Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly Explains His New City Budget Proposal

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Chattanooga is a unique community with the promise of becoming America’s best city. As I look back on my first 100 days in office, I am proud of our efforts to lay the groundwork for tackling the structural challenges our community faces, while ensuring we get the basics right.

We have restructured our government to align with priorities, streamlined departments to be more efficient and effective, and started the process of making it easier to do business with and within our city.

We have also begun the process of shifting resources back into our local neighborhoods and Community Centers. City government shouldn’t just be a building on East 11th Street, but a network of services, places, and relationships embedded in neighborhoods across Chattanooga.

We committed $2 million to the new Construction Workforce Development Center and donated land to help bring the vision for this trade school to life alongside our other key community partners. This will provide critical opportunities for Chattanoogans to get the skills they need to land great jobs in the trades and rebuild a local labor force that’s in high demand.

We began Mayor’s Open Office Hours, a monthly opportunity for residents to meet with me and my senior team in community centers across the city to discuss issues that are affecting them, or to share an idea they’re passionate about — because everyone should have open access to their local government leadership.

We announced a pay increase for our frontline workers and first responders, bringing them up to competitive salaries that will allow us to provide essential services for our residents. 

These are just some examples of the work we have done during our first 100 days in office. And it’s a great jumping-off point to introduce a budget that reflects a new organizational structure, creates a strong foundation for good governance, invests in infrastructure, preserves essential services, and allocates resources toward important new initiatives for our community.

Simply put, this budget is the foundation for making sure Chattanooga lives up to its potential to become the best city in America: a city that works for everyone, as one Chattanooga, together.

I encourage you to explore the proposed budget in full at budget.chattanooga.gov.