Custer Invites Citizens to Meet at Local Coffee on Friday Morning

If you’ve ever wanted to sit down with the man in charge of the City of East Ridge and share your ideas about how the city is running, now is your chance.

Assistant City Manager Kenny Custer, who is currently the acting city manager, is inviting residents of East Ridge to Local Coffee to sit down and have a hot beverage before work on Friday, December 21. Custer said he will be there at 7:30 a.m. and has carved out an hour of his day to talk with the people that the local government serves. Local Coffee is at 5330 Ringgold Rd.

Custer said the idea is to not meet in City Hall that can sometimes be somewhat intimidating to the average citizen, but to meet in an environment that will allow for informal discussion to “identify some of our strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities as we continue to move forward.”

In an email to East Ridge News Online, Custer said that he feels “it is important to engage the community and share ideas that will assist us in creating more efficient and dependable services.”

So, if you’ve got a beef about your leaves not getting picked up in a timely manner, or you want to praise the work of our public safety departments show up at local coffee and have the ear of the city manager.

If you can’t make Friday morning, it won’t be your only opportunity for such dialogue. Custer said it is his intention to meet once a month at different locations in East Ridge to interact with the very people the city serves. East Ridge News Online will keep its readers updated about future informal sit-downs with Custer.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.