Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Tuesday, January twenty-seventh meeting of the Chattanooga City Council.

We are hereby called to order.

Um, I would like to invite Councilman Harvey to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation.

And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh today I want to do something a little bit different.

Um today commemorates uh the liberation of Auschwitz.

And uh because of that, I'd like for us to take a moment of silence that we would never forget the atrocities that happened uh during World War Two.

And uh that we would never let that happen again.

So let's uh take a moment to reflect and remember those uh millions of folks who lost their lives.

That would be councilman.

Thank you.

Uh without objection, the minutes will stand.

Council, let's take a look at our agenda items for today.

I'll point out to you that we are going to have a couple of committee meetings after we go over our agenda.

We have um a planning item under final reading.

However, I have been advised uh by councilwoman burst that we do actually have one other condition that needs to be added to this item.

And so um the attorney's office has provided us counsel with an alternate version that councilman burrs has requested be read today, which will of course put that back to a first reading.

Um so when the time comes, I would ask that um we get a motion to approve the alternate version.

Um also ordinances under first reading.

Um is not able to be here today, and she has asked that we defer item A until the third, so one more week.

Um item B is in my district, and as I am chair and cannot make a motion, I would ask that we get a motion to table this.

Uh, this was the item that um has uh had some interesting situation because of the uh equivalency mapping, and we are hopeful that this can get taken care of in BOSA instead of um as part of a change to the zoning.

Um and then item C from uh council or vice chairwoman Noel, uh to my understanding that one is good to go.

Okay.

Okay, no.

Oh, item C and Curtis Street.

Oh, you have take it away, Councilman Dotley.

Thank you so less, Madam Chair.

So for this one, um, it is a request uh to add a condition to this one.

And the condition is uh she wants to read the recommended for approval of the planning commission version.

Uh and that for all units, parking must be the condition is the parking.

Our uh parking must be in the rear alleyway, which is called Brown Alley, um, for both if if this passes for both um the new construction and also for existing parking.

So our parking must be in the rear alley slash brown alley is what it was called on the map.

So uh if the developer is here and okay with that, then yes, we'll be okay with that condition.

Otherwise, no okay.

Um, and that would be the actual parking in the alley or parking access from the alley.

Parking in the app that part they have to drive to the back and park.

He'll they are supposed to have parking access through the yeah through the alley.

Yes, got it.

Okay.

Okay, so we will take that one from the top.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, madam chair.

Nine seven nine two on that one.

Okay.

Great.

Okay, council moving on uh councilman councilman Clark.

Uh Madam Chair, it's uh the I'm moving with you into resolutions.

Okay, great.

Okay, welcome.

That's all good resolutions together.

Okay, sorry, I got a little hand of you.

No, you're terrific.

All right.

Uh this is in regards to the resolution uh for the economic development fund for the Chattanooga Airport.

Uh in Councilwoman Burns' absence today, she's asked me to make the motion uh to approve this.

And I would hope to have a second with approval from the council.

Uh this is uh initiative that covers both our district with the majority of the airport in her district.

Uh but we shared borders with access to Shalifer Road and Lee Highway.

So we're really excited about this fund.

Uh we hope that we can help continue to grow funds such as this.

Maybe this is a message to the administration that this is something that we need to do to attract uh more flights other than to Houston but beyond, so that we can enter into a competitive market with other cities.

So anyway, that's our intent for item A.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Council, do we have any other questions about resolutions?

Um economic development, city attorney, parks and outdoors, or public works or wastewater.

Oh, yeah.

Are we?

I'm sorry.

I'm still up.

Yep, compared to public works D.

This is the resolution.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This is the resolution authorizing the administrative department of public works to enter to a three-year agreement with waterways.

Uh Jay, would you like to come and discuss some of the uh compromise?

Is that permissible, Madam Chair?

Certainly.

Thank you.

One of the things um there will probably be a brief presentation uh during the public works.

Um councilman Davis's uh has allowed us to enter a presentation from an expert on this.

Uh but Jay, would you like to read one of the clauses that we have added into the homeowners agreement?

Uh I guess is a is a really good victory on a compromise and how we've been able how we'll be able to allow this program to move forward with it in its current form.

Uh we've actually added a few things in there, so there's five different entries that we have on the homeowners agreement.

Uh the first one deals with bordering around the native planning.

The bordering is going to be something that isolates that rain smart process or project on the uh actual property, and it will it gives it a more of a landscape look.

Um native plants areas must be maintained no taller than 10 inches in height and from at two feet from the road.

So that's so that we have clearance for site visibility and all that stuff for cars.

The newer modified planning areas must use only native species before there was a it was okay to have native species and uh non-natives combined.

So now it's just gonna be a native species in those areas specifically.

And we have the last one, which is homeowners get three times that they can be out of compliance before they will be removed from the program completely.

Thank you.

And thank you, Jay.

I just want to point out the key part here is the native or the mixing of the native grass and the non-native grass.

Yes, sir.

And how this all came about, because I'm actually kind of quite amused as to some of the emails we've been getting because we there was this perception that we were trying to not renew the waterways contract.

That was never the issue here, and we've never discussed it at this day.

There was an enforcement issue because we have a participant in this program who has not quite led up to the standards of this program and which uh generated complaints in my district.

Uh it was evaluated and we agreed that we will put some guardrails in.

I think that are actually uh more beneficial to the program because it actually increases the ecological value of what the program is designed to do, which is to capture, which is to allow those routes to capture some of the stormwater.

So I just want to be clear because I know we've been getting some of the emails.

I don't know if that generated internally that the council has always been in favor of this program, but we have to put guard roles on programming when people step outside of those, so it's equitable across the landscape in our city.

But today I'm very glad to say that I will support this.

Uh, we will have a second and this will more than likely uh even with some of the absence of our council members.

Um we will support this with that clause because I think it protects other homeowners and it also makes the program a great program for the people who are in it.

So I'm cool with it.

And that during the uh the committee meeting, we'll see a slight presentation with some justification from that, some pictures of how the program works when it's installed uh effectively.

So I appreciate your work on that, Jay, and helping us reach a compromise and the language.

Um it will allow for the plants to go above the 10 inches, yes, but with guardrails in the planting areas.

So I appreciate you all doing the work on that and making sure that it's satisfying to the council.

Absolutely, councilman.

Now I have to introduce Haley.

Thank you.

Haley Gamblin is the manager of this entire program for the city.

She's the one that did all the background work on getting the the wording correct and pushed out, and she's been driving me crazy trying to get us approved.

Thank you.

Bailey, thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you, Haley.

Stay stay with me.

I've got are you is this about waterways?

Okay.

Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, madam chair.

Haley, I had uh requested a meeting out at John A.

Patton whenever we did the presentation.

Still haven't heard from anybody, but I'm still looking forward.

Yes, um, I've spoken with the Parks and Outdoors Department, their natural resources division uh manages those bioretentions at John A.

Patton, and um, I know that they're interested in um speaking with you out of the site, so I will nudge them again and have them reach out to you.

Okay, so this will this is going through parks and not that is correct.

Okay, all right.

Um, so the language within the resolution has not changed.

This is going to be language within the agreement with homeowners.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, and we'll be getting a presentation.

Okay, terrific.

Thank you guys.

Great.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

One other quick question for Hayley.

Yes, as a follow-up to Councilman Henderson's request.

The request was to have someone to go out to John A.

Patton to look at a rain smart installation.

Is that correct?

Um, no, John A.

Patton is not a rain smart installation, it is an installation that it uh was introduced and is maintained by the Natural Resources Division.

Okay.

I just want to be clear because some I know part of this contract is to figure out who does what, when, where, and how, yes, including the enforcement.

Yes.

And when we request things, we would like those follow-ups to be to happen accordingly because we have to vote on things.

Certainly, absolutely.

Um, I think discussing with natural resources would be the proper channel.

Um, the city's own land is managed by the natural resources team, so all of their stormwater control measures, green infrastructure, that is the team that is responsible for that.

We work solely on residential property.

Jay, could you make sure that that follow-up is uh councilman by tomorrow if possible?

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair.

Okay, council.

Any other questions about items on today's agenda?

All right, let's take a look at the purchases for this evening.

We have two purchases.

There are uh no renewals, RFPs, emergencies, or sole source purchases.

All right, looks like we are good on that.

So let's take a look at next week's agenda, please.

We will have a special presentation next week from the Chattanooga Area Food Bank giving us an update on the donation that we made um when the um when all of the funding was cut for emergency food aid.

Um there's just one crisis after another.

Man-made crisis after another.

Um we also will have um some input from the air pollution control board about um the item that they will have on the agenda the following week.

Planning and zoning will include an update from LDO on a handful of items, um, and then we also have the legislative committee where councilman Harvey will be um formally introducing his landscape plan ordinance.

Um under first reading, we have some planning items.

We have resolutions.

Please hit your light if you have any questions about any items on next week's agenda.

All right, looking good on that.

Okay, please take a look at future considerations, council.

Councilman Harvey.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I do have a question uh under council office uh resolution to repeal resolution number 31479.

Can we talk about that?

What yes, what is that referring to?

Would you like to address that?

Would you like to change that?

It's at the last page 17.

Over here.

All right, we're gonna let number 17.

Okay, yeah, council or our budget chairwoman Dotley can speak to that.

Yes.

Um so within our budget, uh, we are reallocating funding, so we're not adding to it.

We are not taking away, we are just reallocating funding that we already have that will increase uh each council person's reimbursement account from 6,000 to 10,000 and also uh moving the line.

Well, that's it, that's pretty much the bulk of that.

So that way we can uh participate more with our community, you know, community events, community organizations, and things like that.

So uh that's just again no increase to the budget, no decrease of our budget.

It's just a reallocation of funds, and in order to do that particular thing, we needed to have an ordinary uh resolution change.

Okay, yes, sir.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, council.

Do we have any other questions on future considerations?

All right, seeing none, let's move on into our parks and public works and wastewater committee.

All right, thank you, madam chair.

Um council, could I get a motion on the minutes from our last parks and public works committee meeting?

All right, thank you.

Those minutes will stand as published.

Um we only have one agenda item today, uh, which is a presentation from uh April 1st or parks administrative reading.

Hold on just one minute.

Uh, as uh Councilman Clark alluded to in our opening.

Um I want to yield a few minutes to him to introduce a speaker to provide some additional information about the rain smart program that we'll be voting on later tonight.

Uh thank you, Chairman Davis.

Is Daru Ziggler here?

And Rick, can you hear that uh video, please as she comes forward?

Uh I won't belabor this because I think we made some really incredible progress with the rain smart program, but I wanted to allow her to come forward uh because it's a kind of a joke because I was going to breakfast with someone else and I didn't know she was gonna be that I was ambushed.

Uh and she's laughing because that was the case, but she's an ecologist who actually is responsible for installing several of our range smart programs, um, including in my district, and I wanted her to come forward to talk about why it is important not to mix the native and the non-native plants together, which was ultimately the deciding factor in uh me practically changed my mind about how to properly make sure this program was supported and uh work through it.

She has a video to show us because three weeks ago you installed a rainstor program where there was flooding that was causing flooding on into the other properties, and I want you to show that video and then speak to that video and then why the changes um are beneficial for the rain spark program.

Uh Rick.

Okay, Dari, tell us what we saw and then what you did to fix the flooding and three properties with using some of the rain smart guidelines.

And you can might introduce yourself and your company's name, please.

Yeah, of course.

I'm an independent consultant, so my business is just under my name.

But what you're seeing in this video, my client's yard is not pictured in this video at all.

These are the three properties that are adjacent to my client's yard.

And my client went ahead and invested in implementing some rain smart yard best practices.

And what you saw in that video was a typical significant rain event.

So, you know, any larger rain event, you would see something like that in these three yards.

And this picture on the right hand side is what the three adjacent properties look like now post the installation of these rain smart yard best practices.

Um so I think this is a really excellent example of the impact that this program has when done correctly.

Um it has the ability to not only improve quality of living and also property values for the people who are doing it, but for their entire community as well.

Gotcha.

Council, you have any questions for Ms.

Ziggler?

Yeah, what are we seeing?

Yeah.

Yeah, so on the left.

So which one's the left?

Is it like our left or good question?

Um the one with water in it.

Okay.

The one with water in it is what the client's yard would look like after a rainfall event.

And the right side is after you did the installation.

So this is also after a rainfall event.

This is after a three and a half inch rainfall event.

The one on the left, you know, anywhere from two plus inches, you would see something like that in their yard.

And now after a three and a half inch rainfall event on the right, there's no water.

There's absolutely no water as a result of one person participating in this program.

Which means that their neighbors, two and three doors down, no longer are having flooding.

Correct.

Because of your rain smart installation.

Correct.

And not mixing the native and non-native grasses.

Is that correct?

The non-native and native grasses goes more to the aesthetic of the program.

Um on all the yards that I've done, when installations are done in such a way, or um, best practices are implemented in such a way when native plants are planted into their own designated area, those plants are able to get established much faster and grow up much more quickly because they're not competing with lawn grass.

In addition, you don't have a messy aesthetic of tall lawn grass with tall native plants.

Cool.

No, I have to.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh thank you.

Okay, so when we saw the video, it looked as if the water was running from the left side of the image to the right side of the image in the backyard of the school bus house.

Correct.

Where is this improvement in relation to this backyard on the right side of the screen?

It's on the right side.

Okay, but so I had water coming from left to right.

Yes.

And what I'm hearing you say is that by holding water to the right of this, somehow this has changed the water flow to the left.

Correct.

So these yards are shaped like a basin.

And the wall, the basin edge on the left side is higher than the basin edge on the right side.

So the water from my client's property is back filling into these three other properties to the left.

And when it gets tall enough on that side, it all rushes back over to the right, which is what you're seeing in the video.

And so by capturing it all on my neighbor's proper, all on my client's property, it never goes into the other yards in the first place and is then never able to backflow across all the properties into the drainage ditch, which is situated farther to the right.

Okay, and we have no pictures of the installation itself.

I have a picture of installations, yes.

If you flip to the next one.

Thank you.

Yeah, so this is a picture of an installation.

This is all native plants.

And this installation is stopping the water flow from the previous picture.

Um the installation on the property that I just showed you is relatively new.

So I don't have a great picture of it, to be honest with you.

However, this is similar to what that installation will look like when these plants are allowed to grow up and get tall two to three years from now.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, April.

Now if you'll come forward and present your annual report from the parks and outdoors department.

Good afternoon, Council.

April Firth, administrator for Parks and Outdoor.

That presentation was very interesting.

This is a little off topic, but we have parks that do that in their own way, which is why John A.

Patton would be our teams.

And Lynnbrook is a really good example of that.

So we have them on a larger scale.

And they do they the plants absorb the water, which causes them not to flow.

All right.

So I am here today to give basically calendar 2025 report of Chattanooga Parks and Outdoor.

So let's look back.

Okay, that's it.

No, I'm just kidding.

Okay, so that was a lot in a shorter period of time, and I wanted to make sure I got a lot of that in.

But some highlights, over 70 million dollars in economic revenue.

Eight huge events, all of which were bigger than last year.

If you want to see it again, um two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in savings to the city with volunteer work, so thank you to all of our volunteers, and only two weekends.

I just wanted to highlight this one, two weekends that didn't have an event or a program.

So that means my team was out there.

Um what fifty two, fifty, fifty uh weekends out of the year.

So I have a very hardworking, dedicated team who uh loves being outdoors and is extremely dedicated to what they do.

I have made it my goal to meet all a hundred and ninety of my park staff this year.

So I've scheduled one-on-ones with each of my full-time staff members.

I'm not done yet.

I still have more to go.

Um, from having clean parks to having clean park restrooms to making sure Chattanooga residents get out on our water to creating a rectier team and toddler treks.

This team does it all, and and they truly love it.

And every time I speak with them.

So yeah, so a little bit about innovation in 2025.

It was the year of savings.

So we have smart I know this is like the least sexy thing in the whole entire world, but we have smart trash cans that we deploy.

We put trash cans into different parks, they have sensors, and we can we can build a maintenance plan by how often that trash needs to be emptied.

So it will tell us if we need to go twice a day or if we need to go once a week.

And we can deploy them and do deploy them all around the city to make sure that those are staying the same as well.

The heat map does the same thing, and I think you'll get a presentation later this year about the heat map because it has many facets to it, but one of it is um all of our assets are on this heat map, which is in GIS from park benches to trash cans to trees, and our park staff can evaluate them as they're driving by and update they have pictures of what needs to be changed or maintained just based on this heat map in GIS.

It's pretty cool.

We got a power rake skid steer um for in-house gravel refresh, saving the city thousands because we do our own gravel.

In-house repair, um, work on South Chickamauga Creek Greenway that was damaged during spring, and then mowing reduction using native grasses, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I we I think that this native planning and mowing reductions is just gonna get bigger every year.

So very excited about that.

Okay, this controller doesn't work.

Uh oh.

And then I'll look forward to 2026.

A lot happening in 2026, which we're excited about.

We had a great 2025, and these are the parks that are opening or breaking ground in 2026.

So Heritage Park, it's going to open in 2026, and thank you.

You recently gave us 80,000 to be able to do the footings, uh, which was we had some earth issues there.

So we have footings to be able to install the playground.

Very excited for that.

Uh, the new skate park and dog park, Province Park, Walnut Street Bridge.

It is a park.

Uh phase one of Alton Park Connector.

Look out valley, patent fields turf, new Coolidge Park Banshelf, Stringers Ridge Improvements, DuPont Park Refresh, and we will break ground on the riverfront.

And then 2026 initiative.

So streamlining events.

As you may know, um, parks does events, but other departments too, and we do small events and we do big events, and then other departments within the city do events.

So working with Monica's team to streamline events and create a checklist so we are having consistent events throughout the city and consistent organized events throughout the city.

Uh, we will be looking to get placer AI, which is kind of it kind of reminds me of the heat maps of the trash cans.

It will tell us who's using our parks and when they're using our parks, so that we can base programming and maintenance based on that.

Um, right now we're kind of guessing, you know, what parks are being used, and this will tell us, or let's say um park population shifts and that and place our AI will tell us that so that we can react both in maintenance and in programming of that park.

Really excited IBM A returns, and we may have other big events returning too.

We just can't say what they are yet.

Full of secrets today.

Okay, 2026, the year of inclusivity.

Um we will be concentrating on the 10-minute walk.

It is a national standard of what cities should be doing, and we have a lot of areas within the city that you that its residents cannot walk to within 10 minutes, and that's our goal that we need to strive to.

I think we're at about 30, 35 percent, and we really need to get to 55 percent as soon as possible.

Um, a concentration on therapeutic therapeutic recreation, expand events programming.

So when I came in this year, we looked at events and we wanted to make sure that we didn't have six events on one weekend so that as many people can enjoy our events as possible.

So we tried to push them out so every month they are on different Saturdays, and then what we did notice is we have events in Coolidge and Miller and Heritage and Greenway, and so there's some opportunity to expand outside of those so that all residents get to enjoy our programs and our events, and then you'll hear me say it from now until the end of time, deferred maintenance across all districts.

So thank you.

You gave us a two million dollar uh maintenance deferred maintenance budget this year, and we really took that to heart and we tried to spread it across, we did spread it across all districts.

We have about 35 million dollars worth of deferred maintenance, and this will make a very big dentist, but it is a continuous need for parks and outdoor.

All right, and then I am going to introduce Elaine.

Uh, she is our division manager for therapeutic recreation, which might be my favorite division.

Explain their innovation.

Good afternoon.

Like April said, thanks, April.

My name is Elaine Gossett, and I'm the therapeutic recreation manager in Parks and Outdoors.

And this is uh my amazing team with Ella and Nate and Marielle and Sierra.

So you know, saw Nate as a superstar in the video, but um we just wanted to show uh a little bit about what we do, and these we have two of those uh chairs that are the grit junior chairs for uh youth that we receive through a grant, so from the Christopher Reeves Foundation.

Um and then we also it's been a few years uh right around COVID, but we received um another grant by Christopher Reeves for the two adult chairs.

So with the city, we currently own four of these chairs, which really opens up opportunities for a variety of individuals in our community.

So along with that, we um the grant that we just received, we also received some new adaptive kayaks.

Um, and that includes um seating, outriggers, um, hand adaptations, so really opening up our opportunities within the Chattanooga and surrounding community for individuals with disabilities.

So thank you for all that you do to make sure our parks are accessible to all of our our residents.

That's very important.

Absolutely.

Yes, we're we're working on it and working on creating new programs uh every year and new opportunities.

So thank you guys.

And next up is our director Greta.

Okay, I'll be really quick because I know we're short on time, but I also want to say thank you.

They are we have an incredible TR team.

Um so thank you to council for funding the extra positions, thank you to Mayor Kelly.

I do just want to say that for having the vision of one Chattanooga um to make it all inclusive.

And from the time he stepped in the door, this is literally the largest staff that we've ever had.

It's usually been a one-person, maybe two-person show, and now we're able to affect change in more lives here in our community because of that impact.

So thank you for that.

Umfortunately, I heard Councilman Noelle and then Councilman Elliott are not here, but um earlier in the summer.

Uh we were fortunate enough to put a bid in and host the Athletes Unlimited uh women's pro softball team here in Chattanooga.

We did it over a weekend.

We had six teams here that came from all over the country.

Um and it was sold out every single day.

We did have some rain.

Um, but we made it through, and they're very interested in coming back again and are asking us to present a bid for a host site.

And actually have a pro team here in Chattanooga, which would be amazing.

But in lieu of that, councilwoman Noelle um came and threw out the first pitch for us.

So we had this made for her.

Um then in addition to that.

Okay.

I'll give we'll come back and make sure she gets this at another time.

But we also had the picture that was in the video of me for Catherine Clark and one of the balls that we needed during the event, and for Catman Elliott.

And one of the balls that we use during the event.

And for Casma Elliott.

So we'll make sure that you all get it.

And just thank you for your support.

It was amazing to have you out there and see what we do.

How it impacts our city on the major level.

April mentioned your annual report.

So we had a $70 million this year.

68 of that was coming from Campion's corner park for the summit.

Along this morning again.

So we had an opportunity of the radar facility.

Sorry, Councilman.

We could have one question from Chairwoman Hill.

April, thanks so much for this presentation.

It would be really cool if you could give us a bullet list of the different uh data points that were in the video.

It all happened so fast.

I'd love to see those again.

Question about the economic impact piece that Greta just highlighted.

70 million dollars in economic impact is how what I'm hearing you all say essentially.

And that 68 million of that, I think you said was from our primary sports facilities that we that we rent out.

Can you all provide us with the numbers of what our spend was versus the income received versus the the breakdown of how we got to that economic impact number?

So our spend on each tournament and that created that economic impact.

Correct, yeah, to see that ROI.

Do you want that also for river games?

The creepers was 1.9, so that made the other two million.

Yeah.

Okay.

We can have that be terrific.

And the annual, the written annual report will be out next week, and that'll have all those numbers.

Okay, well, then no special need until you unless you've got the ROI outside of that.

Okay, thank you.

And do thank you, Chairman.

Sure.

And Councilman Clerk.

Thank you, Chairman Davis.

I just want to point out I have the video of Marboon.

Rolling the bomb, not really sure.

I will be showing a councilwoman Noel, I will be showing that next week.

Um and her amusement, but I will say that from Greta Hayes, who's our director of recreation for the city of Chattanooga, is a pioneer for many years in bringing sports and recreation to our centers, to our cities, and I was able to attend that event.

And as uh Chairwoman Hill has mentioned, I am very, very, very interested in learning more about the economic impact that her and her team are bringing to the city that often doesn't get discussed because we're always talking about China Tourism and what they do, but we have a general a self-generating apparatus.

Okay, let me say it again.

A self-generating apparatus in that department was probably what five or six people in your department.

I don't know.

We we need to duplicate that beyond summit, uh beyond Warner Park and equally distribute those sports recreational opportunities in my district.

I've talked about maybe expanding expanding these opportunities to the Washington Hills area where we can have more of a centralized recreational sports tourism thing that I saw firsthand when I was there.

So I would love to see some of that data and that research about how that is impacting our city and how we can expand it.

So anyway, kudos to Greta and our staff.

Thank you.

And there's a significant amount of work on her and her team's part of attracting those tournaments year after year, and and even adding to them.

I know that they they've even added some to champions this year, too.

And thank you, April, for the pavilions or putting in Lake Hills and Mario, by the way.

She's done a lot.

She has a bigger law, but she has made a significant impact in hitting the ground running.

So thank you for your leadership with that department.

I didn't highlight those pavilions, but those are one of my favorite things.

So if so before, for everyone's information, but a pavilion probably costs 40, 50,000, 60,000 if you make have somebody else build it.

And our team, so it's not me, but our team, Morgan's team in parks and maintenance, said, hey, we could do that.

We and they designed it, and they're building the first one, which is actually in councilwoman first.

Um it's a rebuild of Ben and Williams, and then Murray Hills and Lake Hills goes next, and it's gonna cost us about $20,000.

So less than half.

Yeah, thank you, April.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

All right, any other questions or comments?

Oh.

All right, I think I'm active.

Okay.

Well, go ahead.

Um yeah, I just April, I just want to thank you.

Um thank you for having the vision to prioritize um folks with disabilities.

I think that's something that oftentimes is easy to overlook, but it's something that we as a society need to continue to bring more to the forefront when we're we're planning parks and buildings and things like that uh for recreation.

So thank you for having the vision.

It's something I have a heart for, and I am uh uh at least my district is a uh uh recipient of the harvesting inclusive playground.

So uh we're so thankful for that and all the work you've done and uh Brian and the team out there, uh Captain Schuyler Phillips, uh who's kind of the visionary behind that.

So we're we're very thankful that that will be designed for folks with disabilities to uh the kids to be able to play and and play with their friends.

Um so again, thank you for the vision.

It's so encouraging to see stuff like that happen here in the city of Chattanooga.

So thank you.

Thank you.

But that credit goes to Elaine.

Okay, like too.

Not that I mean I care too, but that she's the driver behind that one.

So thank thank you all on your team.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's all Mr.

Chairman.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, well, last but not least today.

I just uh wanted to give uh a shout out and a thanks to Jeremy and our public works team uh for the plan that you all put together uh ahead of the winter weather this past weekend.

Um I think Chattanooga was fortunate compared to some other parts of our state.

We we seem to have dodged a bullet uh for the most part, but you never know that ahead of time.

Um and you all put together a great plan that was very clearly communicated to all of us up here that we could then in turn communicate to our uh constituents and you executed on that plan very well.

So I like to say proper preparation prevents poor performance.

Um and and you all yeah, the five Ps.

So feel free to use that.

Yeah, we'll but anyway, seriously, thank you very much for that and and for all that you all do every day uh in public works.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I appreciate it.

All right, I will turn or yield the chair to Councilman Harvey for the education committee meeting.

And innovation, don't forget innovation.

All right, first time in the big chair.

I'm excited here for the call to order the education and innovation meeting to order.

Thank you all for being here.

Um I think I'll go ahead.

I don't know when our last meeting of this committee was, but I'll go ahead and ask for approval of the minutes.

So go thank you very much.

All right, well, for our first um our first update, we're just gonna get two updates today.

Um my friend and colleague Caritza Jones is gonna come and give us a update of the Head Start program, which I was a member of their board.

Uh thanks to former councilman Darren Ledford in the back.

Thank you for that appointment.

It was uh a great time.

And uh so everybody welcome uh our administrator of Department of Early Learning, Caritza Jones.

So good afternoon, Chairwoman Heel, Vice Chairwoman Noel in her absence, and Chairperson Harvey, fellow council members present here today for today's Head Start program meeting.

I am Caritza Jones.

However, I am going to give the honor of um our Head Start Director, Miss Miranda Clark, to join me at the podium.

Come on, Miranda.

Miranda oversees the programmatic operations of Chattanooga Head Start, and she ensures that we deliver high quality comprehensive services to our cities and families.

She is here today to update you on the program and how it's currently serving our community.

We are proud of the progress that Miranda and her team have made.

And I will turn the floor over to Ms.

Clark to share the details of this at this time.

Ms.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon.

So before I begin, I would like to introduce my team because we are, you know, we are family.

Seriously, we have gone through a lot this past year as we fought to get our grant back and received our grant.

So I'm going to introduce my team.

I have Jessica Nicolou, who is our assistant director.

Micah Ekins, he is our new position of compliance and operations manager.

We have Erica.

Okay, I don't think it's Erica Jones, who is the um manager of our um family and engagement.

We have Ms.

Regina.

Um she is the RCA coordinator, which is Linux, selection, enrollment, and attendance.

Wow, say that five times fast.

That's how I say waving it at me.

Okay.

Um and then we also have Jasmine Barnes, who is our manager of fiscal operations.

You've seen her a time or two.

And then we also have Grady Hicks, who is our health manager.

Awesome.

So y'all only understood the long nights, Nike.

So Head Start is the cornerstone of this community.

We have oh thank you.

I forgot to click it.

Okay.

There we go.

She worked hard on this person.

Listen.

So Head Start is the cornerstone in this community.

We have been serving families in this community since 1965, and we are very proud of that.

A lot of times we are often put in the same box as child care, daycare.

We are so not child care or daycare.

We offer so much more than just babysitting children or you know.

I like to think of it as an umbrella because we provide comprehensive services.

So in that umbrella, you have early learning, you have health, and then you also have family engagement.

So it's a comprehensive approach where we support families.

So this is just the table of contents where I would just talk about some of the other overview as far as the enrollment, school readiness, health services, workforce and quality, workforce quality and stability, fiscal accountability, and parent and community engagement.

So again, Head Start is a federally funded program.

We serve at-risk children from eight weeks to five year olds of age.

We provide again a comprehensive approach that addresses early learning, health, and family well-being.

Enrollment.

We currently have 585 slots or seats, as one would say.

Again, we have Head Start Preschool within that grant, and we also have Early Head Start.

The HP grant, which we often refer to as our expansion grant.

That is a grant that helps with our collaborations.

So oftentimes when you hear of Head Start, and we may necessarily be collaborating with chamberless or purpose point.

The purpose of the HP grant is so we can provide that before and aftercare to our families that may be working.

Head start hours are typically from eight until two.

And so when we collaborate with other child care facilities, we provide all of the education and early learning, and they also provide the before and aftercare to support our working families.

So our James A.

Henry site, which I took that slide out, but I also want to just reference that a little bit.

So we are very excited about our James A.

Henry site.

We intend to open that site in August.

That site will house about five early head start, the early head start is zero to three, head start is three to five, and one head start classroom.

We would like to pilot a before and aftercare at that site.

So we are just really excited about that site opening up.

So speaking on early learning, we complete assessments at least three times a year.

We track the outcomes of those assessments, and from those assessments, it produce the data that helps us guide how we support our families and how we support our children.

So as you can see, our gross motor is 85, 81.5%, which is great.

That's a strength for us, but it also shows areas where we can improve and where we are working to centralize our support.

So you have language and cognitive for head start preschool for early head start.

You have again gross motors at the top.

Areas of focus is the language and fire motor and pre-writing skills.

Education cannot happen if a child is unwell.

We provide a supportive service to whereas we are ensuring that all children receive their immunizations.

All children are receiving their physicals.

If they are unable to do so, we support them.

We have family professionals and they work with those families one-on-one to make sure that they are up to par when it comes to anything health related.

We also ensure that children are provided healthy meals with our CACFP program that stands for child and adult food program.

So it ensures that we are meeting the daily nutritional standard.

Next up is family and community engagement.

We um our philosophy on family engagement is summarized into three words.

With not for we do not just provide services to families, we partner with them, respecting parents as the experts on their own children.

Our goal is to serve as a bridge and connecting families and housing and jobs and education.

This year, we have expanded our community partner network significantly.

As you can see, the the this just lists a couple of the partners that we have worked with so far this year.

So you have Family Ford, Signal Centers, a step ahead, Lipscomb University.

I would do want to shout that out.

That is we have an apprenticeship program with them starting this year.

We have about three or four staff members where they will be able to receive their bachelor's degree for free.

And so we are really excited to be able to support our children and our staff.

A couple of the events that we have attended.

You have the health department back to bash, the Chattanooga Free Store, the Fun Fair, and the Baby Fair.

Workforce quality and stability.

So the quality of our program relies entirely on the quality and stability of our workforce.

Within the last two years, we have had a tough go around as far as with staffing.

However, we did implement a couple of things to whereas the vacancies that we had last year, we do not have this year.

Now we still have some vacancies, and please have people go to the site to if you said what we're currently out.

Listen, we are currently hiring, okay?

And accepting children, let me say that.

So some of the things that we've done in the summer of 2024, we raise wages and focus on teachers to match the local media.

Now, our goal is to be able to get the teacher's salary up to what Hamilton County school teachers make, but we are not quite there yet, but we're not very far off either.

We also have now began to offer $500 incentives strategic bonuses to for hard to fill teaching and positions and for bilingual staff.

In support of our teachers and letting our teachers know that they were heard, we reduce class rosters from 17 to 15 to improve safety and reduce teacher stress.

Now that may not seem like a large number, however, I have gone into these classrooms and two children make a difference.

We have provided tools such as the conscious discipline, which is a trauma informed training to help staff manage challenging behaviors to support mental health.

This also can be applied to daily life.

Like the next time we have a training with conscious discipline, I will welcome to invite you all to attend because it focuses on the why and not the what the child is doing.

And so we can all apply that in our life as well.

Okay.

Again, we are offering the Lipscomb University.

That partnership has been great as far as allowing staff to also receive their CDA credential leading to promotions and pay raises.

Moving along to Nile's Palace, fiscal accountability.

We currently have three funding sources.

One funding source is the CH grant.

We often refer to that as our larger grant that supports our core operations.

And then you also have your HP grant, which was referenced to as the expansion grant.

That funding is used to support expansion efforts throughout the city of Chattanooga.

And then we have the child adult care food program, which we refer to as a CAC CACFP program.

It is a state-funded reimbursement program for portions of the full cost required to run your program.

The CACFP program has to, it's also supported with both of the CH grant because it's not enough to sustain all of the workers that maintain our children's dietary needs.

So unlike other federal grants, the CACFP grant is contingent upon enrollment.

So if we have low enrollment and therefore we do not receive full reimbursement, and so we have to make up that difference between the two.

So our goal is to maintain full enrollment.

So this is just an overview of our budget.

Again, the CH grant is often referred to as the larger grant because it's about 15 million dollars.

And well no, I say I crossed my numbers.

The CH grant is about 12 million.

Collectively together, they're all about 15 million dollars.

Currently, we're at 25% utilization, which is about normal for us.

Yes.

So this this is these are the funding sources that support our program.

Did anyone have any questions?

No questions?

No questions.

Well yeah, you got to have a seat.

I'm up here.

No, I think we're gonna get you.

You got me.

I had my hand up.

Oh, okay.

All right, go ahead, madam chair.

Sorry.

This is my first time working this thing.

Miranda, thank you for the time that you put into this presentation.

I can tell you gave it a lot of thought, and we appreciate you being here today.

Um people say sometimes it can be intimidating to come and talk to council, and we're just normal folks, just like everybody else.

So don't worry.

Um I have a few questions.

First, I want to applaud you guys for the thoughtful approach to addressing your staffing challenges.

I thought that the the bonuses for hard to fill and bilingual positions made a lot of sense.

And the thoughtfulness of that two hours a month for personal wellness, I hope staff are able to take advantage of that and and appreciate it because I could see it being a really life-giving tool for folks.

Um a couple of questions that I had.

Um, with regard to the the three funding sources, um, the city is also a funding source, are we not?

Because we help fund the salary bump.

Yes, we we received $350,000 of supplement funding from the city as well.

So it's uh small in the grand scheme of things, and yet that's key to be able to get our salaries to a point that that we're in the next, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Um what is your what are your barriers to full enrollment of children?

So right now we are in a unique situation.

When we went into DRS with our previous grant, we were told that we could not enroll any new children.

And so typically we start enrolling children about March-ish.

Okay.

We were not able to start enrolling children after close to mid-July, August.

So that severely impacted our enrollment because most families have already found a location for their child to attend.

This um specifically really hurt us within our Hamilton County classrooms because you know they start their enrollment very early.

Okay.

So that has been a challenge with as far as with enrollment.

Then also locations.

So if everybody's aware, we also had a fire.

When we had a fire in one of our buildings, um, we had to close for about a month.

And so if you are working or you are dependent on our services, and you may find services otherwise, other places.

Um, we also had, in addition to the fire within that building, we had um flooding caused by the roof.

Um, and so we have like about three offices right now that we cannot utilize.

Um with the Maurice Kirby situ um closure, all of this affects our enrollment.

Okay.

So a couple of things we could not control and are gonna, or actually several that we could not control and gonna bounce back from.

So is staffing at all a barrier to enrollment?

I last year, if you would ask me that question last year, I would say yes.

This year, all this other example.

I think this year we are doing a lot better because we're not having to close classrooms through the staffing.

So we are on uh upwards.

Okay.

Um one final question, and uh I put my used to be on school board hat, and and then I think about Chattanooga 2.0 and that cradle to career that we're always looking at for matriculation, and we know that one of the key indicators of success is a child being ready for kindergarten.

So when you when you showed us those numbers, I don't know how your measurement relates to then how we head into TN ready.

Um but how many, what's the percentage of these children that are ready for kindergarten when the time comes?

For she works more with education.

Hi, my name is Jessica Neklu.

I'm the assistant program director.

Um the numbers that you saw, those percentages are where children came to us in the fall of 2025.

Okay.

So that's our starting point.

That's our baseline.

Okay.

Those percentages tell us where children are developmentally according to their skill set.

So for example, in our preschool classrooms, 52.5% of children are scoring developmentally age appropriate and language.

Okay.

Um, our goal for that uh that domain language is 70%.

So we hope to reach 70% by the end by May of 2026.

And that is that is for each child across each age band?

Yes, it's a it's a a comprehensive um, so it'll combine three to five.

Okay, but then it it measures each child's um developmental age and if they're meeting those skills based on that developmental age.

So we hope that by May 2026 that we've put enough um best teaching practices in place in order to get children to set there be 70% of our children between ages of three and five, meeting their language skills for developing age appropriate practices.

So you five-year-olds are then who most often matriculate into uh kindergarten.

Um are you disaggregating that data so you know how many five what's your percentage of five-year-olds are that are meeting their language targets?

Yes, we do at the end of the year.

So uh uh usually around May, there's a report that goes out to all of our stakeholders and it says, you know, our our children that were entering kindergarten met these current thresholds, and we compare our our threshold benchmark to what uh the actual data set said.

And so how did you do for the last school year?

This past year, we've I believe we met all of our thresholds except for language.

We've seen consistently across since COVID.

Um a decrease in language skills, and so we've really used our instructional coaches to try to um increase our teaching practices when it comes to language.

So even though I mean last year a five-year-old would have been born in 2020, right?

But a three-year-old since who was born in 2022 is having language delays.

Greater than pre-COVID.

I think it could, I'm not exactly sure what the the reasoning is behind, but there has been an increase in developmental delays and language delays in Hamilton County.

Wow.

And throughout the state, it's critsa is adding that.

So like people stop talking to their children more than they did before.

I mean, I'm I'm not being glib.

I mean, when you think if you've got a three-year-old that's coming in with a greater delay than they would have six years ago, this is really concerning about the fabric of our community.

I will say that in the realm of education, um, overall, when you look at things like language and reading, there has been a there has been an increase in the delays development and developmentally, and that could be um for a variety of things, but it all has occurred since you know post-COVID, right?

Um, what that I mean that could tell you a lot of things.

It might have been that there was more interaction going on outside of the home than in the home, right?

I mean, there are a lot of variables that will tell you that, but it it has been an increase across the board.

But they head start requires, well, actually, yeah, they do.

HESA requires the data um analysis, and then it's always there to show the differences and the variances, and then from there when our kids go into Hamilton County schools, because at Head Start they assess them, like Jessica said, they assess them there before they leave, and then Hamilton County um has their process in which they assess to see if they were ready in entering kindergarten.

I guess I'm just I'm trying to understand if we're moving the needle, right?

I mean, because I think the goal of the the concept of of potentially having we're moving it, it's just it's just slower than what you probably would want to see.

Um what we would want to see sometimes, right?

But we know that we're moving it because the work is being done, the efforts are being put in place, um, and the um the resources are being put in place to support those children.

We use um programs such as the Lena Grow program, which is a um language situ a language program.

Our our Head Start classes use that.

Lena um is also being utilized from a UTC perspective, um, University of Tennessee, a Chattanooga perspective through Chattanooga 2.0 to assess language barriers there as well.

Um, that's when other facets of support come into play.

So basics, um reading to your child, early literacy and brain development, all those things come into play, not just necessarily teaching them language skills, but developing their language through just basic conversation.

So then that goes back to the family and parent community engagement piece that um Miranda spoke about earlier.

How do you get parents in their villages, uh, the children's villages to engage them to help to develop their language and build those skills as well?

Okay, thank you very much.

That's all.

Councilwoman Dolly.

Yes, uh so uh thank you so much for the presentation.

It was it was really good and very thorough.

But the only question I had about I'm very excited about the James A.

Henry, of course, that's part of the one West I plan.

It looks amazing.

Gonna open in August.

Um, but I my question was I know I think I saw you had 585 seats currently.

So will you be adding seats with the James A.

Henry, or will it be within that 585 seats?

So that is inclusive of James A.

Henry as well.

The only way that we will be able to add seats is if we went and um applied for another grant to bring more funds in.

So our slots are slots is 585.

Okay.

And then you mentioned also that there was there's a I guess a temporary head start at Hope City Church.

Yes.

So those students will be moving over to James A.

Henry.

James A.

Henry.

Okay, all right.

That's it.

That's all I want.

Thank y'all so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh, Mr.

Chairman.

All right, Councilman Clark.

Uh thank you.

Sorry.

The our weather has all of our voices sounding like frogs.

Um quick question for you.

Uh, and great job, Miranda.

You did a wonderful job presenting, by the way.

Um the 8 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

uh operations for Head Start.

Are there plans to apply for additional grants or as we go into this budget year and budget considerations that I think we're all currently in to expand those hours to be more aligned when when parents work?

Because right now, if we're landing out our Head Start kids at 2 p.m., parents have to do what?

They have to either get off work to come and get their children.

So what are we doing?

What's our strategic framework look like from a funding perspective on how we can expand Head Start past 2 p.m., if any at all in this upcoming budget year.

So that's uh somewhat of a little question because you I mean we could look at it a variety of ways.

We Miranda and her team actually, like she mentioned that at James A.

Henry, they're gonna pilot a program there to see how that works.

Gotcha.

Um, with that population and to see what what the cost looks like with you know what that what it would cost to for us to incur um the ability to do that.

Some of our sites that she mentioned before, Purpose Point and Shameless already do that.

Um our other children, there are some children that attend Head Starts and they leave our centers at two o'clock and go to other centers, um, local providers that provide support such as first um first step Christian child care, and then there's another one.

I'm I'm drawing a blank, but they can leave there and they can go for services there.

Um you're right, as a working parent, and I lived this during pre-K when my child was in pre-K at Hamilton County because Hamilton County's pre-K goes from to 2 o'clock as well.

Um and so, and you're not eligible for before and aftercare if the school has it.

So you're right, parents have to leave work or find other means.

We would like um as we continue to look at quality, figure out how to to alleviate that for the working family, which is how we would generally love to expand the the work in James A.

Henry because we could open up additional spaces for other child care, maybe for city employees if funding was available down the line, so forth and so on, um, to look at an all-day, we call it a full day of services.

But it does cost, it does cost.

And so um, I'm not gonna say that I wouldn't add it into the budget.

I'm just trying to be a good steward of city dollars and looking at what that looks like.

We probably could look at that from a variety of other grant ways um or grant stream funding streams or other additional ways to marry monies to do that.

Um, but it would be ideal.

I mean, who wouldn't want as a working parent um or a parent in school or doing something else um post-secondary who would not um want the full time frame to be able to support to support your family and children?

I have a follow-up question, German Harvey.

What have you all begin the cost analysis for that?

So we do know how much it will cost.

Okay.

We did that um last year when we were looking at possibly putting a city child care or opening up a city employee child care.

We did look at what it looked like for a full day.

After 2 p.m.

After two after 2 p.m., which is like what it would look like for the full day Miranda do have the numbers for that as well because that's how we're able to do the pilot coming up in James A.

Henry, so we know how much needed to be allocated towards doing that.

So we do have the cost for that.

But I mean it is an additional.

Is that an ongoing conversation in the mayor's office on how to support that in this upcoming budget?

Well, I I I mentioned it in my one-to-one, so we do have those conversations.

Um I'm not sure um where that's gonna fall because that falls at the hands of you all at final budget time.

But I mean, we we do have conversations about it in those in the mayor's office.

Um, my direct report, who is Mandy Green, and also um uh chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, Kevin and Darren.

We've had those conversations and what that looks like because we do understand um in our department of early learning that that is the mayor's goal that we we provide the access, but we do know that there's a dollar amount to that, and ultimately that lies at the hands of of you all, not with us.

All right, thank you, Administrator Jones.

Okay.

Any other questions?

All right.

Well, I just want to say thank you all so much for being here.

Thank you for a great presentation.

It was very detailed.

Um, and I'm proud of the work that um I did with you all and in uh I was on the board uh when you were introduced as the administrator, and you've done a great job.

And again, I just enjoyed working with you and what we accomplished back then and everything you're doing now.

So thank you so much.

Um I was at a breakfast last month, and uh Chris Sands was the speaker, and he brought this quote up, it's tremendous.

Uh, and I think it applies today.

It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

And that's by Frederick Douglass.

I think that's a a testament to what you all do.

You're doing the Lord's work and preparing children, um, education is the it's the key.

It prevents poverty, it it allows them success.

And so thank you for caring for our children and do setting setting them up for the opportunity to live the American dream.

So you guys are doing a great job.

Thank you for being here.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Big hand more.

Okay, Kevin.

Okay.

All right.

Uh we've got one more presentation, and uh that's gonna be an update on our 311 system by chief of staff Kevin Roig.

Yes, sir.

Kevin, take it away, my friend.

I'm gonna give you guys the unabridged version.

This should only take about 20, 25 minutes.

Perfect, perfect.

I'm just kidding.

Well, uh, Kevin Roy, Chief of Staff from Mayor Kelly, thank you, Chairman Harvey, for the opportunity to share.

I'm really excited to talk with you guys today about what's going on in 311.

Um, obviously, it's so important to everything that we do and in terms of service provision for the city.

And so we're gonna talk about four four main things.

One, we'll do a quick refresher on what 311 is, then we're gonna talk about what happened.

I think that we all know that there was kind of a period of turbulence recently with respect to 311.

We're gonna talk about that, what we've done about it to correct it, get us back on a better course, and then where we're going, what the future looks like for 311.

So fundamentally, 311 is so much more than a call center.

311 is a centralized front door for every non-emergency call or issue that you could think of as as it pertains to the things that we do here at the city.

And it's it's fundamentally about people, both the people that we serve and the people who are responsible for doing the work.

It's about the processes that underpin that work, and increasingly, it's about the technology, not just the 3-1-1 platform, but all of the technology across all of the various departments and divisions in the city.

So, what started as sort of a one call to City Hall back when the city of Chattanooga, which at the time we were one of the first mid-sized cities to actually adopt a 311 system, they're ubiquitous now across the country.

But in but in 03, it was a pretty new idea to establish this one call to City Hall, which basically, if you think about it, in 2003, um, more than 90% of households still had landlines, only 5% were um mobile as a primary means.

You you fast forward to 2016 through 2023.

This was kind of our period of digital expansion.

So this is when we first launched, we the city launched the the mobile app in recognition of a changing technology trend across the country, people moving away from landlines, mobile utilization increasing, and then where we are now is we're we're modernizing and we're optimizing against kind of this mobile first reality that we that we live in.

And then where we are now is we're we're modernizing and we're optimizing against kind of this mobile first reality that we that we live in.

So today, 70% of households are um are not only mobile first but don't even have a landline.

And so how do we respond to that?

And and if you think about primary means of communication in O3 with a call center model, a lot of it is a lot of the issues, it's storytelling, right?

It's it's auditory communication.

Whereas today it's so visual, it's text, it's image, and so we want to be responsive to that.

We want to take advantage of the technologies that are available to us now.

From a demand perspective, um 311 continues to be a highly utilized service that we provide.

So these numbers year to date have 77,000, but it's actually not year to date.

That's the end of uh December.

So I would imagine we're up to 90,000 uh calls received thereabouts.

Um wait time is around 62 seconds, admittedly, not great.

There's opportunity, I'm sure there's explanation that Derek could give if you guys are interested at the end during QA, but but we uh we're happy with an abandoned rate of just five percent.

I mean, that's pretty that's pretty good.

But you can see the number of emails processed, the text process.

The the story of this data is that this is a highly utilized, highly important service that we get right, and so we want to get it right.

This diagram maps the flow of how these requests come in, and it's important to conceptualize, especially for maybe folks in the public who who don't know this and why would they?

Um 311 is presented as kind of the one stop shop, but it's really a strategic overlay or a clearinghouse that has to interface with all of these departments.

So, irrespective of where a request or an issue or a tip or whatever it is that's coming in that's not an emergency, irrespective of where it comes from, be it a call, an email, etc.

It's 311's role to get it to where it needs to go to ultimately do the thing that the resident is asking to be done.

And so if you lift the hood on that diagram and look at some of the technology that underpins all of those different divisions and departments across the city, in light of what has happened over the last 23 years since we first started doing 311, it's just been an explosion of technological advancement, right?

And that's what we would expect to see.

And so 311 has to have the ability to talk to routeware, cityworks, open gov, rec track, arc GIS, all these different systems that are utilized on the front lines in in public works, for example.

And so it's it's really an exciting time.

It's part of the reason, if not the reason, that we decided to make the migration from the legacy platform to GoGov because GoGov offers the city additional opportunities for customization, API integration, and allows us to more fluidly and and comprehensively take advantage of the full slate of technology that we have across across the city.

To give you an idea of service request volume by district, the geographically it's widespread, right?

Every every district is neck and neck in terms of the utilization of 311, thinking about topics, brush is the number one service request type across all districts, which is interesting.

One of the things that we did recently, which was kind of an iteration of an iteration, is we we moved back to a proactive approach and and went back to routes for um for for brush and and bulk pickup.

The reason that we did that fundamentally is because what one way to interpret the volume of requests for brush is that this is a service that our residents expect.

We got to get good at it.

The way to get good at it is to provide consistency, predictability.

That's what people want.

And so by moving back to a and approaching it as if we do uh for for garbage collection or for recycling, same thing.

We believe that we can deliver that consistency at a level that meets the expectations of our residents what they what they want, what they deserve.

And I think that we're already seeing that because the number of 311 requests for Brush has gone down as in the wake of us doing that.

So, what happened with respect to the turbulence that I alluded to earlier?

So the migration from um or to go gov from the the legacy platform, any time you do a big software migration, you don't know what you don't know until you know it.

So you try to think through all of the things that could happen, but then once you do it, once you're doing it live, you're kind of in it.

So that that happened.

It took a little bit longer to do the migration.

Some of we had issues with some of our integrations.

We also experienced over that same time period some exigent and outside of our control issues that happened.

So we had the the flood, which obviously requests related to that and responding to that is is gonna take priority over some lower lower importance requests in, which is only gonna exacerbate the backlog.

So that was going on.

We started uncovering some this and this goes to like where does process and technology intersect some some wacky things that were happening in GoGov as things uh in other systems were being closed, the constituent was getting closed when they had just submitted it.

So just a lot of stuff was happening all at the same time.

And so what we did, we have a standing meeting in the mayor's office for the Office of Constituent Services, and what we we took that time and we pulled everybody in, and I just want to give a huge shout out to everybody who's been helping.

So Mandy Bowman, Connie, Crockett, Kim, we we this has been James.

I mean, so many if I left your name out, I'm sorry.

So many folks came to the table.

We've been working, and we we continue to meet every week just to do a deep dive on how are we gonna fix this and how are we going to take full advantage of GoGo?

So our goal is to get to a place where people have like an Amazon experience, right?

So people don't just want the work done, they want visibility into ordered, shipped, delivered.

And because of this new technology, we have the ability to do that.

We just have to get in there and go deep and take full advantage of it.

And so we are focusing heavily on proactive communications, accurate information, integration to drive that that customer satisfaction, and we're making really good progress along those lines.

So this is kind of a wacky chart, but if you think about everything is something, everything that comes into the city can be categorized as something, some type of request, right?

And so what we what we did is we took everything, put it on the table, and then started prioritizing around which service request types are the the highest utilized, where where the problems and what we figured out, not surprising, Pareto principle, right?

There was a relatively few number of SR types that were driving uh a majority of the problems that we were seeing.

So we scrubbed our SR types, we we triaged each one to determine hey, is this a technology problem?

Is this a process problem?

Is it both?

And then we put into to action a plan to fix it.

And so what fixing it looks like is we wanted to ensure that for each SR type, the requisite statuses were one, accurate, they reflected reality in terms of what is the actual operational workflow look like, and then how does each piece of technology interact with that?

And and then how does it tie back to GoGov so that we can provide real-time updates and and proactive communication at every step of the way, right?

So ordered ship, delivered.

And so to date, we have already optimized, so meaning we have put more than half of all of our SR types through this process to scrub triage and fix them.

And what we have left now is a little bit of mid-impact, kind of second-tier SR types, and then everything else is low impact, meaning they're important, but the utilization and the problems are in a spot where we we can just progress, and we've already made tremendous gains with what we've done.

Here's an example of the improved communication.

So before we we took on this project, um, everything was pretty much just off the rack and generic in terms of how the statuses would would translate to the end user.

And so what we've done is we have gone through for every single request type and thought about looked at their specific statuses and then built out fit for purpose communications for every step along the way.

This is this is proactive explanation.

If you think about your experience with Amazon, right?

The the when you go to Amazon, you expect you're gonna get it in two days or three days or four days, depending on where you live, right?

But you you kind of have like a frame, a baseline expectation.

But I bet everybody has experienced this.

You order something, and immediately, if it's not gonna be there when they think you expect it, they're gonna tell you delayed, and they're gonna give you a new date of X of expected delivery, right?

None of us has ever called Amazon.

Why?

Well, because they're explaining what happened, and and and they're walking you through it, and you can click into each status and kind of see where the package is, right?

And so it's the same idea here, right?

We want to be proactive along the way.

So this is an example of a housing violation, whereas in the past we would say, hey, we received your thing, and um you can get additional information by going hey here.

Whereas today, we're saying, hey, we have gotten your request, and we're gonna respond as soon as possible.

An inspector is gonna do X, Y, and Z, and this is a reasonable time frame in which you can expect the thing you've asked us to do to be done.

And so that clarity for constituents manages expectations and it gives them uh a level of confidence at each step of service delivery.

So again, explanatory governance, right?

Given visibility to the different things that go in to government delivering the services that our residents expect and deserve.

One of the big things that we one of the big changes that we made is related to this word closed.

So, not to bore you anymore with technology stuff, but we're a little bit boxed in with respect to our ability to change the language inside of the platform, but what we did is operationally, we said, okay, closed from henceforth only now means complete.

Means means the thing that they have asked us to do, we have gone as far as we can.

It's either resolved or it's unresolved, and in either case, there has to be an explanation that is tailored to that specific service request type, right?

So there are situations where we can't do it.

It's outside of the city's purview to um do a thing, and I can't believe I can't think of an example, but there are loads of them.

When that happens, we explain that, and we're gonna offer language to the constituent of what some possible next steps might be, so that we're not just closed, gone, and um kind of leave leaving them in a lurch in that way.

So, and then there's another then and now example of the language.

Another thing that we did is is everything is something, right?

And there are some things that are super long-term projects, the sinkhole, for example.

Well, we have an idea, but we also know that it's gonna take a minute, and so we're gonna use GoGov's statuses and the and the ability to tailor those statuses to our advantage to help manage those proactively with the constituents.

So it's specific statuses that will allow us to again curate proactive communication to help keep the the residents informed along the way.

Another thing that we can do that we've done is used to be whereas a service request would go into one department and division only to be discovered that that's not the right place, and so that department will press close, and then the constituent would get closed on their app as a status or in their email.

So we're we've changed the way that we're doing redirect redirects and reassignments to ensure two things.

One, that doesn't happen to the end user, but two that from an operations management perspective, those types of situations can go into a monitored queue and then driven by the by leadership to make sure that the handoff is happening appropriately and that the uh that the request is is gonna be serviced in a reasonably um timely way.

Um, and then another thing that we're able to do through GoGov is iterate.

So we we're constantly incorporating suggestions that we're hearing from you guys from um folks in the city, and we are um yeah, we're incorporating those into what we're what we're doing.

So, in summary, on on our approach to fixing it, we're just focused on five things.

One is accurate communication, we we're improving and simplifying our service request types and the statuses.

We want to take full advantage of all of the data that is available to us, and and particularly from a centralized perspective.

So I showed you earlier all of the disaggregated systems.

Now we have the ability to bring that into one kind of comprehensive common operating picture, so we're moving in that direction, continue to focus on improving our response times, and ultimately all of this is about providing better customer service to our residents.

So this is um two slides here.

That this is kind of the first one.

This is before integration and automation.

So with before we really got going with what we're doing with GoGov slash 311 now, there was a lot of manual noise in the process.

This is an example of what a typical like missed garbage service would look like.

And you can see that along the way, you've got a call taker who has to manually enter the ticket, and then at the the driver is gonna go do the thing, and then at the end, leadership has to manually close the ticket, right?

And so there was a lag in in the actual process of using the technology.

Where we're going now through the integrations and through what's possible because of GoGov is we're inserting automation along the way so that when a resident takes an action through the app, it automatically is going to route to where it needs to go.

Then that system is going to talk to the route system, and then when the thing is done, you click a button in the truck, and then that change correlates to the change that the end user sees.

So that's real-time information.

That's um that's what's possible through the new platform.

We talk about SLAs in 311 world.

SLAs are service level agreements.

So everything is something, and every something has a an expected period of time in which it needs to occur.

And so this is looking at missed garbage and recycling.

The purpose of this chart is fundamentally to show you that yes, we did experience a dip, but you can see just over the last couple of months, as we've gotten in and gone deep on these things, we have changed the traje trajectory, and we are we're moving in the right direction towards SLA compliance, which is the translation there is that we're doing things in within a reasonably um timely fashion and in a way that is gonna be satisfying for the folks that we are here to serve.

So, what's coming next?

We're gonna continue to finish the roadmap for uh service request optimization.

That was the grid that I showed you earlier.

We wanna make sure that we're maximally utilizing the available functions through GoGov.

So there are things that we can do through email customization that I showed you a little bit of that we're gonna continue to um execute on.

Issue tags are another way that we can flag as things are developing in the field.

Let's say there's uh an ice storm or some other unexpected thing that doesn't fit into a category, we can actually assign a net new tag and all track it at in the aggregate, which is going to give us the ability to um to just manage it better.

And then we're gonna continue to pursue continual improvement through new features as they become available, advancing these new integrations that are still left to be done in some of the um lingering departments, and continue to focus on the customer journey, right?

The customer journey is thinking about 311 through the lens of the resident, like what what is the resident experiencing, and is this experience loaded with friction?

And how can we come in and remove friction, just make things intuitive, make things quicker and easier.

And then ultimately, um, we're gonna use GPS location services, text notifications to really get ahead of um of the communications once we can block and tackle.

So we're still working on blocking and tackling in terms of using what's available to us now at its highest level, and then as we move forward, we'll do some razzle dyes.

So this is an example of razzled as I talked about earlier the different systems and disaggreg disaggregated data.

Where we're going with this is bringing all of the data that's available into one common operating picture that's effectively like a Power BI dashboard.

That's gonna allow our our leadership at the department level to in real time be able to see what's going on, see changes in in volume, see where you know time to service delivery is lagging, be able to click into any one of these charts down to the case level to really get in the weeds to see what's going on.

And so we're we're really excited about that.

We're gonna share more on this once we get it to a place where we're getting real-time updates, which is probably in the next week, maybe or next couple of weeks, maybe next month.

Um, but this is gonna be really exciting.

I know that that Jay and and other folks across our departments are excited to be able to get their hands on this.

So, in summary, 311, there's a lot that goes into it.

It isn't technology only, it isn't people only, it isn't operations only.

It's all three of those things working in happy cooperation, and when we put the resident first, we feel like we we can really drive improvement across all of the things that matter, all the things that you guys hear about, and we're doing that.

It is uh having a material and positive impact on the the culture across the city, just in that mind shift of what would what is this like for the resident, and how can we do this a little bit different just to remove that friction?

Um, and it's working, and uh we're we're really excited about where we're going.

So, with that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you, uh Chief.

Councilman Clark.

Thank you.

Um Chairman Harvey, Kevin.

I think you may have broke a Guinness World Records for the longest life so presentation in council.

But very helpful because I know you it's very detailed said unabridged.

I said unabridged.

And my committee meetings were 15 minutes.

Uh I don't know what happened on this one.

But it's okay, this was very thoughtful and uh very detailed because 311 has been the bane of my existence as a new council person.

You know that.

I do know it.

They laugh because it's true, but it's sad because we spent a lot of money not only operating the operation system, but also the software.

Yeah.

So I don't want us to do a victory lap so fast.

Um because we're still in the beta phase of if this new utilization of GoGov is working.

It's especially as it relates to the routes, and that's where I want to ask you a question regarding what?

I'm sorry.

The routes.

Okay, yep.

Uh, because what was happening was is that constituent requests were coming in the council as if we were 301 operators, and then we would then triage that to Kim Strong.

We're legislators, not operators.

That's right.

So again, the bane of our existence.

Uh, and I know uh councilman Henderson may have a piggyback on this, but the route system.

Before you could call 311 and have your brush and debris pick up, that failed.

We know that there was a backlog, so we decided to change it to the route system.

Which I think, if I'm not mistaken, rolled out just this month.

Is that correct?

Maybe even last week, but with the delay because of the inclement weather, is that correct?

Someone just not systems, yes.

Moving to routes, didn't we do that at the end of the beginning of the year?

Yeah, yep.

Beginning of the year is when we rolled that out officially.

Yeah, we're still two weeks ago.

It's early.

Yeah.

Um my concern is is that people specifically in my district, and this is very a huge annoyance to me, is that people are throwing out their mattresses.

You can, like, for instance, I can drive on the 3200 block of Dotson Avenue.

It looks like our landfill, because people are throwing out their trash as if our curb side, which is not which is an eyesore, depending on what neighborhood you're in.

How is the route system a better way of collecting that off of our streets in a short period of time?

Because if we're only doing the route system once a month, and I put my trash out, I think this week, I think the route system ran this week, if I'm not correct.

So if I put it out Thursday, but it's out for the rest of the month, that is an eyesore to our community.

So, really, how effective is the new route system as opposed to you just calling and saying, come pick up my stuff?

Yeah.

So I think in that in at least two ways.

Thank you for the question.

The the first way has to do with predictability and consistency.

Let me back up.

In either scenario, be it on demand or via routes, you're always managing counterparty risk because the constituent has to do everything just right in order for the thing to actually work.

And so we're constantly trying to think about ways to put downward pressure on that counterparty risk, meaning, how do we make it easy for them to do the thing that we need them to do so that when the truck comes, we can actually grab the the trash and get it to where it needs to go.

So I think that with routes, you have more consistency and predictability versus kind of an ad hoc on-demand service provision that had troubles of its own.

And then the the second thing is City Code actually only allows for 12 um of these bulk pickups uh a year per resident, which whether or not that has been um adhered to in the past is is irrelevant.

The point is we know that we are supposed from an operations planning perspective, go out a certain number of times.

The routes gives us uh the the maximum effectiveness of going out by specific zone on a scheduled and and timed cadence, and it will take a minute to get residents used to that switch.

Anytime you make a change, you got to manage that change.

So, to your point, the fact that we just rolled this out, I think that we have to give it, give it some time before we really know if it's working at the level we expect it to.

But anecdotally, we have heard less complaints about brush and and bulk.

I have not.

That's why I'm asking the question.

Yeah.

Oh, and that's my concern is that as we council, we become the front door because they don't call you all, and you know that.

Yeah, and this is a sensitive topic for me because this has been an issue in my district to where brush has not been picked up.

Yeah.

And so when we talk about the cadence and the consistency of the route right now, and I and I and that's interesting that we only that residents are only allowed 12 bulk per year, which I didn't I didn't know that.

What are we doing to increase the consistency to make sure the neighborhoods are clean?

Because if we're doing this beta route system as a response to whatever was going on with 311, but it's it's kind of exacerbating the whole idea of trying to keep the neighborhoods clean because neighbors are just putting stuff out.

What do we do in the interim in that in that middle time?

Because we're only doing it once a month from this route system is only running once a month per area, is that correct?

Is that right, Jay?

It's just once a month.

I just don't want to do it.

Tell me out here.

And I guess what I'm saying is my concern is that that cadence is not enough to keep our neighborhoods clear of eyesores because of the bulk trash that's waiting to be picked up the next month because either you send code enforcement and say, hey, you put your trash out too early, or you call 301 and you have them pick it up, so it's just not sitting out there for a month.

Because that's what's happening now in my district.

Yeah.

I I think that again, it we have to be proactive in our communication, communicating the change and doing some public education around when each zone needs to be put in their stuff out.

But I think conceptually, if if you're working a zone and you you're gonna turn onto a street, you know that you're gonna pick up everything on that street versus what we know is happening before in some instances.

There would be the same street, multiple piles, but only one or two pickups pickup requests, and it was a little bit of paint by numbers that was happening.

And so what we're trying again, resident first, beautification of the city first, like to us having that consistent zone responsibility on a cadence where it's like it doesn't matter what the request looks like.

What matters is where you are and what you see, go clean it up.

We think that over time it's gonna yield higher results for us.

Jay, do you want to add anything to that?

Uh so on the other side of that, councilman, you're not supposed to put trash out within 24 hours of the pickup.

So if people are just throwing their beds and mattresses out there, then they're wrong for doing that anyway.

So code enforcement should be going there and citing.

So, you know, we're not trying to to be that nuisance to everybody at the end of the day.

So we try to be proactive in providing a predictability scale and say, hey, we're gonna come through on these exact routes, these exact roadways, these exact neighborhoods.

At this day, we're gonna pick up everything that's there.

Then everybody can say, okay, you know what?

I have a mattress sitting in my back, I can throw it out on that day, it'll get picked up.

Nobody has to worry about it.

It's it'll be a change in the dynamic of how Chattanooga's ran.

But I think with time, it will get a lot better.

But Councilman, I I would love to partner with you on some like case specific things that are still nagging, like if you've got recent ones, um, and I'm sure that they're in the Monday board, but I haven't just I haven't seen it.

I was like, Kim, talk to Kim.

We send them to her weekly.

Okay.

I will I'll get with Cam and see if there is an opportunity for us to do some some targeted proactive communication about the change.

I think that this could be a little bit of change management and and public education opportunity for the mayor's office to help out with.

So I'm happy to look into it more and see what additional.

I like to see code enforcement do more.

You know, I have called on more code enforcement in my district, and if the criteria is 24 hours, then code enforcement needs to be out 24 hours to see.

Because as we live in these districts and I'm traveling, in certain areas, it looks like a landfill because people don't know, either for the lack of education of the new route system, or they're just not being inherent to the code 24 hours.

And if that is the case, then you all need to ramp it up and make sure that they want to be educated about it and that code enforcement is on it.

Because if the route system is not working, then we need to come back to the drawing board.

Thank you, uh Chairman Army.

If I may follow up with that, I'm guilty of what he just said.

I had a mattress, so put it up like 10 days I didn't know.

Yeah, I didn't know.

Otherwise, I would have uh waited until the day it was you.

So, how do we find out when the route is coming our way so we can put the mattress out within 24 hours?

Because that's I didn't know.

Sure.

So I mean, how can you find out?

Or you guys.

Well, in general, I think residents in general, yes, meaning.

For sure.

So in the app, right?

There's good explanation now that we that would push out that shows the the different zones and the cadence of pickup with with instructions.

So a big piece of what we're trying to do inside of the 311 app is take advantage of the customizable communications and and push out kind of these FAQs, right, to do this public education.

But I think also we need to continually pound it from a a mayor's office in city of Chattanooga communications perspective, just to really get that message message saturation to to a spot because it is gonna take a minute because it is a change.

So it is in the app because out of fear of missing the uh pickup, I just I put the mattress out.

Right.

And so I didn't want it to be missed.

Yeah, so so that information is in the app just to clarify.

It is okay for sure.

Yep.

Councilman, it's also on the the city website, so there's a map that you can go to that's on the solid waste page.

Okay.

If you open that map and input your address, it will give you a link that tells you exactly when they're gonna be in your neighborhood.

Gotcha.

Yep.

All right, sorry.

Uh couple more questions here, Chairwoman Hill.

Thank you very much.

Um to me, this presentation illustrates the reality that things that seem very simple often are highly complex and require a great deal of time and effort, not only to set up but to maintain.

Um I've been on this council almost five years now, and when I started, I was assigned this very committee, and I was advised that we would have a new 311 in six months, and we're five years in.

Um, and we've had a sorted solutions, none of which have made it all the way across the finish line.

Um these responses, Kevin, are terrific.

Are they active now?

These responses, the thing about, hey, you uh you've made a a code violation claim.

Yeah, we've received it.

Is that live?

So they are they are live across roughly half of the 134 service request types that exist.

And are you writing those in as evergreen a way possible so they don't need constant touches?

Yeah, so we we are, but but also from a from an a maintenance perspective, we're going to revisit them on a cadence as well to make sure that they're still accurate.

Remind me who's on this team.

Um right now it is me and Darren and Mandy Green.

We have uh Mandy Bowman, Connie Bradshaw, James Sprel.

I just butchered your last name, James.

I'm sorry.

Um who's from tech on this?

The the last three or four folks that I just mentioned are all DTS Geralds on it.

Okay.

Um we've got Derek Frizel, we have Kim Strong and Andrew Crockett.

Okay.

Am I missing anyone?

Oh, and Jonathan Taylor from DTS, who is data um helping us with the dashboards and some other things.

So we're documenting, we're documenting all of our processes so that when somebody goes, then we have it written down how.

Oh, for sure.

Yes, and this we've we've gone like full agile methodology with this thing with sprint cycles that we can go super deep with it in terms of documentation if you want to see.

I'm I'm glad to hear we've got some.

I think having leadership brains in the room is important, but people that really know the long-term implications of this type of project management is important.

Um regarding the pickup of brush and bulk trash, um we have done this multiple ways just in the last five years and and prior to that, and we have not found the successful mix.

So I don't know that we're gonna find the successful mix this time either right away.

Um I I do think that over time if we can get into a cadence and hold firm to that cadence.

I think we've been very shiny object.

That's right.

Somebody's mad, now we're doing something different.

Um, and we didn't have the right technology in place.

So we've been switching, and I imagine your staff is kind of like, what am I where am I driving today?

Umce we get into that cadence for say a year, my hope would be that that's the kind of information that's handed down from a um a realtor to a homeowner, um a landlord to uh to a tenant in the same way that we say garbage days on Tuesday, and recycling is every other Wednesday, and everybody just knows it, and bulk trash day is on the third week of the month as it is right now.

I'm not ready to go tell my neighborhood associations all this because I'm really confused.

Sure.

I was amazed my Christmas tree went out, and 30 seconds later the guy came down.

I just hit the jackpot.

But I had no knowledge.

I was like, will they pick it up?

Will I call?

I don't remember.

I've read the press release.

So we're certainly in this messy spot.

Um, I personally am gonna try to just sit tight and trust y'all to work it out, but um this is going to require long term sustained effort to really deliver on the expectations that you all have and and ultimately on the promise to to the constituent.

No doubt.

And I agree with what you said about this is a basic, this is a basic process in a can in a constituent's mind.

Um we gotta get good at this.

That's right.

Especially if we want to try to say we want to do anything else.

Yep.

Yeah.

So I think to get to predictability and consistency, you gotta be consistently predictable.

And that just means we gotta stick with it.

Yeah.

And uh if you if you don't pee at the right time, you won't be prepared and predict progress.

Yeah, that all starts with P.

Yeah, if you don't pri if you don't prior preparation prevents poor performance.

There we go.

Five P's of JIF.

Yes.

Thank you.

That's anything else?

Okay.

Uh Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, sir.

Um Kevin, I would say and and Jay that I I think the 311 app needs to be a little bit more user-friendly.

Number one, to find your area.

To start with when you open it up, the 311 app, it says, I mean you've got park reservations, community center reservations, sewer fees, yada yada yada.

Well, then there's this blue line that says start request.

Well, I I don't really have a request, I'm not wanting to request.

I'm just wanting to find out when my area is and when the brush is gonna run.

So now I've got to you know, figure out well, do I start a request just to find out what area I'm in?

Yeah.

So to me it's a little bit confusing.

It it it well, it was for me when I was trying to find out, yeah.

You know, what I don't even know didn't even know what area I was in.

Uh and that's that's interesting.

Can I just real quick because how you think about how we think about it, how whoever is doing the thing thinks about it has such a tremendous impact on what the product does because the the thinking or the customer journey that we walked through was the person is going to the app because they want to have their brush picked up, and so they go find it, they click it, and then it gets put like all that information gets pushed.

But I hear you, that's good.

We need to move that forward.

Almost a what are you looking for?

Is is like the first step in when you open the app.

Exactly.

And then um I I guess Jay does the uh days.

Plus he got it, so you got a different app.

Well, but you he might council.

But then just to find like I I'm still, I mean, like I'm flipping down, I'm flipping down through stormwater.

Um because I'm flipping through all these starter request, you know, and and I'm still trying to find out where my area is and when they're gonna pick up my brush.

Yeah.

So, you know, I take a chance on clicking on a request of I see bulk trash brush bag yards, so I click on that.

Well, then I get up, I get to a map that I've got to click again to another website to find my area.

It does give me some dates for area one, but there's nothing on this page that tells me what what area I'm in.

Okay, I mean we could make this a full product meeting right now.

That's a lot of opportunities to to do what uh and all I'm saying, I'm just trying to share the frustration that I think and and no, it's it's very helpful.

You know, not everybody's as adept at finding you know technology as I am and that's a joke, okay.

So um I I think just maybe finding simple request as to what area I'm in and when can I expect my bulk you know trash to be picked up might be helpful to know when to set it out because if I'm if I'm clicking on this album, I can't navigate this to even find it.

I'm just gonna set it out.

It's gonna take me less time to set it out than it will be to find what area I'm in.

The other thing, so you pick up for I think five days, right?

Yes, sir.

In that area.

Do you like would they run in front of my house just one time in that week, or would they run multiple times in that week?

And do I have to do I have to wait till the end of my date to say, oh, I've missed it, or you know, I had it out during my week, I need to call 311 to let them know I was missed because I had it set out in that week.

But like, could I expect somebody to pass in front of my house every day that week or only one time in that week?

It's actually two times throughout that week.

So we'll send the primary trucks through.

They'll go through and then following day we'll send in a secondary truck on that same route.

Okay, the primary truck is just looking for tracking.

So the primary truck is picking up whatever it sees.

Okay, everything that's on the road.

Okay, so there's no there's no scalps going out.

Supervisors are going out and and looking at things and taking note, but they're not picking up anything.

What expectations do I have of that of brush being picked up if I set it out on that last day?

It wouldn't be picked up on that last day unless we unless it was on the back side of that area.

So there's no there's really no way to tell what day that truck's gonna pass in front of my house.

No, sir.

So the best better.

Is there a way to find that?

Is there a way to pinpoint that?

Like what day can I count on that truck being in front of my house?

I know what day my trash is picked up.

It's on Friday every week.

I know to have my trash can set out there every Friday.

Is there a way to know what day I need to have my brush set out there to know it'll be picked up that week?

So as we were looking at the details on how we do that, we weren't able to come up with the exact date because of the timeline in the month.

So it was better for us to say, hey, here's a week per area.

Everybody put your stuff out, we're gonna grab it all.

Well, but that's not extended true because if I put it out on the back end of that week and my truck ran the front end of that week, then I've missed it or ran the front in the middle.

Or you know what I'm saying?

So whenever we get done with that area and move to the next area, yeah.

We push a trail truck to go through the area we just did.

Just to try to capture anything.

The week after.

So I could technically set it out on the last day and it would be picked up.

Yes.

Is that what you're doing?

Yes.

It should be so a couple couple of things.

Sure.

So let me just listen, I'm not trying to criticize, I'm just trying to understand and figure out one.

I'm trying to make it easier for our residents to figure out what area they're in and when they can expect their trash their brush to be picked up or their bulk.

Yep.

I know when my trash runs, so I'm trying to figure out how do we, you know, like how do we make it that routine, I guess.

So I will say that the areas that we follow with the bulk pickup are the exact same areas that we do with the trash pickup.

So that shouldn't change at all.

Like it you once you get into that routine of where the first week of every month, then that's what it's gonna be.

It's just a matter of getting everybody educated on when that timeline is.

Now say that one more time for me.

I'm somehow I got hung up on trash.

So the areas that we have identified are the same areas that we do trash collection.

So it's the very same routes that we're running.

So what we run one week for the trash pickup, we're running for that one week of a month for the bulk pickup.

Jay, is it the same number of people and equipment with bulk and brush as it is with trash?

No, because we use knuckle bones for the okay.

So maybe it might be helpful to explain how because there's also a capacity and and uh volume consideration here that that goes into how they can put their operational plan together.

Meaning from the residents' perspective, which we totally understand, right?

Like we have we have kind of set it up to where the residents uh they view brush and and bulk the same as they do as garbage, but it isn't exactly the same because it isn't the same equipment and it isn't the same staff, and so the it's just it's our ability to service that that volume is a little bit more constrained, which is why it's not as easy to pinpoint predictably which day, and rather you have to extrapolate it to a zone because it's it's it's a smaller operation if that's let me let me ask one more question, I'm gonna uh be done.

But um, you know, when you um whey mower, whatever you use for your travel app, you can always pinpoint a hazard in the road.

Is there a way for our garbage truck drivers and I don't put more burden on them?

Is there a simplified way for our garbage truck drivers to identify brush as because I'm gonna assume that the garbage truck drivers cover every road in Chattanooga?

Is there a way for them to you know they're driving down the road push a brush button and and and then we build a data base so that we know where all those brush pickups are, possibly what the volume might be is at this time no, but we are trying to get cameras for the trash trucks?

Yeah that will then go into AI and be able to identify all that stuff.

So yeah, that that tech that technology definitely exists.

We don't currently have it and we're not utilizing it, but it does exist conceptually.

I have cameras on order right now for the trash trucks.

Well, yeah, I thought about cameras too, but I've also thought you know, with a you know on your uh GPS, you can always hit a button to identify a hazard in the road.

Uh the trucks aren't outfitted with it, they do have iPads that they could probably do it, but it wouldn't just be a a geo tag anywhere and and move on.

They would have to type in some stuff.

Yeah, I yeah, I will I would that'd get way too complicated to start typing.

And then they would hit more cars.

I just thought if they could just hit up, you know, a little icon brush that it would at least identify where the piles are.

We're working through that.

We're trying to get to that point, and we're also trying to get to a a place where we have cameras that are looking at what goes into the trash trucks themselves so that we can identify recycle and contaminated loads so that we're not spending so much money on the backside trying to uncontaminate everything.

Okay.

So I have us moving.

It's just not a fast process.

I'm sure the technology is out there.

It's just trying to outfit it on the cost dollars.

Really?

Oh, yes, sir.

I thought it was all free.

Calls dollars.

So budget's coming up, just throw that plug out there.

One thing at a time.

Good job.

Anything else, Councilman?

That's good.

Thank you.

All right, we have two more and then I have a uh recommendation and then uh we will recess.

Uh Councilman Clark.

I just want to say um one way to help mitigate all the trash on the streets, is to really encourage people to stop putting it on the streets and actually use our bulk sites.

We have one off of airport road.

I think people just are taking advantage of the fact that they think that we have the capacity to just pick up your trash in front of your house like garbage.

And we don't.

That's that's why our roads are looking the way they're looking, because we don't have the capacity that we do for trash to pick up bulk.

So we need to be educating the public more.

I'm gonna be requesting more code enforcement.

I've said that like a hundred times.

They have cars, they can drive around and help identify some of these issues because now I'm concerned that it is a code enforcement thing that the day before.

So my question is why isn't code enforcement going out the day before?

So we're actually moving the code enforcement from solid waste into the code enforcement department so that we have more additional personnel and they have more coverage over everything.

That's perfect.

So we deem more education into telling people to take your own trash and put it into the free areas that we have identified to put your ball trash instead of depending on the city to come pick it up whenever you put it out on the streets.

So I just want to say those two elements that we need to push more.

So all right, thank you, Costman.

All right, uh, Councilwoman Dolly.

Thank you so much.

Mr.

Chair.

So just so I'm clear because so first, if you're in District 7, we area one.

So we first of the month, just for clarity.

But also you in mentioning all of this because of um because every month is different.

Every street don't have doesn't have trash things every week.

Would it be safe to just simply say have your items out Monday morning?

Period.

Yes, ma'am.

That way we end the dalling around all week, Thursday, you think they come and have it out Monday morning, it's done.

And you said now the next day it is another truck that comes.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

So in that case, have it out Monday morning at the latest Monday evening, so it's ready for either Monday is the day, put it out.

So that way is our is that safe for me to tell my neighborhood group.

Have it out Monday morning.

If you missed it, Monday morning we'll get it that week.

Get we'll get it that week.

So if it's still out there on Wednesday, they coming.

Right.

Okay, and then if you missed it, no later than Monday evening, early Tuesday morning.

Right.

Okay.

So that's that's the simple thing to tell.

Okay.

That's all I want to.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you so much.

Um, I I do have a suggestion since this is such a complex issue as we have seen.

Um, and we I think we do have collectively some good ideas to bounce off of one another.

I'd like to request that we have some sort of work session uh if we can get that.

I don't know if that's during strategic planning or something, but I think we do need to do this in a dialogue where we can have spend some time and actually, you know, through our situations and things.

So if you don't mind working through that with Chairwoman Hill, I think that would be a great idea.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anything else?

Any other questions?

All right, we do have an attorney client uh meeting after this.

Um so we will adjourn till 6 30.

We are back in session.

Council has not stopped moving today.

Um Clark, will you please um read ordinances are under final reading the alternate version of item seven A.

An ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code Part two, Chap 38 zoning ordinance OS on property located at 5920 Pine Grove Trail from RN3 residential neighborhood zone to IL industrial light zone, submit to certain conditions.

Thank you.

Council, can I get a motion on this item?

We need to have a substitute on that one.

Oh, thank you, Chip.

Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this uh item uh we do need to add a fifth condition on that was not added at first reading.

It's in the alternate version that we just read.

Uh well, so what I want to do is make a motion that we approve this item.

And then Mr.

Turney, do we not need to make a motion to amend the item that is the alternate version here was not read on first reading last week because it has one additional condition.

Uh it has five conditions as opposed to the four conditions that were in the first reading last week.

And the the amended version says as number five that the property must be used only for a car parking area, and no oversized vehicles will be allowed.

So that is a substantial change from your first version.

So if you approve this, it would go for first reading this evening and then second reading next week.

Well, I just number one wanted to make sure it was read into the uh minutes that the fifth uh condition has been added.

Uh and I've already made a motion to approve the alternate version, then I guess and we have a proper second.

Okay, council.

Do we have any further conversation questions about that?

All in favor of approving the alternate version?

Uh opposed.

Motion passes.

And now with a record for second reading next week.

Yes.

Uh next ordinance.

It was meant it was significantly changed.

So it goes back to first reading.

Okay.

Um item eight A, please.

Item this is a first reading.

And we're not just to amend Chattanooga City Code, part two, chapter 38 zone warnings.

So it's reasonable property located at 30 fourteen Dodge Avenue from IHV Industrial Zone to C C commercial corridors zone.

Thank you.

This is planning item 2025 0176.

Is the applicant present?

Do we have any opposition present?

Councilman Dotley.

Uh, for this one, uh Council.

Uh Madam Vice Chair, no requested that this be deferred another week uh until February third, 2026.

Um council, we have a motion on the floor to defer one week until February 3rd.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Okay, do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Okay.

Opposed.

Motion to defer passes.

Item B.

In order to amend Chattanooga City Code Part 2, chapter 38 zone warning.

So it's rezoned properly located at 511 Roswell Street from RN15 residential neighborhood zone to TRN1 traditional neighborhood residential zone subject certain conditions.

Thank you.

This is planning case 2025 018 read is the applicant present.

Do we have any opposition present?

Thank you.

Councilman Harvey.

Madam Chair, I make a motion to table this item, please.

Thank you very much.

Do we have a motion to table?

Can I get a second?

Council, we have a motion on the floor to table with the proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Opposed?

Motion to table passes.

Thank you, Councilman.

Item C.

An ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code Part 2, Chapter 38, zoning ordinance.

So as to rezon property located at 2802 Curtis Street from RN15 residential neighborhood zone to TRN2 zone.

Thank you.

This is zoning case 2025 0144.

Is the applicant present?

Thank you.

Do we have any opposition present?

Um councilwoman Dotley.

Um I believe you have some items uh to add to this, but um we can offer you, sir, um, seven minutes to describe your application um if you would like, and then we can ask some questions and give you two more minutes.

Would you like that?

Okay, okay, that's good.

All right, um, and I believe that uh councilwoman Dotley has um information from Vice Chairwoman Null that she she can do in her in her absence.

Yes, and if you would please state your name um and district for our records.

Uh my name is Josh Murphy.

Um here to have the property at 2802 Curtis Street uh rezone.

Uh the rezoning request that was mentioned, I believe earlier is generally acceptable.

Okay, okay.

All right, thank you so much, Mr.

Murphy.

And uh, Madam Vice Chair Noel wanted to confirm that uh it will be going far from RN 15 residential neighborhood zones of TN T R N2, correct?

And she wanted to add the condition that all parking for for both existing and new units shall be located in the rear alley, also known as Brown Alley.

There should be no parking on Curtis Street, and if you agree to that, then we can move.

She wanted to move forward.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, all right, that works.

Well, we don't need a presentation or anything, and I I add the amendment then is that correct?

Okay, so uh do we need that as an amendment or just okay?

All right, let's do it.

All right, let's all right.

That's it, Mr.

Murphy, unless you have any additional information.

No, ma'am.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, madam chair.

Okay, okay.

I would like to move to approve.

It's amended.

I can do this.

We gotta get it on the floor.

Okay, on the floor, yes.

So I want to move to approve.

We got the second.

And we've got a second.

All right, I would like to uh add the amendment as a condition.

All parking for both existing and new units shall be located in the rear alley, also known as Brown Alley.

There should be no parking on Curtis Street.

Um, so that is my amendment.

That is the motion.

Okay, can I get a second on that amendment?

Second.

Thank you.

And can I get a motion to approve or all in favor of the amendment?

Opposed.

All right, motion uh to amend passes.

Can I get a motion to approve his amendment?

So moved.

Second.

Thank you, council.

We have a motion on the floor to approve as amended with a proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Uh opposed.

Motion to approve is amended passes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, okay, moving into resolutions.

Item A, please.

Resolution authorizing the Department of Economic Development to provide 150,000 from the Economic Development Fund to the Chattanooga Airport as support for the small community air service development grant to facilitate non-stop service from United Airlines operated by Sky West Airlines from the Chattanooga Airport CHA to Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport Airport IAH beginning on March 20, 2026.

Thank you very much.

Councilman Clark.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd also like to point out uh before the motion that uh our April Cameron was present, but she had to leave earlier today, CEO of the airport.

And so therefore, on behalf of my colleague, Councilwoman Burrs, I'd like to make a motion to approve the resolution um to provide 150,000 dollars from the economic development fund to Chattanooga Airport.

Thank you, Council.

We have a motion on the floor to approve with a proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Opposed?

Motion passes.

Item B, please.

A resolution amending resolution number 32678 adopting a revised records retention schedule for the city of Chattanooga to include retention requirements for the Family Justice Center.

Thank you.

Council, we have a motion on the floor to approve with the proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion passes.

All right.

Item C, please.

A resolution authorizing the administrator of parks and outdoors to accept a financial contribution from a private nonprofit entity if awarded up to an amount of three hundred three million dollars for the renovations to the Chattanooga Skate Park.

Thank you.

Council, we have a motion on the floor to approve with the proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion passes.

Exciting, isn't it?

Go get it.

Item D, please.

Your resolution authorizing the administrator for the Department of Public Works to enter into a three-year agreement with waterways, a nonprofit educational organization to continue providing administration of the city's rain smart yards and adopting a waterway programs for an amount not to exceed 192,000.

Thank you.

We have a motion on the floor to approve with the proper second.

Councilman Henderson.

Thank you, ma'am.

Uh Councilman Clark, thank you for your work on this.

You've uh certainly improved this resolution.

I appreciate it.

Any other questions or comments?

All in favor?

Opposed?

Motion passes.

Item E.

The resolution of the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee authorizing the use of construction manager at risk CMAR contract delivery method under certain specified wastewater utility and public works infrastructure projects consistent with Tennessee Co-annotated Section 124107 and establishing implementation and oversight guidelines for such projects in the forms attached.

Thank you.

Council, we have a motion on the floor to approve with a proper second.

Do I have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion passes.

Take a look at our purchases, please.

Good evening, Council.

I have two purchases recommended for approval this evening.

The first one is for public works.

This is a year four renewal.

Big Woody's Tree Service has requested a 4% increase due to labor and grinding material costs.

The new estimate annual spend will be $754,000.

Number two is for technology services.

Council approval is requested to transfer agreement PA 100-387 for grant management software from ampital fund to UNA solutions.

Thank you.

Council, we have a motion on the floor to approve these purchases with the proper second.

Do we have any questions or comments?

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um committee reports.

Councilman Henderson.

Councilman Davis.

The Parks and Public Works Committee did meet earlier today, and we discussed the rain smart program and also heard the annual report on the state of our parks and outdoors department.

Thank you.

Councilman Harvey.

We had a riveting education and innovation committee meeting today, and uh like to follow that up with a 311 work session with uh Chief of Staff Kevin Roig and a wonderful presentation by Miranda Clark and Kritza Jones from uh our earlier learning department.

Thank you very much.

Councilman Clark.

Uh Madam Chair, last month was it this month?

I can't remember.

I I canceled my February uh community development meeting for the Department of Community Development.

I'd like to propose uh rescheduling that I'd like to discuss a different topic.

Community development is just not limited to the Department of Community Development.

It could be expanded to other community development items, including homelessness.

And so I am rescheduling our February.

I'm putting our February committee meeting back on the agenda where we will discuss what the administration is doing in regards to homelessness uh for the city of Chattanooga.

That is a that is news to you, Kevin.

Um, but we will collaborate on what we are doing with our policy director, who the mayor has appointed in what's her name?

Um I'd like to have a policy discussion in February about what the administration's response to homelessness in Chattanooga.

And what date that would be February 10th.

That would be February the 10th.

You're welcome.

The day that's on the calendar.

Thank you.

Uh Councilman Dotley.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, we are rounding the corner on budget season.

Uh so we will have a budget committee meeting to discuss uh updated financial policies.

You all should be receiving those in the next week or so.

Um, our meeting will be February the 10th.

Uh PM PFM will be here to do a board uh bond report or announcement, and then also we'll have a preliminary report from Dr.

A.

Cove uh regarding the um information he the study he's putting together for us.

So be ready for that.

You'll have all your information.

Um hopefully we have it to you by Tuesday this coming February 3rd for the next week.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Did you have any?

So that is that is for February the 10th as well.

Yes, there are two committees on that day.

Including what I just left.

Mine will be robust.

Right.

I would is it with your permission.

I'm sorry, can I be recognized, please?

Yes.

Thank you.

That will be a very robust discussion.

And I think we probably need to use the topic that I'm discussing in a work group.

Would it be possible if we could if I could reschedule mine?

Absolutely.

What do you recommend?

Um, how about we do that off dice so we can look at the calendar?

Okay.

Thank you.

Um we'll circle back on community development homelessness.

We will not be having that meeting on February 10th.

We will be finding a different date and potentially a different time.

When you say time, like not during well, if you said work session, we would want to have more, that would probably be in the conference room.

Gotcha.

I was just notified by Council Harper that we're all on that work group.

Yeah.

Okay, perfect.

So we'll cool.

Okay.

Look at us building the plane.

Flying it around.

Uh okay.

Um, and Mr.

Attorney, do you have any announcements?

Not this evening.

No.

All right.

All right.

Thank you.

Good.

Uh, you don't have to have one.

No ma'am.

Okay.

We have uh reached the point um in our meeting where we are happy to recognize people who are here and would like to address the council.

If you are here and would like to address the council, please do go ahead and line up behind the podium and listen while our attorney reads the rules.

Uh, yes, ma'am.

And at the end of each council business meeting, the chair will recognize members of the public who wish to address the council.

And here's your rules.

Each speaker wishing to address the council can only be recognized at the microphone provided up front for that purpose.

You can't have more than three minutes to speak, and you can address the council only upon matters within their legislative and quasi judicial authority and not upon uh matters which are under the authority of other governmental bodies or agencies.

Uh, do not engage in any vulgar or obscene language, nor use the floor to personally attack or personally denigrate others and address your comments to the council as a whole and not towards individual council members.

And lastly, do not engage in disorderly conduct or disrupting a public meeting, which is prohibited by Tennessee law, and someone commits that offense if a person substantially obstructs or interferes with the meeting by physical action or verbal utterance or to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting or gathering.

Having stated those rules, please go ahead and state your name and your district, please, Mr.

Bell.

My name in my district.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

My name in my district.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Um Monty Bell, the homeless journalist, the great hero like Fox, the man with the trillion dollar voice.

727 East 11th Street.

Real quick, while we're talking about names and addresses.

11 East 11th Street.

That's not an address here.

It's adjacent to this building, but it's not an address.

Monty Bell, the journalist.

Marty Bell, the stenographic reporter.

Mighty Bell, who's sick and tired of people, not my district, not my world, not in my life, making decisions.

You got into February the second, that's a Monday, to come up with your record that you've been keeping on Monty Bale the entire time you've been here from the racist states of the Carolinas.

You were told, and this is everybody as a whole, that you couldn't bring your K through 12 suspension letters that were written up by two of your chair people.

Nobody's child.

And every last one of you are going to get out of my life by any means necessary.

Now, you were told on September the 23rd that you have no business in the life of Bonnie Bail, and you were also told that you have no legal authority for your participation.

And docket number 25C919 that should have been heard in the circuit courts, the trial court at 625 Georgia Avenue.

We're gonna find out why UT Knoxville, UTC, and all of these five-part universities being educated by Monty Bale.

Last but not least, let me let you hear yourself.

You might not know your name.

Well, I guess the only thing is we we've not been served with any of these documents.

So we don't have to worry about this.

No, we don't have to worry about it.

You were not served.

You had no participation involved in the legal matters of Monty Bail.

You're not the attorney of record.

And you finally be dealt with.

We'll see you next week.

Evelina Cut, E V E L I N A, K R T A Y, District 8.

Council today, I'm speaking with you today regarding CPD, Chanu Police Department collaboration on immigration enforcement, which as an oversight body and with funding capabilities is part of your purview.

Reporting from the Times Free Press shows that over 500 in undocumented neighbors were arrested, and a large percentage of those deported from Hamley County in 2025.

That is sharply up from previous years by at least three times, according to some data, likely much more.

Not all data is currently public, but we have some.

What I'd be very concerned about is that the data released by the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department in the Times Free Pass show that the vast majority of these arrests were made by CPD.

Not the county, not ICE, not state patrol, all city police.

We are significant part of the deportation apparatus in Hamilton County.

We can't place all the pass all the blame to the county any longer.

The overwhelming amount of these arrests and deputations offer nonviolent offenses like traffic violations and licensed licensure and registration issues.

We have pink families a part over nonviolent offenses.

It's despicable.

Looks a part of my language a hell of a lot like targeted enforcement by CPD against the Hispanic and undocumented communities.

Yes, the Silver Day on the County Sheriff now with 287G agreement.

But this is not sufficiently explained the rapid increase in arrests.

Typically, traffic violations don't send people to jail.

Why is CP CPD choosing to arrest rather than site in all these cases?

I'm asking for transparency on all level of tax dollars being used for immigration enforcement at a time when crimes against humanity are being done in its name.

I don't want my tax dollars spent for this crime because it gets my faith and my values.

Questions I particularly like answered.

Um help city council in getting these answers.

What data are we sharing with immigration enforcement and the sheriffs on this issue?

Why are so many undocumented people in particular being arrested for traffic enforcement rather than simply cited?

If the city has nothing to hide, I expect some transparency here.

So I'd like to ask you, as city council directly now, can you explain the vast increase from 2024 to 2025 of arrests and on documented neighbors that leads to deportations by CPD in any other way than target enforcement and decisions to arrest rather than site for these crimes.

Are you finished?

Yes.

Chief Chambers, would you like to answer any of those questions right now?

So as it relates, and we've had this conversation many, many times to immigration, CPD has no jurisdictional authority whatsoever to enforce immigration.

Immigration is a is a federal statute.

That's therefore we don't have the authority.

Same as an FBI agent can't make a DUI arrest.

Right?

That's the same thing.

The numbers that are being reported out by the sheriff's office are arrest numbers from CPD.

So the city of Chattanooga, by and large, has the largest population in the whole county.

So whether it's live, work, or play, they're inside our city limits.

So when our officers are enforcing the law, just by the sheer numbers of the individuals that are within the city limits, we're always going to have the most arrests.

That is just the facts.

It's always been that way.

It always will be that way.

Can you explain the increase in arrest in 2024?

Wait a second.

We're not in a back and forth, but we are gonna let him answer the initial question.

Yes.

So for the past several years, uh actually, CBD has made fewer arrests year in and year out.

Now, have do we go in and look at those arrests uh based on the sheer probable calls for that arrest for each every individual one?

Absolutely not, because we're talking tens of thousands.

Um but every single arrest is a matter of public record.

So anybody can go get every single arrest report.

We also have a very robust uh internal investigative system that is 100% transparent, so anybody at the conclusion can get the full record of what that internal investigation consisted of.

So if there's questions about the legality of a particular arrest or a group of arrests by an individual officer or by multiple officers, all of that is part of the Freedom of Information Act and can be requested and reviewed at any time.

That has always been the case, and that will continue to be the case.

Um a follow-up question, and I don't know if we'll have any other follow-ups from the council or not.

Um but Chief, the uh the question about um in a traffic stop, why would someone be arrested versus cited?

Can you offer any insight on that?

Absolutely.

I know you have state laws that you got to follow as well.

So can you explain that to us?

So the the state law requires us before we can cite, you have to be able to determine who that individual is before you can cite them.

If we cannot determine that that individual is who they say they are, then we cannot issue the citation.

There's multiple ways that we try to do that.

There are officers that they try to do that on site.

Um the primary way would be to have a driver's license.

Um secondary, it could be a counselor's ID.

It could be an international driver's license.

There are multiple ways that we you know will accept that we can, okay, this is who this person says that they are.

But state law prohibits us from writing a citation to someone until we can verify that they are who that they say they are.

And so if they cannot verify who they say they are, then what is the next the only option is to make a full custody arrest.

Okay.

Um that's interesting information, just as we think about um neighbors who may have different forms of identification.

That so what I'm hearing you say is showing a different form of identification, a passport, a consular ID, etc.

is not grounds.

You you are not required to arrest someone for having a different ID, but you are required to have a person be able to prove who they are.

Am I understanding that correctly?

If they're if they're being stopped for a traffic violation before we can issue the citation, yes, we have to be able to verify that they are who they are.

So that does not become that that's not an option to you.

That's they do not have some form of ID.

That is correct.

Okay.

And it and it can't just be like a you know, it can't be like a club ID or you know what I mean.

It it needs to be a legal ID, a legal.

Social government document from government.

That's correct.

Ours or another country, like if they had a passport, I would show.

Okay.

Okay.

Council, do we have any other questions?

No.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Go on.

Oh, Rick, we need three minutes.

Hello, I'm Blake Wright, 3013, West Side Drive, District 9.

And I just wanted to say, um, I totally hear what we've just been, you know, relayed information-wise, but I'm only here because tomorrow we're gonna, as like a large gathering of different groups, are going to county, and we're gonna talk about this issue with ICE, and you know, I think we have all seen the news.

We don't live in a cave.

Um, well, maybe some of us do, but not me.

Um, and I know not all of you.

So if we can just kind of think like I know you guys are personally friends with people, some of us have positions of power, you know, each of you are elected to represent a large group of people.

So you're more powerful than myself, you're more powerful than any single individual person in this room when it comes to what we're gonna do as a community, and I just hear often, oh, this isn't something we can do, this isn't within our power, but we all have social power, and you know, we can utilize that power in different ways.

So this is a small town, and I really encourage each of you to be looking at your friends who might be in political positions, you know, using that like political power uh that you have, as well as if you're like, you know, in charge of a police department, and ask how can we be on the right side of things right now?

Because I definitely don't want to see my neighbors shot in the face, and then people in power say that they deserved it.

So just you know, keeping that in mind.

I know that there's limits to everyone's power.

Everyone tries to act like, oh, city council can do anything, oh, county commissioners can do anything, and we know that's not true from like the legal side of things.

Um, but there are ways that we can all collectively work together to be like, hey, Sheriff Garrett, or you know, whoever's in charge of this specific thing, let's try to do things differently and not have a combative relationship with people who are very concerned right now for their lives.

So just saying that and appreciate your time.

And my gosh, this is a really long city council session.

So thank you for that.

We all learned a lot today, though.

If you were here the whole time, we learned a lot.

Is there anybody else who's here that would like to address counsel?

Going once?

Going twice?

Okay, council, I don't see that we have anybody else who would like to address counsel tonight.

Um, can I get a motion to adjourn?

All right, council, we have a motion on the floor to adjourn with the proper second.

Any concerns about that?

All in favor?

We are adjourned.

Thank you.