the gate to McClendon was what about that T-word -- taxes. As in more of them.
It wasn't something he was ready to address, of course. Nor should he.
He did say the team would look for as many "creative" opportunities as might be possible -- perhaps something like the 98,552-square-foot former Cigna Corp. office building surrounded by 95-mostly wooded acres that now is being eyed for reinvention as a school and new housing site in East Brainerd.
McClendon, who was the first to push that idea, said buying and renovating the facility could provide a school for 750 to 800 students at about $16 million to $17 million -- roughly half the cost for building most of the county's new schools.
"How do we replicate that across this district? How do we become proactive and looking for things that are outside the box?" McClendon said. "We could spend our way out of this if we had a magic check, but we don't and we have to be very fiscally responsible."
The goal, he said, is to have some real, meaningful conversations with a variety of people of different backgrounds to guide "a vision of dealing with the crisis."
We're on board with that. Bring on that creativity. Bring on the vision. And then bring on the commitment to back it up.