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September 21, 2005
St. Elmo Billboard: Wish You Weren’t Here.
St. Elmo is up in arms over a garish new billboard that the City is allowing at the entrance to their historic neighborhood. The board, a towering 45-feet high, is contrary to existing zoning rules and appears to have sneaked in under the radar. Or not, depends on who you talk to.
St. Elmo, like Highland Park, has pulled itself up by it’s own bootstraps over the past decade because private individuals bought those bombed out houses and restored them. Lovingly. Without any government help at all.
Which is just fine with them--no one was looking for hand-outs. But the neighborhood really feels torpedoed by this move--they're quite shocked to think their government would collude against them to allow a billboard to go up that makes their neighborhood look like Disneyland. OK, more like Disneyland.
We got no less than six letters here on this subject at WME this morning. Now, the reason St. Elmo residents automatically thought of Ron Littlefield, who--have you heard--is the Worst Mayor Ever, is that while he used to be “a fierce champion of sign control,” according to a story in The Chattanoogan.com’s archives, once election season approached he “pushed through the greatest relaxation of sign controls in the history of Chattanooga’s sign ordinance opening up five miles of Highway 153 to new billboards.” Nine billboards went up almost immediately, on a previously pristine stretch of highway. Thanks Ron. Whore.
A few months later Ron announces he’s running for mayor and the payoffs, I mean, campaign contributions, started rolling in from the outdoor advertising community. According to election commission records, four out of six of the billboard owners on that stretch of 153 contributed to Littlefield the maximum allowed by law. So did other billboard owners and their family members. Cuz that’s how Ron rolls, yo. Hell, it could be worse. We’re lucky he didn’t appoint the head of ClearChannel Outdoor as the sign inspector.
So the St. Elmo folks all want to know if this one of Ron’s notorious backroom deals. I dunno. Ron claimed to be pro-neighborhood during the campaign, but we all know that that was just to drive the whole downtown vs. neighborhoods issue to get elected. It was bogus then and it’s bogus now. St. Elmo and Highland Park are both now thriving neighborhoods, that have passed the tipping point (TM Malcom Gladwell), because of our improved downtown, not in spite of it. Now that he’s elected, neighborhoods haven’t seen squat. Well, certain neighborhoods in Korea, Japan and China have been getting a lot of attention, but that’s another post altogether. Littlefield's Blueprint for Better Neighborhoods [see crappy campaign brochure of the same name]--must still be on the drafting table.
To be fair, if this isn’t Ron helping a friend skirt the zoning ordinances to make some cash, then he can undo this. It’s called a bully pulpit, Ron. Hop up on it.
Same goes for Friend-of-Ron Manny Rico. Manny claimed at the Council meeting tonight to have just found out about the four-and-a-half-story billboard (way to stay on top of the issues in your neighborhood, dude). If Bob Corker didn’t like something, he found a way to put a stop to it. I think that man could roll-back daybreak if he put his mind to it. Hey Ron, pretend it's your Brainerd neighborhood getting screwed, if you need some motivation.
Insiders at City Hall tell WME that, while the official story is that the billboard appears to be grandfathered into the sign ordinance because the building that was torn down on it's site had signage on the side. But the actual placement of the billboard is a violation and thus can be stopped. We’ll see if Ron does the right thing by St. Elmo. I, for one, am holding my breath. Starting…Right…
Comments to: worstmayorever@aol.com
| By Billy Blades | 12:03 AM
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