Agenda Set for Thursday Council Meeting

The East Ridge City Council will meet Thursday at City Hall on Tombras Avenue and once again consider hiring at least one person in the city’s Codes Enforcement Department.

The council has wrangled with the issue for more than a month. The reassignment of a longtime codes employee due to a disciplinary measure has left the department with only two staff members. At least two councilmen have reservations about hiring a new employee without a job description and salary range.

According to the agenda, the council will consider a resolution to upgrade the city’s information technology server infrastructure. The city had a proposal from its long-time IT vendor to do the work in three phases for a total of just more than $40,000. During the last council meeting, the board asked staff members to prepare a request for proposal so the new equipment could potentially be bid on by different vendors.

The council will revisit the Local Parks and Recreation Fund grant it had received some months ago. The council reconsidered moving forward with the grant to build a half-court basketball court, tennis court, restrooms and a walking track when the state required site surveys totaling $5,000 be done on the areas where construction would take place. During the last meeting there was much discussion about returning the grant money ($100,000) and starting over with the process to have these facilities at a place other than Camp Jordan Park.

The council will also discuss Phase II of construction of the Exit 1 interstate exchange. This project will reroute traffic from the northbound Interstate 75 exit to intersect with Ringgold Road at the entrance to Camp Jordan Parkway.

The Agenda Session starts at 6 p.m. followed by the council meeting at 6:30 p.m.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.