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Visit thriveregionalpartnership.org for more information.
A nonprofit 16-county, three-state partnership that seeks regional answers to transportation, conservation and economic development issues, it seems to us, is a necessary, forward-looking entity that should be able to anticipate problems before they become problems and seek solutions to them.
But nonprofits without enough oversight often become mushy, duplicative money-wasters which live to serve themselves and get little done for the communities they vow to assist.
We hope the Thrive Regional Partnership won't ever become one of those nonprofits.
On Wednesday, the Hamilton County Commission voted to give the agency $300,000 over three years, essentially a seventh of its $700,000 annual budget. The agency's request came without a line-item budget and no description of how the money will be spent. The request also was not included in the county's 2019 budget, although the agency had begun talks with the county in January or February, according to County Mayor Jim Coppinger.
The county mayor said the county was waiting for the city of Chattanooga to put up its share of the money, which didn't occur until early July. Matching foundation money also was dependent on the governments' funding.
Coppinger said the $100,000 request frankly was "not on our radar" in the midst of a $755 million budget but that its funding "buys us their services" of various regional studies, maps and collaborative work "to make sure we're moving in the right direction." The agency's resources, he said, also help the county obtain grants and provide information for use "in recruiting for economic development."
In the whole scheme of things, $100,000 for an organization that is digging into and discussing - and, most importantly, solving - the difficult questions that must be answered around development in the next 40 years seems like a bargain.
And while the Thrive Regional Partnership website shows that it offers a "placemaking course" in which "teams learn strategic approaches to leverage their artistic and cultural assets in order to spark economic vibrancy," a map "for outreach and education about our region's natural treasures," and a design competition for students to imagine the transportation system of the future, we hope it will lean most heavily into what appears to be its real work, a "team of private and public partners dedicated to promoting the safe and efficient movement of people, products and data in and around the tri-state (Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama) region."