A request for the use of discretionary funds from two commissioners will be considered by the Hamilton County Commission at the voting meeting next Wednesday.
At the agenda meeting Wednesday morning, Commissioner Tim Boyd told the board that over a year ago he made a commitment to the East Brainerd Elementary School to help install a playground. The new school has four age-appropriate playgrounds. Money in the budget for construction of one of those was $15,000. Cost estimates from Playcore are $125,000. Commissioner Boyd offered to match up to $25,000 from his discretionary funds for money the school could contribute. With the school now having raised $25,000, the dollar for dollar match will double the money provided from the discretionary funds, he said.
Another request for approval of spending $10,481 from the discretionary money for a school will also be heard at the next meeting. This would be used for the purchase of table-sized IPads for the Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts (CSLA). The devices are the size of a small table and will allow instructors to set them up at the children’s eye level. They will be used as a group project-based learning tool.
The zoning committee has received a request from Rosselli’s Pizzeria, 1667 Ooltewah Ringgold Road, to reduce the distance required between restaurants and bars that serve alcohol, and a school, church or day care center. Currently the distance required from the nearest points of the buildings is 1,500 feet. The request that will be heard next week will be to change the distance to 500 feet, which is the space that Chattanooga specifies. The recommendation from the committee is not unanimous.
The finance committee will recommend several expenditures, including upgrades to equipment the sheriff’s department uses for fingerprinting. The new equipment will allow this to be done digitally. Also, $400,000 for the purchase of furniture for the new East Brainered Elementary School will be recommended. This was a budgeted item included in the total $23,500,000 cost of the school.
Imaging tools for Hamilton County that will interface with the TBI data base to help with the meth task force was also supported by the committee. There will be no cost to the county since the $24,700 will be reimbursed. The lowest bids will be approved to lock prices in for a period of one year for fencing materials for the recreation department, and for cameras used by the telecommunications department.
The finance committee also supports the continuation of a grant-in-aid for $371,300 for the Tennessee Department of Health for fiscal year 2015-2016. This is an infrastructure grant that will be used to pay for salaries and utilities.
Hamilton County appointments to two boards will be proposed at the voting session. Patricia M. McCoy will be recommended to fill an unexpired term to CARTA, and Bill McGriff will replace one WWTA board position and Mike Moon will be appointed as a board member for a five-year term.
Commissioner Boyd announced that a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation that was awarded to the University of Southern California for a project to leverage the power of Gigabit connectivity for K-12 education benefited a school in Chattanooga. With USC, students at the STEM School in Chattanooga designed experiments to study the effects of human activity on microbial ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean.
Sheriff Jim Hammond made a yearly presentation to the board of commissioners. He said the department had met or exceeded 400 standards to become CALEA certified - one of only five in Tennessee to reach that goal.