It’s just hard to believe.

I don’t know what else to say except this is unbelievable. You know, you think you’ve seen it all and then something like this happens.

No, I’m not talking about two of the city’s elected officials being sued in U.S. Federal Court for not paying Uncle Sam for an extended period of time. I’m talking about this deal that East Ridge and the East Ridge City Council is going to enter to spend $3 million of taxpayer money to “beautify” Exit 1. 

Are you kidding me?

I thought the idea of the city spending about $50,000 a year to do the mowing at Interstate 75 on state land that the state would take care of anyway was an outrage. Turns out that I hadn’t seen anything yet.

I remember back in 2008, during the last year’s of the Mike Steele administration, the city floated the idea of “beautifying” Exit 1. The plan then was to borrow some money that could be used to put new lights up in Camp Jordan Park and have some mad money left over to do other things, like put up a giant flag pole installation on private property that wasn’t even in Tennessee, and build some super-duper water feature/laser light-show thing that would make all those drivers coming up the interstate stop and spend money in good ol’ East Ridge.

City officials even had a semi-public organization, something called East Ridge Revitalization, lead the cheering section for the scheme. The price tag then was $450,000. Well, the whole thing fell apart when word got out about the wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money. Oh, and one other little detail, the State of Tennessee said you couldn’t build that stuff on state land … among other things, the laser light show/water feature would be a distraction to motorists trying to maintain their lane on I-75 as they speed north to Dollywood.

So, flash forward a decade and the brain trust that is the City of East Ridge hatches this scheme _ it’s deja vu all over again … on steroids.

What’s changed? Will the powers that be at the state level do an about face and permit this kind of project on its land? I don’t know, maybe permission has been granted.

Oh, and then there is this little item: According to the  ASA Engineering proposal, the timetable on the project is for it to be completed by summer. Hey, the last time I looked, wasn’t the city of East Ridge, along with Hamilton County, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Feds going to build a new off-ramp right smack dab in the middle of this “beautification” project. City Manager Miller said the construction has been pushed back to May and he expects it to be completed by the end of the year.

How does all this happen at the same time? Let me see if I’ve got this right _ we are going to go about beautifying the road before the road is built. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? After all, the city is going to do some landscaping along the right-of-way in Camp Jordan Park for the Jordan Crossing project for buildings that haven’t been built yet by the developers.

Oh, I get it now. We always do things backwards.

Let’s switch sides of the chessboard and take the perspective of city officials, shall we? I hear this one a lot: “We will submit to the state for reimbursement under the Border Region Act. We will get all this money back over the next 20 years.”

Could be. But a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in 20 years, just look at the chart for maintenance schedule provided in the packet. A three percent increase in the $100,000 maintenance fee in year one, jumps to almost double in two decades.

Hey, but I’m not a numbers guy. Oh, for the record, the city is running an almost half-million dollar deficit through three-quarters of fiscal year 2016-17. You don’t hear about this stuff at City Council meetings because our elected officials apparently aren’t concerned about these kinds of thing. I’m sure there is a good explanation, i.e., all the property taxes haven’t been collected yet; we will get a one-time something or other from the state in shared funds, blah, blah, blah.

City Manager Miller better be careful because traditionally the City Council fires the City Manager after THE COUNCIL votes to spend more money than was budgeted. He’s the scapegoat. You’ve seen it before.

But, I digress.

Here’s another explanation for squandering $3 million: If we don’t submit all we can for reimbursement during the next six years, that window will close. We only have a limited time to take advantage of this.”

As I understand it, the city can invest in infrastructure and other costs associated with public improvements under the Border Region Act. We submit the costs to the state and they will pay us back with state sales tax money (about 4.12 cents on every dollar). This will go on for another 20 years. 

So the proposed $3 million beautification project will be submitted and hopefully qualify for reimbursement.

Here’s my beef: Couldn’t we find better projects to spend the $3 million on? What about the idea floated a couple years ago of putting our power lines underground? That would be some monumental costs. But you know what, that would really be a benefit to everyone in the city, wouldn’t it? No more power outages during storms. No more looking down  Ringgold Road when the sun sets at glowing lines strung on unsightly decaying power poles.

What about spending that $3 million on hiring more cops? At the same council meeting in which this project was proposed the council authorized staff to pursue a grant for $250,000 to hire two more officers and provide them with vehicles and equipment. Those officers would be the ERPD “traffic division.” Who would have thought that … we don’t have a dedicated “traffic division.” Oh, by the way, ERPD doesn’t have a “narcotics division” either. 

There are better things  to spend taxpayer money on to benefit all the people of East Ridge and improve the citizens’ quality of life than trees, concrete pads for artwork, manicured grass and a pond at the interstate.