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- The fight over vaccinations, suburban growth, and much more, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, and thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by two journalists covering any range of stories this week.

First up is Abigail Warren who covers Germantown, Collierville and other issues for us.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter.

Also with The Daily Memphian.

I'll start with what struck me as the biggest story of the week, and I'll go to you a little bit on this Bill.

The State of Tennessee, first fired Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who is the top vaccine official at the Tennessee State, or, Tennessee Department of Health.

And the state then also announced that it will halt all outreach to adolescents about vaccination, including COVID-19 shots, but also other shots.

So measles, mumps, rubella, any sort of vaccinations, HPV.

And the state will also stop all vaccinations at clinics, on school properties.

It will no longer send postcards reminding the youth of their second dose of the COVID-19.

The reminder cards, they would, the state would be quick to say, we'll go to, continue to go to parents.

And the outreach they say will continue to go to parents, but it was a very controversial move.

And Dr. Fiscus came out and had nothing good to say about the state's decision.

- Her basic point is that the administration, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee reacted to this because some Republican legislators thought this was moving too fast, and thought that children 12 years old and up, were going to get the COVID vaccine without their parents approval.

She said it was an overreaction to it and said some other things about the whole situation.

Meanwhile, the story has, has gone national.

This is, this has kind of become a microcosm of the national debate that we're still having over the COVID vaccine.

And over how much of a threat COVID really is.

In this case though, the administration reacted by not only pulling its promotion of the COVID vaccine, they stopped promoting all other vaccines and immunizations, that there really has been no debate about.

- Yeah, it gets in fringe corners of Facebook, perhaps there's some debate, but it, it, and it was a year that nationally, a whole lot of people didn't get routine exams.

Didn't get routine vaccinations, didn't get a lot done because either they were afraid to go to their doctor's office.

They were afraid because of COVID.

And so the the, we did a story on locally, Le Bonheur and many other physicians, very concerned about the state doing this.

However, Shelby County Health Department runs its own show, and they have been very, I think, vocal in saying, they're going to continue to do the outreach they were doing.

Continue to do clinics in schools, and really basically no change in course.

All that happens as, the CDC came out with guidance, saying that schools should, this is, you know, Centers for Disease Control, recommending that school districts, take an active role and promote vaccines that they have clinics on campus.

It said students age two and over should be masked, including older children and staff who haven't gotten a vaccine.

Some social distancing, three feet.

Ventilation, surveillance testing.

Basically continuing the course of, of monitoring contact tracing, keeping distance.

You cover Germantown and Collierville.

They have their own school systems.

I think we don't know that they fully announced their reopening fall plans, but we do know how they reacted last year, which was different than Shelby County Schools.

I mean, all of the schools were sort of different.

Where did Germantown or Collierville or both of them end the year in terms of their practices about distancing, masking and so on?

- Right, so Germantown and Collierville both decided that masks were optional.

Make sure everyone makes their own choice.

Do what's best for you.

But, that was because they wanted to be in line with Shelby County Health Department.

That's when Shelby County Health Department, made, lifted the mass ordinance and made them recommended, but saying people who were fully vaccinated not have to wear them.

Now, obviously that was before the new CDC recommendations came out, and hopefully in the next few weeks, we'll see what their plans are for when they return next month.

- I should mention while we're talking about schools, we had said last week, we had Joris Ray, the superintendent of Shelby County Schools, as well as a couple of his staff members booked for the show, he had to cancel.

We're hoping to get him back on as well some of his staff to talk about these issues, as well as, you know, all the kinds of things going on with schools.

But staying with you, Abigail.

You covered, I mean, the school board meetings, the town council meetings, everything, You know, throughout COVID.

What was the sort of tenor, you know, what was the sort of tone?

And again, if you want to speculate, you don't have to.

I mean, was there a lot of vaccine resistance?

Was there a lot of, you know, vaccine?

Was it very positive about the vaccine?

I mean, just the tone and especially about the schools, but maybe even more generally.

- Well, at first it was really hard for teachers to get a vaccine in Shelby County.

So teachers were traveling to other counties.

They were going to Lauderdale County, wherever they could to get their vaccine.

So a lot of teachers wanted it.

They did have a day at Germantown Baptist for Germantown and Collierville teachers to get their vaccines.

It didn't seem there was a lot of resistance from teachers that wanted it.

They were able to get it.

There was some policies that Germantown looked at specifically with paid time off.

If they got COVID that they kind of amended to help encourage staff to get the vaccine.

- As we tape this just this morning on Thursday, St. Jude and ALSAC, but St. Jude said that all employees, I think it's 5,000 local employees will be required to get vaccines by, I think it's mid-September.

If not, they're put on leave and if they don't get a vaccine, they'll be fired.

I think, Bill, that's the first of any major employer I've heard about, I'm sure there was some small businesses we didn't hear about, but who has made it a requirement and put that kind of a harsher line on this.

- It's the first from employers, but, but I think this is probably the next big issue for this whole pandemic.

Rhodes College, for instance, announcing that students would pay an extra fee if they didn't, if they weren't vaccinating.

So I think this is really the next front in this whole discussion that we're having as a society, and really, up until now, I think the vaccinations have really not been as much a part of this, as the masks have.

The masks just became a whole symbol of the political divide.

No matter how many times health officials talked about it shouldn't be political, it did.

And, the vaccination efforts that, when they cranked up here, were running very well in the county, outside of the city.

- Yeah, yeah.

And then ran well in the city once the City of Memphis took over.

To that end, just again, as we're taping this, a new health department director for the Shelby County Health Department has been named, we don't know anything about it, but we'll certainly get on that.

And there will be more to know over the next few days.

And I should go back before we move on.

I mean, Shelby County's Health Director, who was on the show, a number of times talking pre-COVID, and I think even during COVID, there was a wave of health department officials nationally who've been fired.

It was one of the things that Dr. Fiscus from the Tennessee Department of Health noted, that I, you know, of the 65 people in her type of position nationally, I think 20 or more either resigned or had been pushed out.

And so all this stuff, to say the least is not over.

And you have to wonder given, I mean, Shelby County, the big counties, the big cities, are able to run their own health departments in Tennessee.

You have to wonder if when the legislators go into session in January, there won't be at least discussion of restrictions on the autonomy that places like Shelby can have.

- Well, there certainly was in the last session earlier this year.

And there were several bills that were passed that give the governor some powers and that limit that autonomy to some degree.

There will be no doubt more discussion about this.

- Let's shift to, there is sort of booming development all over Memphis, Shelby County, the suburbs.

We could go through a long list of projects that really didn't stop during COVID.

But one of the ones that is most notable in Germantown is the Germantown Country Club.

And so Abigail, like, I don't know how often country club golf courses get sold and converted.

I think that's not necessarily common in the country.

It's certainly not common around here.

And it is notable, it seems to me, in Germantown.

Because Germantown doesn't have a lot of available land and it's a very, it's a higher end community, people moved there for the schools.

They moved there for all kinds of reasons.

But to suddenly have this Germantown Country Club available, which you can tell the backstory, is really notable there.

But tell the backstory first and now what's happening.

- Yeah, so in late 2018, early 2019, the country club announced it was closing.

It was kind of surprising.

A lot of people were shocked to hear that.

And the lady that had owned it for a long time had died and her children were running it and trying to find a way to stay financially sustainable, it just wasn't possible.

And so they decided to close it and sell it.

There was a company out of Arizona that actually specializes in reconverting golf courses to subdivisions that had a contract on it in mid-2019, when the pandemic hit, they pulled out, citing the pandemic as reasons to quit.

And so then, Spence Ray, who is a developer in Germantown with McNeill Commercial Real Estate, he put a contract on it with some partners.

They're calling themselves Farmington-Kimbrough Development Group.

And since it sits at the intersection of Farmington and Kimbrough Roads.

And Monday, they got their outline plan approved for 366 homes.

It's a 178-acre piece of property.

They're developing about 145 acres.

Part of it does sit in the flood plain, which has been a big concern with drainage in Germantown.

And so those northern 20 acres are gonna remain a conservation area, but he's on track to be able to move forward with homes and turning it into a residential site.

- And this fits, and we're trying to get Mayor Mike Palazzolo, the mayor of Germantown will be on some time, once we get the scheduling worked out and have Abigail back on for that, but the, Germantown has had this kind of, I mean, it's been a difficult run in terms of development.

There was a moratorium on multifamily housing because I mean, with its limited landlocked nature, it doesn't have any annexation or growth area.

It doesn't have a lot of industry.

It's got a fair amount of commercial space, but it's mostly a residential community, that's the tax base.

And so this conversation, I mean, when was it.

We had Mike Palazzolo on some years ago when they were doing the plan and I've now forgot.

It's almost their version of Memphis 3.0, it's their strategic plan for Germantown.

Where are they with that?

I mean, cause it envisioned more walkable streets.

It envisioned more bike lanes.

It envisioned diminishing, not getting rid of the car, you know, and roads.

Does this Germantown development fit in that?

And is that still part of the conversation out in Germantown, of where we're going and what sort of, with the limited land we have left, what sort of city do we want to be?

- I think it is interesting for sure.

When I started covering Germantown, they were in the middle of the apartment moratorium and that was the talk, and that was a lot of requests.

There was Carrefour, there was Thornwood.

And the last year they've had a lot of residential requests and less mixed-use requests.

During the election, there was talk about the Forest Hill Heights area, the land that they have south of Winchester, as Mike Palazzolo calls it, the boot heel of Germantown.

How is that going to develop?

That was something that some of the aldermen brought up during the election.

That's a smart growth node, but some of them said, maybe we need to re-look at that and think about how we develop that.

- You also cover Collierville where there's a whole lot going on around the town square.

There's a lot going on in Collierville generally.

But this, the parking garage in town square is, there's a proposal for it.

You tell the story, but it, I don't know why it struck me because it's a big deal to put a parking garage in a suburban community, right, in this sense?

- It is, and there's arguments on both sides.

It would be just north of the square, kind of behind Silver Caboose and Brook's Collection around that north side.

And businesses are overall pretty excited about it because not only is there a parking garage, but there's a hotel that are part of the plans.

And so the hotel can bring businesses.

There are a lot of offices that have moved into town square recently, which some people don't like, because it doesn't give the boutique small shop feel that a lot of people admire about the square.

And so right now Collierville is just studying the land, doing their due diligence.

While the shops are excited, there's some residents whose homes are on the historic, the National Historic Places register.

And they're not excited, because they don't want something that's three stories, which is taller than most everything else in town square, to be in their backyard, essentially.

And so they're worried about the privacy, the lights, the noise, all of the things that can come with a parking garage.

- And parking garages, obviously, I mean, Bill, you've covered them.

We've talked about them before.

I mean, from Overton Square, which I think most developers would say, the businesses there would say, I'm not crying over the parking garage, changed that whole area and made possible the redevelopment.

- Sure, and it is always a big discussion.

The balance between parking lots, I mean, the Memphis Zoo has gone through a whole thing where they were considering a parking deck, which is kind of a mid-step between the surface parking lot and the parking garage and look at how that discussion has turned out.

It kind of feeds into the whole notion or the whole theory about making communities more walkable.

Well, if it, if you're serious about that, do you discourage parking, the way that you try to discourage auto traffic coming through?

If you do that, then are you gonna have enough people to really make it a walkable area?

And of course the whole culture in Memphis, I think up until the last 15 years of this discussion, has been that Memphians, historically, want to park as close to the door as they can get.

And if that means a huge, massive parking lot out in front, not in back, but in front, then that's what they tend to go for.

Well, all of that's being rethought now and, and it's, it's a new idea for some people, it's a revolutionary idea for other people.

- And to that end, we'll have Rory Thomas, who's the new head of the Memphis Medical District on the show in a couple of weeks, Memphis Medical District.

And lead by the sadly now deceased Tommy Pacello, was one of those places that got away from that notion that, surf, I mean, Tommy had a rant about surface parking lots that was kind of wonderful and majestic, but that you could have walkable streets.

You could have bike lanes, you could have outdoor seating areas, you have pocket parks.

And clearly in the Medical District that's worked, and has found a way, but I'm a stay on parking garages.

There's another parking garage going downtown.

I mean, it is an interesting thing.

There's been a lot of bike lanes, a lot of walkability, a real true emphasis on that downtown.

If you haven't been downtown in a long time, you would, it's striking, but there's a big parking garage that's going in, what, right across from Beale Street and the Orpheum on what is now a big surface lot.

- This is the parking, it's now a surface parking lot that is a block long and wide.

This is the parking lot that is between the Orpheum Theatre and the end of the Main Street Mall.

And it's, on top of that, it's one of five parking garages that are basically reconfiguring the downtown parking scheme.

The other four are existing city parking garages that will be renovated, some of them will be expanded.

This is what they call a mobility center because it will be over 900 parking spaces once the garage is built, but it will also have some retail on the ground level with, as is pretty much the custom now with parking garages.

And it will also have some facilities there for bicycle riders, for pedestrian traffic, those kinds of things, which is why it's being called a mobility center.

The Memphis City Council was scheduled to go ahead and vote on this at their last meeting or earlier this month in July.

They put it off because they, they want to give this one more look over.

There isn't any indication that some of the Council members have changed their mind, it's just that they want a closer look at this.

- With a different type of deal and different type of potential construction and go to Collierville.

So another area you cover, they built a new high school two years ago, give or take two, three years ago, almost a $100 million facility.

And they're already, I mean, this is either a good, I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.

It's just they're already talking about needing to expand it.

- Yeah, they are, Chairman Wright Cox, the chairman of the school board, his dad was mayor years ago and he always talks about how his dad would say, point at the teachers and say, you're the reason Collierville is growing.

People do move to Collierville for the schools and the public safety.

But yeah, the high school was built for 3,000 students.

And when Dr. Gary Lilly, the superintendent of schools out there, was giving his presentation to the board and mayor and alderman about the budget, Mayor Joyner kind of looked at him and said, three thousand students?

That's what we built this school for.

So they are having to talk about expanding, what that looks like.

At first, they just wanted space, but Dr. Lilly did mention that, in a few years, they could have a ninth grade academy similar to what Bartlett has to help prepare them better for the rest of their high school career.

- The high school was 10th, 11th, 12th right now?

- It's 9th through 12th, but they could have a ninth grade academy to kind of better prepare the freshmen for the rest of their high school career.

- Gotcha.

We've, and speaking Sorry, my voice is dying today.

Speaking of schools, we'll have Roblin Webb and Bobby White, who run a number of charter schools in the city.

There on next week to talk about their plans back to this whole notion of, you know, a year of shutdown and coming back full-time, it appears.

And what sort of learning loss has experienced all the rules and regulations that were changed at the state level, in terms of, you know, not moving third graders forward, if they weren't at certain reading levels, all of that, we'll talk with Roblin Webb and Bobby White from two of the charter school networks in Memphis next week.

And we were, again, we're hoping to have Joris Ray, the superintendent of schools, Shelby County Schools on this week and hopefully he will be able to reschedule.

- Let's stay with a few different things, Bill, the, the bridge, maybe?

I mean, there's just a lot of going on.

And we do have Clay Bright from the Tennessee Department of Transportation on the show later in August.

Hopefully to talk about the bridge reopening.

They are the TDOT and Arkansas Department of Transportation are moving towards an end of July.

They haven't promised that, but that's what they're moving toward, they did reveal.

They've been pretty close lipped about what's going on.

There was more repairs were necessary than they had expected that came out, I think, in this week.

What else do we know if anything about what's going on with the bridge.

- The state is still saying that it intends to reopen the bridge, have it ready to reopen at the end of July.

So by the time Commissioner Bright is here, they expect to Hernando de Soto Bridge will be open to traffic, and that is a major freight corridor for our city, which is part of Interstate-40.

For those who might be new to the city or wondering why all this a-do over, over this bridge over the Mississippi river.

There aren't a whole lot of bridges.

This is one of the major crossings of the river.

But what's happened is the, the damage that they discovered on the north face of the bridge, that prompted the inspectors to immediately grab their phone and call 911 and say, we have to shut down the bridge now, on May 11th, that damage was repaired last week.

What they did was they went and they looked at all of the different weld spots on the bridge, just as a precaution to make sure.

And they, they had a voluminous report, eight hundred pages on this inspection to make sure the bridge was okay, and their preliminary look, they said, well, we probably need nine plates.

Because we do see some damage to those other sections, unrelated to the break that caused this to shut down.

Then when they completed the full review, that number increased to 16.

And this is damage that has to be repaired with parts that are fabricated somewhere else and brought here.

They weigh a lot, need a crane to put them in place.

And these parts are made specifically for the bridge and you can't just slap it on there either.

You have to take the stress off of some parts of the bridge that that part is going to then inherit.

So it's a pretty delicate and complex operation.

- Well, on a story we, was it last week, or within the last two weeks, we had Sarah Houston, the new executive director for Protect Our Aquifer on talking about the pipeline and the aquifer generally, which was a very good discussion.

But right after we did that show, not because of that show, right after you did that show, the Plains All American, which is the group that was trying to put the oil pipeline through Shelby County in partnership Valero, and some other entities, announced they were, they were not going to do that.

And, did they give much of an explanation of why?

- Well, what was notable about their statement was that they didn't make any mention of the protest and the enormous public opposition to the pipeline project.

They said in a very brief statement, that was part of an SEC filing for the company, too, that basically they think there is a lower demand for fossil fuel as a result of the pandemic.

So in essence, that they said we're changing course because of the pandemic.

And also indicated that they still have concerns about the ordinances the City Council and County Commission are considering.

This is not going to stop the City Council and the County Commission from voting on these measures.

Just because the pipeline route through Southwest Memphis has been called off by Plains All American, the Council and Commission are pretty much committed to go to votes on this starting next week.

- You did a real good story this last week.

I think it was in the last week on out.

It was the, possibility, and this sounds like a strange segue, but it was MLGW.

It was TVA, really building the new power plant and its use of water and drilling holes in the aquifer that really brought so many of these things to the surface, a bad analogy there, that of the aquifer that isn't regulated, there weren't a whole lot of regulations you could do, you could do kind of, sort of what you wanted in terms of drilling into it.

TVA is in the news again, because, and MLGW, the City is about to, or did it already just put out its RFP for potential, for potential replacements.

It's an RFP to study potential replacements for TVA.

Is that correct?

- To take offers from companies.

And this specific RFP, Request for Proposal, it is one of three that are part of the process.

This is the most complex process that will take the most time to evaluate the different offers that come in, it's around, what does a transmission system look like for electric power to Memphis Light, Gas and Water, if TVA is no longer the supplier of electric power to, to the city, but to your point about, about the piece that we did about the movement, this has been very interesting.

We've talked on this show a lot about the last seven years of what we've called new activism in this city, from the Greensward protest in 2014, to, which segued right into this whole concern about where's TVA going to get the water it's going to use in this $1 billion natural gas fired power plant in southwest Memphis, where the pipeline route wound up being proposed.

And it spawned this organization called Protect Our Aquifer, and what we've got starting really with that whole TVA plant issue right up into the pipeline is in a city that's had an environmental movement notable for stopping an interstate from coming through Overton park.

We now have that kind of effort, which is also focused on a legal battle, primarily around specifically the city's water system.

- Yeah.

We're out of time.

I did want to mention for a second, but the new Ida B.

Wells statue was unveiled.

You did an interview with the author of a new biography of Ida B.

Wells, it's available on The Daily Memphian site as audio.

We were going to talk a little bit more, but we ran out of time.

Abigail, thanks for being here.

We'll get you back on, thanks for doing this.

And thank you for watching.

Please join us again next week.

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