Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke.The Chattanooga mayoral leadership of Andy Berke has been a mixed bag, and we hoped a strong conservative candidate would emerge to engage him in his bid for a second term.
Unfortunately, none did, so in the March 7 election he faces former Councilman Dave Crockett, 71, whose list of promises sounds like it came from President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; first-term Councilman Larry Grohn, 69, an active Chattanooga Tea Party member but whose campaign hasn't promised conservative governance; and Chris Long, 53, a businessman who believes the city's stormwater regulations are holding back its development.
Given those choices, we believe Berke deserves endorsement for a second term.
Under Berke, the city remains in sound financial shape and has not needed a tax increase. Under the mayor's leadership, the city has invested more money in hiring police officers and in technology to stop crime. In addition, the city has helped bring in new employers and has created an Innovation District in which business start-ups find common ground.
It's true, as many have charged, that most of the visible growth and change under the current administration has been downtown. While improvement downtown benefits all Chattanoogans, less visible enhancements have been made for all city residents. Most suburban residents, for instance, may not see the additional investments in the city's Youth and Family Development Centers, take advantage of lower-cost Internet for public school students on free- and reduced-lunches or know about the creation of additional early learning slots for younger children, but all those have occurred under Berke.
The mayor has taken some deserved criticism, and some not, for his Violence Reduction Initiative (VRI). Rolled out in 2014 to reduce gang violence, the program has not been as successful as he and others promised. While property crime is down, shootings and homicides are not. In the mayor's defense, a police force twice the size of the city's can't be everywhere and is powerless to stop violence that occurs at the spur of the moment.
The city's paving program also has its positives and negatives. While the street paving budget has doubled under Berke's tenure, it probably should be doubled again. Just to name one well-traveled area, the spot on McCallie Avenue where eastbound traffic meets merging traffic from eastbound Bailey Avenue is holier than a tent revival.
On the negative side of the ledger, we've differed with the administration about the city's rollout of bike lanes on Broad Street and ones planned on the major corridor of Martin Luther King/Bailey Avenue. The Broad Street curbs are a dangerous eyesore, and bicycles are rarely seen using the lanes.
For his part, Berke admits the city didn't do "enough engagement" on the Broad Street lanes. "We expected some degree of response," he said, "but it was probably more than we anticipated."
We hope Berke, if re-elected, and his administration will be more transparent in a second term. While the mayor touts his policies of putting the city budget online, of the city's ChattaData portal and of his social media engagement, individuals and groups with city business say he is not as accessible as he should be, that his use of certain messaging apps makes access to city information difficult if not impossible, and that city business, to use the term of one councilman, moves "glacially."
We hope Berke also will offer more accessibility, more outreach to suburban neighborhoods and actual workforce development - in an office he recently created - to help local residents earn the skills for some of the city's living-wage jobs coming to this thriving city.
Crockett, who served three terms on the City Council and later as director of the city's Office of Sustainability, believes his bold vision of high-speed rail between Chattanooga and Atlanta would lead to 150 flights a day out of Chattanooga's airport, some 1.7 million passengers per year, a big "employment boom" and a transformed education system. He further says his plans would "launch the largest community reorganization plan for Chattanooga's neighborhoods that's ever been done," "create 2,000 jobs in neighborhoods" and have an "integrated plan for every single strategy."
Grohn, who has questioned much of the mayor's agenda throughout his term, says council members are told how to vote. The council, he asserts, has been "every bit a rubber-stamp for the mayor," and the mayor "is on a crusade to remove as much power from the City Council as possible." He further charges the administration has "no accountability for its budgeting-for-outcomes goals," the "perception is VRI has been a total failure" and the administration's "corrupt use of political power is as bad as I've ever seen."
If he were elected, he has suggested he would implement "robust workforce development," an affordable housing task force and - if no other means are necessary - a charter school for trades and technical education.
Last week, Grohn ended up with egg on his face when documents he interpreted as evidence that Berke either was setting his sites on a 2018 gubernatorial bid or a job in a potential Hillary Clinton administration turned out to be a master's degree homework assignment done by his chief of staff and Berke's plans for his current re-election.
While a slot in a Clinton administration or a gubernatorial bid (which might have been derailed by a 2015 personal scandal) would not be unthinkable for the 48-year-old Baylor School graduate and University of Chicago Law School-educated lawyer, we believe an opponent serious about unseating the mayor would have far more evidence before making such a charge.
Long says he supports "opportunity for everybody," government partnerships with community groups and development beyond the downtown he refers to as "Emerald City," but he says nothing will get done if the city's stormwater fees aren't reduced.
We like parts of each of the platforms of the mayor's challengers but believe Berke offers the most realistic plan for the city at this time.