- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Germantown Mayor, Mike Palazzolo, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Mike Palazzolo, Germantown Mayor.

Thanks for being here again.

- It's always good to be here.

- Along with Abigail Warren from The Daily Memphian.

Lots to talk about.

I should say at the top, we recorded this a week ago.

So although we'll talk a little bit about the Memphis mayor's race, which does have impact obviously on Germantown.

I should note to everyone that because of various scheduling issues, we taped this a week ago.

But let's start with the biggest news in many months, maybe a couple years, in Germantown, was the whole water fiasco.

I'm sure there's a more polite way to put that.

But it was a fiasco.

Abigail has probably more questions, I'm gonna defer to her, but I'm gonna go real general and just say what in the world happened?

- Sure, well, you know, our water emergency that occurred in July, late July, was a very difficult six days for our community.

And we've learned a lot from that.

Glad that it's concluded, and our water is safe for consumption and is flowing freely.

But, you know, we learned a lot of things.

A couple of items are that we learned is that water is something that we all rely on, whether it's your family, your neighbor, a merchant, healthcare.

We sometimes take it for granted as well, because it is always at the end of that spigot, or we turned it on and it always flows.

So when we lose water, there's something that gets everyone's attention.

And so, you know, that was something that helped us, you know, keep that in perspective.

Also, with us letting the community know that we had diesel in our system, we recognize that, you know, water, whether it's our aquifer or the water that we produce and then treat, it's very important that the community knows that it is safe, and that you have the ability to have clean, safe drinking water, and water for your use.

So, you know, those are some things that, you know, and then, you know, we also learned that our community is very engaged, and they made us aware.

And that's good, 'cause I would prefer to live in a community where people contact their local officials.

- Before we bring in Abigail for some more detailed questions.

For me, and I don't live in Germantown, obviously we covered it, so maybe I knew a bit more, but in some ways, I had friends and coworkers who were not able to shower, who were very frustrated.

It was sort of this, I think many, many people in Memphis got it sort of either as a headline that went by, or a friend or coworker or family member who is dealing with it.

In a very quick description, you mentioned the diesel in the water, what happened?

And then again, Abigail- - Sure, well, it was kind of a confluence of multiple events.

July was difficult in the entire region.

There were multiple storms.

So in Germantown, we had three different storms where we lost power, and also heavy rain.

So at the end of that third storm, we lost a lot of power in the entire region.

Germantown was obviously part of that region.

And we had to go on backup generator.

We got 22 or so generators around our city that provide redundant power to things that we use every day.

And so a leak that turned out to be actually an overfill got into our system and saturated the ground.

- A leak in a diesel tank?

- In a diesel tank that generated, that powered our generator.

And so that leached into the ground.

It made its way to a very small quarter-size hole in a pipe that got into our basin.

Our basin contains about 4 1/2 million gallons of water.

And our system has upwards of 100 million gallons of water.

So roughly, as estimated, about 300 gallons of diesel didn't make it straight into the water system.

It made it into the ground, then slowly made its way into the system.

Then we had to flush the system.

It took four days to get half or 25% of the city back online, and six days to get everyone back online.

- Let me bring in Abigail.

- You talk about the pipe, the pipe wasn't found until Monday or Tuesday, and Thursday is when the notice went out to not use the water for anything except flushing toilets.

NSAFE helped find the pipe corrector, an outside environmental consulting firm.

Do you wish you would've brought in NSAFE sooner?

Was there any discussion to bring NSAFE in sooner?

And what was it when you decided to reach out to NSAFE?

- Sure, well, it was kind of a tale of two crisises, if you think about it.

You know, first, we didn't know where the potential leak came from.

So we were looking in people's neighborhoods that called us, 'cause that's usually the source of most contamination.

Then when we checked our area, we thought it was contained to one area.

Once we began the flushing process, we understood that you can't, like, empty your whole system, and yet, wait a minute, it's still there.

Then we called a secondary, we call 'em a vendor, but consultant, in NSAFE, and they were able to find that.

That pipe is seven or eight feet below ground.

And over time, that small hole would've led to some erosion, and, you know, our workers would've seen that.

But at that time, unless you were to dig it up, and we found the hole going into the basin itself, inside the basin.

And so, NSAFE's a great partner, they do this type of work all over the country, and they've been very valuable for our community.

- Do you feel like you almost lost time where it took a few, because once the pipe was found, it felt like there was a way forward.

Do you feel like there was lost time for a few days until that pipe was found?

- Sure, it delayed some things, you know, and again, we were in crisis mode trying to figure out with our partners, whether they're at the federal, state, local agencies, where the problem might arise.

But to get it back up and functioning in six days was a pretty Herculean task in its own right.

- That, we'll come back, talk about some more.

We may touch on that some more, but I wanted, you mentioned utilities and the power outages.

Tell me again, and I should know this, but I've forgotten, where do you, and this relates to the mayor's race, and again, we're taping this, we don't know yet who the mayor is, we're taping this Thursday morning election day in the city.

But where, Germantown is dependent on MLGW for what?

- Correct.

So only with, for electricity and gas.

We produce our own water.

And so most of the municipalities operate that way, whether it be- - And sewer, let me interrupt you a sec, and sewers.

- Sewer, we rely on City of Memphis, not MLG&W.

They're not in the sewer treatment business.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- So for the, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but, you know, we've had a huge number of storms, we've had the hottest months on record.

We've got, you know, lots of, we're getting Doug McGowen from MLGW on in a couple months to talk about all kinds of things.

They've just proposed a pretty major rate increase to put another billion into upgrades to the system.

As you look at the next mayor, who we don't know who it is, as we sit here, what do you want from them in terms of, let's start with MLGW, and then with sewers?

- Well, we've got along very well.

My community, Germantown, and I think most of the suburbs have, with Jim Strickland and the Strickland administration.

The city of Memphis is key to economic development, public safety, so many things, quality of life for the whole region.

So it's pretty important for the suburbs to have a good relationship with Memphis.

As Memphis goes, the rest of the region goes.

With the regards to MLG&W, I would like to say that I've got a lot of confidence in Doug McGowen.

We learned a lot from Doug when he was the CEO of the City of Memphis and his role as chairman of the COVID Task Force.

His work has been phenomenal.

He is coming to the Suburban Mayors Meet.

Matter of fact, we'll meet next week.

We meet quarterly on a scheduled basis.

And he comes to all of our meetings.

In the past, no MLG&W CEO came to any of our meetings.

And so he has been briefing us, keeping us in lockstep with what MLG&W wants to do.

And we're kind of excited, you know, some of the things he's brought forward, if they're able to be implemented, will lead to better reliable service over the next few years.

It's tree trimming and replacing infrastructure.

We have some infrastructure in Germantown that's 40-plus years old.

It's way past its functional lifespan.

- And it's MLGW owned, or owned- - That's correct.

That's correct.

They have above ground and below ground.

And so both those things begin to deteriorate over time.

- Have you ever thought this, ever thought or has ever been proposed for Germantown or any of the suburbs to put their own, more of their own money in to bury lines?

'Cause that's a big, you know, everyone says, "Why don't we bury lines?"

MLGW says, if you wanna spend, you know, 5 to $10 billion, I can't remember what the number is, but even that, it's incredibly expensive, and it's just not really on the table.

Do you all look at hardening your electrical infrastructure in some way above and beyond what MLGW can do?

- Sure, well, you know, that would've been a great conversation to have in the '60s and '70s, where, you know, we're almost near build out, and we're a fairly dense community.

To put, you know, from aesthetic standpoint, to put power lines underground, we've all traveled to different places around the world, and where you see less things that are coming outta the ground, it's more pleasing.

But also, then you're not affected by wind, those type of storms.

But being underground makes it just as hard to service it.

You have to trench and dig up everything to repair.

You know, if this was the 1970s, that would be a great topic to have.

- With apologies to Abigail.

Sewers, what do you wanna see from the city?

And we've also got, we'll have new makeup of the Council.

And then we don't know who that is.

But what do you wanna see on the sewer front?

- Well, most of the suburbs have either a partial treatment facility in their own suburbs, or they rely on City of Memphis as a partner.

And so, or as a customer, if you wanna look at it that way.

We have a contract with City of Memphis.

It's known as an evergreen contract.

It changes on the volumetric outputs.

And so the rate changes.

But we don't treat any of our sewer.

And so they're a valuable partner to us.

And we wanna keep that partnership moving forward.

And I would say that most of the other communities would as well.

To be able to invest, as you mentioned earlier, like, in your own utility district or system, would be an enormous financial investment, to create your own waste treatment facility would be an incredible investment.

And last time I checked, people don't like cell towers in their backyard.

I don't think they're gonna like a sewage plant in their backyard.

- Oh, I'm fine with that in mine.

- Oh, they want it my backyard.

- Just put your phone number out there you know, ask for input.

- That's right.

Well, and again, since we have probably, you know, five to eight percent of our land still available for some form of development, there are no big pockets of land to be able to- - Like, say, Bartlett has big issues with a lot of development happening.

- And Collierville instance has a reserve area, and those type things.

But for my community, we're very happy with the contractual relationship we have now.

- Okay, bring in Abigail.

- There's also been, I talked to Andy Sanders, Assistant City Administrator, and Cameron Ross, who's Director of Economic Development, Germantown sewer is ready for full build out.

Not that full build out's gonna happen tomorrow, but their sewer's ready, the capacity's there.

And so, they were very complimentary of the way Germantown's planned ahead to be ready to accept any new development that comes, especially in the Forest Hill Heights area, the bootheel of Germantown, as you like to call it, where development is probably, there's the most potential for development down there.

- We've got about 900 permitted houses that are somewhere either approved or in the pipeline.

And we should be able to handle all those.

- Maybe go with schools.

- Okay.

So the last time we had you on the show, you were here with Mayor Harris and we talked about Germantown High School, Germantown Elementary School, Germantown Middle School, which are owned by MSCS, eventually Germantown Elementary and Middle School and High School, if, Germantown High School is a little bit different, but the elementary and middle school will be transitioned to Germantown Municipal School District.

If they don't need it, it'll go to the city.

Germantown High School is a little bit unique because Memphis-Shelby County Schools can sell it, if they would like to, and use the money to invest in their new high school that they're gonna build in Cordova.

If they don't sell it, it goes to Germantown Municipal School District.

But Germantown Municipal School District has been pretty adamant that they don't need that space, because part of their funding is based on the number of students they have.

They wanna keep the students at Houston High School so they can continue to provide the caliber of programs that they offer.

And so they've said in work sessions publicly that Germantown High School, they really don't want it.

So if the city were to get it, obviously you can't really plan until you get it, but do you have any ideas of how the city could use that land?

- Sure, well, and you summed up the scenario very well.

You know, we have eight years remaining on that nine-year agreement with not only the county, but Memphis-Shelby County Schools and GMSD.

You know, right now, that land is zoned a certain way.

And so you always have to rely on current zoning on what may or may not be planned for there.

The market dictates that, 'cause someone would buy it.

They may ask for a zoning change, that type thing.

As it comes to educational facilities, you're right, we don't have the capacity, even if a lot of the children that go to private schools came back to public in our community, that's just too much space of those 3G schools.

Now, elementary and middle, in 10 to 20 or 25 years from now, there'll probably be a need.

And plus, we don't have any school options on the southwest portion of our city, where those, the elementary and middle sit.

So, you know, it's one of those, actually, the Germantown High School situation's pretty interesting, because, you know, it's, they have 30 or so acres in an area that's known as "Old Germantown".

But again, Germantown High School is not actually in the OG district.

OG district allows you to do, either have livable space, or retail office space.

- OG.

OG stands for- - Yeah, Old Germantown.

I'm sorry, yeah, you're a mid-towner, you wouldn't know that.

So in our city, everyone knows the "Old Germantown", OG district.

So it's interesting.

I think Memphis-Shelby County Schools has already purchased land in Cordova for the second high school.

That's exciting.

And then that will probably, I guess, allow for the proverbial "for sale" sign to go in the front yard one day at the high school.

And then we'll move and see what happens after that.

But we were distinct and very direct in making sure that those properties would be used for educational purposes, especially if we had to retain those.

And so it's a really great opportunity for our school district.

They're gonna have, you know, land in a somewhat landlocked community that's almost out of land, so.

- But again, for those not quite as close to this, if the school system, Memphis-Shelby County School system puts a "for sale" sign on that high school property, you have no say in who the buyer is, other than it has to be an educational purpose?

- Well, no, 'cause that's where I meant about how the market brings you a product in a sense, whether it's real estate or commercial real estate.

And so you would think that someone who was going to put an option on that property to purchase it would come to the city and make an application to maybe have it rezoned.

The contract would be stipulated that if the zoning doesn't come along, then the contract is off.

That's kind of the way it works in the commercial development world.

- Okay, so you have that, for lack of a better term, leverage there and some control there that it can't, it's not just gonna get turned into something completely beyond what the folks in Germantown want.

- Yeah, and I'm not one of those petty politicians that says the people of Germantown, but the people of Germantown get to make choices on how their land is zoned.

- How do you go about, again, in a city that is, as you said, it's been really built out.

It's not like an Arlington or even a Bartlett where they've got lots of land that's about to be really impacted, it's probably already being impacted by BlueOval and so on.

You all don't have that much left.

So you wanna be, I think you've said since you've been mayor, you know, you wanna be kinda careful about what you do with what's left in terms of its development.

How do you, what is the process you go about thinking about what this land should be used for?

Because again, even if you guys don't own it, you've got this zoning authority over it, and while it's eight years, there's an eight-year contract, maybe the population, the student population grows faster.

I mean, it could happen faster theoretically.

And people have a lot of opinions, right, and I'm sure they share 'em to you in the grocery store and by Facebook and everywhere.

So how do you have a process that does include all the people in Germantown who aren't necessarily all gonna agree on what they want to see there?

- Well, on that particular property, we could engage the community and have some work sessions, charrettes with stakeholders that live around the area, or merchants that, you know, on one side of Poplar Pike, you have, you know, commercial buildings, on the other side, you have the school and restaurants on either side, and a residential.

And so it's almost a throwback area to maybe the early 1900s where you've got workspace, living space, educational use, healthcare, it's all in one little tight area.

And so we could engage the community.

We do that a lot to begin with in Germantown.

- About 10 minutes left, Abigail.

- Forgive me, I should know this.

It's zoned residential, correct?

- Correct, yes.

- Even though it, the hope I think is to use it for educational, there is language in the law which put kind of this all into motion that if it's in the best interest of the community, it could be used for something else.

So there's a lot of potential.

And in a landlocked city, land is greater than gold.

So to have land potentially if it's not sold, is a big opportunity.

- Sure, and there's certain classifications, like churches or schools, don't require specific zoning.

You'll see a lot of churches and schools are in the R zoned area, and generally that is because around schools and churches, neighborhoods tend to be built and developed over time.

- Legislative session is not that far away.

And people starting to kind of work, and, you know, work in groups informally as we go into the next legislative session in January.

What are priorities for you?

- Certainly, and so, again, I mentioned the suburban mayors are gonna meet next week.

We meet quarterly.

We rotate.

It's been meeting in my community for a year, and I chair it and just accumulate the agenda.

But the suburbs are still focused very much on state shared sales tax revenue, whether it's the single article cap or the sales tax itself.

And, you know, my community could gain between $800,000 to a million dollars a year if those already collected revenues would come back to the city of origin.

In 2002, the state had some extreme budget crisis, and they kept a portion of the sales tax to balance the budget.

I was in office back then.

They were always told leadership will eventually correct that.

- Stop that.

- Yes, we will, we will eventually resume that.

And again, you know, politicians say different things, but it never happened.

You know, we've had these large surpluses over the years- - At the state level.

- At the state level.

And so I think Memphis can gain to the tune of 15 million.

You know, Bartlett and Germantown, or in Collierville, are larger than my community.

They're over a million.

Also, public safety is very much on our mind.

We can't get away from crime has increased in the region, and my community has not increased.

And violent crime has always been very low.

But we've seen more property crime than we'd care to see.

And, you know, those situations are, keeps our community on high alert.

So we like to see if the state can help Memphis-Shelby County with some legislation that could make us safer.

- Before we go to Abigail, specific legislative initiatives - Well, for instance, okay, I serve on the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission, okay, and so one of the items we've had is truth in sentencing, is one thing.

Also- - So you want another, 'cause some of that passed, what, last year?

- Correct.

Well, it passed one chamber, and it did not pass in a second chamber.

So I think then the Senate will bring that back, and be able to maybe make some adjustments.

Also, this region is desperately in need of some form of a youth rehabilitation center.

It's currently located in Fayette County, and it's called the Wilder Facility.

The state has earmarked some money to make some improvements there, but it can't handle the capacity of the 400 to 500 juveniles that every police department in this region know these young people have been committing crimes, and yet they are issued a summons, they go back in the community.

There needs to be a place for them to get services and be rehabilitated and kept.

And it needs to be larger than the expansion at Wilder.

- Okay, Abigail.

- As you talk about public safety, Germantown is, and Richard Hall, who was a long-time police chief, retired last month, and so there will be a new police chief, obviously it's your decision, but you will go to the alderman to get confirmation as outlined in the city charter.

Can you talk about what the timeline is like?

And also the city prides itself on succession planning.

And so is an internal candidate likely?

- Well, and I have named our Deputy Chief Mike Fisher as Interim Police Chief.

And that was effective October 1st.

We anticipate, I anticipate making a decision soon, and on the October 23rd Board of Mayor and Aldermen Meeting.

We don't have one Monday because of fall break.

We lacked a quorum.

And so I'll bring forth a candidate.

I can't break news today on your show.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Eric, Abigail.

I know y'all would, you would embargo that.

That's what you would tell me, right?

Okay, but you will be one of the first to know.

How about that?

- I mentioned BlueOval.

Germantown isn't as close as some of the, you know, again, Lakeland and Arlington and some of the suburbs outside Shelby County.

But have you seen impact?

- Sure.

Well, we're, from the front of that particular project, BlueOval City, to my closest boundary, the city limits, it takes 39 minutes.

And that says Grandpa Mike driving.

I mean, you could probably do it quicker.

But you would get on I-40, then you'd get on 269 and 385, you'd exit onto Forest Hill, and you're right in our city.

To answer a question directly, there are 15 or so executives that are boots on the ground right now.

- Living in Germantown, working?

- This entire region.

- Okay, in the entire region.

- And four of 'em have moved to our city.

And we've identified them.

We've helped them locate schools.

We've helped them with meeting space.

All of our communities in the ring suburbs and Memphis will gain from a residential standpoint.

Some communities will gain from workforce development.

They'll be able to send people there to work in that production facility.

Others will be suppliers and vendors.

You know, we don't have any industry or manufacturing in my city.

And so, you know, not just C-Suite employees, but people at all levels will move to our community, because we'll be close to a lot of quality of life amenities from public schools and other items.

- Abigail.

- Can we circle back to the water?

- Yeah.

- Circling back to the water, one of the issues was communication.

We've talked about this.

Do you wish there was more communication at first?

'Cause obviously at first, it was a fluid situation, just trying to figure out what was going on.

But the first thing that went out was don't use the water, except for flushing your toilet.

And then it took a little bit of time to figure out what was going on.

Do you wish there had been more communication at first?

- Well, you know, when you're in an emergency or a crisis, you can't communicate enough.

You know, what we found, our priority was we got to get the system back up and running.

Even though we were getting a lot of commentary and different things, you know, we had people that were working 15 to 16 hours a day concentrating on how to get this system back up.

I could give you all kinds of stats.

We had four press conferences.

We had 37 Germantown alerts that went out, forty-seven slash press releases, social media posts, we had town hall meeting, all those things.

But again, you know, when your friends and your family and your business owner don't have water, you know, you're desperate for information.

And so, you know, we are going to, we look forward to James Lewellen, the former town administrator of Collierville, is doing a deep dive review.

We've already done a lot of after action ourself, but he'll have a different set of eyes.

But he also has experience as an administrator.

And Collierville had some of their industry had some water issues over time, not the water plant in Collierville, but industry.

And so he has experience with dealing with groundwater, not pollution, but groundwater infiltration, and that type thing.

And so we're looking forward to that as well.

And we'll put in different processes.

We've done, since our water emergency, we've already done two they call tabletop exercises.

We've done two.

We have a third one planned for winter storms, 'cause we're gonna have winter storms.

And one of the things, Eric, that we learned in this is that we have redundant backup generators and we actually are gonna have a second water tower, which would've been helpful if it would've been online.

But MLG&W, we've gotta define for them what our critical assets are in our community, whether it's the hospital, a fire station, the water treatment plant.

And then we gotta let them know, please service that and get it back online so we don't have to use a generator.

- Alright, we are out of time, we'll leave it there.

Thank you for being here.

I appreciate it very much.

Thank you, Abigail.

But that is all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get it wkno.org or look for it on YouTube.

Or you can download the podcast to the show from iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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