The Hamilton County Commission voted 7-4 Wednesday to allow Mayor Weston Wamp to sever the county’s contract with a planning agency it shares with the city of Chattanooga.
“When Chattanooga and Hamilton County go their separate ways, that’s a problem,” Commissioner Warren Mackey, D-Lake Vista, said ahead of the vote. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The Regional Planning Agency is a jointly funded venture of the city and county. An interlocal agreement between governments authorizing the agency is set to expire June 30, 2027, but the resolution grants Wamp authority to end the contract June 30 of this year, provided he gives the planning agency notice by April 1.
Commissioner David Sharpe, D-Red Bank, told his fellow commissioners he was uncomfortable with placing a planning agency under the authority of a single elected official, including its staff, rather than shared control between different city and county leaders.
Hamilton County Commission gives Wamp authority to withdraw from planning agency
“I feel like I’m compromising the voice of the people I represent and allowing their resources to be used in a way that’s detrimental,” he said.
The commissioner said that while 30% to 40% of the county lives in unincorporated neighborhoods, he believes 65% of the county’s revenue was spent in those areas despite residents in municipalities paying more in county taxes.
While Mackey also opposed the proposal, he ultimately voted yes for procedural reasons. The commissioner made an unsuccessful call for a revote in an attempt to flip the results 6-5 against the resolution.
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The agency reports to the Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Organization to coordinate federal, state and local agencies conducting improvements in transportation infrastructure.
Where most conflict and public opposition arises is the agency’s work for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission. The commission serves as zoning board with equal county and city representation and makes recommendations in rezoning cases to the City Council and the County Commission, depending on the location of the case, while also making the final decision on proposed subdivisions.
Kim Helton, an Ooltewah resident, is a member of Hamilton County Residents for Responsible Development. Helton is a recurring figure at both County Commission and Planning Commission meetings during public comment and offered her support to the resolution, arguing that residents in unincorporated areas didn’t have meaningful representation for zoning and subdivision decisions.
“We aren’t One Chattanooga, One Red Bank, One Collegedale, One East Ridge,” she said, referencing Chattanooga’s strategic vision for unity. “We are the unincorporated areas.”
County Commissioner Jeff Eversole, R-Ooltewah, has been a longtime critic of the Planning Commission and — until recently — has repeatedly sought to dissolve it in favor of a county-only commission. Eversole sponsored the resolution to split the county off from the planning agency after receiving legal advice from the county attorney that dissolving the zoning board that the planning agency reports to would be nearly impossible under state law.
“The Regional Planning Agency has let us down in the unincorporated parts of the county,” Eversole said, citing long ambulance wait times and substandard fire protections in areas where the agency has approved large subdivisions. “They did not live up to their end of the bargain.”
In the current fiscal year, the planning agency received around $900,000 from the county and $2.58 million from the city.
Though the funding from the county is bolstered in part by a matching federal grant, pulling out of the planning agency would leave the county between $750,000 and $800,000 to develop a planning department solely for unincorporated neighborhoods, while leaving the regional agency down a quarter of its total budget.
When Commissioner Steve Highlander, R-Harrison, expressed concerns over whether the prospective county planning department would be able to hire staff as experienced and qualified as the regional planning agency, Commission Chair Ken Smith, R-Hixson, joked they “could hire some RPA people” in the aftermath of the drastic funding reduction.
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Wamp, who offered his support for the legislation, has cast the resolution as a process improvement meant to benefit Hamilton County as a whole, rather than an adversarial action against municipalities.
“From Sale Creek to Apison, the planning priorities of rural parts of the county are increasingly different from those of the city of Chattanooga,” he said in a statement sent via text. “A dedicated county planning department will work collaboratively with the RPA to improve the status quo in regional growth planning.”
Wamp has until April 1 to give the planning agency a termination notice. Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Contact growth and development reporter Raymon Troncoso rtroncoso@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6317.