- (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.

- School board member and candidate for mayor Michelle McKissick 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 Michelle McKissick, a candidate for Memphis Mayor, as well as a member of the Memphis-Shelby County School Board.

Thanks for being here again.

- My pleasure to be here.

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

Before we get started with Michelle McKissick, let me say, this is one of a series of interviews, one-on-one profiles we're doing with the top eight candidates, all have now confirmed.

We have recently done Karen Camper, Frank Colvett, and JW Gibson.

Coming up soon Van Turner, Paul Young, former Mayor Herenton and Floyd Bonner.

Those will all be in the coming weeks.

The past ones are all available on wkno.org or you can search "WKNO" or "Daily Memphian" on YouTube and get those videos.

You can also get podcasts of the full interviews wherever you get your podcasts.

Just look for "Behind the Headlines".

Our criteria, which is important in terms of fairness 'cause there are other people who have declared their candidacy for mayor.

What we looked at was the limited polling available, financial viability, both in terms of the volume of donors and the amount that had been raised, as well as previous election success.

All of this leads up to a debate that we are doing here on WKNO on August 15th at 7 PM.

So far all the candidates I've mentioned have committed except Sheriff Floyd Bonner.

We are hoping that he will be there.

That will be moderated by me and, wait for it, Kontji Anthony will be co-moderating that, which is very exciting for all of us.

All this again leads up to the election on October 5th, but early voting begins on September 15th.

So with that, Michelle McKissick, thanks for being here again.

Let's start with the current mayor, Jim Strickland is termed out.

Has he been a successful mayor?

- I think he's been successful in a lot of different ways.

There's been a lot of growth in downtown Memphis, but I feel from what people are telling me in the community, that they just would love to see more of that success outside of downtown Memphis, and maybe the core Poplar area into north Memphis, south Memphis, and even southeast Memphis.

- What does that take?

- What does that take?

- Yeah.

- I think it's just that level of intentionality and actually going out into those communities and asking what do they need?

Not giving them what you think they need, but actually talking to community members as I've been doing over the last several months of what they need investment in.

Like for example, out in southeast Memphis, I was talking to a neighborhood association and they were saying that they don't feel like they have enough things to do for their young people.

And that the community center out there, the backfield is going completely unused when it can perhaps be a soccer field or something of that nature.

- Let me bring in Bill Dries.

- So we're at a point now where every time the skies get cloudy and rain is forecast, Memphians get pretty anxious about it because of some problems that, that we've had with a specific part of our infrastructure.

Do you think that Memphis Light, Gas and Water, as it is currently configured with its own board but a city-owned utility, do you think that that needs to change?

Or does how that setup works on a day-to-day basis need to change?

- Clearly there needs to be change.

I'm one of the Memphians who's had power out just the most recent power outage as a matter of fact.

And so, this is something that has been years and years in the making.

So it seems to me that we need to have more oversight because it's impacting too many people.

And like you said, anytime it seems like it gets cloudy, the power's about to go out.

And so, there has been an investment, the city of Memphis, we had agreed to our rate increases to pay for it over a billion dollars, and it's been sitting there for two years.

We know COVID happened, but nonetheless, you can't blame everything on COVID.

The neglect of trees being cut over time.

So there's a lot that needs to be done.

I think it would be helpful to have an oversight of MLGW.

- And the other thing that we hear a lot about on a day-to-day basis is the condition of roads here.

So there's a paving schedule, I believe that paving schedule has improved during the tenure of Mayor Strickland, but still there are a lot of complaints about it, even by his own admission.

So if you're elected, you hit office, what do you do about that?

- Well, part of the problem is people think all the roads are just city of Memphis roads.

Well, that's not the case.

The state, you know, overseas paving some of those roads, but we don't know where to go to report the problem and people don't know where to find the solution to it of, or who's actually working on it.

But it's a really big problem.

I mean, I've certainly got a flat tire before because of hitting a pothole.

And I think just having a centralized location of where to report this.

But then holding the state accountable for taking care of the roads that it's supposed to take care of here.

But then really just doubling down on making sure that we do stay to that schedule and maybe make it public.

Sometimes when things are put out there to see like, okay, when this road is supposed to be paved then there's just a higher level of accountability.

- Crime, I think by the admission of most everyone in the race is certainly right at the top of the list in terms of issues here.

But city government, aside from the police department, the folks who arrest people, the moment they bring them in for booking, they become part of another system that is largely county government.

What can the mayor really do about this on a system-wide basis given those limitations?

- I think having conversations, for one.

I think the city government and the county government are operating too much in silos and not interacting enough with each other.

And just to seeing how can they collaborate and how can they make a difference to be a united force so that we can make a difference.

Because it is a revolving door and literally everyone you talk to, no matter what neighborhood they come from, they're concerned about their safety and then what seems to be the revolving door of repeat offenders getting back on the streets and committing more crimes.

- So with that in mind and that belief which we hear a lot of in our reporting, yet those same voters last year voted for a pretty significant change in outlook and direction in the election of a new district attorney general, and a new juvenile court judge.

Is the public sending mixed messages or is the problem that we're dealing with here that complex that you can have those two things exist side by side?

- Well, I think people were just looking for a change, that we'd had a DA who had been in office a really long time and you know, had that person been reelected, that would've been extraordinarily long.

And it's like, things had not changed.

And so changing who was in that position, it's like hopeful for how can we improve things.

As far as the, you know, our juvenile court judge and who's there in place now, again, looking for how can we do things differently.

Because we've been doing the same thing and not getting any different sort of results.

So I think people are looking for a hope of what can we do differently?

And I believe that is a matter of just not just lock 'em up, but how can we also have some preventative measures?

How can we bring back more community policing?

Because right now there's a sense of distrust with law enforcement here.

And the thing about it is, it's unfair to the majority of police officers out there who are doing their jobs, but we don't have enough police officers to help do that aspect of community policing.

- Is there a magic number of the number of police?

- Right now, what we're around 1,900 and so from what the statistics I've read and when we last dipped off about 10 years ago, I think we need about, you know, 400 or so, four, maybe five hundred so more officers.

But the thing is it's not just the patrol officers.

We need more detectives, more investigators, because as I was doing some research, the FBI says according to their 2021 statistics that only one in five crimes here in Memphis is actually solved.

And so, we don't have time to go and do the longer term impact of community policing because we're constantly having to focus on those violent crime offenders.

If we have more police officers getting back up to the numbers for a city of this size, we can have an impact in addition to other aspects to help stem crime.

- You mentioned the revolving door.

That's a phrase that the current mayor Jim Strickland uses is very often in his criticism of how the DA is operating how the courts are operating, the judicial commissioners.

That people are getting arrested, the part that he has authority over it, they're arresting people, they go in, they get relatively low bail or no bail and they're released.

And this, from Jim Strickland's point of view is, includes violent offenders.

What can be done?

I mean, it's a follow up on Bill's question.

The mayor doesn't, as Jim Strickland has made clear, he doesn't have that authority to keep people in jail, to keep the most violent, excuse me, violent offenders in jail.

What does it come down to for, if you get this job?

- You know, you touched upon it when you said judicial commissioners, because that's a role position people don't even realize exists for the most part.

That they are the ones working towards setting bails.

We need to know who are these people, we know what's their level of training, how do we go about reevaluating what are the metrics for when someone can be released?

I think anyone who's committing any crime with a gun or other type of violent crime, then you know, they should not be able to get back out on the street.

Because right now the, there are so many who are in jail, it's almost like we're policing poverty because they don't have the means to pay for lower level offenses to get out.

So they're, you know, consuming that space in our jails.

Whereas those who are, you know, by whatever means that they are committing violent crimes, crimes with guns, high-level drug crimes, they have access to funds to be able to get out.

- Fifteen minutes left here.

I wanna stay with judicial commissioners, now a note to everyone that we did a, a number of us, Bill and I, and Julia Baker and others on, who cover public safety for us at The Daily Memphian, did a big two-hour interview with the lead judicial commissioner, that'll come out as a Q&A in the The Daily Memphian.

It might be out by the time this show airs, but it'll be out soon, as well as a series of profiles of all the judicial commissioners.

It was a fascinating conversation.

I will say a couple things that stood out to me that, that the judicial commissioner system has been around since 1995.

There was a sent, it's still on the spotlight, it feels new.

And a lot of what he talked about was the state laws that they are bound to follow the state laws, and that some things that maybe people don't like, I'm paraphrasing here.

Are, that's up to the state.

And so, let's segue to a lot of what the DA does, the judges do, the judicial commissioners who are really just extension of the judges and work for the judges, comes down to the state.

And there's a special session coming up soon around guns.

What would you hope to see come out of that special session?

What do you expect to come out of it?

- Well, what I would hope to see is that we have some measure of gun reform for red flag.

So, because there are people who clearly should not be holding guns.

For those who are doing everything, they're law abiding citizens, that is your second amendment right.

But we have a very unique situation.

You have a large, larger urban area here in Memphis than those who may be experiencing like, I just wanna, for whatever reason, if they're more rural areas where they're not impacted by it.

But we need help from the state because so goes Memphis, so goes the rest of the state.

And so I think, you know, lawmakers in Nashville, the governor, I'm happy to see, I hope that they do have some measure of gun reform.

So that's what I'm hopeful for.

But I don't think to answer that second part of your question, whether or not that's actually would happen.

- And we had Brent Taylor on, state senator Republican from a Germantown and of east parts of Memphis and Shelby County.

He was not very optimistic that much would happen in this session along those lines.

But again, we will see as that comes up.

Let me stay with crime for one second before we go back to Bill.

The mayor has talked about a youth curfew, picking up youth.

It's a kind of confused situation.

Do you support a youth curfew and how do you view the mayor's role, MPDs role about dealing with young people who are in trouble?

- Or causing trouble?

- Well, I think part of it the city of Memphis has gotta get back into the business of caring about its young people.

There, you know, when there was a divestment from the school district back 10 years ago that it, it fell off.

Where it's like, okay, well that's just now the county's problem.

And it's not just about looking at our children as a problem, but how can we be a part of that crime prevention on the front end, where we're providing things for them to do.

Growing up, I mean, I grew up with Libertyland with going to Adventure River, a water park, and those things just don't exist here anymore.

And it's not just enough to say, go to school and then go home and do nothing else.

And so, that's what people are telling me.

We don't have enough activities that are meaningful that they would like to be interested in and involved in.

So it's a balance.

I don't believe that it, you know, a curfew alone would solve the problem.

We need to give them something fun to do.

- Ah, Bill?

- So as mayor, you're in office, you're making your first budget.

Do you propose ongoing city funding for Memphis-Shelby County Schools?

- I believe the city of Memphis can provide for young people in other ways.

I'm not talking about funding the school system.

I think that, you know, the county, what we have worked out right now, it works but there are so many other ways.

For example, I would love to see the City of Memphis have an internship program where 5,000 high school students are hired for summer internships, where they literally could be working within the departments of the city of Memphis.

I know that works because it's something we piloted with the school district, where we hired 1,000 students for summer internships.

If you like event planning, you can work in our family and community engagement office where they plan events all year long for teachers and students, and things of that nature.

So there's ways that you can go about helping young people by being creative without directly funding the school district.

- You are one of nine school board members.

Is the board going to be able to pick a superintendent soon?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

The process that we've been going through here, it's been well over a decade since we hired and did a national search for a superintendent.

So sometimes things may get a little wonky but the process is working through, we will have a superintendent.

We have a wonderful interim superintendent right now.

The district has been moving forward not with just that 1 person but with the 14,000 employees, six thousand of them that are teachers that are doing their job and keeping things on track with our school district.

But yes, we will get it done and it's gonna happen within this academic school year.

- And let's talk about the previous superintendent's exit.

The board made a decision to stop the investigation that was underway into his conduct, and to end his contract with a buyout that amounted to a six figure lump sum, to Superintendent Joris Ray.

Was that the best way to handle that situation and how should people judge that when they're looking at the candidates for mayor this field?

- Every candidate's gonna have some difficult decisions if they haven't already in their, you know, respective careers.

And so, you make decisions of what you have to deal with at the time.

And we were focused on how do we get students back into school.

We were coming off a really rocky period with the pandemic, with COVID, and dealing with all of that and wanted to keep the focus on students.

And we had, I think weeks left before the school year started.

So that was what the board decided, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking.

But at that time what we decided as a board to move forward, to keep the focus on children and to help stem that tide of learning loss that they had already experienced.

- Was it necessary to pay him $480,000 in effect to leave?

- I don't believe the sum was that much money from what I remember, not that much money.

But it was a part of a standard contract, which the previous superintendent before, the one that we, you know, had to dismiss had.

So it was standard a part of that contract.

It was not anything out of the unusual for an executive level position of that nature.

- Let me, one thing about that that, I know people were frustrated and not just the media, was that the results of the investigation were not released.

We FOIA'd it, we had Freedom of Information Act, it hasn't been made available.

And I mean, I would, it is an odd thing that people don't know what happened, right?

There's a lot of rumor, there's a lot we could sort of report on, but this very prominent position, the one employee, right, of the school board and then everyone else works for the administration.

Can you say what happened and why?

I mean what, what did that investigation find and why wasn't it made public?

- Well the investigation was never completed so the board never received any sort of report.

So there was nothing to release at that point because the investigation ended.

- Last one on this for me and then we'll move on to some other issues.

If you were elected mayor and you know, you have senior many senior positions, right, that work for the mayor and someone is accused of sexual, you know, inappropriate behavior with staff, how would you pursue that?

- We would pursue it as we did.

We would have an investigation, an independent investigation that was not party to the city of Memphis or any one individual to let it play all the way out.

And so that's what I would do as an executive leader.

As a mayor, you have a whole lot more latitude as opposed to working with being one of nine board members where there has to be a consensus to reach a decision.

And so at that time, you know, the point was there may have been differing perspectives or opinions on how to move forward, but in the end, the one thing that the board decided was what's best for students and at that time was to move forward.

- With six minutes left, I'm gonna switch to economic development.

And we talked some last week, one of the candidates we've had JW Gibson, I think that was last week.

That my sense of time is not so great.

But we recently talked to JW Gibson, others, we'll certainly talk to Paul Young about it, who is the head of the Downtown Memphis Commission, the use of incentives.

Has Memphis, is Memphis using incentives appropriately be that PILOTs, TIFs, other things that come through EDGE?

Is it, are we giving away too many incentives?

Do we need to use more incentives?

- I think how we are directing those incentives, I think they're going to larger companies, corporations, but small business owners feel like they're being left out of that conversation.

They're not getting that level of support.

What we tell small business owners is that, oh, you know, we'll provide you technical support but they don't get that infusion of cash that they need to grow their business to be able to achieve more contracts, perhaps even with government entities where a lot of these businesses benefit from.

So that is a part of the problem.

I mean the Chamber, 80% of its businesses are small businesses, but they're not getting the full benefit of those types of incentives.

- And is that a matter of doing that through EDGE or through DMC?

I mean the mayor has appointments to EDGE, which is the board that does most of the incentives in town.

DMC is an independent body but has a lot of influence over.

Is it those two entities or is it a whole other entity?

- I think it's having to reevaluate all of that and I, you know, just having the conversation with small business owners and meeting with the Black Business Alliance coming up, that they wanna be a part of that conversation.

They're not at the table, so, yeah.

- Ah, Bill?

- What do you think is a doable goal during your administration for a minority businesses getting a share of city government contracts and business?

- You know, I'm a daughter of a entrepreneur.

My dad was an accountant and so it was always a struggle to try to be a part of the conversation and to be able to go after those contracts.

So I think expanding our percentage of MWB contracts that we do offer, and holding companies accountable that they are meeting those metrics.

But that's just simply a part of it.

If you expand the pool so they're more out there to take advantage of it, then you'll see a benefit of more businesses that can impact from those types of contracts.

- All right, let's talk a little bit about the view that you see.

You and the other candidates in this race are going to a lot of events of all different kinds and you're talking to as many people as you can during the course of a day, seven days a week, very long days in some cases.

Where do you think the electorate in Memphis is, in terms of their mood, in terms of their hopes, in terms of their fears, all of that for what's gonna happen in this city not too far down the road?

- What's great about Memphians is they're always very hopeful.

They are always looking to how can we make things better?

And as I've been going to lots of community events as you mentioned, they're telling me, Michelle, that it's time for a change.

We need some fresh perspective.

We need someone who is going to, you know, buck the status quo and someone who is not a part of that entrenched environment of always have been a part of the Memphis establishment.

And that's what I offer and what I hope to bring as the next mayor of Memphis.

And this is my hometown, born and raised here and you know, all my kids went to public schools in this city, so I've been invested in a part of the solution and that's what they're looking for.

Someone who's really, really a part of Memphis.

- Just a, coming back to a couple things that I didn't follow up on.

What, do you support, we're talking about MLGW, obviously very much in the news to say the least.

Doug McGowen's been in the job as CEO for now, he's a former CAO, he's been in the job seven, eight months now.

Do you support McGowen staying in that job?

- Well I think he is new to the role and so having to come in there and deal with a lot, but he's not new to the problem.

Because having served with the city for so long, and this has been a problem that we've been seeing grow in Memphis with our power going out constantly.

And that we have with MLGW over a billion dollars that, you know, citizens said, "Okay, "we'll allow you to increase our tax rates to address these problems."

So this is something that he's been on the periphery of and so I would love to have a conversation with him about, you know, what's going to be different and how are we gonna expedite fixing our power problem.

- Do you support, the big news for a while there, it's pretty wonky but it's very important was whether or not MLGW should leave TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, as the primary provider of electricity?

Some said that could save hundreds of millions of dollars, could be, you know, tax reduction, could be invested in the system.

Do you support reopening that whole assessment of whether MLGW should stay with TVA for the long term?

- I think we should, we absolutely have to because just, you know, this is something that we've been had a partnership with but for over 80 years now.

And to sign another, I'm glad we didn't sign another 20-year contract with them, is only within five years now.

But we definitely need to say what's gonna be best for Memphis and are they looking out for Memphis?

And I'm not so sure that TVA is doing that at this time.

- We talked about roads, do we need to spend more money?

I'm not sure if we we asked you on that, is that part of the problem just spending more money on potholes, roads, fixing roads?

- I think yes, you know, definitely, obviously need to put more money into it, but it's also a matter of just the accountability and posting the schedule of when certain roads should be paved.

I think if people just know, first of all, if it's coming, it's coming my way, what the rotation is.

But then also some of the roads here in Memphis are not paved by Memphis.

The state has responsibility for that.

People don't realize that.

But we need to hold the state accountable to make sure that they're doing their job, but posting what the schedule should be so everyone knows when we will get rid of potholes.

- One more question again just coming back to MPD and how, and crime and policing.

The City Council recently passed some ordinances that limit to some degree MPDs ability to pull over drivers based on issues like expired registration, temporary tags, which are seem to be almost the norm in Memphis these days.

Broken taillights, missing bumpers, also banned traffic stops by unmarked cars, I believe.

Is that right Bill?

By unmarked police cars.

- Unless there are exigent circumstances.

- Okay, and okay, and where do you support those changes that the Council passed?

- You know, a lot of times I know with more serious offenders, they are often, you know, caught with low-level offenses like a tag light being out.

But there are so many people who are simply just don't have the money.

And so it gets into that fine line of are we policing poverty here?

So I, there are other creative ways, I was just at a community meeting and they were talking about how we need to expand our blue light cameras beyond just major intersections, but into more neighborhoods to be able to capture more types of crimes.

- All right, that is all the time.

Sorry to cut you off there at the end, we're running outta time, but thank you so much, thank you, Bill.

I'll note that this is the fourth profile we've done of major candidates for mayor.

We've done JW Gibson, we've done Karen Camper and Frank Colvett.

Coming up in the coming weeks, Van Turner, Paul Young, former Mayor Herenton and Floyd Bonner all over the next few weeks.

We also have a debate with all the major candidates.

All have confirmed except Willie Herenton and Floyd Bonner, of the people I just mentioned.

That's August 15th at 7 PM co-moderated by Kontji Anthony.

So be looking for that.

The election is October 5th and early voting begins September 15th.

Thank you again to Michelle McKissick, Bill Dries.

And we will see you next week, thanks.

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