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Government leaders from around Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia met privately at the Volkswagen Academy on June 30, a day after the same leaders met publicly in a Chattanooga Area Regional Council of Governments meeting.

Some of the same elected officials who attended the invitation-only meeting in June — as well as officials from nonprofit groups and private citizens — came Tuesday to listen and give feedback at the open meeting.

Written by Ann Coulter.

A very important decision about the future of our area is about to be made; yet so far, there is very little public awareness or discussion of it. This decision is who to name as the new executive director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency (RPA).

The RPA is the only intergovernmental organization in our area responsible for short- and long-term land-use and transportation planning. It provides various planning services to the county and to 10 municipalities in Hamilton County, as well as parts of three north Georgia counties. State and federal law requires that we have an organization like the RPA or we’ll get no federal transportation dollars, and we won’t even be able to subdivide and sell property in Hamilton County. The RPA is a front-line local organization on such important issues as the quality of water in our creeks and streams and the quality of air we breathe.

The real estate development patterns the RPA helps guide, along with the volunteer planning commissions they provide staff services to, have a direct impact on the property taxes we pay. If property values rise enough due to growth that can be generated through wise planning, land-use controls and stewardship, then property tax rates to do not have to be raised by local legislative bodies.

We’ve just experienced how divisive and bruising raising property tax rates can be. Rather than just griping about that or threatening retribution to elected officials, we should be urging those officials to hire the most knowledgeable and farsighted land-use professional they can find to lead the RPA and charging that agency with creating plans and policies that will maximize the value of the infrastructure we already have, prevent the most valuable growth from merely moving toward and over the county lines as it is now doing, and preserving the quality of landscape and community that makes this place worth calling home in the first place.

Ann Coulter is a principal at Kennedy, Coulter, Rushing & Watson, a strategic planning and change management advisory firm.