Housing Authority Meeting on Friday

The East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment Authority will hold an organizational meeting on Friday, June 30, officials announced Wednesday.

The meeting will be held at noon at City Hall on Tombras Avenue. The public is invited.

In late May, Mayor Brent Lambert named his appointments to the newly-formed East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment Authority.

Darwin Branam, Eddie Phillips, Ruth Braly, Earl Wilson and Curtis Adams were named to the first-ever housing authority. The members will serve staggered terms.

Branam is a former East Ridge City Commissioner and most recently was appointed to the City Council to fill the unexpired term of Lambert when he was elected mayor in 2010. Braly is the Chairperson of the Industrial Development Board. Phillips is the former Public Safety Director for the city, while Adams served as Hamilton County Commissioner for District 8. Wilson was recently appointed to the city’s Beer Board.

The council adopted by resolution the formation of the East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment Authority in its April 27 meeting, for the purposes of “fighting blight” in the city. The council determined that there are “unsafe and unsanitary” conditions in the city of East Ridge. Officials said the housing authority would be governed by state statute but that the authority would have the ability to adopt its own rules.

The East Ridge Housing and Redevelopment Authority will have the ability to condemn buildings which have been neglected by its owner for a long period of time. It will receive its funding through the City, officials said.

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.