For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Marc Gravitt. I serve as Vice Mayor of East Ridge, a position that I am honored with and I take very serious.
For those that know me, you know I speak my mind. I have absolutely reached my limit on comments made by people that don’t know the facts. I would like to set the record straight on a couple of things related to Superior Creek.
First, as I have said publicly, this is an unforeseen, unfortunate, tragic situation, with ongoing repercussions for the families. As evidenced by comments by some on Facebook, it’s easy for some second guessing, Monday morning quarterbacking making comments such as, “you should have done this, you should have done that. Why did you do this or that?” Chief Mike Williams & Fire Marshal Kenny Custer had to make a very difficult, very emotional judgement call within an extremely short period of time. Some people have been saying, “The city shouldn’t have made the families move immediately.”
When is there ever a good time?
When faced with an immediate, life threatening, safety issue, a decision must be made immediately. After the structure was deemed to be in this condition, what would you have them do? Would you rather these two professionals that deal with life saving incidents, at a moments call, take a risk by letting these families stay there for any amount of time? Taking the risk of a child being injured, or worse? People have been saying “the city should have compassion.” Do you think Chief Williams, who has served as the head of the East Ridge Needy Child Fund for almost 20 years, wasn’t heartbroken over having to make this decision?
Second, the conspiracy theories are running rampant. “This was planned. The city is going to take it over for developers.” “The corrupt council did this.” Really?
Do you really think this was a conspiracy planned by the City Council, the city Fire Chief, city Fire Marshal and state Fire Marshal? Oh, and by the way, don’t forget to include the owner’s own engineer? His engineer, not the city’s, refused to sign off on the structures’ integrity in a meeting Thursday.
The first I heard about this situation, my wife and I were having dinner. These rumors are not only absolutely false, but absurd.
This whole situation developed from a complaint filed with the city. When the Fire Marshal went to investigate, he discovered more dangerous issues. We have some good people working for the city. I ask that you please try putting yourself in their position when faced with a life threatening issue.
_ Vice Mayor Marc Gravitt
