On October 27, the Chattanooga Times Free Press ran an inaccurate story on the county’s school facilities planning process.
Earlier this year, I (Mayor Weston Wamp) collaborated with the Superintendent of Schools Dr. Justin Robertson and the longtime County Engineer to add a new step of due diligence and accountability to our school facilities planning in order to save taxpayer dollars. Our aim was to avoid costly overages by involving architectural consultants in the pre-planning stages as we established the scope of $200 million in major school projects.
On the heels of the construction of Tyner Academy going $30 million over budget, we knew changes needed to be made to the county’s planning process before embarking on school investments in Hixson, Brainerd, Soddy-Daisy, and downtown at the Gateway site. By hiring professionals for tens of thousands of dollars to assist in the planning stages of these projects, we believe we can save taxpayers tens of millions by the time they go to bid.
One of the complex school projects vetted by consultants was the Gateway facility and the idea to move Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts (CCA), which currently occupies the former City High School, to that location and develop a new technical school at the same site. In January, the school system put a $50 million estimate on the cost of the concept. After months of analysis, professionals estimated that the cost would be more than $82 million and would leave CCA without a gym and other features of their current facility. Additionally, to repurpose CCA’s current location for another school to use the campus would cost $37 million according to estimates from the school system’s MGT facilities report in 2020.
At a total cost of ~$120 million, moving CCA to the Gateway site is cost prohibitive and makes no sense for taxpayers. And many CCA parents voiced their opposition to the proposal regardless of costs.
The same consulting report that estimated moving CCA to Gateway at $82 million, estimated that redeveloping the first and second floors of Gateway as a technical school, which was the original plan when the building was purchased in 2023, would cost half as much, around $43 million.
This reality set the disgruntled, liberal county commissioner, who represents CCA, on a warpath. Despite many in the CCA community not wanting the school to move, this commissioner leaked hundreds of documents to the Times Free Press in an effort to stop the new downtown technical school, which doesn’t fit his political agenda.
Unfortunately, the biased, inaccurate reporting by the Times Free Press that followed is a local example of why only 12 percent of Republicans trust the news media, according to recent polling by Pew Research.
The Times Free Press has since published numerous retractions and corrections to their October 27 story, which included quotes from only one county commissioner: the Democrat they had worked with to source and develop the hit piece.
The corrections revealed a stunning disregard for fact checking and common journalistic standards for a newspaper with such a rich history.
Not only were both architectural consultants hired transparently according to county purchasing rules by the public works department, they were part of a collaborative effort with school system officials to save taxpayer money. County commissioners had access to the documents weeks in advance of voting to issue bonds, which they did unanimously. And the allegation made by the Times Free Press that I signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) without the authority to do so was patently false and has been corrected. In fact, I signed nothing unilaterally, and the MOU dated back to 2004 when it was approved by the county commission.
So, where’s the controversy?
There isn’t one.
As I told the commission last week, it is time to decide whether we are working together to move Hamilton County forward, or whether we are working against each other to move the county backward.
My administration continues to be committed to moving the county forward with an emphasis on improving public education and increasing access to career and technical pathways.
_ Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp
