Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly on July 28 marked the completion of his first 100 days in office with the launch of a live tracker that allows the public to measure his administration’s progress moving forward.
Using the real-time tracker at ChattaData.org, residents can monitor changes to individual action items and browse actions taken toward each goal.
While the city has completed more than 80% of the plan’s action items, many of those tasks are merely first steps toward solving some of Chattanooga’s broader structural issues, Kelly says.
“The work doesn’t end just because we checked some boxes on a spreadsheet. I’m proud of the headway we’ve made, but we still have some substantial goals to hit in several key areas, and we’ll be continuing to work hard on every single one of those priorities.”
The Kelly administration built the 100-day tracker as an internal tool to measure progress and drive accountability within city government. As work continued July 28, the tracker inched upward past 80%.
Not all action items are equal, and while some were completed fairly early and easily in Kelly’s first 100 days, others will take additional months or years to complete, the mayor says.
As an example, within weeks of taking office, staff conducted a survey of city-owned properties that can be converted to affordable housing, completing that action item.
However, the action item of revitalizing the Land Bank Authority will require renewing the entity’s tax status and charter, which is more complex and was not completed by the end of Kelly’s 100th day.
Those two items are just the initial steps toward Kelly’s broader goal, which is to begin to put these properties back into circulation for the public’s benefit, whether for affordable housing or to help jump-start job creation.
In another example, the city was able to build a number of task forces to simplify city codes, completing that action item. But now the work begins of going through city ordinances and codes line by line, evaluating changes and then going through the process of getting the rules changed, which will take more than a year.
Kelly says he’s proud of establishing a new city Department of Community Health, led by Dr. Mary Lambert, and of establishing the new Community Forward initiative, a partnership with Hamilton County Schools that will support both students and families in seven schools located within the city.
Several items are functionally complete, but because they are tied to the budget, additional details will be revealed as part of the city’s budget presentation in August.
Source: Office of Mayor Tim Kelly