Friday, August 1
The state department of education has set September 9 as the date for receiving bids on a $1 million expansion of the Chattanooga Technical Institute. Bids will be received and opened by the state purchasing department at a 2 p.m. meeting on that date and the successful bidder will have one year in which to complete construction. More classrooms, laboratories, and office space are included in the expansion.
Police Chief Eugene McGovern has requested an inspection division, headed by Detective Captain J.M. (Pete) Davis and composed of seven other detectives. They will be responsible for gathering information on subversive activities, civil disturbance, militant groups and campus unrest.
Lee Anderson, editor, Chattanooga News-Free Press, has been named chairman of Group III of the United Fund Campaign to be held this fall. Assisting Anderson will be Ray L. Nation, public employees; Paul G. Bode, education; Mrs. Gordon Smith Jr., neighborhood division, and Dr. Ralph Mohney, ministers division.
Saturday, August 2
The City Commission has sent a two-paragraph letter to the Tennessee Inspection Bureau stating it will make the improvements promised and requesting that Chattanooga retain the Class III rating for fire insurance it now holds.
The monthly report of Cecil Sounders, chief building inspector, showed the value of building permits issued by his division during July was more than three times those issued by the city during the same period last year. July 1969 permits amounted to $6,482,162. Largest among the permits was one for Parkridge Hospital, $14 million, and the Chattanooga Coca-Cola Bottling Co., plant on Amnicola Highway for $1-million.
Mayor A.L. Bender has announced he will propose that the City Commission request the Hamilton County legislative delegation to pass enabling legislation to provide for a pension program for the city’s hourly-paid employees. Salaries employees are covered by a pension plan, Bender noted, and employees who are paid on an hourly basis should have the same opportunity.
Sunday, August 3
Residents of Chattanooga’s Model Cities area elected 25 “peoples’ representatives” to the Community Development Administration Board Saturday. About 1,300 people voted in the seven districts which cover Avondale, Bushtown, Orchard Knob, and East Chattanooga. Thirty-four candidates were running for the 24 places.
Gifts and grants to Covenant College during fiscal 1969 topped $316,000, substantially breaking all giving in the Lookout Mountain college’s 14-year history.
Monday, August 4
The Chattanooga Symphony Association recently received a $6,000 donation from the Chattanooga Junior League. The money will be used for a three-year music enrichment program for junior and senior high school students in the Chattanooga and Hamilton County schools.
Chattanooga may face a dilemma in public transportation September 2, the date on which city schools open. Commissioner Peterson said that normally about 1,000 students ride the Southern Coach Lines buses during the school term. September 1 is the date Southern Coach has said it may not operate. The bus company and the city have been considering ways and means by which the city may take over and operate the transit system.
Tuesday, August 5
Dudley Porter Jr. vice president, general counsel and secretary of Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co., has been elected to the board of directors of Coco-Cola Bottling Co. (Thomas) Inc., Sebert Brewer, chairman of the board, and DeSales Harrison, chairman of the advisory committee, announced.
A $126,500-plus judgement which Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Wilson of Chattanooga won from Farmers Chemical Association, Inc., of Tyner, was upheld by the state Supreme Court Monday.
Some 250 Chattanooga area businessmen and civic leaders, members of the Kiwanis Club, and the Chattanooga Rotary Club, met today for the kick-off luncheon of the 1969 United Fund Campaign. The speaker was C. Virgil Martin, chairman of the board of Carson, Pirie Scott & Co., Chicago, and chairman of Roxbury Carpet Co, and Roxbury Southern.
Wednesday, August 6
The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission reports, in the first 19 detailed neighborhood analyses being undertaken, that the center city’s population area declined from 45,025 in 1950 to 18,330 in 1967. The area, designated as District 1, includes the central business district. Part of the cause of the decline is attributed to clearing of the westside and the building of the freeway through the area. Removal of homes on Cameron Hill above the freeway and the area just below it along, Pine, Chestnut and Poplar streets, added to the exodus of resident population.
Quinten Lane, director of staff personnel services for the city schools was named director of the Model Cities program Tuesday by the City Commission. Dr. John Dyer, city coordinator of federal programs, had been acting director. The appointment of Lane raised the ire of the local NAACP chapter which immediately sent a telegram to the commissioner protesting the appointment of a white man to the post. James Mapp, past president of the NAACP here, was appointed by the City Commission, as training specialist for the Model Cities program.
Thursday, August 7
Mayor A.L. Bender reached an agreement with the Tennessee Inspection Bureau Wednesday that will save Chattanooga’s Class III fire insurance rating for at least another 60 days. Bender outlined three points of an agreement with C.N. Mullican of Nashville, bureau manager, which include relocation of an aerial truck in Brainerd for protection of high value property; a program of new firefighting units and recruiting and training new personnel, and immediate orders for extension of water mains and hydrants as annexation becomes legal. The mayor’s action are subject to approval of the City Commission.
The County Council has agreed to issue $1 million in rural bonds to finance construction of a new high school in Tiftona and to make improvements at Red Bank High School. County Judge Chester Frost said the rural bonds – to be paid for from taxes raised only in the 2nd and 3rd Civil Districts, not in Chattanooga – will not require a tax increase.
County Councilman Cartter Patten criticized the council’s policy on closed-door meetings Wednesday and said he would not bind himself to any decisions that may be professed as presumably reached during closed or secret sessions of the council. Judge Frost promptly cancelled an executive session he had called Wednesday after Councilman Patten’s statement.