Tim Kelly (born April 3, 1967) is an American politician and businessman who is serving as the 66th mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He won re-election on March 5, 2025, against challenger Chris Long, by a margin of 17,356 (85.44%) to 2,750 (13.54%).
Early life and education Tim Kelly was born on April 3, 1967, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Betty Sue and Patrick Kelly. Kelly is a 1985 graduate of Baylor School in Chattanooga. He was a John Jay Scholar, and majored in German Comparative Literature at Columbia University, graduating in 1989. At Columbia, he was a roommate of Brent Forrester, who went on to become a writer of The Simpsons and showrunner of popular shows such as The Office. After graduating, he returned to Chattanooga, where he began working and eventually took over the family's auto dealerships. Kelly returned to school in 2012, earning his M.B.A at Emory University in Atlanta.
Business career After graduating from college, Tim Kelly took over his family's car business in Chattanooga, which consisted of a Cadillac and SAAB dealership. He added a Subaru dealership during his first year in business and later began selling GMC Trucks, Hummers, Mitsubishis, and Infinitis. In 2001, he founded Polaris of Chattanooga, and in 2003, he started Southern Honda Powersports. He later created the Zipflip and SocialBot apps. Kelly had taken on several roles in Chattanooga community organizations, including sitting on the boards of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce, the Community Foundation, Benwood, and the River City Company. Kelly is also a trustee of the Baylor School.
Chattanooga FC In 2009, Kelly co-founded the Chattanooga FC along with Krue Brock, Marshall Brock, Paul Rustand, Sean McDaniel, Daryl Heald, Hamilton Brock, Thomas Clark, and Sheldon Grizzle The team was founded to play in the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), the fourth tier of the American soccer pyramid, and considered roughly equal to the USL Premier Development League.
Kelly was integral in organizing the first public stock offering of any American soccer team using the securities reform laws passed in late 2016 that allowed such investments. Under Kelly's direction, Chattanooga Football Club is the only major team other than the Green Bay Packers to offer common stock to the public. Chattanooga FC exceeded the $500,000 mark in public funding in February 2019. 44% of people with stock are from outside the Chattanooga metro area and come from 44 states and ten different countries.
Mayor of Chattanooga
2021 election
Kelly announced his intention to run for mayor on May 21, 2020, to succeed then-incumbent Andy Berke, who was term-limited. On March 2, 2021, Kelly received 30% of the votes cast in the general election, the highest number of votes of the 15 candidates in the race. Kelly won the mayoral runoff election against Kim White on April 13, 2021, with 59.9% of the votes. He was inaugurated on April 19, 2021. Kelly has stated that he does not identify with any political party.
Kelly endorsed the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, for President in the 2024 Presidential election while he spoke at the Hamilton County Democratic Party's annual Kefauver Dinner in 2024.
2025 election
Tim Kelly won re-election to a second term in office, beating challenger Chris Long by a wide margin.
Mayor tenure
Goals and Accomplishments
2021
At the beginning of Kelly’s term, the Administration addressed the Covid-19 pandemic by encouraging mask usage and vaccination, while reopening city facilities as cases subsided. During the process of reopening the city, Kelly allowed constituents to address the administration in-person through open office hours. He continued to promote the Covid-19 vaccination to Chattanoogans through the Vax 4 Cash Sweepstakes, a weekly drawing from a pool of residents who submitted proof of vaccination with an award of $1,000 and a city parking pass. To combat pandemic-era economic challenges, the City of Chattanooga began its partnership with United Way to implement a tax-relief program for seniors and disabled veterans.
The city also launched the EMPACT program with Google and ChattState, allowing Chattanoogans to earn Google IT Certifications and qualify for higher wage jobs.
2022
In 2022, the Kelly Administration published its One Chattanooga plan, the mayor’s strategic priorities for the city. The plan includes seven key goals:
• Build a universal path to early learning
• Catalyze economic vitality in the Black community
• Ensure affordable housing choices for all Chattanoogans
• Improve local infrastructure & public transit
• Build a competitive regional economy
• Close the gaps in public health
• Provide responsive and effective local government
That same year, Kelly also introduced the One Chattanooga Relief and Recovery Program, a $30 million investment in 36 community initiatives to increase economic vitality through housing and resource opportunities. The plan allocated $5.3 million to initiatives aimed at resolving homelessness, $1.56 million to initiatives increasing homeownership, and $5.8 million to create affordable housing. The remainder funded initiatives for workforce development, entrepreneurship, public safety, mental healthcare access, and early learning.
During the second year of his mayoral tenure, the Kelly administration implemented several initiatives focused on expanding affordable housing and redeveloping Chattanooga's public housing communities. The Kelly Administration launched the largest affordable housing initiative in Chattanooga history by contributing $100 million to create and preserve affordable housing. In addition, the adoption of the Westside Evolves Plan aimed to regenerate Chattanooga’s oldest public housing community. The ten-year plan was co-developed with public housing residents and envisions renovated units with a community hub and early learning center. Kelly led efforts to legalize accessory dwelling units in the city, expanding housing access by allowing for multiple structures on a single-family lot.
Improvements to local infrastructure were a major talking point of Kelly’s campaign, which featured a video of the mayor filling potholes. By the conclusion of his first full year in office, the Department of Public Works inspected 95% of Chattanooga’s roadways and filled 90% of reported potholes. The city also commissioned a 30 million gallon wastewater equalization station to prevent sanitary overflow into the Tennessee river.
Kelly introduced ‘Bridging Communities,’ a coalition of community partners serving immigrant and refugee communities. This strategic partnership brought together advocacy groups to engage in community outreach and economic support for immigrant families.
Kelly also led efforts to augment city culture, specifically through the Chattamatters civic education project.
2023
Among the most high profile economic development projects in 2023 was the South Broad revitalization project, estimated at more than $1 billion in future development, which is anchored by a new baseball complex jointly owned by Chattanooga and Hamilton County. In 2023, the city and county also jointly launched the One Westside project, which sets up future funding for new mixed-income units in one of the city’s oldest public housing projects paid for by private development in the adjacent area known as The Bend.
In 2023, the Kelly administration expanded municipal housing assistance and introduced new policy frameworks to address rising housing costs. The First-Time Home Buyer Grant and Loan Program, launched at the Affordable Housing Resource Fair in June in partnership with Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), offered 0% interest loans and small grants to residents earning at or below the area median income. In the effort to combat rising housing costs, Chattanooga launched its first comprehensive policy toolkit to address housing, the Housing Action Plan. The city also introduced advancements to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program to incentivize lower rent.
The city introduced a number of initiatives to address homelessness, expand localized healthcare access, and support workforce development. The city began a small-scale collaboration with Branch Technologies to develop 3-D printed temporary shelters for unhoused individuals, resulting in two initial shelter units. CARTA sold the Greyhound Bus Stop building to the city for future use as a homeless shelter with a capacity of 160 beds. And 1,000 previously unsheltered individuals were housed through city programs.
In addition to addressing housing instability, the administration directed funding toward the day-to-day needs of constituents. Community centers received an increase in healthcare resources and personnel, specifically for women, children, and infants. The mayor also launched a Mentor Hub to connect youth with local organizations offering mentor programs, motivating youth to invest in their futures.
The Kelly Administration opened the One Chattanooga Institute for Early Care and Learning at Tyner Academy, which gave high school students interested in early childhood education the opportunity to learn experientially. Chattanooga joined the Pathways for Early Childhood Leadership initiative, a peer-learning cohort led by the National League of Cities.
The city’s 2023 infrastructure push addressed both transit and utility systems. The Department of Public Works repaved 70 lane miles and filled 18,000 potholes, cracks, and divots. Kelly’s appointments to the airport board improved transportation and economic development, as his board promoted a new CEO who led dynamic reforms. That year, the Moccasin Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant treated 22 billion gallons of wastewater and cleaned 1.5 million feet of sewer lines. The Moccasin Bend Environmental Campus unveiled their project to convert Chattanooga wastewater to biogas, allowing the city to benefit and profit from waste. The city also received a $6 million urban forestry grant under Kelly’s leadership to improve Chattanooga’s urban tree cover.
The city received a $500k federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the initiative to return passenger rail travel to Chattanooga. Tim Kelly is an active board member of the Sunbelt Atlantic Railroad Coalition and leads an ongoing campaign for passenger rail access.
Kelly moved to decrease the impact of tourism in neighborhoods by passing legislation limiting short term vacation rentals in residential areas.
2024
By 2024, 30,000 new jobs in the Chattanooga area had been created since the beginning of Kelly’s mayoral term. In addition to job creation, the administration directed public and federal resources toward neighborhood redevelopment and modernization. The revitalization project for the Westside neighborhood received $50 million through a HUD Choice Neighborhoods Grant. Development plans for the revitalization of the South Chattanooga and East Lake neighborhoods secured a $500,000 grant. Chattanooga zoning laws were modernized under the Kelly Administration for the first time since the 1960s.
Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities selected Chattanooga to participate in its three-year advising program aimed at helping cities overcome historic inequalities for marginalized communities.