OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESSIn other business the City Council voted to:• Approve rezoning an 18-acre swath of land where developers plan to build a new multifamily residential complex with 387 units on Riverside Drive.• Increase a construction contract at the St. Elmo and John A. Patten parks to build bathrooms by $7,500 - a total project of $154,242.• Accept $15,000 from Hamilton County Commissioner Warren Mackey to construct better lighting at Millikin Park off West 45th Street.
Nearly 300 people have applied to work in the Chattanooga City Council's office -- jobs that will be vacated by Dec. 1.
By a thin margin, the City Council voted two weeks ago to restructure its four-person staff, a decision that was made after weeks of bickering and stonewalling.
Some on the council argued that the new pay plan was a plot to get rid of the current employees calling it "cowardly" and "evil." Councilman Yusuf Hakeem even threatened to advise the staff to sue the city.
Other officials who voted in favor of the restructuring said the council needed new positions, such as a full-time employee to write legislation.
"The problem was the positions weren't right," said Council Chairman Chip Henderson. "You've got to make a change somehow to correct it."
The new plan could increase pay for some of the City Council's four employees -- a clerk, a management analyst, a deputy clerk and a council support specialist -- but it also puts in place requirements that may mean the current staff would no longer qualify for their jobs.
One of the positions is already vacant after Cynthia Patrick, the council support specialist, went to work for the city's Information Technology Department. The other three City Council employees were told they could reapply for their jobs and would be considered for the newly created positions.
Their names are now among about 280 applicants that will be weeded through in the next week. Henderson said about 175 of those applicants were for the administrative assistant position -- which is the lowest paid of the four positions.
Three council members -- Henderson, Jerry Mitchell and Russell Gilbert -- will choose which applicants to take to the council for a final vote.
Hakeem said he still doesn't understand how the council got to this point since talks began after the council's Clerk Sandra Freeman asked for a raise and the city began to research clerks' pay scales across the state.
"I've tried to get to the root of all this," he said. "Initially, all we were asking for were pay increases and now we're talking about transforming the entire office."