BusinessWeek’s fourth annual survey calculated information from several categories. Affordability, safety*, and school test scores were given the greatest weight.

“It makes sense. We have beautiful parks, Greenways and a Riverwalk. Families can afford to buy a home in safe neighborhoods. They have easy access to jobs, with more on the way through HSC. Clarksville really is Tennessee’s Top Spot” said Mayor Johnny Piper.

Parents pushing their children on the swings at one of Clarksville TN's may Parks

Other criteria included number of schools, household expenditures, air quality, job growth, family income, museums, parks, theaters, other amenities, and diversity.

Recently, Clarksville was also named by CNN as the fourth best city in the country to start a business and .

Clarksville is Tennessee’s fifth largest city and the ninth fastest growing city in the U.S.

Celebrating 100 years of Bold Dreams & Civil Right's Victories!

The Clarksville Branch of the NAACP will host its 54th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet on October 23, 2009 at First Baptist Church of Clarksville, 435 Madison Street Clarksville TN. starting at 7:00 p.m.

The National NAACP organization is celebrating “100 years of the NAACP and fighting for freedom, civil and equal rights”.

The theme for this year’s banquet is, “Bold Dreams…. Big Victories”. There will be a special presentation honoring former Presidents of the Clarksville Branch of the NAACP.  The guest speaker will be National NAACP Board Member and President of the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, Gloria J. Sweet-Love.

Cost of tickets for the event will be $50.00 per person.  For information on how to obtain tickets contact the Jimmie Garland at 931-216-6745 or O.D. Watson at 931-216-0290. Deadline for purchase of tickets is October 16, 2009.

Reserve a table for your business, church or organization today!

Registration begins August 10. The deadline to enter the tournament is noon on Thursday, September 17. The tournament is limited to 124 players. The entry fee of $110 includes one practice round at Swan Lake Golf Course on either September 14 through 18 (Practice round must be scheduled at Swan Lake and does not include a golf cart), lunch on both days of the tournament, use of a golf cart, commemorative gifts and the opportunity to win prizes. There will also be a chance to win the hole-in-one prize, a brand new vehicle from Mathews Nissan Suzuki.

Entry forms are available at all local golf courses, local pro-shops, online at www.cityofclarksville.com and at City Hall (1 Public Square).

Players in the 36-hole event will be divided into flights after the first day of play. The player with the lowest gross score for the 36 holes of play on the second day will be the champion. Prizes will be the same in each flight.

Greg Guinn was the 2008 winner of 29th Annual Mayor’s Golf Classic. Other past winners include Rob Long, Brian Balthrop and Chase McKay.

For more information on the tournament, contact the City of Clarksville’s Mayor’s Office at 645-7444.

Leaders from Montgomery County gathered to hear State Senator Thelma Harper speak and give her support to Tim Barnes, Democratic Candidate for the Tennessee State Senate District 22. They left this event with a deeper understanding about what this race is really all about.

Thelma Harper has served in the Tennessee state Senate for more than 14 years; she has seen more than her share of politicians come and go. Harper addressed the audience with the kind of fire that has made her one of the most powerful senators to ever represent Tennessee. But sadness in her voice could also be heard every time she mentioned the name of the current senator Rosalind Kurita.

It was Thelma Harper who some time ago came to Clarksville to lend her support to a young up and coming candidate from Montgomery County. It was Thelma Harper who walked these same streets with Kurita and it was Thelma Harper who welcomed her with opened arms when she arrived for her first day on Capitol Hill. Senator Harper, the first African American woman elected to the Tennessee State Senate, knew how it felt to not only to be a minority but also what it meant to be one of the few women senators serving her state and country on capitol hill.

On this night, Thelma Harper told a story of how Rosalind Kurita crossed party lines and cast a vote giving the Republican Party control the Tennessee state senate. It was a speech about trust, a word Senator Harper repeated several times during her emotional speech.

Harper spoke about knowing that if a vote comes up that creates more jobs for Tennesseans or better educational opportunities for our kids or a bill that provides every person a chance to become a home owner that you are going to have a senator in place you know you can trust to do the right thing. Without hesitation, Harper proudly proclaimed Tim Barnes to be that person. While she said she once saw Rosalind Kurita as the future of the Democratic Party, she now sees that in Tim and stressed that only Tim Barnes can undo the harm Rosalind Kurita’s vote has caused the party.

She encouraged all in attendance to get to know the candidates and to hold them accountable to their word, stating her belief that “your word should be your bond,” and that trust and accountability are just a few of the things we as voters should expect from our elected officials.

Senators Harpers speech had all the ingredients of a powerful motivational moment, but at the same time you could have heard a pin drop in the room. The experience was deep as it was moving.

In leading up to the list for this monthly magazine aimed at male readers [with the survey actually targeting fathers in search of family friendly communities, researcher Sara Vigneri wrote:

"...fathers face reality when they're not in prime time. They want to raise their children somewhere safe [ed. note: read "low crime"], where they can attend good schools with favorable student-teacher ratios, above-average test scores, and respectable budgets. Plenty of museums, parks, and pediatricians also contribute to a good quality of life, whereas multihour commutes, expensive houses, and divorcing friends and neighbors do not.”

The top “family friendly” spots across the country included Honolulu with school spending of $9000 per student, Madison WI for the high number of pediatricians accessible to families; Seattle WA for its $266 per capita spending on city parks and public areas; El Paso Texas with a median student/teacher ratio of 16:1; Tulsa OK with an average 17-minute commute for its workers; Honolulu, Hawaii for its unemployment rate at half the national average, and its beaches (which is a given — hey, you’re on a island!). Las Vegas, where our city leaders are currently marketing our city to mall developers, ranked 32nd on the list.

Other cities that handily topped Clarksville: Salinas CA (despite its earthquake ravaged landscape, it has made a wonderful comeback); Stamford CT (a nice southern New England community); Boise Idaho with the accessible landscape and college community; Manchester NH; Ann Arbor MI; Oceanside CA, Buffalo NY and more. The “losing cities on that bottom ten included Flint MI, Dayton Ohio, and Beaumont TX. The listing reflects data culled from an evaluation of 257 U.S. cities using statistics and information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics, FBI, American Association of Museums, National Center for Health Statistics and American Bar Association.

Readers should also keep in mind that some of these statistics are more than a year or two old before they are compiled into a report that can be used by journalists. Not that it makes a major shift in the issues I now address. The report, which was discussed on the May 19 Today Show on NBC, cited “$6,729 per student, per school year” as inadequate by the magazine’s rating, and that it is a figure the School Department challenges with the statement that it spent $7,494 per student. National databases may not yet reflect that number.

Clarksville’s best resource is its people. It holds a diverse population that includes a high percentage of military families, due to the presence of Fort Campbell. The number of retirees, listed at 8%, is lower than the national average. It is more and more a young family town.

Yes, housing is exceptionally affordable here in contrast to the rest of the nation. Clarksville is a city on the grow, working to attract new business and industry. But it is this unchecked growth that brings with it a host of new problems, especially in terms of the needs of families. Its infrastructure is not keeping up with the pace of development, as heavy traffic and perpetually clogged main arteries prove. Some of the road/traffic design, especially on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard at the new 101st overpass, is sheer lunacy: without reflective aids, a driver can’t even see the marked traffic lines at night and the traffic lights are not aligned correctly with the lanes. Confusion reigns. Ergo, avoid the intersection and its surrounding shopping at all costs/it’s just too aggravating.

Many schools are overcrowded, packed too tightly, and though new school construction will temporarily ease that issue, the unchecked growth in family housing will quickly refill those buildings. Back to Square One.

Clarksville children are isolated from many activities by virtue of distance from, well, just about everything. It is completely unsafe for a youngster (or anyone) to ride a bike along most Clarksville roadways. The lack of bike lanes is abominable. Children living in most new housing developments are completely dependent on mom and dad for rides to everywhere they need to go. More mini parks and pools, please. They can’t even walk safely in many areas due to lack of sidewalks.

One of the biggest ironies in that department is the Airport mini-park adjacent to Outlaw Field, which of and by itself emerged in prolonged piecemeal development; it has a playscape and a pair of basketball hoops set in a grassy nook beside the airport fence, it has a children’s playscape. There are no sidewalks, so access to the park is gained by walking alongside the well-traveled two-lane road that connects Tiny-Town Road and Jack Miller Boulevard. Secondary access comes from walking the railroad tracks that bisect the neighborhood. Many youngsters pass the time climbing the railroad flatbed cars and other equipment stored, sitting dormant, there, virtually every day of the week.

Clarksville has several military-oriented sites, a nice but small downtown museum, a small but wonderful art community, the Roxy Regional Theater (a cultural blessing for the city), Dunbar Cave (a hidden treasure and boon for naturalists), bowling alleys, and quite a few sports fields — most of which require — here we go again — access by mom or dad’s car.

Clarksville does have an exceptional library with good summer programs for children. It has a large computer lab, providing internet access for many city residents. Its growing collection of music and DVDs reflects the diversity of the city and the creativity of the library staff. The Pageant Lane library does have truth in advertising: there is something for everyone there. And it’s on a bus line.

How many times will a family visit the Customs House (apart from special programs)? How many times will someone visit Fort Donelson or other sites and monuments around town? What about the children who are NOT involved in sports? There are few options, so… stay home and play video games? Surf the net? Hang out, bored and ripe for trouble?

The city boasts an ever growing median income, but the job roster is littered with low-paying jobs that don’t meet the living wage criteria for pay with and/or without benefits. When some professional support services offer $10 an hour for master degree’d workers, it becomes a joke. Eight or nine dollars an hour is NOT a good pay scale; it’s certainly not a living wage (neither is the current minimum wage).

Clarksville charges a fairly high price for access to city pools, but once again, most kids require a ride to and from the pool. Some, like the Swan Lake complex, are not accessible without private transportation. They are certainly not within walking distance for most families.

Clarksville’s bus system is good for what it does; it just doesn’t do enough or go far enough. Any city worth a “top spot” rating needs exceptional mass transit. That means later nightime buses, Sunday service, cross-town buses, a terminal (not a WalMart Parking Lot stop) at the end of each major run (i.e. at north Clarksville, the northern end of Wilma Rudolph, and Sango). They need cross town buses that cover North Clarksville, rather than routing riders south all the way downtown just to go north again on the other side of town. More benches and “weather shelters” at more stops would make the system user-friendly.

Drive down Fort Campbell Boulevard and see the pawn shops, title loan companies, the bright blinding neon orange fireworks shop, used car lots, fast food eateries, and WalMart. It doesn’t look good; it’s not appealing to newcomers.

While the high cost of gas is further crimping the family dollar, this “top spot” city is so hellbent on housing and industrial growth that the infrastructure of activities that supports young families has been left in the dust. Each of these tightly packed suburban developments piles cookie-cutter homes on flat lots barren of trees and within spitting distance of each other. No sidewalks, greenspace, playgrounds…just lots of driveways.

Comparing Clarksville to other major or emerging cities across the country leaves the city in a less than favorable light in terms of crime, air quality, and traffic congestion.

Though this survey includes cities large and small, when I make my comments I’m not comparing Clarksville to the big metropolitans like New York City, Chicago or L.A. That’s an unfair contrast. Nor do I compare Clarksville with smaller towns that dot the landscape between the major urban centers across America. Clarksville is a mid-sized city on the grow. From my own experience and perspective, I simply look at what other cities of comparable size have to offer, and Clarksville comes up short. It has many wonderful features, but the scales have been tipped to the side of development profits and tax revenues rather than resources for the people who fuel those profits and revenues.

When the city settled on the “Top Spot” logo, which no one but city officials seem to like, they painted a bullseye over the city, making it ripe for just such comparisons. Without careful management, without an effort to maintain the delicate balance between the job/housing market and the amentities and infrastructure that enriches the lives of the people who live here,, Clarksville will never be Tennessee’s true “Top Spot.”

The Clarksville, Tennessee City Council met yesterday in an executive session that was led by Mayor pro tem Barbara Johnson. The meeting covered a variety of topics ranging from flood plain issues, zoning and even touched on eminent domain while not specifically addressing the recent blight declaration controversy. Some agenda items did not generate discussion and these are not covered in this report.

To view the full agenda, please see: The City Council’s agenda page.

Ordinance 68-2007-08

First on the agenda was the first reading of Ordinance 68-2007-08 which was to bring the city code into compliance with the new FEMA insurance rate maps. The changes are intended is to allow the city to continue participating in the national flood insurance program which is administrated by FEMA. Many of the changes are already in place in other sections of the city code such as the storm water plan.

Ordinance 67-2007-2008

There was one zoning change covered this evening. Ordinance 67-2007-08 was a request by Twosome Partners GP to amend property located at the intersection of Tiny Town road and Needmore road from R-1a Single family residential district to O-1 Office-Medical-Institutional-Civic District. The recommendation was to reject the change requested. There were two comments by the public which discussed resident concerns about worsening traffic issues already present on Tiny Town road. Twosome Partners GP did submit a traffic study which suggested that there would be no worsening of traffic issues. Twosome Partners originally requested a R-4 Multiple Family Residential District for an Apartment development, city council members noted that the O-1 zoning would still allow that use.

Ordinance 55-2007-08

Would allow the city attorney to use legal means to remedy ongoing code violations, the location of which was not discussed. This is related to code violations which have been outstanding for several years, covering three properties owned by two separate individuals. During the discussion it was mentioned that the individuals in question have ignored several summonses, and that this ordinance would allow the city to take them to a “bigger court.”

Ordinance 54-2007-08

The Customs House Museum had several issues before the council relating to repairs to the roof of the city owned facility, and repairs of their HVAC system:

HVAC is an acronym that stands for “heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.” HVAC is sometimes referred to as “climate control” and is particularly important in the design of medium to large industrial and office buildings such as sky scrapers and in marine environments such as aquariums, where humidity and temperature must all be closely regulated whilst maintaining safe and healthy conditions within. – The Wikipedia

The measure has been approved and recommended by the finance and Administration Committee. City council members expressed concerns relating to the possibility of using a Trane HVAC system on the museum. They also expressed a distinct lack of desire for doing the job piecemeal.

The costs broken down are approximately: $90k for the roof repairs, $30k for re-insulation of the roof, and $223k for the HVAC system.

This is an urgent issue and one that the city should rapidly approve. The Clarksville Fire Department was already dispatched on at least one occasion relating to the system.

Ordinance 56-2007-08

Deals with amending the operating budget for the golf courses to cover additional expenses related to the watering of the courses during last summers extreme heat and drought conditions. Broken down the amounts are $20k for the Swan Lake course and roughly $8k for the Mason Rudolph course. The city golf courses are open to the public used by both private individuals and Austin Peay State University’s golf team.

Ordinance 57-2007-08

Amends the operating budget to reflect approximately a $9,750 donation for the Independence Day city fireworks display.

Ordinance 42-2007-08

This appoints an interim city attorney which will be Mr. Tim Harvey of the firm Harvey and Silvus. A benefit of this appointment is the fact that if for some reason Mr. Harvey is unavailable, his partner David Silvas would be able to fill in.

The firm has defended the city in several of the racial discrimination lawsuits filed against the Clarksville police department.

Ordinance 59-2007-08

Is an amendment to the city fireworks code which would prevent people 16 years old or younger from being able to purchase certain types of fireworks, they would still be able to use fireworks under the supervision of a parent or guardian. This brings the city code into compliance with Tennessee state code.

Ordinance 66-2007-08

This is the item on the agenda I was most interested in as it covers eminent domain. The city wishes to bury power lines along Legion street and improve the side walks. They stated that the improvements would be similar to the improvements made on 1st street. This authorizes use of eminent domain to obtain rights of way and or easements, which is “not likely to be used.” Ward 2 Council Member Deanna Mclaughlin commented, “After all, who wouldn’t want buried power and better sidewalks?”

Ordinance 64-2007-08

Another eminent domain issue was raised in relation to sewer main improvements in the Hazelwood sewershed. This is another urgent issue and should be a priority for the council as it was behind the recent moratorium on new constructions in the exit 1 area.

Mayor Piper, in reporting to the Committee, said that the Hazelwood lift station, which serves 4500 homes, is overloaded; it’s running at 100% capacity and has overflowed five times in the past year. Now the problem has become an issue with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation – Sewer Problems Plague Hazelwood Area: Moratorium on New Construction.

Fixing the sewershed issues is expected to cost between five and ten million dollars. A substantial portion of this expense is likely to be passed on to the developers responsible for the out of control growth in that area.

Board appointments

The city council were informed of covered board appointments:

• Susan Thomas to the audit committee 01/08-12/08
• Pat Hickey to the Natural Gas Acquisition Board 01/08-12/10,
• Lane Lyle’s appointment to the parking authority was corrected. The term is now set for 01/08-12/10.
• Bryce Powers was reappointed to the Storm Water Board of Appeals from 01/08-10/09

Roxy Regional Theatre

The Roxy Regional Theatre’s new arts center plan was brought up with council members making arrangements for representatives from the regional theater to appear at a future council meeting to show the council a visual walk through of the proposed arts center. The representative from the theatre will likely need longer than the standard five minutes allocated for members of the public to address the council. This item was not on the agenda. The city council has a direct interest in the planned development as they transferred the city parking lot located next to the theatre for $100 to allow for the expansion of the existing theatre.

Public Comments

No public comments were made at the meeting.

The Montgomery County Parents & Teachers Organization (PTO) along with local School Board members and several County Commissioners will present evidence, petitions and signed affidavits. We all agreed that this possible shelter would not only pose a safety risk to the students of Byrns – Darden Elementary School, but would cause irreparable damage to the community as a whole.

Jimmie Garland Sr., President of the local NAACP, said it best when he stated that the “Salvation Army has the right heart but this is the wrong location”. Speaker after speaker stressed the facts about the crime rate surrounding the current location of the Salvation Army and the fact that the new location would endanger the entire student population including the 19 children who walk to and from school each day, with the youngest being 5 years old.

But the startling statement of the evening came from a former Salvation Army homeless person who commended them on the work they do for the homeless but, he too must agree with those in attendance that a homeless shelter near a school is a bad location!

The next step for the Salvation Army is to petition the Clarksville Board of Zoning Appeals approval of this location and site. The Urban Resource Center, parents, concerned citizens, PTO members, school board members, elected officials, clergy, NAACP members plan to attend this meeting on January 3, 2007 – 100 Spring Street Clarksville, TN @ 8: 30 A.M., to speak before the Zoning Board members in opposition to the Salvation Army building a homeless shelter next to Bryns – Darden Elementary School.

We urge all citizens to attend this event and speak!

Contact person for this press statement is:

Mr. Terry McMoore, Director Urban Resource Center
931-552-9076 (H) or (W) or 931-378-1999 (C)
Email: