East Chattanooga'snew birth, new jobs
For two years after families were moved out of the 440 apartments of the Harriett Tubman housing project in East Chattanooga, the 36-acre ghost town sat vacant as the Chattanooga Housing Authority tried to sell the property. After on-and-off-again bids from private groups, CHA finally took a second offer from the city of Chattanooga -- $2.6 million in cash. And City Mayor Andy Berke said the decades-old vacant buildings would be torn down to make way for recruitment of jobs that would serve the community where more than 2,700 live in a 1.1 square-mile census tract that is 96 percent black and the median household income is $15,197. Only 67 percent of residents there have at least a high-school education.
City officials have worked since them to begin putting their money where their hopes have been.
On Thursday, Chattanooga's Director of Multicultural Affairs, James McKissic, said 14 residents from that East Chattanooga neighborhood became recipients of the first new jobs there: They will work for the next several months for the Nashville contractor who won the $3 million demolition project, and they will have the potential to make up to $20,000 each, McKissic said.
It's true that 14 is not a lot, but it's a beginning. Some 479 people applied for the 30 job-training slots from which the 14 were chosen. More may be hired, and the city has linked up the remaining hundreds to other organizations offering help with job placement, such as last week's Urban League Job Fair, Career Development Centers, First Things First and Partnership for Families and Children.
When the Tubman site is cleared, Berke hopes to attract a new business there that will employ many more residents. He and County Mayor Jim Coppinger have sent a jointly signed letter to Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith asking that the schools give the adjoining former Mary Ann Garber Elementary School to the city to add value and to "join the effort" for economic development and "for the betterment of our community." Garber has been closed for more than a decade and is used as storage for the Teacher Supply Depot.
For years, Tubman and Garber have sat abandoned, offering a jabbing daily reminder to East Chattanooga residents that government didn't care about the community because caring would mean investing to make community assets rather than community liabilities.
Reclaiming Tubman, Garber and East Chattanooga is a great and moral idea. These 14 jobs are a very small but very good start.
Say cheese, U.S. Forest Service
There's been a big dust-up over the past week about a new proposed rule by the U.S. Forest Service about photos and filming in federally designated wilderness areas of our national forests.
Papers and blogs across the nation have shouted outrage in headlines like "U.S. Forest Service wants to fine you $1,000 for taking pictures in the forest" and "Ansel Adams would have been taken away in handcuffs."
Not exactly.
The Forest Service is proposing to require permits with fees of $30 up to $1,500 for commercial filming and photography. Commercial -- as in movie making or perhaps calendar making. And commercial photographers who do not obtain permits could face fines of up to $1,000. Tourists and park visitors, as well as journalists and news organizations, would not be affected, according to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.
Still, there's an interesting dynamic in this question even for commercial work. These are public lands, after all. We already have paid for them, and we continue to pay to maintain them. Commercial filmers and photographers -- as long as they aren't trashing a place or as long as the filming is not so involved that it essentially closes an area to other members of the public -- shouldn't have to pay to use something that is theirs and ours.
On the other hand, the 50-year-old Wilderness Act of 1964 sets aside swaths of land where permanent roads or commercial enterprises are prohibited for the express reason of preserving those jewel-like areas from exploitation. The act does allow for commercial recreation groups, such as raft companies or hunting outfitters, to use the areas for business. Generally motorized traffic is prohibited in these places where people are encouraged to enjoy a primitive type of recreation.
One Colorado nature photographer John Fielder, whose life's work has been taking photos of the nation's wilderness lands, told the Coloradoan that artistic expression fits in that wilderness recreational category, as well. And certainly the U.S. Forest Service -- with Ad Council help -- has done its share of commercializing national forests to make us all aware of our treasures and to draw us there: Click to www.youtube.com/user/discovertheforest.
The Forest Service -- which oversees 193 million acres of land including 36 million acres in designated wilderness areas -- initially planned to keep the rule open to public comment until Nov. 3. Thanks to the outrage, that's now extended to Dec. 3.
You can comment by email at reply_lands@fs.fed.us.
And by all means, send them some pictures!