Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Chattanooga City Council met on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, for an agenda session followed by a voting session. After opening with the Pledge of Allegiance, council heard a CARTA parking enforcement update and a DTS SMART grant report, then recessed until 6:00 p.m. for an attorney-client meeting before returning for votes on ordinances, resolutions, purchases, board appointments, and a street renaming request. No written agenda or minutes were available; this summary is compiled from the transcript.
Charles Frazier, CEO of the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA), presented an update on the consumer protection and parking compliance ordinance. Key points included:
During consideration of Regional Planning Commission appointments, Councilman Elliott asked nominee Ethan Collier about concerns he had heard: the 73 Shallford Road rezoning, allegations of suing neighbors to acquire land, and whether too many developers serve on the commission. Collier said the Shallford Road property was renovated but the planned addition was never built after neighbors imposed conditions; he called the land-acquisition lawsuit allegation "an absolute lie," explaining he spent more than $170,000 suing LLCs under the Neighborhood Protection Act to force demolition of 25 blighted, vacant homes in Milltown, and said he did not buy those properties. He defended having developers on the commission as peer review. Councilmembers Hill, Burrs, Harvey, and Henderson expressed support for his service or appreciation for his answers. The RPC appointments were later approved.
Gerald Neal (Chief Information Officer), Ryan Huddleston (Director of Intelligent Cities), Sarah Abel (ITSA), Fire Chief Terry Knowles, and CARTA Chief Innovation Officer Daniel Dufour presented the closing report on the USDOT SMART grant received in March 2024, operational from January 2025, ending September 30, 2026. Deployments included 13 roadside units, 13 LIDAR units at 13 intersections, and 28 onboard units on fire trucks, CARTA buses, and city test vehicles along East Third Street and Central Avenue. The technology supports emergency vehicle preemption and transit signal priority, with no personally identifiable information recorded. Chief Knowles said the fire department's preferred approach is turning all intersection lights red so fire apparatus can clear intersections more safely; CARTA installed V2X devices on 12 buses in two weeks, reducing install time from four hours to 30 minutes. Future expansion includes more than 80 additional intersections through an Advanced Transportation Technology and Innovation grant, 20 more through congressional funding, and coordination with CARTA's $25 million FTA-funded autonomous shuttle program.
Fran Pierce, a District 8 resident, said her father Lehman Pierce lived on Canon Avenue for all 84 years of his life, served on City Council for 19 years, and fought for the community, including against drug dealers and prostitutes. She said the street renaming had been discussed for about eight months and commemorative signs had been posted, and she asked why the item was tabled and why the community had to keep waiting. She noted she had been at the meeting since 3:00 p.m.
City Council. Um, and if you'll please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you and welcome everyone. Thank you for your patience with us as we um got started a a little late this afternoon. Um we'd like to at the beginning of our meetings give kind of a rundown of how our meetings operate so you'll know what to expect. Um the first half of our meeting um is what we call our agenda session, and so council will go through and consider the items that are before us for a vote tonight, um and also the items that are before us um for a vote next week, and then even farther out items that will come before us in three weeks or or later. Um we will uh council will consider and discuss those items as needed so that we're so that we are well prepared for all the votes that we'll be taking. Uh we also have during our agenda session um a special presentation this evening from Carta, and so we'll get to that in just a minute, and we also have a department report um from DTS about the smart grant project that they have ongoing. Um we'll also look at our purchasing items. Um and again council will have the opportunity to ask any questions or raise any concerns about the items that are before us uh for approval regarding purchases this evening. Umce we have done that, we'll take a recess um as we always do, and during that recess, we often have an attorney client meeting with our city attorney. Um and I'm told that we do need a brief um attorney client meeting this afternoon, and so we'll do that during our recess. Um so that when we get to the end of our agenda session, I'll announce the time that we'll be coming back for the second portion of our meeting, which is the voting portion. Um where we'll vote on all the items on tonight's agenda. And once we get to the end of that, um there will be a time at the very end for public comment for members of the public who are here uh who would like to address council um on any topic. We're happy to hear from you at the podium down front when the time comes for that. Um so that uh is a rundown of how our meeting operates. Um so with that being said, uh council could I get a motion on the minutes from our last meeting. Oh, second. All right, do we have a motion properly seconded on the minutes from our September 22nd meeting and they will stand as published. Um at this point I'd like to invite up Charles Frazier from Carta um to give us an update about their parking enforcement initiatives. My name is Charles Frazier. I am the CEO of the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority, fondly known as Carta, and I'm here to give you an update today on the consumer protection and parking compliance ordinance. And uh to get things started, uh let me just uh reacclimate everybody to the overarching goal and the timeline. So you've seen this timeline before. Overarching goal of this whole project is to support economic activity downtown. And so what we want to do is make easier parking at fair and predictable rates for everybody. We want an allowance for enforcement of parking violations, and then a consumer protection framework to protect people that are coming downtown. And so this is the timeline. This should look familiar to you. Uh in April of this year, City Council approved the ordinance. In May, Carta's Board of Directors approved the associated licensing requirements for private owners and the community supporter program. I'm gonna give you an update on both of those items today. We are in the amnesty period, the 120-day amnesty period, which is when people had the opportunity to pay off their outstanding citations. That ends uh tomorrow. And then uh today uh we're gonna be talking about enforcement, which starts officially on October 1st, and then uh thank you, Councilwoman Burrs, for suggesting that I come back in April of next year to give the council an update on how how did everything go in our first few months of the project. So let me start with kind of the the I think the most important part of what we're trying to accomplish, which is where we will be collectively by the time we get to December of this year. And so by the time we get to December of this year, we will have more free parking and more rate protected parking areas for people to come downtown. So by the by December, we will have 18 facilities in the Chattanooga parking network. That's a combination of lots and garages. Of those, six are privately owned operators that'll be joining the Chattanooga parking network. There'll be three new garages added with the first hour free parking, which is excellent for everyone. And that brings a total of 4,774 off-street parking spaces that'll now be a part of the Chattanooga parking network. And I want to draw your attention to kind of two statistics here, which I'll bring back to you as we're moving through the project. But when Carta first introduced the first hour of free parking, we had 1,143 spaces available. By the time we add the new garages to this, and they are offering their first hour free, uh, we'll have 2,723 spaces of first-hour free parking. So that's a hundred and thirty-eight percent increase. I'm happy about that. I think that's a step in the right direction.