Chattarati Articles in Editorial

Tackling the 700 Block of Market Street

2011-09-01T10:30:00Z

Today begins the first Urban Design Challenge presentation series, with proposed work for the 700 block of Market Street. While the opening event in July featuring Alex Krieger was a big hit, with several hundred in attendance, this event is expected to draw a similar crowd. Actually, since this first presentation features a team of locals and a real site, I wonder, will this event actually be more attended than the July opening with Krieger?

This is a site that has a colorful and controversial history, and is compelling to me for a number of reasons:

1. The team. Known as Dynamic Density, this team is led by two architects with whom I share an office, David Barlew and Craig Peavy. Friends and respected colleagues, I know David and Craig to both be passionate for and energetic in their roles as stewards of the built environment. Because they work within feet of me, I have had a couple of hearty conversations on their project, the role of urban design, the value of community engagement and discord, and history as it relates to design. In each case, at the conclusion of the conversation, I, or they, have remarked, “Well, that’s exactly what this Urban Design Challenge is for.”

2. Speed. Dynamic Density was awarded this site and this project in late July, giving them about six weeks to understand the project goals, soak in the history of the project site, consider conceptual schemes and uses for the site, and settle on and develop a strong idea. As a comparison, were this a real architectural commission for a real project, it would require a similar team of multi-disciplinary professionals about 10-12 months, at least, to produce a thorough design for the project. The award that this team stands to receive for participation in the program would pay a licensed architect for about 3-5 days of work. The amount of work that this team will present in a short amount of time is astounding.

3. Downtown. When I think of downtown, I think of the commonly named Central Business District (CBD), which I would define strictly as 6th to 9th, Cherry to Chestnut streets. This is the densest part of the city and, seemingly, the one part of the city that needs the most help. It’s the only part of the city where the original fabric of buildings still dominates the landscape, where the streets feel like outdoor rooms, and where it’s easier to just walk four blocks than drive. However, even Christian Rushing’s favorite urban block, the 700 block of Cherry Street, perhaps the least altered continuous city block in the city, is crowned with a prominent missing tooth (a surface parking lot) at one of its corners, and it likely has more office space that is vacant than occupied. In the rest of the CBD, empty office space abounds. We’ve been trying for years to infuse a viable retail market into the city, and various efforts have been made through the years to animate the public realm in the Central Business District. But the efforts to revitalize Main Street, Frazier Avenue, and other smaller scale urban/commercial neighborhoods have been more successful at achieving a 24-hour-occupied, vibrant public realm.

Granted new projects, such as the EPB building, renovations, like the Read House and Loveman's, and events such as Nightfall have been huge for the CBD, but all in all, over the course of the last 40 years, when retailers left for the malls in the suburbs, and buildings started to be razed to make room for 30 parking spaces here and 50 there, it seems that the momentum of revitalization is elsewhere. And to me this is because the physical and architectural fabric of these smaller neighborhoods can accommodate the more suburban lifestyle that we have all grown accustomed to. We love the old buildings, the animated public sidewalks, the restaurants, the loft apartments, and in the smaller neighborhoods, there’s a chance of being able to park within two blocks. So we can have the best of both worlds. But to animate and truly re-inhabit the CBD (on a 24 hour a day basis) will take a significant lifestyle change and leap of faith by a truly large number of middle income Chattanoogans (in terms of living, playing, and working here). The 700 block has been looked at by multiple developers, many of whom rely on urban development as their bread and butter, and so far none have been able to make the project work. The challenge is not one that we can solve by conventional urban development formulas. The CBD needs our attention.

4. History. The 700 block is a symbol of Chattanooga’s past, present, and future — both because it is a historic site (its Fountain City Drugs was one of our last locally owned, walk-up pharmacies) and because of its current state as a gaping hole in the fabric of the CBD. The most geographically constricted of the six sites, the 700 block begs for an alternative analysis, one that accommodates a certain amount of small-fabric rebuilding of the site in a pattern that would be more in scale with its original development. Or does it? Is the three-to-four-story building fabric from the late 19th century the appropriate scale for a 21st century city? As friend and local expert on architectural history Andy Smith pointed out to me a few weeks ago, the precedent for size and scale in downtown Chattanooga isn’t the three-to-four-story Fountain City drugs building; instead it’s the high rise that began to be built as early as 1906 in the form of Broad Street’s James Building and others that soon followed. The Hamilton Bank tower (now First Tennessee bank building, clad in metal in the 1970s), the Maclellan Building, Chattanooga Bank Building, and nearby Patten Towers are some of the early models, with the Suntrust tower (1970s) being one of the most recent.

But at the same time, as beautiful and dignified as some of our 100-year-old towers are in downtown Chattanooga, I tend to agree with a former professor who claimed that skyscrapers suck the life off our city sidewalks. Or another colleague, who often pointed out that one of the most visited and beloved cities in the world, Paris, France, is composed almost entirely of buildings that are no more than six stories tall — none of which require an elevator. So it doesn’t seem to require 20-story developments to build a thriving 24-hour city. Maybe just six stories. Some slightly less, some slightly more.

Size is just one of the issues sure to be a topic of conversation before, during and after the first presentation by Dynamic Density. I hope the presentation additionally stirs conversation about parking in the downtown core, low and middle income housing, downtown retail, and public realm animation. I hope that it causes people to question how they live in our city, how they move around, with whom they do business, and where they fill their prescriptions.

And as I mentioned before, this is the whole point of the Urban Design Challenge. Chattanooga has an internationally acclaimed reputation as a superb small city that pulled itself up from the doldrums of economic and environmental despair, re-engaged with the place of its birth, the river, and activated the community in a decades-long process of excellent urban design to completely change the course of its history for the better. But we’re not done, and the purpose of the challenge is to reawaken the community to the strengths and necessities of good urban design. For those of you that are interested in this event, please plan to attend. Also, there is a smaller and more casual gathering planned for the following week, September 8, a Community Design Forum, which will present an opportunity for Chattanoogans to reconvene for a moderated discussion about the virtues of the 700 block presentation. The forum will be held at Greenspaces from 5:30-7:30. Hope to see many of you there.

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Urban Design Challenge: Mind the Gap

2011-08-01T08:30:00Z

Last Wednesday night, our community opened the Urban Design Challenge with a presentation by noted architect and urbanist Alex Krieger. The audience was treated to a brief history of American urbanism before the focus of the presentation turned to the indicators of downtown health. It was not surprising that our city has, in one way or another, tried to address all of the concerns he laid out. He was quick to point out that in many respects Chattanooga is well ahead of the curve on many of the indicators. His presentation was incredibly dense, but as relates to the work of the Urban Design Challenge, one thing stood out for me, the slogan “Mind the Gap.”

“Mind the Gap” is a phrase from the ubiquitous sign for the London tube, warning riders to watch their step between platform and train. Used in the presentation, it was a challenge to pay attention to the seams between elements in a city. Taken a step further, we could construe it as an admonishment to address the urban public realm. These are the places such as streets, sidewalks, parks and plazas (to include everything we can see while we’re there). The public realm belongs to all of us. It is the community. One of the major reasons for the turnaround in downtown Chattanooga is the quality of the public realm. As much care was given to planning and designing the public realm as was given to that of the aquarium or any of our other fantastic downtown attractions.

The six sites of the Urban Design Challenge each have the potential to transform our downtown. However, unto itself, a single building or single building program doesn’t have that power. Transformational projects have to embrace and nurture our interstitial spaces. These are the places where our community truly lives.

As Alex was reminding us of conversations that our community conducted in the past, it occurred to me that there was another gap to mind. For the last few years, there has been a gap in our community discourse on design and urbanism. Perhaps the community needed to take deep breath after a three-year-long, $120 million riverfront project. Perhaps our conversation was caught up in the general malaise of the development world since economic conditions worsened. Regardless of the reason, it's important to start talking about these things again.

The ultimate purpose of the Urban Design Challenge is not necessarily to develop shovel-ready plans for specific parcels downtown. The purpose of the Challenge is to reenergize the community conversation regarding our vision for the future of our downtown. Judging by the turnout and evident enthusiasm on display Wednesday, it appears as if we're ready.

Christian Rushing is a principal with Kennedy, Coulter, Rushing & Watson.

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Ron Littlefield: ‘The Great Twelve Month Challenge’

2011-07-28T15:00:00Z

Written by Ron Littlefield, mayor of Chattanooga.

Chattanooga is definitely riding a wave of optimism and good publicity. Today, almost every shortlist of progressive or attractive communities features Chattanooga among the favored places to watch. We've reclaimed our riverfront, remodeled our downtown, restored our quality of life, and rebuilt our economic base. We have even regained our prominence as a center of manufacturing. And now, with our gigabit-quick fiber optic network, we have the fastest Internet service in America.

Popular national magazines and newspapers regularly feature our city in a positive way, and requests from those who want us to come and tell our story continue to pour in at city hall and the Chamber of Commerce. Even in a down economy, our hotel room tax revenues continue to grow at a double-digit rate — reflecting a thriving visitor market.

Still, it could all come unraveled and we could fall back into the dismal, depressed and dirty community of the past if we fail to take the bold and decisive steps needed to maintain our momentum.

And so, the question: "What's next?"

Naturally, many believe that the focus must remain on the downtown and riverfront — at least to a significant degree. And, quite frankly, that will be the case under most any circumstance. It is natural and expected to build on our recognized achievements. As the saying goes, success breeds success.

Looking at things in the cold light of financial reality, however, it must be admitted that we have a number of projects in the development pipeline and a relatively large inventory of unoccupied real estate that will take a few years to absorb. That hard fact coupled with the residual effects of the recent recession will continue to haunt the banking and financial industry and keep new private development constrained for the near future.

With such limitations, the next big thing in our downtown and riverfront almost by necessity will be the new national park on Moccasin Bend and the historic and natural preservation of Stringer's Ridge in North Chattanooga. Those projects need more immediate governmental action and will require a different sort of community attention and focus not directly affected by the private development market.

Accordingly, it must be concluded that the one factor that should dominate our collective energies today — the one thing that will have the greatest positive effect and the one item that we can undertake even now while the national and world economy continues to regroup, recover and heal is to focus with all available intensity and determination on efforts to streamline, simplify, economize and unify our principal local governments. The city and county must move beyond their often rocky coexistence and become focused toward a single common goal and direction.

In order to maintain the momentum in this "most transformed city in America," one great final push remains: Unity, absolute and total unity, and I believe that it can be done and should be done in 12 months.

One year, one purpose, one future, one community, and perhaps, just perhaps, one government. Are we truly interested in progress? Have we actually become a community of the future? Are we clinging to outdated structures of government that might limit our opportunities?

So, some will ask about the recent expiration of the city-county sales tax agreement that served to fund joint agencies for 45 years. Wasn't that intended as a step toward city and county cooperation? Well, it did give the appearance of unity, and years ago at its inception, it was envisioned — in the words of county chief financial officer Lewis Wright — as a means for "training" the county government to fund local nonprofit and social service agencies. In truth and in fact, it did not achieve unity in any respect. Instead, the agreement became a frequent flash point — a bone of contention and the source of almost constant disagreement over the issue of equity and double taxation of city property owners.

After four and a half decades of experience, it became obvious that simply shifting funds from the city to the county did nothing more than create an illusion of more significant county participation in some very important joint responsibilities. It was an exercise in financial sleight of hand that enabled the county to give the appearance of supporting agencies to a greater degree, but those paying only county taxes did not pay the bill. In short, instead of bringing us together it actually drove us further apart. Finally, it became obvious that the agreement simply wasn't working. The best example illustrating the fact that the old formula was structurally flawed is that two smaller municipalities were actually being subsidized by the process: Red Bank and Lookout Mountain. Most would agree that Red Bank might be experiencing some financial stresses, but Lookout Mountain is more than able to pay its fair share to organizations like Allied Arts or important agencies like Orange Grove.

When that old sales tax sharing arrangement was fashioned 45 years ago, Chattanooga and Hamilton County were very different communities than they are today. Chattanooga was an urban island in the midst of a very rural county. Things are different now. Outside Chattanooga, where four decades ago you found fields and pastures and a scattering of mobile homes, today you find upscale subdivisions and million dollar houses. It is now time for Hamilton County to recognize the fact that it has matured into an urban county, and that distinction calls for some very different ways of doing business. Notably, among the larger communities in Tennessee, Hamilton is the only county without some type of local government charter or home rule.

Knox and Shelby counties have home rule charters, and Davidson County, of course, is a metropolitan government — which extends the same sort of local governmental powers countywide. Hamilton County, on the other hand, continues to operate as an appendage of the state with a very rural sort of government that lacks ordinance powers and even has failed to organize a countywide fire service — as provided for under existing state law.

Unlike those chartered counties, Hamilton County (among other things) is unable to adopt and enforce basic local ordinances to deal with abandoned, overgrown or otherwise unkempt properties or even to install a traffic signal without state approval.

With these limitations, Hamilton County attempts to operate somewhat as a municipality and uses general revenue to support or supplement services outside Chattanooga, such as volunteer fire departments or other public service providers. Since general revenue is collected from the entire county and considering that the city of Chattanooga constitutes 58 percent of the county tax base, taxpayers within the city rightfully complain that they are being "double taxed" — once by the city and again by the county. When city properties are taxed to support 100 percent of services within the municipal limits of Chattanooga and then taxed again to support 58 percent of services outside the city, the combined effect is that some county services are depending on the city for almost 85 percent of their support. This isn't fair.

Accordingly, to avoid the recurring issue of double taxation as we move forward, the Chattanooga City Council should make it clear that our temporary support of most nonprofit corporations, arts organizations and social service agencies important to the general health and welfare of the entire county is just that, temporary. It could be gone in 12 months.

Most people should admit and (hopefully) would agree that the present situation with the city carrying the burden of financially supporting social service agencies with countywide responsibility is not fair or sustainable over the long term. The city is already the principal provider of urban services that make our whole community attractive for growth and development. If the elements that make up our quality of life — the "intangibles" cited by Volkswagen as the reason that they chose Chattanooga — are to be maintained, everyone must be involved, and everyone must contribute their fair share.

This, in part, is how we get it done in 12 months. If we set a definite time limit on support of agencies by the city of Chattanooga, there will be an added incentive to move things along.

Didn't we reject "metro" just a few years ago? Actually, it was more like 27 years ago — and a lot has changed since then. We have had three votes on the concept of metropolitan government over the years. The last occasion was 1984. The big issue at that time was the schools. The city and county maintained separate systems back then, and even though the schools would not have been affected by the proposed charter for the new government, two prominent local attorneys shamefully campaigned that the proposal would lead to forced busing of students. That was enough to doom the issue to failure.

Since that time, we have changed the form of city government from a five-member commission elected at large to a strong mayor form of government with a nine-member council elected from single member districts. Even that change was opposed by many in the community, and fears were ignited that the proposed "new" form of government would double taxes. The initial referendum on changing from the commission form of government failed, but the change to the more representative form of council government was installed under an order from the federal court. The mayor-council form of government has now been in place since 1990 — 21 years — and much of Chattanooga's positive transformation has taken place during this period. Of course, the much feared and loudly threatened doubling of local property taxes never happened.

Following the last metro vote in 1984, the citizens of Chattanooga passed a referendum to merge the previously separate city and county schools into a single countywide system. In spite of critics, most rational and reasonable people would agree that in terms of education things have gotten better. We have learned that we can change things and that change can be a good thing. Some might argue that the merged school system is still a subject of controversy, but such is the case in almost any other community. The one thing that we have achieved is unity of purpose in education. The current political wrestling and wrangling, the factions on the school board, and the selection of the next school superintendent are temporary and transitory. The fact that the previously divided local schools are now one system makes it absolutely necessary that such problems get resolved so that the whole community can move forward together. We need that sort of unity — the necessity of unity — in general government.

What has been the experience with unified governments in other places? Of course, Nashville is the best example for us in Tennessee, but there are many more. In the neighboring state of Georgia, there are at least six merged governments including Columbus-Muscogee County, Athens-Clark County, and perhaps soon Dalton-Whitfield County. In Kentucky, Louisville-Jefferson County adopted metropolitan government in 2003 following its sister community, Lexington-Fayette County, that enacted "urban county" government in 1974.

I have studied, visited and compared consolidated governments over the years. Further, I have contacted and interviewed officials in such communities to determine how things worked out after the mergers were accomplished. To put it briefly and bluntly, I have never found a community or a leader in any such community that would reverse the process and go back to separate governments if the opportunity presented itself. If your only interest is low taxes, it should be noted that Nashville-Davidson County has the lowest combined tax rate of any of Tennessee's large cities. At this writing, Nashville has been selected by Forbes magazine as one of the top five "boom towns" in the United States.

Many will say that we can't do unification until all incorporated communities agree to be a part of it. This is just an attempt to dodge the issue. In practice, there are many combined city and county governments with smaller communities that have retained their autonomy within the boundary of the larger incorporated government. In fact, there are several separately incorporated municipalities inside metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County. The consolidated governments of Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Miami and others also have separate "satellite" cities within the greater corporate boundary.

The issue of what we do with the smaller communities cannot be used as an excuse for doing nothing.

How do we start? To quote Alice in Wonderland, we "begin at the beginning." Quite simply we begin with a small group of interested citizens to put meat on the bones of the idea — to examine our needs and our prospects for the future, to make choices, and to begin writing a charter.

How would it work? Nashville and some other consolidated governments provide services based on two service districts: the urban services district (which usually comprises the old municipal limits of the major city) and the general services district (which is made up of the remainder of the county, including the previously unincorporated area). As implied by the titles, the higher level of service is provided in the urban services district and a higher tax rate is applied accordingly.

Considering the basic categories of services provided by local governments, let's look at questions in three vital areas:

1. Public safety

—With the realization that almost 60 percent of Chattanooga's police force lives outside the city limits shouldn't the need for expanded, concurrent authority and responsibility with Hamilton County be reviewed?

—Should the question of tax bases — city v. county taxes — be a factor in determining who pays for and who receives emergency services? The controversy over free take-home vehicles for city police officers who live outside Chattanooga and the limiting of city fire services to properties within the corporate limits are good illustrations for this issue.

—Has the loss of expensive properties due to slow response by volunteer emergency personnel (as reported in recent news stories) or lack of full-time professional fire service in unincorporated areas made the community more receptive to the concept of a countywide fire department? What about countywide emergency services in general?

—In regards to all our city and county needs for an urban level of public safety services, is it possible that the entire issue can be addressed in terms of unified training — and a new regional training facility?

2. Public works

—In terms of providing the most efficient system to manage development, wouldn't it be advisable to totally consolidate local government engineering, building permit operations, etc., and adopt uniform codes?

—Other than the fact that public garbage, curbside recycling and trash collection would be provided in the urban services district as compared with a more basic level of street maintenance, etc., in the general services district, what else would be different in terms of public works services under unified government?

—Shouldn't the city and the county work together to meet mandates and assure a continued high level of environmental quality? State and federal environmental regulations are becoming more burdensome, and soon the responsibility for environmental matters will no longer be confined to the corporate limits. Perhaps the greatest need and the greatest opportunity for combined services is in the creation of a comprehensive water quality authority to manage, regulate and maintain all community features related to water, sewer and stormwater services.

3. Parks and recreation

—Can't we even agree to join forces in creating and maintaining important quality of life resources? Existing state law currently provides for consolidation of such city and county departments. The city and the county already share some responsibility jointly for funding, maintaining and patrolling the Tennessee Riverpark, segments of the greenway system, and some other facilities. The support of golf courses, civic centers and recreation centers is still a city responsibility even though many facilities are used continuously by citizens from all over the region.

—Before the new practice of charging higher fees for non-city residents goes too far, shouldn't steps be taken to gather these diverse resources under a single ownership and management structure for the benefit of everyone in Chattanooga, Hamilton County and the surrounding region?

We are currently and actively seeking interested citizens to address the consolidation of these specific divisions of public service or to help work out the general details of merging the principal governments. One thing learned over the years in Chattanooga is that the best way to make positive change happen is to involve as many people as possible drawn from every element of our population. People tend to support and will work to achieve those plans that they actually helped to create in the first place.

Let me emphasize that this is not an exercise in immediate public sector job reduction; it is an opportunity to provide better service with lower cost and maximum efficiency as the community grows. Let me also emphasize that Chattanooga is growing, and the entire region will continue to grow. Current city and county employees have nothing to fear. In short, we are seeking to remove redundant layers of administrative bureaucracy and more effectively stretch our limited resources. One of the principal benefits of consolidation: lower taxes. The fact should not be overlooked that Nashville has been able to maintain a comparatively low tax rate while maintaining effective, efficient and economical public services in spite of their "boom town" status.

What about elected officials — how many council districts and administrators should serve a combined government? Both the city and the county have had good experience with legislative representatives (City Council and County Commission) elected from single-member districts. Also, both have similar administrative functions with a single chief executive (mayor) with departmental administrators heading the principal governmental functions.

At this point, we do not wish to presume too many details or preempt too much of the work of an appointed charter commission, but it is probably a safe assumption and the most advisable course of action for the new government to closely mirror the form of the existing governments that it will replace. The exception might be that the legislative body (council or commission) probably should be larger — perhaps 11 to 19 members — in order to achieve the desired diversity of representation. Considering that we have recently completed a new census and that we are presently engaged in the redistricting process, there is no better time to address this issue.

There is an alternative to pursuing full-blown consolidated or unified government and that would be for the county, Hamilton County, to seek its own charter — home rule for the county — with enough local governmental powers to enable it to operate in a more urban, municipal-like fashion. One often cited misstatement is that all that is needed to achieve metro government is for Chattanooga to give up its charter. It sounds so simple — even though it is practically and legally impossible for a number of reasons. But as things stand now, such an action would not create metro government; it would only create a larger unincorporated area with no resources to support necessary urban services.

Can anyone imagine that Hamilton County would have the financial ability, political will and other resources needed to step up and accept responsibility for fire and police services, for public works, for sewer services, and the Electric Power Board in the city — if the municipal government of Chattanooga suddenly ceased to exist?

On the other hand, if the county will take the initiative and move toward home rule, it could set the stage for something like the unified system of "urban county" government as found in Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky. If Hamilton County took the necessary steps to draft and adopt a charter containing the right provisions and powers, it might then be possible for Chattanooga or any of the other municipalities within Hamilton County to hold a referendum on the question of merging with or otherwise joining the new urban government. I for one would commit to support the initiative and cheer the process along.

In closing, we have options for action, but not an option for inaction. We cannot afford to do nothing. If the county does not wish to move ahead on home rule, then can we agree to jointly pursue a new effort to achieve metropolitan government?

This is an interesting and pivotal time in the unfolding destiny of our community. We have made great strides. We have overcome the indignity of being cast as the "dirtiest city in America," and we have survived the Great Recession. We have made great progress, but there is more to do. We have become a community that is not content with the status quo, and we do not intend to sit down and rest.

Let it be said flatly and absolutely that at this point in time there is nothing more important in determining our community's future than the need to achieve greater unity. The environment for new private development is in a rebuilding phase. We are faced with a time in the organizational structure and leadership development of our community when all the ingredients for change are falling into place. The time for unifying our governments is now. We must not allow this opportunity to slip away.

We must act right away to appoint an exploratory committee made up of a cross-section of our community. That committee must move quickly to develop standards and guidelines — a structure for a new government. Then a charter must be drafted, and preparations for a referendum must be complete by August of 2012.

We have talked about the need for unified government for more than 25 years. We are now embarking on a regional planning effort to guide our growth for the next 40 years. Good growth will come with good government. Let's make it happen in 12 months.

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Daniel Ryan, Tech Director, to Join Obama Campaign

2011-07-21T14:30:00Z

Chattanooga-based developer Daniel Ryan will join Obama for America as a senior Web developer in August.

Ryan joined Chattarati as technology director in September 2009 after building the liveblogging application, OnLocation, we used for the mayor's state of the city address and subsequent live events. Since then, he developed PressWorks, the custom CMS powering this website, and has played an integral, behind-the-scenes role at Chattarati and The PressCore Inc.

Ryan also co-founded DevChatt, the annual tech conference and expo, and sits on the board of the Young Professionals Association of Chattanooga.

He will be relocating to Chicago for his new position in the Obama campaign and stepping down as Chattarati's technology director next month.

"My 11 years in the Scenic City have been the best of my life. I love Chattanooga and will deeply miss it while I'm away," Ryan said. "It's my belief in the future of the city that led to my involvement with Chattarati, YPAC, DevChatt, etc., and I continue to believe that Chattanooga can be a premier city for education, industry and technology."

"But now I've been asked and humbly accepted a role with a campaign that I know will be a part of American history," he said.

Upon the announcement, Publisher John Hawbaker said, "Daniel is a collaborator and a friend who we will all miss greatly, and his impact on the way Chattarati delivers news and public information cannot be overstated. Through his vision, talent and creativity, Daniel hasn’t just made Chattarati better, he has made Chattanooga better."

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Fleischmann’s Republican Problem

2011-07-20T08:00:00Z

On the surface, all seemed well in Chuck Fleischmann's camp.

In August, he squeezed out a narrow win for the Republican nomination. In November, he breezed through the general election. In January, he was sworn in as one of many freshman lawmakers.

It wasn't the Tea Party revolution that buoyed him to office, and there was no mandate for his election. Tennessee's 3rd District is a GOP stronghold, and whoever won the nomination last year had a long career in front of him (or her) as a legislator. That's part of what made the primary so competitive, so pressing. So nasty.

Fleischmann's re-election campaign should have started up around March of 2012 with all the accouterments of a modern political machine — a little less baby-kissing, a lot more tweeting. There would be a few cameos at the Club for Growth. Better not forget Anderson and Union counties, the two that gave him the edge in the nomination fight. Hamilton County, which went for Robin Smith in the primary, would come around. It's his home, and he its congressman.

Or so it seemed.

Before the new year had even begun, the rumor mill began to turn. It was inconspicuous at first. Smith was weighing a primary challenge, it said, or Weston Wamp was interested in the seat long held by his father.

It was hard to take the rumors too seriously until the would-be candidates started talking about it on the record. Wamp was the first to the New York Times. "I am taking a serious look," he recently said of a primary challenge. A week later, Smith told the Times Free Press she's "not going to rule out" a run.

Two Hamilton County Republicans, brand names in the 3rd District, are publicly weighing a primary challenge seven months into Fleischmann's first term. It's not his party-line voting record they and their supporters object to. That record, it should be noted, would have been there regardless of who won the nomination — Tea Party or not. This is inside baseball.

It's hard to tell what's happening behind closed doors right now. No one has formally announced, and Fleischmann's office is apparently "not thinking about politics."

I am thinking about politics though, and I have a few theories about these latest shots across the bow:

— The primary last August decided very little except that Hamilton County Republicans didn't like the outcome. Perhaps Fleischmann hasn't passed the "one of us" litmus test local conservatives are so fond of.

— Zach Wamp had more of a preference in the primary than he originally indicated. Maybe it was Smith, maybe it was someone else. Maybe he just wanted the seat kept warm for his progeny.

— According to the Nashville Post, Wamp has been shopping his son's candidacy around the Beltway in hopes of signing on a strategist. Reportedly, there's been no takers for what could become a messy gig.

— If there is a primary challenger, it would be one or the other — not both — and the politics would be toxic. Sen. Bob Corker's up for re-election in '12. Would he campaign alongside Fleischmann the incumbent, Smith the former party boss, or Wamp the heir apparent?

— Maybe no one will run against Fleischmann in next year's primary, but there are some in the local party who'd like to see it happen. Wamp and Smith aren't operating in a vacuum, and their trial balloons could simply be meant to see what kind of support is out there.

No matter which way you shake it, Fleischmann has a tougher road ahead of him than the district's past proclivities suggest. He has a Republican problem in his own backyard, and it's not going away.

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To Read: ‘Winds of Suspicion Reach Gail Force in the Palmgren Case’

2011-07-14T12:00:00Z

Bill Colrus's latest column is one of the most sobering reads since this saga began. It gets to the heart of what makes the case of the missing Signal Mountain woman so fascinating while maintaining a staunch innocent-until-proven-guilty stance toward her husband. Highly recommended.

Via nooga.com

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Give the Men Tobacco and Leave the Women Alone

2011-07-01T14:30:00Z

The most any writer can reasonably hope to gain for his troubles is a fair hearing in life and a little appreciation after he's gone. Ernest Hemingway achieved the rare feat of becoming the world's most famous novelist while he was still very much alive. For his trouble he received a Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and at least one good pot shot from most of the literary lights of his day. William Faulkner attacked his simple, declarative sentences by saying "he has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." Vladimir Nabokov dismissed his overtly "masculine" subject matter as nothing more than "deep" boy stories. Gore Vidal, who hated everyone, seemed unable to forgive Hemingway for the way he treated older writers who had helped him get his start, namely Sherwood Anderson and F. Scott Fitzgerald. As the 20th century drew to a close the P.C. brigade had added predictably and for good measure that he was a misogynist, a homophobe and a racist. By 1992, Hemingway was so deeply out of fashion that Frederick Busch of the New York Times felt the need to apologize for even admiring him, which he did in an unfortunate little article entitled, "Reading Hemingway Without Guilt."

One thing even his critics never discounted, however, was the enormous influence his style had on other writers. This was already apparent in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for "his mastery of the art of narrative ... and for the influence he has exerted on contemporary style." Fifty years after his suicide on July 2, 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, it is taken for granted that Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any writer of the 20th century.

Until recently, I found this preoccupation with Hemingway's style a bit off- putting. It seemed to imply a lack of substance — why else would all the focus be on his style? Thinking thus, I avoided him for the first several years of my reading life.

When I did finally decide to read Hemingway for myself, the first thing I noticed was that I didn't notice his style. What stood out to me was not his tough, terse prose or his repeated use of "and" in place of commas, rather it was just how deeply substantive he was.

My favorite Hemingway short story provides a good illustration. In "The Butterfly and the Tank," a man is killed in a crowded Madrid bar for playing a practical joke. This is the story, but it is not the point. The story begins, "On this evening I was walking home from the censorship office to the Florida Hotel and it was raining. So about halfway home I got sick of the rain and stopped into Chicote's for a quick one. It was the second winter of the shelling in the siege of Madrid and everything was short including tobacco and people's tempers and you were a little hungry all the time and would become suddenly and unreasonably irritated at things you could do nothing about such as the weather." Chicote's is crowded; full of smoke, singing, laughter, men in uniform and the smell of wet leather coats. As the singing grows louder, a civilian in a brown suit squirts a waiter with a flit gun. Everyone laughs except the waiter, who is indignant. Delighted with his success, the man squirts the waiter twice more, lightheartedly. By now the music is dying down and three men in uniform grab the man and rush him out into the street where you hear the smack of a fist hitting his mouth. Moments later the man comes back into the bar. "He had the flit gun again and as he pushed, wide eyed and white faced into the room he made one general, unaimed, challenging squirt, holding it toward the whole company." Almost immediately the man is pushed into a corner of the bar and shot.

When the narrator returns to Chicote's the next day the manager solemnly informs him that "in the flit gun ... he had eau de cologne. It was not a joke in such bad taste, you see?" As they ponder the previous night's events, we learn that the man had bought the flit gun and cologne to use for a joke at a wedding and had announced his intention. He had bought them across the street. There was a label on the cologne bottle with the address. The bottle was in the wash room and it was there he had filled the flit gun. He had come into Chicote's on account of the rain.

Eventually the manager, with his "relentless Spanish logic," concludes that it was really just gaiety and that no one should have taken offense. "Listen," said the manager, "How rare it is. His gaiety comes in contact with the seriousness of the war like a butterfly ... like a butterfly and a tank."

Speaking of his years teaching writing at the University of Iowa, the late Barry Hannah voiced the following complaint about the current state of American literature:

... Stories had simply become too small, they took such a low altitude. Take a couple, and then someone would acknowledge something in a Kroger parking lot about their relationship and he'd get back in his car and drive on. People were not going for much. They were going for very limited American realism, which is a bore to me. I really want stories that are rippers in the old sense. Tales of high danger, high adventure and high exploration. Tales that are as wonderful as frontier tales.

Much of what Hemingway's early critics said about him was true. He did use simple language. He did write tales about hunting, fishing, bullfighting and war, or "boy" stories if you prefer. And he did repay the kindness a few writers showed him early on with disrespect, if not outright cruelty. But I am almost certain Ernest Hemingway never had an epiphany in a Kroger parking lot. If he did, at least he thought enough of posterity not to try to turn it into literature. For that, if for nothing else, he deserves our admiration and respect, now more than ever.

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Chattarati Turns 3 Today

2011-07-01T12:30:00Z

There were probably only a hundred local Twitter users in the early part of 2008. And in a mid-sized town with a low adoption rate of new technology, the general rule then was that you followed everyone who was local. That's how I met John Hawbaker.

In April of that year, I received a message from someone I only knew as @jehawbaker. He asked me to contribute to a group blog about Chattanooga. It's called Chattarati, he told me in an email. To which I replied, "Sure thing," but to myself I thought, "I give it two months."

Fast forward three years, and Chattarati has lasted much longer than I ever expected. It's grown into a number of areas I never would have imagined. And I've found myself in the middle of much of it. That group blog, cheekily described as "everything we love and hate about the Scenic City," has become a place for reporting, data visualization, research, multimedia, cultural and social critique, liveblogging, and analysis of some of the most important issues facing our region.

It's still a blog in theory, I guess, in that some of our work is geared toward short posts, repurposing external media, and interjecting the occasional opinion. But to look at Chattarati only through that lens is to miss something bigger that's transpired on this website, the media landscape, and our city. We were an early adopter of social media and liveblogging for example, and I suspect that our efforts in data visualization will soon be replicated across a number of local outlets. At the least, Chattarati has pushed the envelope in terms of what consumers expect from local media, either directly or indirectly.

Media is changing, because the tools to produce it and distribute it are changing. More importantly, the way it's being consumed is bringing about that change at a very rapid rate. Three years ago, the landscape looked much different than it does now. And three years later, it will be something else entirely. The lines between production and consumption will continue to blur. Websites will behave more like applications than publications. News, information and entertainment will be tailored to the individual rather than a broad audience. This has already happened on a meta level. Twitter has turned every consumer into a publisher for his or her circle of influence. "What do you want right now?" is the question preceding every Google search.

In spite of this shift, or because of it, the need for a good news product has never been greater. The "noise" of social media is here to stay. The demand for good content, which is still king in my mind, is rising. New business models are emerging. Technology and the distributive power of the Web are forever altering the way we look at, report on, and understand big issues and big stories. The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica won a Pulitzer last year for its in-depth and engaging reporting on the financial meltdown. The work for which it won the award appeared almost exclusively online. A small staff, operating at a fraction of the cost of the New York Times, was able to use new publishing tools to expose the corruption on Wall Street that led up to the banking crisis. Some of the methods they employed didn't exist a decade ago. The economic and journalistic models fueling their work are just one example of what's to come for an industry that will become increasingly splintered and more diverse in the next three years.

Chattanooga is changing too. Two weeks after Chattarati launched, Volkswagen announced it would build its first U.S. manufacturing plant at Enterprise South. It along with Alstom Power and Amazon.com are fundamentally altering the economic landscape of our region. In the near future, moderate population growth will continue to stress our resources. Consolidation of our governments will be necessary. Chattanooga is a regional experience, and it happens outside the city limits as much as it does in them. We have to come together to address the challenges posed to our infrastructure, our emergency responders, our social services, and our education system.

Because of this, Chattanooga needs more media voices. Not because the current ones are insufficient, but because the challenges we face as a city, as a county, and as a region are so great. We need more participation in the civic process, in planning, in economic development, and in education. We need the collective brainpower of our citizens to help address and solve these challenges.

I have no idea if Chattarati will be around in three years — if we'll be one of those voices or not. As an unfunded operation, there are inherent limitations to what we can do. But I hope we are a part of that discussion. There's so much we want to accomplish. There's so much we have to learn from this place we call home.

In the near future, we will be working on two projects that I'm quite excited about. The first is a Web app that lets residents find and share information about their neighborhoods. The second will be a collection of resources geared toward those who want to become more engaged in local government. I look forward to working on these projects with our contributors. And I look forward to sharing them will all those who follow this website.

Chattarati turns 3 today, and as the editor in chief, I'd like to thank a lot of people who make it possible: To John Hawbaker, who gives it vision, to Daniel Ryan, who keeps it running, to Aaron Collier, who keeps it grounded, to Joe Lance, who asks tough questions, to our contributors, past and present, who've given so much of themselves to it, and to our readers, who give it life and inspire us to do better work.

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Parsing the ‘Offensive Images’ Bill

2011-06-30T11:00:00Z

Written by Janie Parks.

The Tennessee Legislature recently passed a law, sure to effect many Chattanooga residents, which expands the class A misdemeanor of harassment to include posts on social networking sites. The law provides that harassment includes:

Any display of an image in a manner in which there is a reasonable expectation that it will be viewed by the victim by telephone, in writing or by electronic communication, without legitimate purpose and:
With malicious intent to frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress; or
In a manner the Defendant knows, or reasonably should know, would frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities; and
As a result of the communication, the person is frightened, intimidated or emotionally distressed.

A violation of this law will carry a sentence of up to 30 hours of community service or a fine of $100.

The intention behind the law is to prevent cyberbullying among children and teenagers. The law focuses much of its attention on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter where users are able to post pictures and comments on others' walls with little restrictions.

In an effort to clarify the scope of the rule, state Sen. Bill Ketron states, "The images must be targeted at a specific person. If you randomly stumble upon something online that was offensive, this law would not apply."

Many critics of the law feel that it is overly broad, creating a slippery slope when it comes to deciding what constitutes harassment and what doesn't. On its face it is hard to determine if the law applies only to minors or if it applies to adults as well. Many also feel that this new legislation will open a Pandora's box with respect to control over the type of material that can be posted on the Internet.

The law is set to go into effect on July 1, 2011.

Janie Parks is an intern with the law firm Davis & Hoss P.C. A version of this article originally appeared on the firm's blog, Tennessee Criminal Law Review.

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Split the Difference on the Sales Tax Collection Fee

2011-05-20T13:30:00Z

During a February meeting between Chattanooga's finance administrator and City Council members, it became quite clear that the city had little incentive to renew its sales tax agreement with Hamilton County. The reasons why are long, but suffice it to say it stems from two factors: under Tennessee law, the revenue would revert back to the jurisdiction where it originates without the agreement; and there is a deeply embedded desire amongst city officials to end the era of double taxation for Chattanooga residents.

Still, it's also become quite clear that several vital services in Hamilton County will bear the brunt of the fallout. The health department in particular has become a political dodgeball being thrown back and forth between Georgia Avenue and 11th Street over the past few months — alarmingly so.

And, as James Harrison reported on Wednesday, three mental health centers that were funded under the agreement may now lose local, public support. The latest blow came when they were shut out of the city's recent $201 million budget proposal.

The agencies — the AIM Center, the Johnson Mental Health Center and the Fortwood Center — had requested a combined $327,444 from the city after being told by Mayor Jim Coppinger they could no longer count on funding from Hamilton County. As high as that amount may seem, it's relatively small when compared to the size of the budgets being considered by both governments.

But there's one caveat: The money has to come from somewhere.

City hall spokesman Richard Beeland told several reporters on Wednesday that since the county trustee's office plans to begin charging the city a 1 to 2 percent fee for collecting sales tax revenues — "charging us for an electronic transfer," as he put it to me — Chattanooga can't afford to fund these agencies. And its budget proposal sets aside $735,000 to cover the cost of a 2 percent fee.

(The fee probably covers more than just an electronic transfer. There's actual work being done behind the scenes, I hope, and the fee was merely waived in the past. At minimum, the county is within legal bounds to do so.)

County Trustee Bill Hullander has not yet said whether that fee will be 1 or 2 percent. There's an opportunity there if city and county officials can end, or at least put on hold, the riff between them.

If the county agreed to only charge a 1 percent fee, that would free up more than $367,000 for the city to support these agencies in the coming fiscal year. After that, the agencies would be expected to go through the same application process as other city-funded agencies, or they would have time to work out new funding arrangements from other sources.

The county would receive some money to offset its expenses, and the city would fund programs it already supports. Most importantly, the services these agencies provide for their clients, which include residents of both Chattanooga and Hamilton County, can continue with full funding for another year.

Everybody wins. But there has to be political will to make it happen.

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