Editor’s note: This is an abridged version of Collier’s final public statement as chair of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission, delivered Monday.
Mayor Wamp, Mayor Kelly — thank you. It seems like yesterday, but it was over 12 years ago that Jim Coppinger and Mayor Andy Berke appointed me to chair this commission, and it has certainly been one of the great honors of my life.
To my fellow commissioners, past and present — thank you. Most people have no idea how many hours you give to reviewing applications, staff reports, driving out to look at a piece of property before a vote and sitting through meetings that run long. For those of you who work in the development industry, I think the cost has been even higher, because it means stepped-up scrutiny. You’ve had to disclose, recuse and defend yourselves in ways most volunteers never have to.
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I also want to thank the staff of the Regional Planning Agency. They are professionally trained and educated employees of our city and county — not laymen, not developers, but public servants — and they are the ones who actually do all the hard work. This community has no idea how hard you work to keep Chattanooga and Hamilton County ready for the growth that is coming.
I’ve always thought of this commission as something like peer review. It’s like a classmate reading a friend’s thesis before it ever becomes a final draft — catching what needs catching, testing it, improving it — before it goes to our elected officials, where that same debate becomes public, and yes, political. This is not a flaw in the system. It’s the system working. But peer review only works if the reviewers bring different perspectives to the table.
We are not just a room of developers and engineers. We have members who understand this work from the industry side — property rights, land development, plats and subdivision regulations, zoning — and we have members who represent our neighborhoods and community groups, who show up because they care about their streets, their communities, our city and our county — not because it’s their trade. That balance, that diversity of experience and of thought, is exactly what has made this commission strong.
Mayor Wamp has said he wants a chair who is independent of the building industry, and I want to say plainly: That’s a fair thing to want, and I respect it. I’d only add that some of the best work I’ve been part of here came precisely because I understand a site plan or a subdivision regulation — I’ve spent over 20 years working in these regulations — not in spite of that experience, but because of it.
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The easy path here would have been to never say much of anything — nod, vote, go home. Nobody on this dais gets criticized for staying quiet. But I don’t think that’s what this job is for. The public deserves to know who their planning commissioners are — not just our names, but what we think, how we think and why we vote the way we do.
If we’re silent, people can’t know us, and they certainly shouldn’t trust us. So I’ve chosen, more than once, to say what I actually believed about growth, property rights and housing, even when it was controversial, even when it cost me something personally. I’d rather be a chairman people could disagree with than one nobody could read at all.
I want to be clear about one more thing. I have never wanted to silence anyone who opposed a project before this commission. We have rules and a process for how decisions get made and how this meeting is run. What I have wanted — what I still want — is for every voice to show up: the neighbor who’s owned their home for 40 years and doesn’t want to see change, and the young family still trying to find a way in.
I used the words “have-theirs” and “have-nots” at one point to describe that gap, and I’ll own that it landed harder on some people than I intended. This wasn’t meant to dismiss anyone’s stake in this community. It was meant to ask us all to make room at the table for people who don’t usually get a seat.
So in closing, thank you — to our mayors, to this commission, to the RPA staff, and to this community for letting me be part of something bigger than myself. My title here is no doubt changing. My love for this place and its people is not. If this chair calls for a different kind of leadership right now, then it’s certainly time for me to find the next place that needs the leadership I have to offer. Thoughtful. Honest. Transparent. Direct. I’ll be looking for those opportunities, and I hope I find them right here, in the place I’ve never stopped calling home.
Ethan Collier is the chief executive of Collier Construction and served as chair of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission from 2014 until this week.