- (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.

- Memphis Mayor Elect, Paul Young, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Paul Young, Mayor Elect, City of Memphis.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you for having me, as always.

- In your new role.

- Yes, glad to be here.

- Congratulations, first of all.

- Thank you.

- Are we a month from elections?

- Two months.

- Two months from election?

- Well, no, a month past election, two months until I actually take office.

- Take the job.

Well, we'll start a bit today with, I just want talk a little bit about the campaign, and some of that, but we'll mostly talk about policies, and hiring, and agenda, and so on.

- Sure.

- But just to start, how did you win, when you look back on it?

I mean, what did you do right to win in a very crowded field?

- I think I was consistent.

We started relatively early.

We got into this race September first, and even before that, we had started just touching people in our communities.

We had this strategy where we went to one person's house, and talked to about 15 or 20 of their friends.

And then somebody in that audience heard me speak, and said, "Let me introduce you to my friends."

And so it really was a grassroots campaign.

And we did that up until the election.

And we stayed consistent on our messaging that brighter days are coming for our city.

We spoke about optimism and hope without burying our head in the sands, and tackling our challenges head-on.

- You've never run for office, right?

You had never held office?

What was it like?

I mean, unfortunately, or fortunately, or just the reality of elections, is raising money, and I think you raised maybe a million dollars?

- $1.2 million.

- $1.2 million?

- Yeah.

- What was that like?

- It was grueling, but you know, we knew that we had a strong message, and the campaign itself, although I've never been the candidate, I've worked in local government and in local politics for the past 20 years, so it wasn't that unfamiliar.

I think the fundraising side was pretty grueling in terms of just maximizing my network and reaching out.

But people believed in the message that we had.

They believed in what they've seen from me in the past, and they know that when they invest with me, they're investing in good governance, and in a brighter future for the city.

- What is your take on, I mean, turnout was very, very low.

And because there is no runoff, you won by some thousands of votes past Sheriff Bonner.

- Right.

- And won with a very small percentage, you know it's a very small percentage of people elected, and even, obviously, smaller percentage of the overall eligible voters in the city.

Does that undermine your agenda?

Does that deny you a mandate?

Does it do any of those things that people talk about?

- It doesn't undermine my agenda at all.

I mean, I think what we saw is apathy.

I think people feel like government doesn't necessarily work for them, and so they'd rather not play a part.

But my goal is the same, regardless of how many people voted.

We won, and so my goal now is to make sure that we govern for all of the people.

Whether they voted for me, whether they voted for another candidate, or whether they didn't vote at all, my goal is to make sure that we govern and that we run city government on behalf of the people of our city.

- Well, let's kind of begin to talk about the transition.

Do you, I mean, in the weeks, the month since election, I mean, I know you've talked to the current mayor, Jim Strickland.

Do you then reach out to the people you're gonna be working with?

Do you talk to Lee Harris?

Do you talk to state officials?

Do you talk to the DA?

I mean, how does that work?

I imagine there's a certain amount of them saying congratulations, but are there conversations that are about policy and planning with other government officials already?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I've obviously had a lot of conversations with Mayor Strickland.

I've seen him quite a bit, 'cause we're working on a lot of things over the transition.

I've seen Mayor Harris, we hadn't had in depth conversations, but we certainly will.

And we've always had a good working relationship.

I've already had a great meeting with DA Mulroy to talk about some of the things that I've talked about on the campaign trail.

When we talk about public safety, which is certainly top of mind for everyone, my goal is to make sure that we are galvanizing our whole community together.

That means all of us sitting at the table on a very frequent basis, working together to minimize the crime and violence that we're seeing in our community.

And we have to do it together.

And so I'll be talking to Mulroy, Tarik Sugarmon, other judges.

I've talked to the superintendent.

We're gonna have a unified force when it comes to moving our city forward.

- We talk about police force.

Have you met with Chief Davis?

- Yeah, I've had a couple of conversations with Chief Davis to talk about the future of MPD, her desires.

We're still finalizing our decisions, and I think she's gonna be meeting with the transition team next week.

All of our chiefs and directors, they're gonna have their own separate conversations with our transition team, and we'll have those recommendations in the coming weeks.

- Those are the recommendations to keep or to look for someone else across the board?

- Across the board, yeah, across the board.

- Have you worked with Chief Davis?

You've been in government, you said.

You are current and you will be until you become mayor on what, January 1st.

You're the head of Downtown Memphis Commission.

Before that you ran Director of Housing Community Development.

- Right.

- What did you do before that?

- I was the Director of Legislative Affairs for Mark Luttrell in Shelby County.

- That's right, okay.

So you know a lot of these people.

- Yes.

- Right?

And you know the sort of operation.

But with Chief Davis, how much did you work with Chief Davis in your career?

- I've worked pretty closely with her, you know, obviously in downtown Memphis, we have seen some challenges over the past couple of years since I've been there.

Just had some unfortunate incidents.

And we worked pretty closely in response to some of the things we've seen around, some of the traffic incidents we've had downtown, the unfortunate shootings we've had on Beale Street about two years ago.

And in each instance, I've worked very closely with Chief Davis and her team.

- I would try to get you to make some news, but you're saying it'll go to the transition team?

- Yes.

- It's a big team, lots of different sort of committees and areas of government.

They'll come back to you, but ultimately, it's your decision.

- Yeah, so the transition team, there's a personnel group, the people appointments group, that's three individuals, Former President of University of Memphis, David Rudd, Chris Winton, former HR exec at FedEx, and Emily Greer, Former Chief of Staff over at ALSAC/St.

Jude, so very qualified folks that are gonna help make some recommendations to me.

- You mentioned it somewhere right after you won, you wanted to have a pandemic-level response too.

Talk about what that means, and talk about the reception you've got from people like DA Mulroy and Tarik Sugarmon, Judge of the Court.

- When I talk about the pandemic-like response, during the pandemic, all seven mayors of Shelby County, the regional mayors around Shelby County, all of the CEOs of the major hospitals, all of the division directors in city government, county government, we were on a call every week talking about how are we going to reduce the level of the virus in our community.

My goal is to make sure that we have that same urgency around reducing the level of crime and violence that we're seeing in our community.

And so we need the mayors in our community, we need the district attorney, the judges, the school superintendent and others, to be coming together.

It may not be weekly, but it needs to be a very frequent basis, to talk about how we're going to reduce the level of violence that we're seeing in our community.

And it's been received very well.

- One that people focus on, and we focus on some at Daily Memphian, is the judges.

The judges are elected, elected for eight-year terms.

It's a strange, I don't want to be pejorative when I say this, but they are ultimately accountable to the people who elected them, maybe to some degree to the state, in terms of how things roll up and the appeal system and so on.

Judges you've talked to have been receptive to talking more about things there?

- The only judge I've talked directly to about this is Judge Tarik Sugarmon.

And he certainly was very receptive, and had a pretty good relationship with him prior to the election.

But I'll talk to more, and I presume that there will be, because it's literally a conversation.

It's a conversation around how we have a shared understanding around what is happening, and what needs to happen to reduce what we're seeing.

- In terms of the parts of public safety, criminal justice, that you as mayor will control, which is primarily the police force, but other parts and pieces.

But do you see big shifts in how the police department operates?

How police officers are deployed?

How they're pulling people over?

Are there big shifts in the air with the police force?

- Yeah, so first let me say when we talk about public safety, MPD is a big part of it from the suppression side, but public safety is all of the things.

And so we are certainly gonna make investments in other areas.

- And we'll get to those.

- Yeah, we'll get to those.

But speaking to MPD specifically, my goal is obviously to continue to work to increase the complement, but we also have to focus on what are we going to do in the meantime?

And that to me means being more efficient with who we have.

How are we deploying our officers?

How much time are they spending on the various tasks during their day, so that we can make sure that we are maximizing where they are and what they can be doing.

The second part is investing in technology, using things like cameras that can identify where things are happening in a more efficient way.

Maximizing technology such that you have artificial intelligence on the camera that can see certain actions.

Like if Eric decides to go and bust a window on Beale Street, we now have the technology that identifies that action and alerts someone, without someone having to watch the screen.

Those are the types of things that we're gonna be doing, as well as using drones, instead of cars chasing people, we can have a drone following someone, and then apprehending them on the back end, which is much safer.

- How long will those technology implementations will take?

One month, six months, a year, two years?

- I mean, it'll probably happen over the course of a year.

It'll take a while.

Obviously, you know, supply chain, have to make sure you get all the things in.

But I can tell you the MPD is already thinking about some of these things, and so some of it can be deployed even quicker.

- And cost effectively?

I mean, is that in the budget?

Or when you're about to propose a budget, that'll be one of the first things you do?

- We will certainly include things in the budget that is necessary, but we also have funds that the MPD has recently received.

I think there's about a $40 million state grant that Mayor Strickland and MPD has secured from the state.

And I don't know that they fully programmed how that'll be used.

And so we're gonna use the resources that we have available to do everything that we can to make sure that we are stopping the chaotic environment.

The number one thing I wanna say is that people have to see a reduction in the chaos.

When you're driving on the streets, and somebody almost mows you off the road, that's an indication of chaos.

When you go to a party and you come outside, and your windows are busted and on the ground, that's an indication of chaos.

When we can reduce those small things, we are going to have a dramatic impact on the way people perceive our city and how they feel.

- With that technology, I mean, does that change the goal?

I can't remember if your goal was 2400 or 2500 police officers.

Does that shift at all, given technology?

- No, I mean, I think we still have to start moving, keep pushing towards the goal.

If we see some dramatic reduction when we are using the technology, then maybe we'll adjust the goal.

But I think you keep the goal where it is.

- Okay, let's move on.

We can circle back to crime and public safety.

Well actually I wanna stay with that and talk about some of those.

You talked about police, a big part of it is the suppression, but there are other things.

From this morning, we're recording this on Thursday morning, DA Mulroy, we did a big story on some of the businesses he shut down and some residences where they are a nuisance, where there's repeated crimes there.

It, I think probably, is welcomed by a lot of people that nuisance properties in the end, I think it was maybe four.

There were a couple convenience stores and a couple of apartments.

Is there more on that?

And you've worked on blight issues a lot in your career in and around the city government.

What are those other things that you think you can turn the dial on as mayor?

- Well, I think there's a concept called crime prevention by environmental design.

Like how buildings are designed and laid out.

You know, we'll be looking at things like that.

So, you know, just thinking about an intersection and how open and wide an intersection is.

If it's open and wide, then it accommodates itself for doing the donuts in the middle of the intersection.

So you can make those things tighter from a design perspective that reduces instances of those things happening.

If things around the community looked blighted and neglected.

If it looks like no one cares, people behave as such.

And so making investments in the community do those things.

And then the other thing is thinking about how can we actually intervene.

If we know which young people are headed down, and I'm not talking about those just under the age of 18.

I just mean people under the age of 30.

And you see that they're headed down the wrong road.

They've had certain instances of interaction with the law.

We should be directing programs and interventions toward them proactively instead of waiting until we have to hold them accountable later.

- Isn't that, what is it, Block 901 or 901 Block- - 901 Block.

- The Youth Villages Program?

- Memphis Allies, many programs that are active, and we have to come up with data sharing agreements, so that we can identify who's headed down the wrong path.

And then do the things to stop them from going further.

- Let's move to, and we're about halfway through the show here.

Let's move through to some economic development related things.

The stadiums are big.

I mean, they are both civic investments.

They're economic development, there's a lot to it.

There's a negotiation underway between the city and the U of M on the Liberty Bowl improvements, FedExForum, and the Grizzlies.

Do you expect, I guess the first question is, do you expect those to be finalized before you are inaugurated?

- You know, I've just been recently brought in to those conversations, and progress is being made.

I'm hopeful that we can at least have a framework for how we move forward by the end of the year.

But regardless of whether it happens before the end of the year or after, my goal is the same: to make sure that we are able to support the University of Memphis in their ambitions and then we are able to keep the Memphis Grizzlies in our community, which so important for our city.

- Is there enough money?

- There's never enough money.

But we are a creative community and a creative city, and so we're thinking about some ways to ensure that we reach those goals.

- Well something that's been talked about, I don't know how much has been reported, but it's changing sort of the TDZ downtown, the MLGW Building, with MLGW moving out of its headquarters, could that become part of a new revenue stream?

Have you been part of those conversations in your role as head of DMC?

- Yeah, certainly I've had some conversations, as role of DMC, and certainly as we start thinking about what potential revenue opportunities are going to look like, so everything's on the table.

We're having conversations about what any opportunities in the downtown area could be, to support getting this project executed.

- Does that also include, I mean, I think it's not a secret that part of what the Grizzlies want is not just improvements within the Forum, but improvements around downtown.

You know, whether that's street scape and lighting and safety issues like you just talked about, or more kind of entertainment options and so on.

Is that part of the conversation?

- Yeah, I mean they certainly wanna make sure that the environment around any new stadium is conducive to a new stadium.

And so certainly there those are things that they're exploring as well.

- Well, a couple other projects, we did a story this week that Liberty Park, the Fairgrounds redevelopment, which you were originally part of in your role at HCD, and expanding and changing the, it's a TDZ also?

- TDZ, yes.

- Tourism Development Zone, which works.

Where's Bill when we need him?

Bill's out sick today.

You could describe it too, but let's go do it real quick.

What is a TDZ, 'cause we're throwing that around.

But it's very important.

- A TDZ basically takes sales taxes in a geography at a baseline level.

You build something, generates a lot more taxes.

There's a growth in sales taxes, that increment is used to pay for the thing that you're building.

- Okay, to that end, it looks like, as of right now, Liberty Park is underwater.

Because the sports complex has opened, but there's been no development of the hotel, apartments, kind of entertainment complex on the, what is that, the central north-facing side where the fields and the old baseball stadium were.

What's going on there?

What's your understanding of what's going on there, and what will you do as mayor to move that forward?

- Yeah, so I mean the project started just in time for the pandemic and so, you know, all of the private development that was intended to go along with the youth sports facility just hadn't been executed yet.

I know that there are a lot of conversations with the development team, and they're working towards getting a start over the next year.

And so what's happening is the city is having to contribute to pay for those bond payments over the next year or two.

It's not the end of the world, it's something that the city accounts for, as part of the risk and evaluation for when you issue those bonds.

The City has the ability to make the payments, but certainly would prefer not to have to make 'em in the future.

And so we're gonna do all that we can to make sure we get those private developments executed, both on that site and in other areas in the TDZ, which is much bigger than just the Fairgrounds or Liberty Park site.

- Okay, and Sam Hardiman in The Daily Memphian had a much deeper dive on this and the follow up story, so I won't take up too much more of our time right here with that.

Let's start with some other sort of big projects in limbo.

Some that you have been, I think directly, or at least tangentially involved in.

The tourism people will say we need a convention center hotel badly.

That's a hotel with what, 400 to 600 rooms?

It really limits our ability in Memphis to get bigger conventions in town, because they wanna be able to put everyone in one or two hotels.

The deal with Loews fell through, the deal down at the Carlisle's development, 1 Beale area fell through for a convention center hotel.

Is that a priority for you, to get a convention center hotel built?

- Yeah, we're certainly gonna continue to work hard.

We know we need a convention center hotel in our community and we're gonna work to execute it.

- What's been the missing piece to get it done?

- We were really close on 1 Beale.

I think the market just, you know, you had the war in Ukraine, and all of these external factors, factors that just push the market slightly beyond where it was economically feasible.

But I think it's just gonna take commitment, finding the right site, finding the right development teams that are willing to double down on Memphis.

- And are those development teams, I mean, what is your take on where the city-run, like the city, I think, essentially ran the youth development complex.

They were essentially the developer.

They didn't hire, there's a different company that came in that runs it and owns it or runs it.

- Right.

- What's your relation, when you think about these projects, is it time to have a private developer with a contract with the city, or should these developments be run by someone at HCD, or someone who's within the city government?

- Yeah, I mean I think the youth sports facility is a little bit different 'cause that's essentially a convention center for sports.

- Okay.

- And it makes sense for the city to own and build it.

When you talk about a hotel, there are different models.

There are cities that have built convention center hotels and they own and manage that hotel, and they contracted out the management with a private party.

I think any of those scenarios have to be on the table.

Sometimes local government has to be involved just to make sure that mitigating some of the risks that the private sector won't take.

- The MLGW, so we talked about lighting, environment.

I mean it's streetlights that we're in the middle of, MLGW is in the middle of putting LED lights everywhere.

Doug McGowen will be on the show in a couple weeks, a month or so.

He had said, I think in January when he was on the show right after he first got the job, he said, you know, I can't remember the exact number, but by 1 year from this coming January he'd have 90, ninety-five percent of the streetlights operating.

- Yeah.

- Is your sense that we're on track for that?

- Well, from my conversations with Doug, yes, they are.

I mean I think it's 77,000 streetlights that they are working to execute.

And I know in downtown Memphis they have done quite a few of the ones around the FedExForum, and that area, and that part of downtown.

I've seen them out on the streets now when I've driven down Airways.

I think a band of the lights were out the other day, but they're working to bring 'em back.

So I think they're on track and it's a really important project for our community.

We have to get the lighting that we need from a public safety perspective, and just to make it feel more comfortable.

- And if you, during the campaign, you didn't wanna commit to hiring anyone or keeping anyone, so you know, Doug McGowen included, but you've worked with Doug over the years.

Do you have confidence that he's taken MLGW in the right direction?

- Yeah, I've had some discussions with Doug, and he's talked to me about the plans.

And you know, for me it's about making sure that whoever is at the helm of any of these organizations or divisions is forward-thinking and thinking about the future.

And I feel like they're doing that.

We hadn't made any final decisions, but I think they're on the right track.

- MATA announced recently, they've suspended this decision for now, but they announced that they're gonna cut a lot of bus service, eliminate certain routes after 7 PM, partly 'cause of maintenance and ultimately money, and you know, being able to maintain very old buses.

The trolley downtown has been closed.

The Riverfront Loop is what, nine, almost nine years or more that it's been not running, and the Madison line has not been running.

Gary Rosenfeld who was on the show about last spring, said, "Look, by spring of 2024 we'll have the Riverfront Loop in place and operating, we'll have Madison operating."

Are you confident that both on the bus service side and the trolley side, things are going in the right direction?

- Well I hadn't had an opportunity to sit down with Gary yet.

He did reach out.

My schedule has been a little crazy, so I will be talking to him soon.

I'm glad to hear that they suspended the plan to cut services for now.

I've seen a big outcry from the community, and we wanna make sure that people can still get where they need to go.

We're gonna have some discussions, and I wanna have more in-depth dialogue with him before I say whether they're on the right track or not.

But transportation is significantly important in our community, especially when we know there are so many people without resources.

And so it's gonna be an important area of focus, and we'll have those dialogues.

- I mean, Jim Strickland who will be on the show for a two-part show coming up in the next week or two, talking about his eight years as mayor.

He touts a number of successes.

One is accelerating how often streets are paved, road improvement.

Do you think, is there room to accelerate that more?

Are roads being paved at a proper pace?

What do you hear from people, and what do you plan for them?

- Yeah, I think Mayor Strickland will tell you that one of the number one things you hear is, "Do something about the potholes!"

- Has that been your experience too?

- Yeah, well it's not number one.

Number one I hear crime now, but potholes is probably number two.

I think Strickland's administration has done a great job in that vein.

I think it was about 25 years with the paving cycle.

Now it's down to 12 or so.

I'd love to get it down even even lower than that, because we need people to feel the services of local government, and the driving down the street is one of those everyday experiences that people have, and it makes them feel like their government is working for them, and so- - Yeah, so many more things we're talking about, we only have about a minute and a half left.

But in terms of the overall fiscal health of the city, you know where, people talk about, we're gonna hit this good fiscal cliff where with some debt refinancing that's gonna happen either next year, or I think 2025, when the $50 million sort of gets freed up.

Do you still anticipate that, as you start thinking about a budget, that there is this fiscal relief that's coming up?

And what about interest rates are way up?

I mean costs of borrowing for cities, municipalities is much higher.

What's your sense of the financial state of the city?

- Well I think the financial state is pretty strong for the city.

We are looking forward to that debt cliff when we have roughly $50 million available in our annual budget moving forward.

And so we're gonna make decisions in the meantime to help, you know, enhance our community, and we're gonna look forward to that opportunity to make even deeper investments to advance our city.

- All right, well again, thanks for being here.

Congratulations again, we look forward to having you on when you are mayor, sometime in the first January or February.

But thanks, we are outta time.

Again, as I mentioned coming up very soon, Jim Strickland in two episodes.

Doug McGowen coming up soon, other shows coming up.

If you missed any of today's show, you can get the full episode at WKNO.org, or you can download the podcast to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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