- (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.

- The Memphis City Council on the new mayor, crime, stadiums, and much more, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

We're joined tonight by two members of the Memphis City Council, just recently reelected, Chase Carlisle from Super District 9, position one, and JB Smiley, Super District 8, position one.

Thank you both for being here again.

- I live here at this point.

[everyone laughs] - Okay, good, well, there's your sleeping bag over there.

Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Look, there's a lot to talk about.

As I was making my notes for this, I just kept adding things in.

We've got MATA, we've got all the things with MLGW and so on, but there's a new mayor, right?

The the Council is not totally settled.

There's some runoffs and things to be settled on that.

You all, both, as I mentioned, were reelected quite easily, unopposed in the case of Councilman Smiley.

What do you want?

I'll go to you.

You live here, Councilman Smiley.

What do you wanna see from the new mayor?

- Well, I think my position with the new mayor is I want him to come in and be a collaborator, not take the position that he runs the entire city, but come into a Council, come into a city administration saying, "Look, my job is to work collaboratively "with the City Council, ultimately to move the city forward."

This is not a situation where he can come in and dictate to the Council what he wants to see done.

This is a situation where he comes in and say, "Look, what can we do together?"

- And priorities?

- Priorities for me, I think we need to sit down and decide where we need to go.

Not having a lot of different things, one thing here, one thing there, let's focus on one thing.

Let's get that right and then we move to the next issue.

'Cause when we take the approach that we're gonna do everything at the same time, nothing gets done.

Look where we are eight years ago and see where we are now.

We're virtually in the same position.

It is time to move the city of Memphis forward.

- For you, what do you wanna see the new mayor and what are your priorities for the- - Yeah, I think JB hit the nail on the head.

We wanna see collaboration.

I think ultimately, what people forget is even if you have a grassroots candidate or somebody that's from the community, like Mayor-Elect Young, the Council's really the one out in the field, so to speak.

We're the ones fielding phone calls and constituent services and getting a lot of feedback.

And so, it's very difficult to take pats on the back and the smacks to the face and not be able to have a partner on the administration side to help work on some of the challenges when we're getting direct communication.

I agree with Councilman Smiley.

I would say that I would like us to pick maybe a couple things.

I think for us, we continue to talk about crime and then we always talk about the underlying issues.

And I think, for me, if I had to pick one thing that the City of Memphis can control, and we as councilmembers, it's economic development.

A lot of these are crimes of poverty.

We've gotta make workforce development a priority.

We've gotta partner with the state for resources.

So we have to give people opportunity, and we've gotta be there for intervention to make sure that they're finding those paths of opportunity.

- And I should note, we'll have Paul Young, mayor-elect on the show in the coming weeks.

We'll also in a couple weeks have outgoing mayor, Jim Strickland, on for a full hour.

So we'll do two parts with Jim Strickland, look back at his eight years as mayor, as well as maybe talk about some of his time in City Council, what's next for him.

But I'll stay with you, Councilman Carlisle.

Was Jim Strickland a successful mayor?

- You know, I'll take the politician's path.

I think Jim Strickland faced a lot of headwinds unexpectedly.

I think he stuck to his guns about being fiscally conservative and anti-crime and pro-police.

I don't know it's fair to judge him fully based on things like COVID and George Floyd and Tyre Nichols.

Granted, the buck's supposed to stop with him, but I think we missed the mark on, again, things like economic development, big opportunities to have public-private partnerships that move the city's economy forward.

So, I think the history will tell.

- Same question.

- Well, I essentially agree with Councilman Carlisle as it relates to what happened with Mayor Strickland's tenure as mayor.

But I think our position going forward has to be how can we get past this plateau?

I think we've been here for quite a bit of time, and I think with a very strong Council, we're gonna move the city in a more positive direction in the next four years.

- Was he a successful mayor, though?

- Well, I think he was focused on some things that in his eyes were improving the city.

You see a lot of new buildings downtown.

You see development downtown.

You see a new riverfront, so to speak.

But, I think our focus going forward in the next four years has to be more on community, economic development, and we have to do something with blight in the city of Memphis.

- Bring Bill in.

- To that point.

One of the things that I observed, and I think you both probably observed, is that Mayor Strickland took a position that the city's revenue before the pandemic, certainly, is going to grow by such and such an amount by maybe 3 million, 4 million, and that things like an affordable housing trust fund to promote the construction of more affordable housing will get a million of that, or may get 2 million of that, or maybe 3 million, but some portion of the growth.

And there were several voices on the Council who said, "No, let's go for it.

"Let's not relatively nickel and dime it "in a $740 million budget.

Let's really put some money there."

But the trade off in that means that there might be some other areas that maybe you could give a little bit of money to that you're not gonna be able to, because we're gonna focus on that one problem.

Should the next mayor go for it, so to speak?

- Yeah, so that's a great question.

I think that from, again, from the Council standpoint, I served as budget chair this year.

Councilman Smiley wrapped up, we wrapped up our fourth budget season.

And so it took some time to get comfortable.

And again, we spent the first two years dealing with COVID and federal dollars and all these things.

So now that we're comfortable, I think what the next mayor has to determine and decide is where are the priorities within some of the service lines in the city and the service centers.

The reason we were able to free up about $40 million in this year's budget without increasing the tax rate was a little bit of the federal funding side of things and just going back and looking at labor line items that were continually left open, 'cause we're gonna hire, we're gonna hire.

And the administration has the ability to move money around a little bit by having large compliments proposed in the budget.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I think the administration has to administrate.

They've gotta be focused on running their business efficiently.

And I think that's something that you often hear from more conservative Republican, old-school Republicans about fiscal conservancy.

And not that Strickland wasn't, but he really wasn't much of a micromanager.

And I'm not saying that Paul Young has to be, but they really needed to get focused on running the business of the government of the city of Memphis.

- Councilman Smiley.

- And my position is, as it relates to the Council, I think we need to do a better job.

I think the last four years, at least during my first four years on the Council, we essentially just said, "Okay," to the administration and, "Whatever you want, you get," as opposed to saying, you know, doing our job, which is to serve as the checks and balances to the administration.

I think we need to do a better job asking the right questions.

And then when we don't get the answers, sometimes we say no, sometimes we say no and just hold things until we get the answers that we want, so that we are comfortable moving forward.

And a lot of times, we just voted, because the mayor asked for it, and I don't think you're gonna see that in the next four years.

You're gonna see a very strong Council, and we will not be subservient to any administration.

- All right, let's get to the vote totals here.

I've brought paper again onto the show.

This is the certified vote.

And Councilman Smiley, I'm gonna start with you, because you said before the first vote was cast in this, you said, "Whoever is the next mayor is going to win with only 25,000 votes."

And you said, "I, and probably some other councilmembers, will get more votes than that."

And your question was, it was kind of an open question, it was kind of a statement too.

You said, "So we will have a mandate "just as much as the mayor does, if not more in the vote totals."

So here are the certified vote totals.

Paul Young got 24,420 votes, certified vote totals, JB Smiley, you got 33,625 votes.

Chase Carlisle, you got 29,096 votes.

And we should also point out that Councilmember Jeff Warren, the other councilmember running unopposed, got the most votes, more than the mayor-elect, so did Ford Canale and so did Janika White, one of the five new councilmembers on the body.

So my question to you, Councilman Smiley, is, what is your mandate?

- Well, I think we need to go back to the last four years.

Mayor Strickland would come to the Council almost without fail and let us know that he had a mandate, because a significant number of people in the city of Memphis elected him to be the mayor.

Now, you see five incoming councilmembers have more votes than the incoming mayor.

So, I would propose a question to the people of Memphis, "Who has the mandate?

Who should be dictating the policy of the city?"

And if you ask Councilman Smiley, I'm gonna say the City Council does, because City Council has five councilmembers who received more votes than the incoming mayor.

But our job isn't to dictate what happens.

Our job is to work collaboratively with the mayor, and I believe this mayor will work well with the City Council.

- Councilman Carlisle, is your mandate, if you feel like you have one, is your mandate the same as Councilman Smiley?

- He has a mandate.

I'll say that.

- No, I think JB said it very well.

I don't have anything.

I mean, this is gonna shock you, I have nothing to add to that.

I think that's well said.

- What do you think about the turnout though?

I mean, everyone talked about it, the turnout was abysmal.

I think if you care about the city and you care about elections, it's disappointing- - Yeah, we had a lot of chat at the Council office over the last few months, and I'll give my guy credit here.

I disagreed with how it went, but I recognize now why.

At the end of last year, we had an opportunity to put a referendum question on, or two years.

Was two years ago?

- Two years.

- And I voted against it, because it was- - Which one was that?

- So it started as partisan primaries and then not to get into the mechanics, but ultimately we gutted it.

The last meeting we gutted...

The amendment was made to gut it and put 50% plus 1 onto the August county-- - Yes, that's right.

- Ballot that would've amended our charter.

- This past August.

- Yes, and so- - And wait, and just because this may come back.

Fifty plus one is that you've gotta get fifty percent of the vote in your race plus one, or you go to a runoff to the top two.

- You go to a runoff.

- Okay.

- Which would've stopped- - Which happened in certain districts.

It's still going on in certain Council- - Yeah, so in 1994, [indistinct], seven single-member districts have to go to fifty percent plus one.

Anybody that is plurality or citywide, the super districts and the mayor, most votes win.

It goes back to the idea of protecting the minority vote.

And there's been a lot of conversation, much like on the federal level with the Voting Rights Act, is that still applicable in a city that's now 67% African American as a protected class?

And so I think we're gonna dive into that here in the very near future.

But to that point, it always comes down to voter turnout.

It was abysmal in the county primaries, and I think last time it was 95,000 votes with an incumbent mayor.

A lot of talk around the Council and people.

I thought it was gonna be somewhere between 100, 105.

Hey, where were you at, 90, 95?

- I was at 95.

- Now, one of the things that did happen is we de-annexed Windyke, Southwind, and at Eads, and east Cordova, so you were gonna lose some vote totals, but we still had the same number of registered voters thereabouts.

So, I was very surprised, based on all the issues that the city is facing with the opportunity to vote for a new leader, that voter turnout was as low as it was, and it's very sad.

- So, does a runoff solve that if you have an even lower turnout for the runoff?

- So runoff doesn't necessarily solve the voter turnout problem, but what the runoff will do, it'll allow the majority of the people who go to the polls and exercise the right to vote to decide who the next leader of the city is.

In this situation, Mayor-Elect Young received, essentially 25% of the vote, which means 75% of the people voted for another mayor.

What I would like to see going forward, and the reason I propose 50 plus one right now in the past, is because the majority of the folks who exercise their rights should be choosing the leader of the city of Memphis.

I think how we solve the turnout problem, I think one of the priorities of the Council needs to be voter education, civics, so that we can get people informed on the issues of the city and how local government has a more significant impact on those issues than the federal elections.

- I do wanna add, and I'm sorry to interrupt.

I do wanna add though also, there were a lot of promises made, and I'll be direct and blunt about it.

When Frank Colvett and then Dr. Flynn had entered the race, there was a lot of conversation about the mayor reflecting the community, and I understand exactly what that means and why the necessity of it.

They got outta race and there were a lot of promises made by a lot of candidates, including a few of the top four or five vote getters that said after things like the People's Convention and some internal polling that if they did not have a viable path, they were gonna get out, and that never happened.

And I think that those individuals should be held accountable for their words, even if they're private citizens.

If you see them on the streets and you're like, "Oh, I'm sorry you didn't win," but you're upset about Paul Young or somebody else getting a low percentage, they had the ability to endorse or get outta the race and chose not to for selfish reasons.

- Do you think that any of those people who you think should have gotten out, would have prevented or did prevent someone else from winning this race?

- I'm gonna say yes.

I'm just gonna leave it at that.

I'm gonna say yes.

- What do you think?

- I think it would've made some of the top four candidates or the top five candidates have a more viable path to the mayor's office.

What we saw in this past mayoral election is a significant splitting of votes.

- I mean, truly.

- One more?

- Yeah, one more, at the Council this coming Tuesday, there are two ordinances that are on for first reading.

Both of 'em are ballot questions.

One is, that would go to voters next August and for future city elections would be to bring back the runoff for everything, essentially, 50% plus 1.

The other one would say that voters would decide on would be to go to partisan primaries.

So partisan primaries had passed on two readings, that ballot question, why is it back at first reading?

- Okay, I'll go.

[Chase laughing] I have a reason to believe what's gonna happen at the final reading of both these potential ballot questions is the Council will make it very clear that we're leaning one way or the other.

And I think right now what the Council is doing is just having conversations, because our job is to put the city of Memphis on notice of these issues, and hopefully we hear from the people of Memphis.

But ultimately, what's gonna happen is the Council will have very robust conversations regarding these issues and ultimately pick a path to go forward, because what we now understand is what we saw in this past election as it relates to the mayor, it can't happen going forward.

- So in essence, you're putting both of those questions on level ground and move forward through three readings from there and see which one- - Yeah, the Council's gonna pick, the Council's gonna choose a path to take on the third and final reading.

One will be voted up, and one will be voted down.

I highly do not- [Chase laughing] - I'll hop in.

- Go ahead, yeah.

- I think it's highly unlikely you see partisan primaries come through.

I think 50% plus 1, everyone always talks about, and we don't wanna spend time talking about it again, but there really is no Republican or Democrat way, I mean, you can talk about progressive conservative, but that's even not applicable, I think, to the City Council.

Every member on our body is aligned and agrees on what would be considered progressive policies.

We need social safety nets.

We need assistance in communities, We need reinvestment into divested communities.

So, it's more about how do we do that as efficiently and effectively while focusing on partnerships, and I can go on and on, but what we were really trying to do is give, to JB's point, is kind of clean up this hot mess that's been created by plurality, which is why I think even someone like me is very open to the runoff provision.

And I will say, it will still have to go to court.

So if voters approve 50% plus 1, Allen Wade will have to go to federal court and get a judge to agree to it.

So this is one step in a process.

- And instant runoff voting, which some very wonky folks would say, "Well what about that?"

That was taken off the table by the state.

You all may make a kind of symbolic gesture of asking them to undo that law, but as of right now, that's not an option at this moment.

- No, but I think we're gonna make a stronger push.

We're gonna have a session on Tuesday to talk about our legislative agenda.

I think it's important that we ask them to do that.

- With that, we've got about eight, nine minutes left.

Let's get into more of the issues that you all are facing and the new mayor will face as well.

And again, as I mentioned, we'll have Paul Young on in the coming weeks.

MATA, or I'm sorry, not MATA, the other M, MLGW, the rate increases, 12%.

They're selling the building, moving out east, creating more power generation, trying to do more tree trimming and harden the infrastructure and spend the previously allocated money faster.

All these things are happening at once.

Are you all happy?

I'll start with JB.

Are you happy with the direction that Doug McGowen, the what, less than a year in, head of MLGW, are you happy with the direction and what's going on there?

- I think the reason that Doug McGowen was in that position, 'cause we knew that he was gonna have a clear vision for MLGW.

We just didn't know which direction he was gonna take, but we knew, when he gives his word, he's gonna keep it.

And his job right now is to improve MLGW in the best way or most efficient way possible.

And if these steps are steps that he believes will put MLGW in a better position, I think the Council should give him time to see, does these positions put MLGW in a better position?

Because my entire life, my 36 years on this earth, I've been hearing that MLGW is this essentially evil entity that takes away from people of the city of Memphis.

So we need to take a completely different direction.

If Doug McGowen is taking us in that direction, let's follow him and see where we go.

- The guy's making moves.

That's what we asked him to do.

- Okay, one more for me, and then I'll go to Bill.

The stadium negotiations, there's all the state money that is allocated in part for Liberty Bowl.

I was gonna call it Liberty Land, the Liberty Bowl or Simmons Liberty Bank Bowl, I'm sorry, whatever it is and for FedExForum, and it's just not clear how, there's not quite enough money, and it's not quite clear what the Grizzlies are gonna put in.

What do you want to see?

I'll start with you this time.

What do you want to see?

I assume you want both to get renovated, and you want both to be here and thriving sports and entertainment organizations, but how does it get done?

- Yeah, I don't wanna comment too much, because ongoing negotiations are very sensitive right now.

But I think we wanna see it both/and, and I think it's gonna require returning to the state, and that's what we're gonna be committed to do.

- And gain more money from the state.

- Yes, the question is what mechanism or mechanisms.

- Real quick, both/and.

- Yeah, both/and, okay, Bill.

- What about a soccer stadium?

- That's off the table.

- But here's the deal, it's where do you put it, right?

Right now, Simmons Liberty Bowl is a turf field.

You very easily could convert that field back to grass and have that and still look at concerts, but the idea of tearing down the Coliseum and building a soccer stadium is 100% off the table.

- I prefer to stay out of that.

There's a very strong group of individuals who's been gathering folks to speak against tearing down the Coliseum.

And I'm more inclined to listen to their concerns as opposed to saying, "Hey, this way or no way."

- We just don't have the money, flat out.

I mean, we have other priorities, and you're not gonna lose a professional sports franchise and the University of Memphis is our university.

We need to support that, because what's good for the university is good for the city, and soccer's growing, but we don't have a way and a mechanism to build a 60 to $80 million stadium.

- Okay, let me get to the other end now, the Memphis Area Transit Authority, the Transit Authority Board is preparing- - It's an audible sigh from Councilman Carlisle.

- Yes, is preparing to, the Board of MATA is preparing to vote on some really serious service cutbacks for this winter.

At the same time that you have had on this table for some time now, a $33 million transit vision plan.

If the board goes through with those service cuts, what happens to the long-term plan?

Is that a break in faith with the Council?

- Do you want me to go or do you want to?

- I'm gonna say it this way.

I've received several emails and calls whether they're seeing news stories or whether they're hearing it from their friend in their local eatery about MATA taking a very, making draconian cuts as it relates to routes, and they're deeply concerned about it.

And my position, and it usually always is, has ultimately bend to the will of the people.

If there's enough people that come out and say, "This should not be done," you're gonna see a very vocal Councilman Smiley.

- Yeah, I think JB's fair in that regard.

And obviously, this is a service, but it's also a business.

And I think one of the things for me is that if MLGW is gonna make draconian cuts to services, they need to demonstrate why that is, and they need to open their books up very clearly about how they're managing their business and those issues.

So we're very hands off with MATA.

I think people forget that all we do is make grants to them, and they have their own board, their own C-suite.

And so, if it's gonna come our way, there's gonna be a lot of questions from me, almost like an auditor.

- But you all and the County Commission both passed this plan that says that money that rolls off from PILOTs, payments in lieu of taxes, is going to go to MATA to get them to a combined funding level of around $33 million a year.

What happens to that?

- Well, we're still marching on the PILOTs.

We gave them an extra 10% than they received that was proposed from the mayor this year.

I think ultimately, we've gotta look at things like a regional transit authority, which would be important, which is why having that consistent funding from the county would be great.

A consolidated government certainly would help.

But I think we just have to dig into the business.

And also, transportation in general, traditional transportation is changing.

We've got huge grants from the American Infrastructure Plan, huge grants that came out of ARPA, converting away from diesel truck, diesel buses into electric, and then more on-demand services that can feed these fixed route services.

And change is just hard.

I think a really good example is as in Edmund Ford, Councilman Ford's district, we went to this on-demand service, and there was a lot of consternation in the beginning.

Now it is one of the best things that those residents love, being able to utilize MATA as if they had a public Uber.

And I think we're gonna have to start looking at those things.

It's not just about money.

They're struggling to hire diesel mechanics.

They're struggling to keep up with an aging fleet, and it's not all on Gary Rosenfeld.

Much like MLGW in the city, this is 30 years of mismanagement finally starting to rear its head.

- Just a couple minutes left here.

We talked a bit about crime, but let's come back to crime.

Mayor-Elect Paul Young said that he wanted to have a quote, "pandemic-level response to crime", bring all the people together, all the various entities that are focused on crime, root causes of crime, public safety.

What on that, I'll go to JB.

What do you wanna see?

- Real quick.

Jeff Warren said that first.

- Okay.

- I gotta give my guy credit.

Jeff Warren's been saying that for a while.

- So shout out to giving the Council credit where credit is due.

It seems like he's saying much of what the elected members of Shelby County and the City of Memphis have been saying.

We need a global approach.

We need to bring everybody to the table and talk about how do we address crime in the city of Memphis?

For the past few years, it's been an isolated group here, an isolated group here.

Let the government chip in to address crime.

Let's bring all of the thought partners, all of the entities that have any authority or influence and figure out what do we do going forward.

- Yeah, I think he's right.

You've gotta have NGOs, the government.

The problem again that we're having is accountability to the people.

There are so many entities that are on their own, whether they're Constitution elected.

It's very hard to get agreement and then execution.

There's no case manager for all these entities trying to work on the problem.

- And what if they won't, because the judges don't have to come to the table.

- Yeah, then we have a huge- - The DA doesn't have to come to the table.

- Then we're just kick the can down the road.

I mean, the state legislature too.

We can't continue to talk about crime in Memphis when we know 2,400 guns are getting stolen outta cars a year and the clearance rate's only 4%.

And then, if you have a gun and then you go and carjack somebody, you get a slap on the wrist, because you're a juvenile or you're 19 and you're ROR'd out, so we have to have real conversations.

- All right, obviously we can do a whole show on that.

We've done many whole shows on those issues.

Thank you all, we're out of time, thanks for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

Again, as I mentioned, Paul Young coming up soon, Jim Strickland coming up soon.

A big show on broadband in the coming weeks on the big broadband proposal that we didn't get to, but that is all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show, you can go to wkno.org, Daily Memphian, or wherever you get your podcasts to get the full episode.

Thanks very much.

We'll see you next week.

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