Mayor Tim Kelly
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly said the Wilcox Bridge will be the top priority for the city when Chattanooga receives federal funding from the recent infrastructure bill. H.R.3684, also known as the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” allocates almost $1 trillion to improving the country’s infrastructure over the next decade.
Mayor Kelly, speaking to the JFK Club on Tuesday afternoon, said he did not know how much money Chattanooga would get from the bill.
He did say there was one project that will be addressed first when the money is received. He also said the Wilcox Bridge was already slated to be addressed before the infrastructure bill was passed.
“I think public safety has to come first,” Mayor Kelly said. “If the Wilcox Bridge, God forbid, gives way then that would be a disaster for the community and the railroad. And right now it’s increasing response times because fire trucks don’t go over it.”
He also listed the Wilder and Walnut bridges as projects the city will focus on, as well as expanding the Home Uplift program using money from the infrastructure bill.
“The Walnut Street Bridge is also a priority, and in terms of most effect for the least amount of dollars, expanding the Home Uplift program is very exciting to me. That has a sustainability and a workforce development impact, and it will lower people’s bills.”
“There are numbers on the Walnut Street Bridge, but I don’t know them off the top of my head. I inherited that from the Berke administration. Everyone knows the decking has to be replaced, but what people don’t know is that for structural purposes, paint performs an exoskeleton function. So it needs to be sandblasted, inspected, and then repainted.”
Mayor Kelly said that bidding for contractors and services to complete these projects will be a challenge as well. He said that the city will try to make sure it does not spend a significantly higher price than what it should to complete these projects.
“I think the problem we’re going to face is a bottleneck of contractor supply, because everyone is going to get this money at the same time. The first bids are the ones that are going to be executed, and if we wait too long then we’ll be behind because everyone is going to be booked up.”
“Supply and demand is the only eternal law of economics. People are going to have to be patient and stage the work. I don’t know how it will play out, because some of the work is very specialized, and in the case of the Wilcox Bridge, the railroad has a lot to gain or lose there as well.”
He also talked about his plan to build up early childhood education in Chattanooga, his administration’s strategy to address the lack of affordable housing in the city, and more to the JFK Club over the course of their hour-long meeting. Mayor Kelly repeatedly called his policies “localism” and implored those listening to move past partisan party lines, saying that many solutions are not partisan.