- (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.

- Elections, the TVA decision, and much more, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] Hi, I'm Eric Barnes.

Welcome to Behind the Headlines.

We do have a roundtable of journalists this week talking about some of the biggest stories of the past few weeks, starting with Abigail Warren, who covers the suburbs for us at The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

So there is a ton, we haven't done a roundtable in probably five, six weeks.

I think we'll start, Bill, and for both of y'all, with elections.

We are actually, and I'm gonna get this wrong and you're gonna correct me, but we're, in July 15th is the beginning of early voting for the county final races, everything from county mayor to DA, to County Commission, a lot of judges, juvenile court race.

It's also the primaries for a lot of races, like the governor's races.

- State and federal.

- State and federal.

So where do you wanna start?

It seems like the biggest story's at the county level.

Obviously the mayor's race and certainly the DA's race.

And I should note that next week on Behind the Headlines we have current Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich and her democratic opponent, Steve Mulroy on the show together to talk through the issue.

So please do tune in for that.

But what do you see as the biggest stories right now in the election?

- The county-wide races for district attorney and for county mayor are the top of the ballot, are kind of the main attraction here.

Although you have all 13 seats on the County Commission that are up, and it will be interesting to see how the new court, the race for the new Cordova seat on the Commission works out, and whether there's now a nine-vote majority for Democrats on the Commission, as opposed to the current eight-vote majority on the Commission.

But the advertising in the district attorney's race between the Republican incumbent, Amy Weirich, and her democratic challenger, Steve Mulroy, those are now starting to be seen a lot on social media, as well as on TV outlets, as well.

And it is, the race is every bit as contentious and about which direction the county should go in the chief prosecutor's office.

As I think everybody anticipated this would be.

- And we are reaching out to Mayor Harris and to his opponent, Worth Morgan, to try to get them on the show before early voting begins.

Abigail, how much, Abigail, you primarily cover Germantown and Collierville and we'll talk about those, but you cover lots of things for us.

How much are people paying attention to things like the DA race, the county mayor race, the juvenile court judge race, that seems to have within the city, a whole lot of attention on it?

- They are paying attention.

I know in Germantown, what's been interesting is with the redistricting.

Germantown's been split into three districts.

So there are three different County Commissioners, Brandon Morrison, and Brittany Chauncey are... - No, keep going.

We won't worry about the names, but the three district.

- They'll meet for most of Germantown, but then David Bradford, who has represented Collierville and is running uncontested has a part of Germantown, as well.

So there's a lot of interest in that.

David Bradford, like I said, is running unopposed, so he'll represent Collierville, too, but I do think there is interest in the county mayor's race.

There's a lot of signs when you drive around in the suburbs.

So I think people are paying attention.

I see more mayor signs than I see DA signs or anything else.

- County mayor signs.

- Yes, county mayor signs.

- But also, I mean, Germantown mayor's race.

Is that election?

I screw this up every time is that, is that... That election's in November?

- That's in November.

- Okay, so that's only really.

- And Mayor Mike Palazzolo is seeking reelection.

He pulled his petition on Monday and so far, he doesn't have an opponent.

- Right, you don't cover Bartlett or Lakeland, but it is of interest there that they actually have two, there's no incumbent.

- Right, so they have pretty... - And the incumbents often often win these suburban races.

- They have pretty pivotal elections as Mayor... - McDonald.

- Keith McDonald has decided to step down after 20 years.

- Yeah, - Mayor Mike Cunningham in Lakeland has decided to not seek re-election.

- Thoughts on those.

I mean, those are areas they've seen kind of a boom in growth and development and population, but also with the Ford plant coming, lots of speculation that, 'cause those are some of the communities that are closest to the Ford plant that they will see even more rapid, bigger, perhaps even some amount of unwanted growth, given the scale of what they're talking about out of the Ford plant.

- Yeah.

And the Ford plant questions are especially relevant in the Lakeland and Arlington elections.

And we should note that the Arlington municipal elections will be on the August ballot.

The other suburban towns and cities go in November just to make this more difficult.

- And this is the point at which I say, and I point to the Shelby County Election Commission has a very good website, ShelbyVote.org.

We cover it, The Daily Memphian, other folks in town cover these issues, but you can go to ShelbyVote.org and you can figure out exactly where your district and when that election's gonna happen.

It is very confusing.

It's one of my rants is there's just too many elections and I think it does work against us in terms of turnout, but ShelbyVote.org, the Election Commission's website has all these dates, so please do go and look.

- Right, and in lieu of changes that you would like to see in the election schedule.

- Which aren't gonna happen this year, yeah.

We're still gonna have 17 elections.

- We will be running plenty of features that just explain some of the basics of this.

We call the series Ballot Basics and we will have that.

- Yeah.

- But one thing that I'm interested in seeing in the August county general elections is the status of the city and suburbs divide on those county-wide races for mayor and for district attorney.

For folks who don't know, the largest majority of democratic voters in any single county in the state is here in Shelby County.

And it's the democratic base within the city of Memphis.

The largest base of Republican voters in any single county in the state is also in Shelby County.

And it's in the suburbs that are outside of the city.

So I'll be interested to see the status of kind of that dividing line in both of those county-wide races.

- Segue out of elections into talking about MLGW and TVA, we've done a lot on those.

We had Jeff Lyash, the head of TVA on a number of times.

J.T.

Young, the head of the MLGW.

We talked to the mayor about it.

We've talked to lots of people about this pivotal decision.

And again, just to reframe it briefly, TVA has been a provider of electricity to MLGW for 80 years.

It's the biggest customer in TVA, something like 10% of their revenue.

And there is an opportunity to either renew the contract with TVA or renegotiate a contract or break ties with TVA and go with another sources.

The city, MLGW, had been having a bidding process, a very elaborate bidding process that covers, and I'll try to do this right, bids for the transmission of electricity, bids for power generation, in terms of, you know, natural gas-fired, or, you know, traditionally power generation or renewable energy sources.

And so recently, Bill, you were not able to be here when I was talking to Dan Michael, the juvenile court judge, because without naming names and who the bidders are, MLGW gave the public and City Council, especially, an eye onto what those bids look like, what kind of costs, what kinds of savings or non-savings there are.

What did you learn there about where we're going?

- Well, we learned from this that the RFP process as it's called, Request for Proposals, on all of this, that the savings that some studies done by groups with an interest in this process who were potential rivals to TVA on this, they all had studies projecting from $100 million in savings annually with a new provider over TVA to $450 million annually.

Well, the RFP process came in with savings of about 22 million in 1 of the 2 most frequently mentioned options to $55 million in savings annually with a switch to another provider by the second option on this.

Immediately, critics of the process surfaced and said, "This is not accurate."

So that will continue.

- Part of that criticism, was that from people who would like are pushing to leave TVA, was that, "Well, this is too skeptical, too cautious an assessment," - And I think what it will also probably do is it will reignite the controversy over the idea that Light, Gas and Water has to generate some of its own electric power, which means building a plant, even if it's having someone contracted out to do that for them.

So I think you'll see that surface, again, as a point of discussion.

Although prior to this, there had pretty much been agreement among even the critics that yeah, Light, Gas and Water, if they got someone like a MISO, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, to provide the electric power through its marketplace, that there would have to be some independent power generation of that.

- Yeah.

One thing that brought up and you did a really interesting story for us recently, Abigail is, and I had not really thought about this, that MLGW provides power to all the suburbs, but really is not by the sort of creation bylaws, you know, the structure of MLGW, it is a city-owned asset.

So there have been times where non, there was a non-voting suburban representative on the board of MLGW just as a, again, as a ex-officio, non-voting representative.

That position hasn't been filled and the suburban mayors are a bit worried, right?

That they don't, one, don't have a voice in this decision.

And they are, of course, dependent, you know, on 30% of the population in Shelby County, I believe, is outside the city of Memphis.

And they feel like they don't have a voice on it.

- Right, and while they did have a representative, they felt like their voice wasn't significant that it didn't hold weight because that person didn't vote.

They did appreciate his insight but it was challenging to not have a vote.

And so there's actually legislation that representative, Kevin Vaughan, may be bringing forward that could address that.

That's one thing I think that the legislature will be looking at next year to see if there's a way to give the suburbs more of a voice.

It's really challenging, I know, to the mayors, when there are power issues.

I remember a few years ago, there was a power issue in the Germantown park neighborhood, kind of by Hacks Cross and Poplar Pike, And they were dealing, it would be blue sky, pretty day, and they would have a power outage.

And so I remember one mom saying "I'm throwing away my Costco bill every month."

And so just due to the number of power outages.

And so it's always a challenge because they'll call the city, the city of Germantown, but the city can't really do much because it is, like you said, a city of Memphis-owned asset.

And so they would like to see more of a voice.

There's also challenge like challenges with, if Memphis, if MLGW does leave TVA, what does that look like for infrastructure?

There's a lot of concerns about what the reliability is if MLGW leaves TVA.

So there's kind of, there's a lot of concerns right now.

- Yeah, and that is one of the things that people have, even people who have said they don't, who've been on the show, or we've interviewed in The Daily Memphian, or read in other outlets who say, "Well, I don't like TVA in certain ways and I feel like, "you know, there are complaints about excess salary, "of secrecy, of they're not engaged in Memphis, but they're engaged in Chattanooga and Nashville" and all those kind of criticism, even some of those critics, Bill will say, "Yeah, but they're always reliable."

I mean, that they are incredibly reliable and have been proven to be a reliable source of electricity.

And even just in this last week, I think in part 'cause of the heat wave, I think it was record, what was it?

TVA reported record demand region-wide for the month of June on the same day that MLGW had, you know, something like 8 to 9,000 outages.

So that reliability issue both for individuals, for business, for big business and for suburbs ways heavily, because TVA, it is hard to, I haven't seen a critic who's pointing at the TVA record and said, "We've had these outages, "we haven't had the power we were promised," you know, they, it's hard to criticize 'em on that front.

- And it's really hard for someone who is dedicated to a process that just is laser-focused on reliability and the rates that you're paid for power to keep it there because of all the other stuff.

I call it stuff, technical term there.

That is in the atmosphere that you just talked about.

So it's a very difficult road ahead here.

J.T.

Young, the President and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water will make a recommendation to the Light, Gas and Water board at its August 16th meeting.

The board, which makes the basic decision on this, whether or not to stay with TVA or to give the five-year notice to TVA will then make the decision.

It might be a month later, there could be more time for public input, even beyond what's already built into the process.

But we will probably have a decision from the Light, Gas and Water board by the end of this year.

And I think some of the people, maybe not all of the people involved in this decision are watching the calendar with the idea that the legislature does go back to work in January.

- Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, the legislature, whether you agree with it or not has been certainly aggressive about regulating, changing laws that make it harder or easier for, you know, various whatever city, county, suburban entities to make decisions here.

And they've done similar things in Nashville and the other cities.

The last point on that is we are trying to get the head, the CEO of MISO, on the show to talk about who they are, what they do.

We're trying to get that sometime this summer.

And what, just to clarify, Bill, I think we've talked to the mayor about this, and I think City Council people in effect because MLGW is city-owned, although, you know, it'll go from a recommendation from J.T.

Young, the CEO to the MLGW board.

It does fall to City Council in the end to approve a decision.

- Yes.

- I mean, it's a fact.

- The City Council.

- The funding, the all of that.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- The City Council in effect has to ratify it.

But that said if the Light, Gas and Water board makes a decision, one way or the other, the Council cannot come back and say, "All right, well, we're gonna vote on that same proposition, should we leave TVA or not?"

No, the Council will be voting, in effect, on what the Light, Gas and Water board has decided.

Vote it up or down.

- Well, we mentioned the suburbs, a tremendous amount of development all over Memphis, all over the county, but specific to Germantown, there's a kind of, first of it's kind development that is going on in Germantown.

Talk about that.

- Yeah.

Thornwood, which is right there at Germantown Road and Neshoba Road is kind of the first mixed-use development of its kind in the suburbs, it's still under construction.

Right now, they're building the second hotel.

They have a Hampton Inn & Suites, and this will be a Townplace Suites.

But really it's been doing well.

The shops that they have are filling up, they're completely leased with the apartments they have on site, the hotel's doing well, hence the demand for a second hotel.

And so really it's been interesting to watch and see the way that Germantown has really invested in what it calls its Central Business District, which is kind of the center of the Central Business District is Germantown Road and Poplar and kind of the businesses around there and how Germantown has really invested in those areas with improvements like The Grove, the outdoor amphitheater at GPAC and other amenities that they've added to that area.

And so not only has Thornwood done well, but now you look on the western side of the city and what is called the Western Gateway and Carrefour is being redeveloped.

Originally, Henry and Nelson Cannon were pursuing that.

They've sold the property to a group called Germantown Devco, but Billy Orgel is a part of that group and so there's potential for that to, kind of, crack a gold mine of opportunity.

There's belief that what Thornwood did for the Central Business District, Thornwood can do for that western side of town.

- Carrefour can do.

- Yes.

Yes, that Carrefour can do for the Western Gateway.

And so Carrefour does have challenges because it's surrounded by Memphis on the north and south side.

And so that makes it a little bit more challenging because Germantown can't invest in Memphis, but it is cool to see that like even one of the developments over there sold and there's plans to renovate it.

I think part of it due to the renovations and the redevelopment and re-invigoration of Carrefour.

- It is in, we had, we've had Mike Palazzolo, the mayor on a number of times over the years, mayor of Germantown, and their sort of recognition, I can't remember the name of the plan, but their, they did kind of a strategic plan and an urban plan.

- Smart growth.

- Smart growth plan, yeah.

That embraced the fact that Germantown is a pretty mature community.

It's no longer, I mean, it really has to be smart about how it grows here on out, create more density.

There's not a lot of, they're not gonna bring in a bunch of industry.

There's only so much land left and how this seems, these are things are kind of extensions of that growth plan.

- Right, and that's kind of what Spence Ray, who is the developer of Thornwood said.

He said Germantown had these codes and they were just not being used.

So he was really the first person to come in and look at these codes.

And they were similar to stuff he had seen in Atlanta, in Chicago and other big cities.

And so he said, this is what Germantown wanted to do to grow in a way that continued to keep them economically competitive.

It just hadn't been used.

And now you see other suburbs kind of taking a similar approach.

Bartlett just did something recently where it's adopting similar, a similar growth plan.

- Yeah, and I think probably we see more of that.

And I've heard from people who, given the Ford plant and its proximity, a lot of people will probably, who relocate to the Memphis area to be part of the Ford plant.

I mean, again, not, I mentioned Bartlett, but Arlington, Lakeland, Germantown, I assume, too.

I mean, it's relatively close by the standards of most cities to that big Ford plant and all the workers that are coming.

We'll stay with you as our Topgolf correspondent.

Topgolf is coming to Memphis.

A lot of people are really excited.

We won't do a ton on this.

You went on Sports Radio, though, and did like half an hour on Topgolf recently, which is amazing.

I have not listened to it, but I just, the idea of that is fantastic.

You're a big golfer.

[laughs] - Not really, no.

- Yeah, but talk about golf, Topgolf, for people aren't following, it's a big economic development thing and it's a big, I don't know, almost a tourism thing.

- It is.

- That's go going in, out towards the suburbs.

- It is, and so it's right, just south of the Germantown border right there.

The best way I explain it is if you take Germantown Road and Winchester where they meet, there's that Aldi and it's just behind that Aldi.

And so people are really excited, but it's gonna be two stories, and the national Topgolf builder construction team, they're building it.

So it's gonna be like every other Topgolf.

It's gonna have a full kitchen, two bars, meeting space, they're also gonna have mini golf.

Topgolf launched a mini golf concept, so it's really gonna be family friendly.

So there's a lot of excitement.

Topgolf has been looking for a decade off and on at Memphis.

And there was always a question back when Ken May was the CEO.

He's a Memphian, he's a Harding grad, he went to the University of Memphis and University of Tennessee.

And there was always a question of, "Well, why doesn't Memphis have Topgolf?

He's a Memphian."

And so it is exciting even though he's no longer with the company, Topgolf has finally decided on that site.

I mean, they looked everywhere.

They looked from east Shelby County to downtown.

If there was a site they wanted - Yeah.

- They looked at it.

But they felt like this site, especially with the proximity to 385 was really the right site for them.

And it's part of a larger, mixed-use development that spreads across Germantown Road.

So you're gonna have a hotel across the street, you're gonna have town homes across the street.

At least there's the zoning for that currently.

So there's a lot of, like you said, tourism - Yeah.

- Opportunities right there.

- Bill, this one strikes me.

I mean, I'm all for Topgolf coming.

I'm not a golfer, that's great and everything.

And we'll talk about Overton Park and golf, and the zoo in a second here.

But it does remind me, and friend of the show, Sherman Willmott, said this years ago about Cheesecake Factory, when Cheesecake Factory came into Wolfchase that why do we, as a city, as a community, have to judge ourselves as a good community or a bad community based on whether or not we have a Cheesecake Factory?

And there have been other ones of those, over time.

This is not to diminish Cheesecake Factory or Topgolf.

It's just some of these things that it's less and less so, I feel like, in the 25-plus years I've been in Memphis, but some of these things that are of national prominence that we, when we get 'em, we're like, "Oh, we're there, now we've arrived."

- Yeah, and there's a whole succession of them because once we get one of these-- - Trader Joes.

- One of these things.

Yeah, Trader Joe's.

Once we get one of these things, then it's like, Okay, something else pops up.

- Yeah, right.

- It is kind of be wary of following trends.

Although these things are nice to have, but there's also another game.

And I don't cover it, so I just encounter it by kind of watching Abigail struggle with it.

And that is Trader Joe's is building in Germantown.

They're obviously building in Germantown, but the company's position remains, "Well, we're not saying whether we're coming to Memphis or not."

Literally, even as the sign is going up on the building that has their brand name on it, they will continue to say, "We don't know what you're talking about."

- Yeah, and there's a Tesla.

Wasn't in the, have a Tesla.

- And as I've, as I've tweeted Topgolf and there's been confirmation, they've tweeted back and said, "We have nothing to share yet."

Even after they've attached their name to Memphis.

So it's been, it's been fun.

- This is our lament because we-- - Part of the game.

- Yeah.

And, I get it from people like, "Why haven't we reported on that thing?"

Like, we cannot get confirmation because of so on, so on, and so on.

With a couple minutes left, I mentioned Overton Park.

The new golf course has, I think, officially opens today.

I think the ribbon cutting is today.

People have started golfing on it.

And you know, it was many years in the making a whole lot of people who came together to make that the renovation of that golf course was really has a big history in Memphis.

I think former Mayor A.C. Wharton was on the show back when he was sitting mayor talking about how I think he had learned to golf there.

And there are a lot of Memphians that, that was the place they learned to golf.

They had junior golf there.

So it was more than just golf and given Overton Park's kind of significance in the city that is opening and some, you know, great folks and I can't help but give a shout out to friend of the show, George Cates, who passed away a year ago and was the founder of the Overton Park Conservancy was very instrumental, along with others, in making that happen.

He would hate that I gave him any credit for that.

But that opening of that comes as, you know, we had a kind of fits and start announcement from the zoo and OPC that they've come up with an agreement, and we've talked about that.

We're trying to, we were trying to get Tina Sullivan, the head of the Overton Park Conservancy and Jim Dean, CEO of the zoo, on to talk about the settlement.

As I hear, there are still some details to be worked out, but in the midst of that, Jim Dean is leaving after three years at the zoo.

The significance of that, and maybe, you know, Jim's been on the show, I think back in the day.

He was here, came in an incredibly tumultuous time and by most accounts that I hear did a lot of good and healed a lot of wounds and really turned a lot of things around all against the backdrop, not just of the fight with, about parking and so on, but against COVID and the financial stress that caused.

- Yeah.

And I think that what you saw here was one of those times in an organization and the politics of an organization, which I think all organizations like this have to some level, even though the people involved probably don't want to acknowledge it very openly.

But in the politics of this particular organization and the tumultuous issues that were faced there, you saw the board and the city go for a director who, in essence, his job was to reorient that institution.

To basically reset it and its goal.

And that's what Jim Dean did during his brief time here.

And now you have Matt Thompson who has been at the zoo for quite a while, who comes in to run the organization.

- All right, I didn't give enough time to that and a bunch of other things, but thank you both for being here.

Thank you for joining us again.

Next week, DA Amy Weirich, her challenger, Steve Mulroy also been on the show number of times, they will be on to talk about the issues around that race.

For long time listeners of the show if you thought I opened the show weird today by saying, "Hi, I'm Eric Barnes."

In 13 years, that is the first time I've ever done that, so you were not wrong.

Thanks for joining us, you can get the full show on wkno.org.

You can download the full show from wherever you get your podcasts, including on The Daily Memphian site.

Thanks, we'll see you next week.

[intense orchestral music] [acoustic guitar chords]