Roy Exum
Late Saturday morning, there was a driving rain as I took my khakis to be hemmed by Bruce Baird, who owns a wonderful menswear store on Broad Street, and it was glaringly obvious that what the crazies among us have done with a looney bike-lane scheme is ridiculous. There are concrete barriers, reducing Broad Street to two lanes of traffic, which I believe will impede downtown businesses tremendously. Right now pedestrians are using them to trip and people fall a lot.
Bruce, usually his affable self, is so livid he is red-faced.
He has loyally stayed downtown while other business have left and what the project might well do to his trade is a worry. Did anybody talk to you about this, I asked the business owner, only to get a terse “no” in reply. Was there a meeting or anything to discuss it? Was it brought before the City Council? “No and no.”
My goodness, has the way the morons have snatched away our rights in these United States now spread into our city? The plan is to allow a row of parking outside the bicycle barriers but as I followed two empty shuttle buses (yes, it was raining hard so few people were out) a problem arose.
On the Broad Street side of the Read House, cars were parked along the barrier. The shuttle buses were obviously too wide to stay in the remaining lane, thus taking about two feet of the other lane. Presto, we had a one-lane street with the plodding shuttle buses domineering the entire parade.
I believe such nonsense is going to hurt downtown far more than help it. The River City Company, saying we are desperate for downtown housing and tooting the horn at every turn, can’t like what is happening. The River City group, its purpose hazy and its quasi-government function never quite explained, should have stopped this if indeed they are for the revitalization of a promising downtown district. On record, there has been nary a peep. In fact, River City has been leading the chorus for the bike lanes.
What is worrisome is that the public, to my knowledge, had absolutely no input into such a hair-brained scheme. If you haven’t noticed, such lack-of-regard is being pushed on us more and more. Did somebody just arbitrarily decide to tangle our main thoroughfare to the Aquarium without any transparency, any warning or any input?
Ditto the Chattanooga Parking Authority. I cannot fathom who gave the “authority” to some faceless people who have just raised the hourly rates, instituted ridiculous fees for fines, and have now started charging fees on Saturdays. If this is tourist-friendly you can wad it in your peace pipe.
Increasingly the citizens of Chattanooga have no say. They can call the City Council but it appears that august group has little say either, else we would have known it from media coverage. This is crazy. This isn’t who we are. Chattanooga has been a model of progress because people and government have worked together.
All of the above buffoonery most surely should have been done properly through our elected City Council. That’s why we chose them for in an election. Yet as of noon Sunday, a full 85 percent of 1,800 people who responded to a current Chattanoogan.com poll agree the permanent bike lanes are stupid.
Our presidential candidates shout, “We want our country back” but a growing number of Chattanoogans are shouting, “We want our city back.” The bogus emissions centers, which incidentally passed a good-sized herd of VW diesels in recent years, are a folly. We know that.
I fully believe some lawyer could add to his pile by declaring them a conspiracy because 90 Tennessee counties aren’t plagued with the $10 and ensuing hassle Chattanoogans are. That’s clearly unfair to the state’s taxpayers, charging four counties while the other run free. Don’t we have some elected leader in this town who can stand up and shout, “Enough!” If not, it is plain-and-simple, we need new leaders.
For the first time in my memory we have a reclusive mayor. City Hall is about a welcoming as the Silverdale workhouse. This isn’t to say Andy Berke is doing a bad job but, great golly, he’s got to take responsibility for some idiotic decisions. The City Council didn’t approve the bicycle mess or our nutty parking regime, so who did?
I’m afraid that may be why Andy is a recluse, the king over a fiefdom who issues a decree and sends it to the masses by some minion who hands it to a backhoe operator. That’s a horrible example of poor government. ‘Government of the people, for the people, by the people’ is the dream, not some reclusive tyrant whose absence among ‘the people’ is being noted more and more.
This Thursday night the mayor is hosting a fundraiser for his election campaign at the Bessie Smith Hall. The Sixth Annual ‘Bruce, BBQ and Berke’ gathering will begin at 5:30 and a $25 donation will gladly be accepted. It would almost be worth $25 to get an explanation for zany stuff that is now occurring regularly where the public has no voice.
Somebody needs to be able to ask why we just sink another quarter-million in a Violence Reduction Initiative renewal when it is easy to see we are on track to set a new record this year in both shootings and murders alike?
Couldn’t some of the concrete used for those bike barriers be put to better use patching up pot-holes in our streets that have been so neglected, not to mention far better use of the total amount the project will cost at the final whistle? With the city opting out of any support for Erlanger Hospital – which is unprecedented in any other mid-sized city in America – could the hospital send a bill or something to City Hall every time a gang member gets capped? How about tax cuts for the hospital in trade? It isn’t fair to make the hospital pay every penny for Chattanooga’s mayhem.
Isn’t it about time to join the 21st century with a streamlined combination of city and county services that would save us millions? While I strongly suspect the county commissioners would frown on the Bicycle-down-Broad fiasco, I think the city might learn a thing or two from Jim Coppinger and a couple of the common-sense members of that body. Can you imagine the benefits of combined law enforcement, public works and the like?
On Mayor Berke’s invitation to this week’s event, he wrote one catchy line. “No need to put on a Brilliant Disguise or hide out in the Secret Garden; make The Promise to ride the Backstreets down to the party."
What I’m saying is the backstreets are probably the best way to get there. Forget going down Broad Street.
It is increasingly evident we need to get our city back as well as our country.
royexum@aol.com