I’ve said for a very long time that the City of East Ridge has its priorities wrong.
Job One: Public safety. Job Two: Pick up the garbage. Job Three: Keep up the streets. Job Four: Enforce codes that make neighborhoods and businesses nice. Job Five: Provide nice recreational opportunities, and do all this without breaking the bank and spending more money than the city takes in.
I’m fixing to find out if some of the 11,000-plus voters in this city agree with me because I’m offering myself as a write-in candidate for Mayor of East Ridge. The name Dick Cook won’t be on the ballot, folks. If you think the city can do better you gotta write the name on the ballot.
The last time I looked, the city’s budget went from $17 million and change to $23 million and change. Of course, that included a 27 percent property tax rate increase. One might conclude that all the economic development that has come to the city hasn’t allowed our leaders to bank enough coin to hold the line on property taxes. It may have helped matters if the mayor and council had not voted to needlessly give $7 million of your tax money to the owners of the new liquor stores on Ringgold Road.
Looking at the last financial report that is available (May) it appears our city may run a deficit. Our elected officials vote to spend more money than we’re taking in. I wrote a story about the budget a couple years ago and pointed out that there was deficit spending, as the city had to reach into its fund balance to make the budget balance. The mayor quickly corrected me and said it was “planned deficit spending.”
Hey, when you pay your household bills at the end of the month and you are forced to transfer money out of your savings account into checking to make ends meet, what’s that called? The mayor might refer to that as “planned deficit spending.” If that happens long enough I call it “going broke.”
The city has lost a significant number of police officers this past year. Depending upon who you ask, it’s either about money or morale. Probably a little bit of both. We must do better retaining the men and women who endeavor to make this city a safer place.
The fire department needs more firefighters. There’s an appeal on the department Facebook page asking those interested in becoming a volunteer firefighter to come by the firehall.
The city’s sanitation department is rife with inefficiency. I don’t know about you, but it’s not unusual to see garbage trucks pick up cans that are empty. That’s right, One truck right behind the other. There seems to be some confusion there. And the collection of brush and large items is anyone’s guess. Just look at the patches of unmown grass encircling a patch of dirt near the curb where brush has sat for two or three weeks. We can do better.
I think you would agree, the streets are a mess. Pot holes, botched patch jobs, gutters littered with so much debris it’s got pine seedlings reaching for the sunlight. And how about those storm drains that literally haven’t been touched in years. This is our lot, despite millions of dollars in state gas tax revenue that’s in the budget earmarked for road maintenance that goes somewhere else. I don’t know where that money is spent, do you? One thing is clear, it ain’t on street paving.
What does the city do for our streets? On Marlboro Avenue, at least, it put a fresh yellow stripe down the center. I think the same was done on Tombras and Bennett Avenues. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig.
Of course, parts of our commercial corridor are currently a construction zone. We’re building nice wide sidewalks on the south side of Ringgold Road, but more importantly we’re beefing up the stormwater system beneath those sidewalks. Three years ago the mayor told me this project was going to coincide with the reconfiguration of the I-75, I-24 split. He said what’s known as the “multi-modal” project on Ringgold Road would take two or three years with a price tag of about $10 million.
So what did our mayor and council do at the last council meeting, it voted unanimously to forward $3 million of federal money it received through a Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) grant and give it to the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority (WWTA).
What? The city manager explained to our elected officials that the city doesn’t have a utility and that we would pass that money to the WWTA and earmark it for improvements to the sewers inside East Ridge. No discussion. Approved.
I think you would agree that the WWTA is a well-funded organization. Just review your own checkbook register to confirm that, as East Ridge is it’s biggest customer.
I contend that the same $3 million could have been forwarded to the Hamilton County Stormwater Authority. That utility is funded by ratepayers ($9 a year on your property tax bill) and government subsidized. The money could have been earmarked for stormwater improvements relating to the “multi-modal” project.
Camp Jordan Park is a gem. It should be, owing to the fact that the city spends more than a million dollars a year to run it and periodically spends additional millions to upgrade it. Remember, the city is only in Phase II of a multi-phased renovation of the park. Cha-ching.
City officials have done a wonderful job over the years convincing the 21,000 people who live in our eight-square-mile city that the park is a cash cow. I ask simply, “show me the money.”
No doubt the activities in the park make money for businesses around the interstate. It didn’t make enough for our elected officials to avoid raising our property taxes, did it?
Look, there is very little chance that the person sitting in the seat of Mayor of East Ridge changes in the November 8 election. But to paraphrase singer/songwriter John Hiatt, “I’m a longshot, baby but sometimes longshots come in.”
If you are one of the voters who thinks a change is warranted, write me in for mayor.
I’m giving you a choice.
