Chattanooga City Council Meeting - March 3, 2026
Chattanooga City Council Meeting - March 3, 2026
The Chattanooga City Council held a regular meeting on March 3, 2026, which included a planning and zoning committee session. The council addressed ordinances, resolutions, purchases, and heard public comments on sidewalk safety and charitable accountability.
Consent Calendar / Routine Approvals
- Minutes of the previous meeting were approved.
- Ordinances on first reading: Item A (speed limit reduction on Graysville Road from 40 to 30 mph) and Item B (annual towing rate increase) were approved.
- Public works right-of-way abandonment in District 2 was approved with a condition that no healthy trees larger than six inches in diameter at breast height (DBH) be removed from the abandoned alley.
- Resolutions: Appointment of Tim Moore to Board of Zoning Appeals; lease with Legal Aid of East Tennessee for $1/year; donation from Miracle League for a video board ($83,000); contract awards for FY26 Citywide Resurfacing ($13.5M) and Birchwood Landfield Gas Flare Replacement ($929,915) were approved.
- Purchase requests: Six purchases approved as a package, including a stormwater supply renewal with a negotiated 1.1% increase (vendor initially requested 7%), a risk management increase of $500,000 due to rising claims, and others. Two RFP formats and one sole source purchase (tree distribution program for $29,199) were reported.
Public Comments & Testimony
- BJ Keepers (retired military, Chattanooga resident) requested that charitable organizations receiving city funds be audited and held accountable for transparency, including annual reports, financial disclosures, and adherence to bylaws. He referenced an unnamed group he said had received city and county funds without proper oversight.
- Hopenchi (Oak Grove resident, mother of five) highlighted the lack of sidewalks in her neighborhood, which she said creates safety hazards for families walking to parks and businesses. She referenced successful traffic safety measures in Hoboken, NJ (zero fatalities since 2017) and Helsinki, Finland, and urged the council to adopt a Vision Zero policy. She offered to help organize walk audits.
Discussion Items
- Risk Management Budget Increase: Councilman Elliott questioned a $500,000 increase for risk management obligations through March 31, 2026, noting that the FY27 budget has not been approved yet. Staff from risk management explained that claims for 2025 were up 14% over 2024, and claim costs for 2024 were up 45% over 2023. Councilwoman Burr requested a future presentation on the department's progress in reducing risk. Greg (Risk Management) outlined initiatives such as checking driver safety records and preventing injuries in wastewater operations.
- Agawilla Drive Rezoning (3886 Agawilla Drive, District 5): The applicant requested a rezoning from RN-1 to RN-3 to develop multi-unit residential. Originally proposed 79 units, reduced to 67 after public input. Staff recommended conditions limiting attached units to no more than four per building and preserving a townhome-style form. Neighbors expressed opposition, preferring the current RN-1 designation and citing concerns about traffic and rental properties. Planning commission approved the rezoning with five conditions.
- East Third Street Rezoning (1010 East Third Street, District 7): A rezoning was requested to allow a drive-through pharmacy as an accessory use on a site currently zoned CN. Staff recommended the INST zone instead and proposed an ordinance amendment to permit drive-throughs in institutional zones. Councilwoman Noel noted the applicant had not contacted her and required a conversation before she could support the rezoning. The council agreed to move the related ordinance amendments ahead of the rezoning vote on the next agenda to provide certainty for the applicant.
- Ordinance Amendments: Three text amendments were discussed: (1) Changing the term "adult use" to "adult-oriented establishment" to align with state law and other city code; (2) Allowing drive-through facilities as an accessory use in the institutional (INST) zone, with standards to prevent standalone commercial pharmacies; (3) Updating notification requirements from 15 to 21 days per state law and clarifying sign posting rules for form-based code and board of zoning appeals cases.
- Future Considerations: An MOU with Launch Pad to install a publicly accessible naloxone (naloxone) box at Miller Park was introduced, with a presentation scheduled for March 10, 2026.
Key Outcomes
- Votes: All ordinances and resolutions on the agenda were approved unanimously.
- Planning & Zoning: The Agawilla Drive rezoning will proceed to final reading with staff-recommended conditions (no more than 67 units, no more than four attached units per building). The East Third Street rezoning will be considered after the related ordinance amendments are voted on, pending Councilwoman Noel's district approval.
- Future Meetings: Budget working session scheduled for March 31, 2026 (9-11 AM); Planning Commission meeting on March 19, 2026; Homelessness working group to meet monthly; 311 education session to be scheduled; Risk management presentation to be scheduled.
- Donation: Volkswagen donated three vehicle shells to the Chattanooga Fire Department for training purposes.
- Community Engagement: The Hicks and Pike Road safety improvement survey open through March 6, 2026.
Meeting Transcript
Good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the Chattanooga City Council for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. To get us started, I'd like to invite Councilman Henderson to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and invocation. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Madam Chair. Reading from the book of Proverbs, chapter three. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not into thine own understanding. Amen. In all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Would you bow with me in a moment of prayer? God, we do ask that you go before us and prepare our way. Amen. Amen. Before we get too far into our agenda, I'd like to take a minute and welcome our mayor's youth council to our council chambers. You all got lucky because our agenda is relatively short today. But we do have a planning and zoning uh committee meeting that you'll get to um you'll get to enjoy, which is some of the heaviest lifting that we do, honestly. Uh, you know, we have some key responsibilities as city council members that include setting the budget for the city of Chattanooga, uh, making decisions about planning and zoning, um, among other things, passing other ordinances. So we uh welcome you here today, and we thank you for your service on the mayor's youth council. I will say my daughter was on the mayor's youth council when she was in high school and found it to be a pretty fun experience. So I hope you all are enjoying it as well. And I see a CSAS on that shirt, and that is where my daughter went to school. And my son Elliot is a senior there. Y'all are like, you know, it's not really please. Well, welcome. We're glad you're here. I don't know. Were there any prepared? Did anybody have anything they wanted to say? Did y'all prepare anything? No, y'all your faces. You're like, please no. Don't worry, we were not gonna put a mic in your face. Um no, let's not make them stand. Okay, we're glad you're here. Um okay, moving on. Can I get a motion on the minutes, please? Second. Okay, minutes will stand without opposition. Um we are gonna go ahead at this 3:30 meeting and discuss our agenda for today. Um, so for our youth council, what we're gonna do is we go over the agenda for today, then we look at our purchases for today, we look at next week's agenda because we are always planning um pretty far out in advance, and then we actually look at a future considerations document. So we're looking at items um as far as sometimes even a month out so that we can get prepared as a council to be ready to vote when the time comes that the item is on our agenda. Um so council, we don't have any items on our final reading today. Um items on first reading. We have some items from our city attorney. Councilman Elliott. Thank you, madam chair. I was hoping someone could give me a little bit more information on item B evolving uh billing of charges on the records. What are we doing with that one? Somebody else is coming to me on this one, and I think it's the same thing, but I think it is. I was just trying to check.
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