- (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 Jim Strickland.

tonight on Behind The Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Jim Strickland, Memphis Mayor.

Thanks for being here again.

- Oh, I love being here.

- Absolutely, and Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about a lot of things going on, as we tape this on Thursday, the announcement of a big renovation of the Liberty Bowl that I think the city's gonna be involved in.

We'll talk about it's budget season, you've got a lot going on there, you've got a year and a half left.

We might try to get to some of that.

We'll touch on crime, we'll touch on all kinds of things that we can get to in 26 minutes.

I wanted to start though with a couple weeks ago in your Friday email, which all of us in the media just love that you get to now in this modern age, get to break news, and control the conversation a way we used to be able to, but I'm an avid reader, and people should be, because, and you should communicate, I'm joking with you, but you mentioned the possibility, and I may botch it.

And I'll let you clean this up, of putting MLGW up for sale against the backdrop of one, a series of storms, the most recent in February, that was one of the worst outages in what?

Twenty years or something like that.

And also this massively important RFP process about whether MLGW will leave Tennessee Valley Authority as the primary supplier of electricity.

You know, we're a billion dollar customer of TVAs, their biggest customer, people talking anything from $20 million in savings to $450 million in savings.

Are you serious about wanting to market MLGW, which is a city-owned utility, or was it more just sort of people need to start thinking differently?

Or what was the purpose of bringing that up?

- Well, I certainly was not proposing it, but I think it ought to be seriously considered an option.

And the fact that I said it, I wanted to kind of convey to people the magnitude of the problem.

I've lived through all the storms from the ice storm to Hurricane Elvis, just like you have, and we all get upset when the storm happens, when our power's out, and then two weeks later, we forget.

And then a few years later, we have another storm and government gets yelled at why can't they do it?

This is not an easy solution.

This is a not only expensive, but pretty, people will have to be act differently, or live differently.

For instance, tree trimming may be very serious.

I get calls every year when MLGW goes out, and starts trimming trees, asking me to tell MLGW to stop.

Don't cut our trees.

The magnitude of this problem.

I mean, we can't have it every, it's not an easy solution.

It's gonna cost a lot of money, and it's gonna change the way we operate a little bit.

I don't know what the end result is, but if we truly were gonna bury power lines, I don't know how you fund it without selling MLGW.

- Yeah, yeah.

It's some billion dollars, what?

To put all the lines underground.

That doesn't- - Oh, it's more than that.

- Yeah, it's six billion for the lines.

- It's a billion for the lines that are in your backyard if you were just to do those.

- Right, just for those.

- Six to seven billion, if you did everything.

- On the streets.

And so we had, I actually tell people, we had JT Young, the President CEO of MLGW on, and talked about much more extensively a couple of weeks ago, you can get that at wkno.org.

We also had Jeff Lyash, the CEO of TVA on recently, he came back on advocating, obviously for MLGW to stay.

We had some advocates who'd like the city or MLGW, the city will use it interchangeably to leave TVA.

Where are you on that, I mean, should the city, I don't think you're gonna tell me we should definitely leave, but what should this process, this RFP process of bids and proposals, what should come of it?

- A serious, objective review of the situation, financially and reliability.

And we're just beginning to dig deep into it.

Meaning all the answers to RFPs are in, I think, what, there was 25, 26, 27 companies that bid, I've not seen any of 'em.

I've not seen a summary of 'em.

I've not even seen a list of 'em.

MLGW's experts are digging deep, and looking at all of 'em.

And they will come up with some kind of recommendation.

I don't know if they're gonna narrow it to three or whatever.

And in broad terms, the MLGW administration will make a recommendation to the MLGW board, who will then vote, and then the City Council will vote.

At some point in there, after probably when MLGW's administration makes a recommendation to their board.

I think that's when all the documents become open, and our expert will dig deep.

- All right, bring it, Bill.

- Mayor, as we record this.

We've just heard the University of Memphis has announced plans for an extensive renovation of the Liberty Bowl Stadium.

Top end of that estimate is about $200 million.

What is the city's role in this?

- All right, first it's Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, and they paid some money for that, and that money's gonna help maintain the stadium, but the city's role, first of all, in the decision on what for the university to do, whether to build on campus or renovate the current stadium, we had no role in that.

That's a 100% university decision.

I did not advise, I was not in it.

I just said, whatever you decide I'll support.

They told us a couple weeks ago, they had decided they wanted to renovate the current stadium.

Now, we will partner in getting that funding, and getting that work done.

We do not know how we're gonna fund 150 to $200 million, but that's not the announcement today.

The announcement today was the university has decided, and we do, as you know, we had an architect look at it, and they think the design, the redo of the current stadium could really be nice.

This is the same group that redid Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, which was similar originally to the build of our current stadium, and it's gonna be really nice.

- Would this be an increase in capacity, more seats?

- No, it will actually be a decrease in capacity, somewhere in the low 50s.

I think right now we're at 56,000.

This would reduce it somewhere between 50,000 and 53,000.

- Should the state, and will the state, do you know yet, will the state fund any part of this?

- I don't have an answer to that, and that's part of the work that we're gonna have to do is figure out how do we come up with that money?

- Just a quick clarification, I should know this, who owns the Liberty Bowl?

The city?

- the City Government owns the stadium, owns all, what used to be The Fairgrounds, and we lease it out to the three tenants.

Now, I have offered both university presidents.

and two or three athletic directors I've worked with, I'd be in favor of giving them the stadium, the stadium, any arena or stadium cost money to operate.

Most everyone, I don't know about Yankee Stadium, or the most famous, you know, the most successful ones.

But outside of those, you lose money operating, but I would give them if it were up to me, and of course the City Council would have to approve, but I would give 'em the stadium if they wanted it.

- Has that been part of the recent discussions?

- No, I mean.

- And they run away every time you bring it up.

- They don't want it.

- They wanna use it, but they don't want it, I got it.

- It's just expensive.

They have, frankly, a pretty good financial deal.

And, you know.

- You said, so it's city-owned, but it's not, is it gonna all be city money?

I mean, city taxpayer money?

- No, no.

- Okay, just to clarify, I assume that there'll be a big fundraising campaign via the university, there'll be sponsorships.

There'll be, potentially, some city money, but that's gotta go through Council, there'll be.

- Right, well, we said at the very be beginning of this, that I'd support what the university did, said what they wanted to do, but if they were gonna really do a big renovation, which I'd say 150 to 200 million is a big renovation, they would have to pay for the lion share of it.

- And there were also some comments in the university's announcement about what this does for Liberty Park, because this was something, this decision, I would guess, you were kind of waiting on to lock some details of Liberty Park in place.

- Maybe, it is interesting, the City Team, when the university said they really wanted to seriously look going on campus, City Team was almost excited about what could we do with that space where the stadium is, instead of a football stadium, but outside of that, we really didn't freeze any other work.

The Youth Sports Complex is out of the ground and being built and on schedule to open in November.

The private development is not as, I mean, nothing's come out of the ground there yet, and we're working very hard to get something placed there.

- So, on campus was a serious possibility in this?

- As far as I know, I mean, Dr. Rudd, when he was there, and Laird told me they seriously looked at it, how, I don't know, and how much it costs, you know, they'll have to talk about that.

- Let's shift to it is budget season, as I mentioned at the top of this, the taxes look like they're gonna be about the same, go down a penny more.

I mean I guess every savings of a penny adds up, but it's more of a technicality in terms of how the appraisals came through and appeals went through.

But I'll just put it to you, your priorities.

When you went into this budget this year, what, sixth budget season, what were your priorities, and how are they reflecting your proposal?

- Well, priorities have really been remarkably the same for six years, which is public safety, paving, core basic services, cleaning up the city, and helping MATA.

This is the first budget year since I've been mayor that I felt we had a little elbow room and some room to do some significant, more significant things where we, and I think we did when we come into agreement with the Police Association for a 5% raise next year, and a 5% raise the year after that.

A 5%, 1-year raise has not been done since the mid '90s.

I think in the mid '90s, they did a 5%, 5% and a 5%, our agreement's a 5%, 5% and an open to negotiate.

So that's very significant.

We're finishing up the 3% raise to Fire, both those, a 5 and a 3% raise, that's significant money.

- 'Cause that's 2/3 of the staff on the payroll, which is the biggest on the operating side.

It's the biggest line is all staff, right?

I mean is staff.

- Yes.

- Yeah, so it's big chunk is what we're talking about, yeah.

- And insurance costs went up, but the other two items that we really focused on, probably I'm guessing 80% of the new money went to employees, the other went to MATA.

We are really trying to implement Transit Vision, which is our plan to really explode the service.

In rough numbers, we have built up the budget to $30 million a year.

When I took office, it was 22 million.

So we've built it up to 30.

The challenge with Transit Vision is it takes another 30 to really implement it.

And so we were at 30, and then we're for the first time ever, gonna do a dedicated funding source.

And the first year, it's basically $4.5 million, it will grow over time to 11 or $12 million on the road to getting to Transit Vision, and then a smaller amount, seventeen people to handle illegal dumping, 'cause it's always a challenge.

- We'll come back to crime, you mentioned the funding of public safety, but when you talked about paving, and I remember when you, I think the first time you were on the show, at least as mayor, you talked about paving, paving, paving, and I said something about how you always focus on paving, and I'll paraphrase you as anyone who thinks this is outta left field has never been to a community meeting, who's never met with constituents, who's never campaigned because that was one of the main things you would hear when you were campaigning.

How do you measure the progress in six years with paving and cleaning up the streets, and I just mean the literal streets, the physical infrastructure.

- Sure.

We have brought the paving cycle, which is what they measure.

You try to pave a street every 20 to 25 years, national standard.

When I took office, it was every 35 years.

Our streets running, so we were behind, we're now at 25 years.

We have more than doubled the paving that was done in my first six years, compared to the six years prior.

I proudly take the nickname, Jimmy Asphalt, around City Hall.

I love the smell.

- I've got to write that down.

- I know, I love the smell of freshly poured asphalt in the morning.

- It's getting weird, Jim.

- But just anecdotally, I get fewer complaints, but I still get complaints.

We have a long way to go, we're 300 square miles.

There's a lot of roads.

- Some of those complaints have gotta come.

And this is just anecdotal for me from some of the main thoroughfares.

I mean, Poplar is horrendous.

- Which are state routes.

- Okay, so Poplar is a state route, which is North Parkway, East Parkway, some of the Parkways are.

- The Parkways, Union, Jackson, Elvis Presley, Lamar, Summer.

- Summer.

- And they paved Summer, the state did pave Summer.

- So what is the answer there?

- We're working with the state.

- But it's been a couple years that y'all said, I think that, "Hey, we're gonna turn that back to the state.

The state's gotta take care of that, and put some pressure on 'em.

- No, no, they've had it.

- I mean, they've always had it, but you sort of announced, we're putting the pressure back on them.

- Well, that was a little different.

That was the interstate loop, cleaning up litter around the interstate loop.

That's what that was about.

They've always been in charge of paving state routes and interstates.

- Yeah, fair.

- It's a struggle, but we work it, and work it, and work it.

Poplar's supposed to be on the list this year.

And I've talked to the commissioner himself about this issue, and there's a new commissioner.

I'm gonna go try to meet with him, but it's.

- At some point, are you tempted just to pave them.

and send them a bill, and hope they pay it?

- No, because I have other streets that need to be paved.

I mean, if those were the only streets that needed to be paved, absolutely.

But when you have 300 square miles of roads, there's plenty that we need to pave.

So if we do our job, which we are doing a better job, and the state does a better job, we can get there, but it's gonna take a period of years, because there was such a backlog.

- Okay, Bill?

- Another part of the financial puzzle that you put together in this is the city's agreement on FedExForum, along with the county, where is the city money to meet that obligation coming from, and I understand this is over several years, this is not one lump sum for it.

- Right, if I can back up a little bit, traditionally, the city and county have not had to pay for the operating losses at the arena.

We talked earlier about every arena loses money.

The deal that was structured with city and county government was really a good deal.

I had lunch with Rick Mason last Friday, and I thanked him.

- Former city administrator under Herenton.

- And he was one of the negotiators of that deal.

Now, just unfortunate that I happened to be mayor when the bill came due.

So it was a kind of oddly worded that we would have to buy tickets and suites, and so forth, and we didn't wanna do that.

The team didn't wanna do that, so we renegotiating, and it just made a flat amount, a predictable amount.

And I think the first year's like $5 million, two million from us, two million from this county, and one million from the Sports Authority, we've built it into our budget.

We knew this was coming.

We actually got a little reprieve during the pandemic, 'cause I think that was actually maybe the first year, but it's predictable now, it will go up a little bit, and we'll be able to handle it.

- And I take it that if there are operating losses at FedExForum under this new agreement, the Grizzlies are and their group, that part of their group that operates the FedExForum, they are still on the hook for those operating losses?

- Yeah, if the operator losses are more than 5 million, yes, and it will be, to be honest with you.

So they will share almost probably an equal amount.

- All right, you talked about illegal dumping.

The 17 employees also includes some heavy equipment in your budget proposal, and this is really kind of a new approach to illegal dumping, because the city does get so many calls about this, and this is not, you didn't pick up my garbage.

This is someone dumped a bunch of tires here, and we need something done with it, and you just cleaned it up two weeks ago, and now there are more tires there.

- This is a extraordinarily frustrating issue for everyone in the city, citizens and government.

We spend millions of dollars a year picking up litter.

The state spends millions of dollars picking up litter along the 240 loop.

And sometimes you don't see any evidence of it, because as soon as you pick it up, people throw it down.

This is a phenomena that I started thinking about.

This didn't exist when Crump was mayor and so forth, because it's really driven by fast food and convenience stores.

We're a throwaway culture.

We weren't in the 1940s.

So it was easier to be clean then, but this is all in the hands of the citizens.

They can save this money and we could spend it on something else.

So, but we get a lot of illegal dumping.

I don't know where all the tires come from, but they are, when I was in Detroit, they do the same thing.

They put hidden cameras up, and they see the tires dumped, but we just need a crew that does nothing, just pick 'em up, because then we don't have to take our solid waste employees away from their routes, and we have created the Public Service Corps, which is people given second chances of criminal records to pick up litter.

This is kind of an offshoot of that to pick up the illegal dumps.

- Right, and getting rid of tires is I have learned over the years, much more complex than just picking them up, because there's a fee that's involved with it to recycle them.

There's only one recycler, as I understand it in town, is the city going to approach that tire recycling?

I don't think we've ever had tire recycling on the show before, but here we go.

[all laughing] As I understand it, your administration would like to see more of the money from that fee come to the city, which now goes to the county.

So you're kind of trying to rework this whole thing about tires and what to do with them.

- Yeah, because we take the brunt of the actual pickup.

We feel like we should share part of that fee 'cause the county really, frankly, doesn't pick up as far as I know, tires within the city limits.

- One of the, with six minutes left here, we've talked about before, we talked about the streets, and I talked about the dangers, or the rough streets, let's talk about reckless driving, drag racing, just the ticketing.

It is pretty bad out there, I mean, I think objectively.

We did the story on it, you've talked about it, that people are driving extremely fast.

There's more and more anecdotally, I hear it from people, I see it, people who just kind of decide to make their own rules, and I'm not, the drag racing thing is one thing, I'm talking about reckless driving and even separate even, maybe from the shootings, although that is horrific, and scary.

What is your administration doing to try to get control of the driving and the recklessness, and the kind of sense of fear that people have about just driving down to the grocery store, convenience store, or school?

- We're arresting a lot of people.

In last year, in 2021, we arrested 890 people for reckless driving, and drag racing.

Eight hundred and ninety, last year.

This year in the first quarter, 239.

So we're out there arresting them.

It's just.

- Are you able to, I mean, if arresting is the answer, then keeping them in jail is gonna create a deterrent, but are you able- - I suspect none of those 1,100 people are in jail right now, yeah.

I suspect mean, as you know, 201 Poplar or at least I claim, you may not agree, but 201 Poplar is a revolving door.

I went to a track meeting this morning.

They put up a man today.

They've arrested him 44 times since 2005, 44 times.

I bet some of these 1,100 arrests are the same people.

It's just police officers get very frustrated.

They arrest and rearrest, it's just, there's no penalty and there's no rehabilitation.

- So I mean, what is the answer?

You advocated hard for truth in sentencing in the last legislature that did not happen.

- For reckless driving, I'd love to be able to confiscate their car.

- But that would have to be a change in state law.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- I mean if we could confiscate their car, impound it, and destroy it, that would be a deterrent.

- We have a District Attorney race coming up.

It'll be Steve Mulroy against Amy Weirich, I have no idea.

Are you endorsing, are you advocating for Steve or Amy?

- I've not endorsed anyone yet.

- Yeah, are you gonna?

- I don't know.

- Yeah, but you want change from the District Attorney's Office as part of this?

I mean that revolving door 201 comes from who is it at fault for that, let me put it that way?

- State law.

- State law.

- State law, we have weak state laws, and you have people on the show who disagree, and they're just flat out wrong.

They're flat out wrong.

All right, I took every aggravated assault case in Criminal Court, upstairs, Criminal Court.

That's the more serious court.

And in 2021, 25% of the aggravated assaults got probation, no prison time.

Forty-two percent on top of that served less than 11 months in jail.

And these are some of the examples, stabbing a coworker with a knife, shooting someone in the stomach, drive-by shooting, that is outrageous.

And for people in Memphis to claim that it's not is bulls--t. - Yeah.

- And y'all need to call that out.

- Well, I mean we have you here.

We've had all kinds of people on all sides, and we'd love to have the police chief on to talk about, we've had Amy Weirich, we've had Josh Spickler from Just City.

We've had elected officials.

- And he's the leading disseminator of false information.

- So, and people can go back and watch, Josh's been on the show before, and they can find that archive.

When you go to the state and lobby for things like truth in sentencing with legislators, or with the Governor's Office, and they say, we don't wanna toughen these laws.

What is their justification?

What did they say to you that this is not something they need to change?

- It's a variety of reasons.

First, many of the legislatures are from rural areas.

They don't have the issues that we have, but having people like John Gillespie now in the State Legislature who represent Memphis, who can convey it is a big help.

And Speaker Sexton came down to Memphis and listened to us.

The Sheriff, me, Chief Davis, and really took this up, actually went way beyond.

I just wanted to focus on aggravated assault, increased the penalty for aggravated assault.

And they went well beyond that, so we've been arguing for six years and we finally got it.

- If you get, and I'm sorry, but just to follow, apologies.

We'll try to get some more on the podcast version of this, and add some more things in, but with just 30 seconds left, if you know, we're stuck at about 2,000 police, you've been trying, you've obviously increased benefits.

You've increased the bonuses, all that, and really, 20, 30 seconds are left.

If you've got another a 100 or 200 police officers, what would they be doing?

Would they be patrolling?

Would they be doing drug interdiction?

Would they be at the desk doing bureaucratic stuff?

What would they be doing?

- They would be out on the streets, patrolling, investigating crimes, community policing.

- Okay.

We will have more.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, thank you, Bill.

Sorry for leaving you out at the end there, we will get to a few more questions with the mayor.

That'll be tacked onto the end of the podcast, which you can get wherever you get your podcast, thanks.

Next week, we talk to the folks from the Election Commission about election integrity.

Join us then.

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