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- Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo, on schools, consolidation, COVID, and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

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

And thanks for joining us.

We are joined tonight by Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo, who's joining us remotely from his office in Germantown.

Mike, thanks for being here.

- Glad to be with you.

- Along with Abigail Warren, reporter with The Daily Memphian, who covers among other things, Germantown.

We'll start, Mayor Palazzolo, we'll start with the schools.

And the three Gs as it is called, those who aren't as familiar with that, they are the schools that were not handed over to the Germantown Independent School District when deconsolidation happened.

So the elementary school, the middle school and the high school.

There's a lot going on with that.

Abigail has a lot more questions, but I'll just ask you, from your point of view, where are you on that?

And do you feel like you're going to finally, Germantown will finally get those schools as you all have wanted?

- Well, Eric, thank you.

And you know, those three schools are very important to the residents of Germantown, they bear the city's name.

We refer to them oftentimes as our heritage schools, again, because they have in their title, Germantown.

We do have as a school district, the need for growth, we have close to 1000 residential households that are in some form of approval, that will go online over the next 2 to 10 years.

And so we see growth on our horizon.

So it's very important that we require more land, buildings, and be able to properly educate the children in our community.

We made some efforts last legislative session came up a little bit short, we will be back in this legislative session.

And we'll also make an effort to create what some left out of the original public chapter one, the Norris Todd Bill many years ago, it was very silent on how buildings would transfer in ownership and also was very silent on how, whether there was the capability of one LEA to operate in another LEA's boundaries or jurisdiction.

The Attorney General opined in 2017, that this was not legal and boards of education did not have the authority to do so.

So we wanna codify that attorney general's opinion.

So it's something that's still on our radar and very important to us.

- And before I got to Abigail, chapter one, the Norris Todd Bill was the bill that that basically set in motion after a consolidation of the suburban school district and the city school district into one big school district for about a year.

And then they were, the suburbs were allowed to break off into what I think now six different, you know Millington, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, Germantown and Collierville, just for those who aren't as close to it.

Abigail.

- You did say you expect this to go back to legislation?

Is that correct?

Or go back in the legislative session next year?

So your expectation?

- We are prepared in this upcoming legislative session to bring back the legislation that we proposed it may be modified, or it may be augmented.

But we would look to bring that through the House Education Committee and also the Senate Education Committee.

- Is that if conversations do not happen, because part of the reason that legislators put it on hold was so that conversations could happen at the local level?

Do you expect that not to go?

Is that not going so well or is it?

- Well, there are ongoing conversations and we've been very fortunate that Mark White, our representative for the majority of the Germantown population, also, he has a port portion of east Memphis as well.

But he has been very helpful in bringing again, a good medium of conversation moving forward.

If that is not successful, then yes, we would be back in the legislative session, this upcoming '22 session.

- What happens with the money and the students?

I mean, let's say whether it's negotiated with Shelby County School systems, or it's done through the legislature, you've got how what is it, a thousand, fifteen hundred students in those three schools?

There's maintenance.

I mean, I don't quite follow the money in this logistically, you all would take on the operating costs of those schools, of the teachers, of the upkeep.

Would you then also take on pension and you know, those kinds of liabilities, how does all that divvy up?

- Well, you know, it is a very complicated situation.

And it takes a good nuance of conversation in cooperation between two governmental bodies to move this forward.

They're roughly actually about 3300 students in those Germantown Elementary, Middle and High School.

Part of SCS, Shelby County Schools, Reimagine 901 program and something that they aspire to accomplish, their strategic plan is to move back to a principle of neighborhood schools.

Currently Germantown Elementary, Middle and High School are fed from many districts across the Shelby County region.

So a lot of those students move across literally, they move across schools that are in their neighborhood to come to those three schools.

So the guiding focus here would be the come up with an agreement over time, as I mentioned, we have growth in our community, but it's really gonna be over the next 2 to 10 years.

So we would be very agreeable if our friends in Shelby County Schools would be as well, to be able to talk about a staggered point.

Maybe this is 6, 8, 10, 12 years down the road, so that children, their parents, and faculty members of those schools could feel like there is a consistent transition plan.

So they don't have to worry about where am I going to be a student next year?

Or where am I going to be teaching next year?

This would be done over time.

So you know, our primary goal is because we are landlocked, and there are very few parcels of property large enough, especially on the southwest side of Germantown, because you gotta remember Eric, and Abigail, you wanna get geographic balance with your schools.

You can't have five schools in your northeast quadrant.

You would want to equitably have a balance so that kids can walk to school, or take a short drive in a car or use, you know, transportation, through buses, as well.

So right now, we don't have any schools in our GMSD District, that are in the southwest portion of Germantown.

Those are occupied by those three campuses, elementary, middle, and high school, Germantown, operated by SCS.

So the goal would be a slow, thoughtful and caring transition over time.

- And would, the students who are not Germantown residents would be, would the idea be that they would be eased out of those schools, and the schools would be exclusively for Germantown residents, or no?

- Well, you know, and again, as I mentioned earlier, in kind of my opening statement or opening question, you know, the Attorney General opined in 2017, that an LEA does not have the authority to operate in another LEA's jurisdiction.

So the ultimate goal would be for again, SCS to adhere to their Reimagine 901 plan and have their students, you know, go to schools that are neighborhood-centric and neighborhood-oriented, instead of having to move across multiple districts to be able to go to school, you know, it's about efficiency, and it's about wanting to create, you know, I think everyone wants to be close to their school, walk to school, or have a short drive to school, not a long, lengthy bus ride.

- Am I right, though, that, I mean, there are non-Germantown residents in Germantown Independent School District schools, right?

I mean, doesn't that happen?

I mean, Bartlett has kids from outside the Bartlett area, and there's a process that's not unheard of.

- Sure.

All municipal schools have transfer policies.

And so they're not necessarily open transfer, they could be guided on how many seats are available.

You know, one of the things that I'm very proud of our Germantown Municipal School District leadership Superintendent board members is that they have really methodically looked how to right size their district and, you know, they wanna be able to get the proper balance of teacher to pupil ratio, and also be able to, you know, there are people that live in unincorporated Shelby County that want to choose a public education at the local level.

If we have seats for those students, then they're welcome to come.

So the answer your question is, yes.

- Okay, Abigail, another.

- On the note of right sizing the district, they do plan to have their demographer come back and look at obviously their housing developments that have been approved.

Last time the demographer came, Germantown Country Club wasn't thought of as a developful piece of land and that's been, the outline plan has been approved for 366 homes.

So there's a lot of change in the city that the demographer is going to look at when it comes back and they want to look at that now that the census results are coming back.

- And is that a Shelby County Schools demographer, Or Germantown?

- No, that's Germantown.

Germantown wants to look at.

- For the Germantown Schools or Germantown city of?

- Germantown Municipal School District wants to look at that as they continue to right size the district.

- And I've been wrongly calling it Germantown independent school district, it's Germantown Municipal School District.

I think moving on to other things going on there, in Germantown.

Well, and this is going on around the world talking about COVID, and talking about vaccines.

In general, am I right that, and I should say that we were airing this, we taped it about a week earlier, and a lot can change in a week.

So I should say that on everything we've talked about today.

But am I right that there's a vaccine site that's reopening or expanding in Germantown as a result of this surge in the Delta variant and so on?

- That's correct, Eric, and perhaps when this airs we'll be closer to be able to announce an open date.

We're shooting for on or about September 20th.

We were very successful with our partners, Germantown Baptist Church and the Town of Collierville, in inoculating close to 70,000 regional residents.

And that ran from late February till June, because of the surge also, because of the, still in the discussion point on whether booster shots will be made to the entire region.

I know that's an ongoing conversation.

But we will be prepared for that.

And we'll again, we'll work with the church, they've been very gracious to lend us their property and truly missionary work on their behalf and then the Town of Collierville.

We operate it jointly.

And when we first did this back in the spring, we went toward this program, whether we would be reimbursed for the expenses or not, we felt it was an obligation for public health, safety and welfare, to get people vaccinated in this portion of the county, in the southeast portion of the county.

And so we'll do so with the same amount of fervor and dedication, the second go 'round, and we've learned a lot and I think a lot of people were very thoughtful and thankful when they came to our site, we got a lot of positive feedback that it was smooth and efficient and friendly, and safe.

And so we're committing to doing that.

And I'm very proud of our residents.

You know, you may be able to see over my shoulder that Germantown fighting together.

Posters that we put out, we won some national awards.

We don't do that to win a national award in marketing and communications.

But our marketing campaign has led to approximately 73% of our 2 ZIP Codes that make up Germantown being fully vaccinated, roughly 20, or roughly twice the average of the state, and Collierville numbers are very similar as well.

So the more that we can get people safe and healthy, those are our primary goals.

- Right, we bring in Abigail.

- You also, do you believe the vaccination site has helped lead to the low transmission rates that Germantown has seen?

Germantown seen some of the lowest transmission rates in the county, week after week when Shelby County sends out their update.

- Yeah, I think so.

And again, I think we were being very methodical in our approach, you know, we're always going to err on the side of an abundance of caution and care.

We wanted to, again, bring safety to our residents.

And so you know, the more we could educate the more we could have meaningful conversations, bring messaging to the community, it's led to less transmission and a higher vaccination rate.

You know, we oftentimes will hit the pause on activities and do things again in a mindful manner.

And we're very fortunate again on this portion of the county up and down the Poplar Corridor, starting from the river, heading toward Poplar almost concludes in Collierville in Shelby County, on this portion of the county, it's been, you know, again, lower transmission rates, more safety and more vaccination, readiness and acceptance.

- While we're talking about vaccines, about a month ago, the city had considered requiring vaccinations as a means of employment.

There were a lot of employees that were concerned by that requirement.

Eventually, Patrick Lawton, the city administrator, sent out a notice and said, we're not gonna do that, but did send out some requirements.

Obviously, employees can't travel if they're not vaccinated.

You're asking them to mask and you plan to restart assurance testing.

I don't know if that started.

But is it a concern that there's some resistance among city employees to get vaccinated?

- Well, you know, again, our primary goal has been safety and the safety starts with our employees.

Our employees are family members, in my opinion, and everyone's opinion in this organization.

The safer they are, the safer they are for their families at home.

The safer they are, and the healthier they are, the more able they are to provide critical services to our residents.

You know, to have a fire pumper running, a police cruiser arriving on time, or, you know, in a quick amount of time having an ambulance continue to operate, having water mains fixed.

You know, stray dogs picked up, I mean, you name all the services that we provide, as local governing, those things are very important to us.

And, you know, as you mentioned, we were one of the trends centers here in this region.

We started our own in-house contact tracing program, about half dozen of us, including myself, are contact trace certified.

We got the Shelby County Health Department to sign off on that.

That creates less work for their employees, we do it in-house so that we can quickly contact trace, isolate and provide service, health services to those employees.

We're also bringing back assurance testing, as well, we isolated in the workspace, we're masking in City Hall and other city assets, campus buildings.

Those things are very important because it keeps us healthy, so that we're able to provide services to the community.

Just like in COVID, we use this term pivot and fluid, you know, we wanted to engage our employees, we pivoted quickly and we brought back some of the things that created a safe environment for them to work in.

And we'll continue that moving forward.

Bringing back the vaccination location is just another thing that makes it easier for our citizens and our employees to get vaccinated or booster shots as well.

- What did you hear from employees?

Why did they not, obviously, you're not naming names, why did they not wanna get vaccinated?

I mean, this is not unique to Germantown.

To be fair, obviously, I mean, to say the least, and there's been resistance, and there's been concern and hesitancy.

What were the kinds of things you heard and how did you address them?

- Well, simply put, each one of those conversations are different.

They're all nuanced.

People gather information in different ways.

They rely on advice in different ways.

You know, we're ever hopeful that people, you know, if they're medically capable, and religiously capable, get a vaccine or get a vaccination.

However, you know, consult your physician, conduct more research on your own, ask other people, ask co-workers.

So the litany of reasons, Eric are just a little too lengthy to go over in this particular conversation.

But they're varied.

And, you know, again, 73% of our population, in our residents, in our city, have chosen to be vaccinated.

And so you know, that's a good sign.

And we wanna be respectful to our employees, but we want them to be you know, I care for their well being and I want them to be safe.

And we'll do the best things to keep them safe.

- You mentioned that list of city services that y'all provide.

And we talked earlier about the schools against that backdrop.

There's a proposal moving along to consider consolidation.

It's coming from City Council members from County Commission members, some members of the business community are behind it.

We did a show on it last week.

And again, I remind everyone that we taped the show a week ago and a lot is moving quickly when it comes to consolidation.

Although it's kind of a long-term process.

Your thought this is I should clarify because there's just so much, I mean, it's almost like COVID, there's so much like a fog of information out there.

So this would be consolidation of Shelby County and Memphis governments.

It would not involve the schools, it would not be consolidating Germantown you know, the government of Germantown into Memphis or into Shelby County or into this new area.

It would really be, it would impact unincorporated Shelby County, City of Memphis.

And it's been an effort, you know, Bill Dries last week did a long history of these efforts in the various trials and tribulations.

They've all failed.

What is your take?

If it doesn't affect your schools, and it doesn't affect the Board of Aldermen or your office or your services, do you have an opinion and why on whether consolidation should go forward?

- Sure.

Well, and just a moment of humor.

I think Bill Dries was around in 1960 when it first came up.

- I believe he did cover that, yes.

- You know, right now, Eric and Abigail, I find it a little bit disingenuous to be bringing up it.

We're in the middle, still in the middle of another surge of Delta variant surge of a pandemic.

We're focused on so many things right now.

You know, again, we're taping the show and won't be aired for a little bit, maybe 10 days after the taping, but the numbers are still very, very high.

I mean, we're concentrating on so much right now.

I don't know this is the perfect timing to talk about a metro consolidation.

Now with that stated, you know, I will tell you that our city fathers and mothers in the '70s, '80s, and continued to now worked very, very diligently to become a self autonomous city.

Not every city in our region provides full service fire, police, ambulance, they rely on maybe county services and other services.

Over the years, you know, we moved from the late '70s, early '80s, to a volunteer fire department, to a full service professional fire department.

It's ISO-rated one.

And so you know, those things over time we have done so that we would not have to be reliant on either Shelby County or City of Memphis.

- That would not be impacted, as I understand, that's not really on the table to impact those services or just take away that autonomy, is it?

Of you're just concerned that somehow in the process, that autonomy would be interfered with?

- No, and that's just a lead up to where we are right now, to be honest with you, you know, we've done a good job of that.

Where I think there's so much unknown and we went through Metro consolidation 10 years ago, as you're fully aware, it passed by maybe 1200 votes in City of Memphis, and it was an 85-15 split in the county, eigthy-five percent against, fifteen percent for, it failed about 65-35.

If you were to combine the votes, you don't have to combine the votes.

There's the fear of the unknown.

There's the fear of change, will my taxes go up?

Will they go down?

We hear about efficiency, does efficiency lead to less taxes?

Does efficiency lead to better services or curtail services?

There's representation, you know, a 40-member council that Metro Nashville Davidson has, you know, that's pretty cumbersome.

Right now we have 13 City Councilman, thirteen County Commissions, I have a board of five.

We add those together, that's not 40.

When you have a 40-member council, you know, factions and coalitions occur, not that factions and coalitions don't occur in a five-member body, or 13-member body, but it's is much more cumbersome, you know, educational funding, will that be tampered with in the future?

It's a long process, nine months, a charter commission has to be approved.

You know, I'm thankful that people like Chase Carlyle have reached out to me, I have met with him, since perhaps some of the things I have said in the media have come forward.

And you know, sometimes the suburban municipalities are thought of as an afterthought.

We represent about 23% of this region.

And, you know, that's nothing to take for granted at times.

- Abigail, we have just a couple minutes left, more on consolidation, yeah.

- How would that, can you go into detail why you are opposed to it, you've said very strongly that you were categorically opposed.

Can you kind of explain what about consolidation concerns you?

- Yeah, I don't see, you know, in 10 years is actually short amount of time in public service, trust me, it goes by quickly.

I don't see 10 years from 2010 to 2011, looking at this, how things have changed, general services, whether they be urban, suburban, or rural, because the county is made up of all three of those sections.

We don't know what general services will look like, how our tax base goes to that.

It's too much unknown right now.

I can tell you that my constituency I hear from them daily, if not minutely, they are not in favor of this.

We will learn more over the next few weeks.

The municipal mayors meet later on today at the taping of this show.

And it is our primary and really our only topic today.

So there'll be more to come.

And I hope you would reach out at that point in time to get more information about the way the municipalities feel about this.

- And Germantown could formalize their stance in a future meeting with a resolution by the alderman, City Administrator Patrick Lawton is pulling them to see if that's something that would like to look at.

- Correct.

And we did that 10 years ago, we had a resolution and perhaps the municipal mayors, I can't speak for my colleagues, but perhaps we'll go on record with the joint letter, we did so recently with something affecting Shelby County Assessor's Office.

And so we can come together as a group if needed.

- And again, I will remind people we taped this not eight days ago from when you're watching, if you're watching on Friday night.

With just a minute left, Germantown, UT-Martin is opening a satellite campus.

Do you wanna talk just for a minute about that?

- Yeah, Wildwood Farm approximately 350 acres will be preserved, it's almost park-like setting now.

And it will be an agricultural equestrian center for University of Tennessee-Martin, think it's the largest gift the University of Tennessee system has ever received.

I think it's approaching $80 million in value.

And what an opportunity for our children in this region if they wanna go into some form of veterinary medicine, they may be able to go to Houston High School and UT campus and then do their work or field work, residency work here.

So it's an endless opportunity for great possibilities on that campus.

- And when is expected to open?

Do you have a date yet?

- They're going through their approvals right now and I think they are targeting maybe the 2022, 2023 academic year.

- Okay, Mayor Palazzolo thank you for joining us.

It's the first time we've been in the studio with a remote guest, thanks for your patience and being the guinea pig on it and it went well and we look forward to having you on again, whether it's remote or in person.

So thanks for being here.

And thank you, Abigail, thank you for joining us.

Again, you can get past episodes of the show at wkno.org.

Or you can search for Behind the Headlines on YouTube.

You can also get the podcast to the show on The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks and we'll see you next week.

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