Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Pulse Staff
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 22:27
Our take on this week’s agenda

Here is one of the more interesting items set to be discussed at the August 26 meeting of the Chattanooga City Council. As always, the agenda may be amended to add or subtract items. The Chattanooga City Council meets each Tuesday at 6:00 pm in the City Council Building at 1000 Lindsay St.

7. Resolutions
A resolution authorizing the Chief of Police to apply for and, if awarded, to accept a grant from the Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in the amount of $187,841.46 to be used for child passenger safety and booster seat use, which grant requires no local matching funds.
While we applaud anything that helps spread the word among parents of small children to make sure their offspring are safe and secure when riding in a vehicle, we do wonder why it will cost $187,841.46 to spread this word far and wide.

It just strikes us as an odd sum-especially the specificity of the final forty-six cents-to promote the use of car seats and booster seats amongst Chattanooga parents.

We imagine there is some federal government bureaucrat who draws a comfortable salary whose entire job is coming up with bizarre figures for federal grants using a combination of Ouija board, Magic 8-Ball and leftover Chinese takeout.

But at least we don’t have to come up with any matching funds. It’s not like it’s our money…oh, wait.