Hamilton County school board member and local business owner Jenny Hill is running for Chattanooga City Council to bring open-minded pragmatism to a new era of city government, she said.
As the city prepares to elect a new mayor and a new council to navigate the post-COVID-19 world, Hill says her penchant for leadership has drawn her to run for election in District 2.
"It is in me to want to make the world better. And I feel called to contribute with the skills that I have been gifted to help make Chattanooga a better place for everybody, not just for people that look like me, who live in my specific neighborhood, but for everybody," she said Wednesday after qualifying for candidacy in the March election.
"COVID-19 has made 2020, a year full of economic hardships, among many types of hardships. And when I think about how that's going to affect our city budget, I recognize that there will be, for some people, an instinct to want to bury our heads in the sand, buckle down and wait for this to go away," she said. "But I see this as an opportunity for us to identify what kind of city we want to be and, with a limited budget, align our investment with our vision and our goals so that when we're on the other side of this recession, we're a stronger city for it."
Hill is the owner of Papercut Interactive, a 19-year-old tech company in Chattanooga, a wife, mother, board member of Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise and former chair of Metropolitan Ministries. Through her experiences, she believes she can help steer the community.
"I believe that Chattanooga needs a shared vision for our future. For me, that includes strong infrastructure, good paying jobs and thriving neighborhoods," she said. "But more important even than my vision is ensuring that we develop a shared vision for our community. One that everybody in Chattanooga understands and is excited about, so that we can set our goals for where we want to be in 10 years, and align our investment with that, with those goals in mind. So that's my number one."
Having represented District 6 on the Hamilton County Board of Education since 2018, Hill said she will use her gifts of sorting complex discussions into solutions to work with the new mayor and other council members to promote that vision.
"I think sometimes people come to tables with an agenda. And that's just not how I operate. And I think my body of work on the school board will show that I ask a lot of questions and do my homework to make decisions," she said, noting that she's learned the value of a "genuinely collaborative" process. "But the reality is we have 180,000 souls in Chattanooga, and 10 people, while elected to vote and lead on behalf of those 180,000 people, [the individual] voices are tremendously important."
(READ MORE: Meet Jenny Hill: 4 things to know about the new District 6 school board member)
Hill is one of two qualified candidates in District 2. Current Councilman Jerry Mitchell has not filed paperwork for re-election.
Contact Sarah Grace Taylor at staylor@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6416. Follow her on Twitter @_sarahgtaylor.