I have a long history with the Walnut Street Bridge. My first girlfriend’s grandfather, C.E. Betts, was the engineer who designed her. I was two months shy of being able to drive over her. I remember when she was closed down, boarded up and left to rust. The first time (and I thought it would be the last) I was arrested was on the Walnut Street Bridge after some friends and I climbed over the fences with a 12 pack of cheap beer and a boom box playing Nat King Cole on a warm summer’s night to watch the stars above and the river below.

I remember the excitement when a smart group of people got together and raised the funds to save the bridge and turn it into a linear park and then the focal point of our city. A friend that I played music with wrote a song about the bridge. “Grandfather new you as a little child. And I see you now, rusting in the dark…”

The Walnut Street Bridge is glorious and beautiful on its own and need no further adornment. It doesn’t need tawdry flashing lights to make it important. In fact, its simple beauty is what has made it an anchor and a landmark for Chattanooga for over 100 years. We don’t need to copy another city’s identity. We have our own. We’re Chattanooga. A Vegas style light show is the antithesis of what Chattanooga is famous for: Simple, perfect, natural beauty.

The idea of spending public funds on embellishment is obscene when there are homeless people sleeping on the streets, kids plagued with poverty and hunger, rampant crime, cracked and pot-holed streets, abandoned buildings that could be re-purposed, infrastructure to be repaired or tax rates that could be cut. I can think of a hundred ways to better use public and private funds.

The Walnut Street bridge is a good thing. Let’s leave it that way. For another hundred years.

Bobby Stone

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I too find it absurd that our mayor thinks it is reasonable to spend $4 million for something as useless as a light show on the Walnut Street Bridge. This after $9 million and counting is being spent to remodel Miller Park, which did not need remodeling.

We have people who do not have any housing, other people who can't afford decent housing or regular meals or medical care. We have streets that we can't drive on without tearing up our cars. We pay lip service to helping homeless people and working poor, but we aren't spending money on it. Spending money to establish a council to examine the problem is not the same as spending money helping people who are in dire, dire straights right now.

We also talk a lot about affordable housing but affordable housing is a relative term. When you talk about one bedroom apartments that cost in excess of $1,000 a month to rent, you are not talking about affordable housing to the majority of people who live here.

To continue to blow tax money on stupid and useless attractions for downtown is criminal. I hope you will walk the walk, Mr. Mayor. Spend our money on things that make life better for the people who live here, who are not all independently wealthy.

I don't think anyone can eat lights on the bridge. Nor do I think they will make the quality of life better for anybody living here. It can be argued that they will make it worse for some living downtown. There's something very wrong with government willing to spend millions on something as irresponsible as this while charities are begging for funds to keep people from sleeping in the elements and going hungry. City Council, I hope you are more responsible than those who proposed this farce.

Darlene Kilgore