Second mayoral term
Berke was sworn in to his second term on April 18, 2017. During his second term, he has continued many of the investments that marked his first four years in office, including renewed commitments to early childcare, violence reduction, affordable housing, digital equity, and economic development.
On September 23, 2019, Berke stood alongside Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and other officials to announce "East Chattanooga Rising," an initiative to convert the former Harriet Tubman Homes site into a mixed-use development anchored by an automotive paint manufacturing facility. The project is expected to generate 150 jobs in one of Chattanooga's highest-poverty ZIP codes, which had not seen any economic development for more than a century. The city's commitment to small businesses also increased with the launch of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund, intended to help neighborhood-based lifestyle businesses obtain financing for minor improvements, marketing, and other expenses, as well as the local launch of Kiva, a micro-loan program to provide start-up capital to entrepreneurs. The downtown Innovation District was highlighted repeatedly throughout Berke's second term, with national exposure coming from Revolution's Rise of the Rest tour and Project For Public Spaces' International Placemaking Week.
As part of the city's Fiscal Year 2019 budget, Berke committed $5 million to the community's first Affordable Housing Trust Fund to combat the trend of local home prices and rents rising faster than wages. As of January 2020, the City was praised by Built for Zero, a movement of more than 80 cities and counties across the country working to measurably end homelessness, for having effectively reached net zero homelessness among its veteran population.
The Berke administration's widely praised response to the July 16 terror attack earned him the attention of the Strong Cities Network, a "global network of mayors, municipal-level policy makers and practitioners united in building social cohesion and community resilience to counter violent extremism in all its forms." Berke was invited to speak to the SCN multiple times and was involved with the 2018 launch of its Public-Private Partnership Task Force Against Hate in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund. In April 2019, he announced the formation of a Chattanooga Council Against Hate to combat extremism and bias-motivated violence at a metropolitan level. Following local protests after the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, and the shooting of Breonna Taylor, Berke announced the formation of a new Office of Community Resilience to help law enforcement officials, social workers, and criminal justice reform advocates co-create new solutions for responding to people in crisis. The Chattanooga Police Department also earned national recognition for launching the Policing & Racial Equity Dashboard, an open-data tool that displays closed investigations, including citations, arrests, use of force, and citizen complaints by race.
The Mayor's Youth Council, a group of highly motivated young adults in their junior or senior years of high school, also became heavily involved with violence reduction, focusing particularly on generating new policies and ideas to curb the prevalence of gun violence in their community. In Berke's second term, the Youth Council also became heavily involved in issues of boosting voter turnout and improving environmental sustainability.
In 2018, Berke charged the Office of Early Learning with adding 1,000 high-quality "seats", or accessible, affordable spots for children who needed them, before the conclusion of his second term. As of January 2020, the Office was well on its way to that goal, having added 916 seats throughout the city.
Berke's second term has also seen the completion of several landmark capital projects, including the $10 million renovation of Miller Park Archived September 1, 2019, at the Wayback Machine in downtown Chattanooga, the construction of a new Youth & Family Development Center in the Avondale neighborhood, and the $6 million renovation of East Lake Park. Other significant projects, including the renovation of Walnut Plaza and the construction of the Ed Johnson Memorial Project commenced during Berke's second term. The Ed Johnson Memorial Project was arguably the most significant undertaking of Public Art Chattanooga, a 501c3 nonprofit organization administered by the City of Chattanooga and the Public Art Commission to support public art projects throughout the city. PAC's strategic plan, CHA Creates, was passed by the Chattanooga City Council in February 2019 and included the city's first "percent for art" policy to ensure continued long-term funding for public art projects and maintenance.
