Mayor Tim Kelly on Leading Chattanooga
Mayor Tim Kelly talks about his journey from business to public service and how the “One Chattanooga” plan is creating lasting impact for residents. This conversation was recorded in April, 2025.
About Mayor Tim Kelly
Tim Kelly is the 66th Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, elected in 2021 after a career as a successful businessman, civic leader, and fourth-generation Chattanoogan. Kelly has advanced a bold, equity-driven vision through the One Chattanooga Plan—a living strategic framework designed to ensure every resident can thrive regardless of zip code, race, or income.
Under his leadership, Chattanooga has focused on expanding affordable housing, investing in sustainable infrastructure, and strengthening a competitive regional economy. Kelly has prioritized collaboration over partisanship, building cross-sector partnerships that drive innovation and inclusion across the city.
About the One Chattanooga Plan
The One Chattanooga Plan is Mayor Kelly’s strategic framework for uniting public, private, and nonprofit sectors around a shared goal of equitable growth for all residents. Centered on priorities like affordable housing, early learning, public health, and infrastructure, the plan positions Chattanooga as a model for collaborative city building. Under this vision, Chattanooga became the first National Park City in North America—reflecting its commitment to sustainability, green spaces, and community well-being—while a thriving tourism industry continues to drive the local economy, supporting thousands of jobs and nearly $2 billion in annual visitor spending.
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Spencer: Mayor Tim Kelly, 66th Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Welcome to Signature Required. Thank you guys for having me. You're the 66th mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Elected in 2021 originally after a career as a successful businessman.
Spencer: Mm-hmm. A civic leader and a fourth generation Chattanooga. Yes. Uh, I think you refer to yourself as an accidental politician. Is that right?
Mayor Kelly: I do, I do indeed. Yeah. I, I never ran for [00:01:00] student council before I ran for Mayor. Not, not, not, not, no, no. Even interest in politics. Just a deep abiding love for this city, which as the viewers can see, is pretty remarkable.
Mayor Kelly: Hmm.
Spencer: We're really thrilled to be able to have you and. Um, what I'd love to start off with is most people have never had the chance to talk to a mayor, meet a mayor mm-hmm. Or really understand the basics of what it means to be the mayor of any city or of Chattanooga. Yeah. So. Let's just start there for a second.
Spencer: Okay. And, uh, what is it that you would say you do here?
Mayor Kelly: Well, again, I, you hear a lot about how business and government are different. I, I had, I was warned a lot, you know, and, and, and it's not really true. Uh, I will say there's a, the, the main thing people need to realize is that legislative politics and legislative politicians who tend to be lawyers, not always, but it's a very different enterprise than executive politics.
Mayor Kelly: So if you're a mayor. Or governor or president, you are running an organization. Now you're [00:02:00] not running it to produce dividends for shareholders, but the, the fundamentals of organizational management are exactly the same. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, the city of Chattanooga is a 2,600 person service delivery organization.
Mayor Kelly: And so my, my job as mayor is to make sure the trains run on time, you know, to run police, fire, public work uh, you know, we, we have to deal with the homelessness and affordable housing, all those things. Uh, so it's, it's not moving words around on paper. We have a legislative branch that does that. Uh, it is, it is running an organization.
Mayor Kelly: So, uh, it is, I think a background in business, uh, is almost indispensable for our system of government. Uh, and that's, that's it in a nutshell.
Carli: So I have a question about that. When you think of a mayor. I have a five-year-old boy and we watch a lot of Paw Patrol in our house. Oh, yeah. And so I think mayors are often categorized as kind of Mayor Humdinger, the villain that hates puppies.
Carli: Right. Yeah. Right. And I don't get hating puppy vibes [00:03:00] from you at all. Definitely don't hates pu. Yeah. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions you think people have about what you do versus what they see portrayed in media as a mayor? Well,
Mayor Kelly: I think, you know, again, it's, uh, it's interesting. There have been, you know, a lot of, uh, mayor depictions, mayoral depictions, some good, some bad in, in popular, uh, culture and media.
Mayor Kelly: But I, I think the main thing is that, you know, I have searched my desk, uh, and I still do occasionally for the magic wand, and it's not there. Hmm. I can't find it, but, but people do tend to think that the mayor is sort of the, you know, I think a lot of times, uh, this all powerful person in the city, uh, it's, but it's not that, right?
Mayor Kelly: We have leadership, we have the, we can cast vision, uh, and we can use our bully pulpit. The executive branches. I mean, again, we do run the business of government, but I mean, just like the federal government or the state government, we have a legislative branch that controls the, the dollars. Um, and we have a judicial branch, right.
Mayor Kelly: That, that administers justice. And so, uh, you know, it's, it is a leadership role, but it's [00:04:00] not as though we are all powerful for good or for evil. Yeah.
Carli: And I think, I understand that you have your role as the mayor of Chattanooga, but. There are also some places where there are county mayors. Yeah. And can you tell me a little bit about the difference between those two roles?
Carli: Yes.
Mayor Kelly: It's, it's a very important distinction. So in Tennessee, the county mayor, most other places like Kentucky, they call it a county judge. Mm-hmm. Here we used to call it a county executive, which I think is in some ways more appropriate because they are, uh, essentially extensions of state government. So the governor.
Mayor Kelly: Needs, uh, essentially an executive, um, extension in every county, 99, 97 counties across the state, whatever it is. I should know that, but I'm not a county mayor. Uh, let me off the hook, but, uh, that's what that is. Uh, cities, particularly cities like Chattanooga, have a home rule charter, so we in theory.
Mayor Kelly: Unless the state preempts us from doing it can say, you know, on Wednesdays, everybody in Chattanooga should wear a purple hat and make it so, and we can do that if we want, [00:05:00] provided the state says no city in Chattanooga can make, or in Tennessee can make people wear purple hats Mm-hmm. So, and again, the, the, the county mayors really don't have operational responsibility, uh, in the same way that we do.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, so they're, they're, they're very different jobs.
Carli: So they aren't elected. So you're elected by, oh, no, they're elected. Okay. They're absolutely elected. They're not appointed by the governor. They're just, they're not
Mayor Kelly: elected now. The way that they're elected, they're elected in a, in a plurality. So the person who gets the most votes, uh, wins in Chattanooga anyway.
Mayor Kelly: You have to get 50% plus one, uh, which requires many times a runoff. Like in my, my first election, we had 15 people running, had to get a runoff. My last election, I had one opponent. Didn't have to do that. So yeah, they're, they're, they're very different jobs. But you're right to point it out, there's a tremendous amount of confusion about it in the
Spencer: state.
Spencer: Hmm. Something that's commonly said is that anyone that's been successful in business. Is gonna hate it in politics. And I'm interested to hear, 'cause you brought that up right away, that Yeah. You know, your [00:06:00] background as a businessman as a lot of things that don't include politics. Right. Can you talk a little bit about what was your business Yeah.
Spencer: Coming into this? Mm-hmm. And what has that been like as. A transition for you? Yeah,
Mayor Kelly: it's a great question and I, and I, again, I would start by pointing out that difference in legislative and executive politics, right? Uh, Senator Corker's, a good friend of mine, uh, he was a former mayor of Chattanooga, and I think he would tell you, he has told me he's told others.
Mayor Kelly: So I'm not speaking out of school. Uh, that, you know, again, not many people who are good at business, um, and executive politics really, um. Find joy in legislative politics. They're very, very different, um, skill sets and attitudes and mindsets. So, but my business was the car business. It was, I'm the third generation car dealer, uh, and grew from my family dealerships from, uh, one to 11.
Mayor Kelly: What brands. Oh my gosh. Uh, started out with Cadillac and Saab, uh, added Subaru Mitsubishi. Hummer. [00:07:00] Infiniti, GMC truck, you know. All right. Um, and then branched out in the motorcycle business, um, and it had a bunch of different motorcycle brands. I'm out of all that except Honda Motorcycle, which I, which is actually in the city of East Ridge.
Mayor Kelly: Do you ride. I do. I mean, I don't have much time for it. Okay. But that's not why I got in it. I got in it because it's a, it's an adjacent vertical to the car business that wasn't quite as competitive. And, uh, we actually grew the Honda store to be the biggest one in the country, and it still is. And, uh, quite proud of that.
Mayor Kelly: Congratulations, uh, but also branched out and started, um. Uh, was one of the co-founders of Chattanooga Football Club. Our local now professional soccer club. Mm-hmm. Uh, Chattanooga Brewing Company beer, it's fun business, um, and a couple of other restaurant ventures. So, yeah, I mean, a pretty textbook entrepreneur, local entrepreneur, but spent more and more time.
Mayor Kelly: Doing nonprofit work, you know, on nonprofit boards. I grew up in a family where it was just a value that you gave back through, through your time, uh, and treasure and philanthropy. And, uh, as, as time went on, I became more interested in the public [00:08:00] good, um, than in private gain, I guess I would say. And, uh, I got enough money, you know, uh, again, I do think that, um, um.
Mayor Kelly: Without waxing philosophical or religious right. Like once you hit a certain level, you know, that's not what it's, there's no meaning in more money. Uh, and, and as the chairman of the Community Foundation, it was a bit like being in the front row of the bleachers and seeing the action on the field and doing what I could to, you know, cheer for the change that I needed to see.
Mayor Kelly: But the only place to go from there is onto the field. Mm-hmm. And again, never ran for student council. Um, and, and, but, but you know, literally felt the tap on the shoulder from above and, you know, you gotta try put myself out there. And I was like, the dog that
Spencer: caught the car I was chasing. So, yeah. Tell us about that.
Spencer: Because a lot of people will say, I feel a call mm-hmm. To run. And you ask them, you know, what's their why, why did they go and, and pursue this? Yeah. Walk us through that for other people to be able to recognize [00:09:00] that.
Mayor Kelly: Well, again, Chattanooga is an extraordinary community and it, it really is. And it's one where it's ex it's very friendly. Uh, you know, our culture is one of really can-do and, and, and public private partnership. Um, but the gaps here are really, are really too broad. It's a city that needs to work for everybody.
Mayor Kelly: Again, I am a nonpartisan mayor. I'm not a. Polemical person. But I really became as, uh, a chairman of the community foundation taken with the idea of economic mobility. I mean, if I have a theory of change, it's definitely economic and we have too many people. The gaps between the rich and poor, and frankly, very directly black and white in Chattanooga are just way too broad.
Mayor Kelly: And it ends up, it's not about racial preference, it's about opportunity, right? And making sure that we provide opportunities. That we can lift people up out of poverty and, and really, I mean, ultimately it's about everything from economic development to public safety. And I just didn't see the people stepping up and stepping into that gap with enough intentionality.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, and I think it was, I think [00:10:00] it was Stephen King, some author that said, you know, uh, the only reason to write a book is 'cause you can't, not 'cause it's a miserable process. But for me it, this was like that. I mean, I literally kept waking up and going, I, I, I don't wanna do it. I don't even like public speaking, but realizing that I, I had, I had to do it, I had to do it, or I wasn't gonna be able to live with myself and, you know, so here I am.
Carli: So you left the world of soccer, beer, and motorcycles Right. To run against 15 other people, right? In your first campaign?
Mayor Kelly: Well, 14. I was 15. 14. So you were
Carli: number 15. I, and from what it sounds like, you didn't even run a student council campaign, so that was your first ever it was campaign, if you had to go back and tell yourself today.
Carli: Yeah. Having two successful campaigns running for mayor on that first day when you launched.
Mayor Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Carli: What would you tell that guy?
Mayor Kelly: Oh, I don't know that I would've, um, it's, it's not different than I expected. I mean, again, it's, it's, you're selling, you're yourself and you're selling your platform and your idea. [00:11:00] And I just kind of started with a clean slate like I would with a startup and said, you know, we're trying to achieve product market fit, and we're, and we're, you know, we're, we're going to market. And you, you know, you come in with a thesis.
Mayor Kelly: In this case, I was not really interested in trimming the sales to tell people what they wanted to hear. You know, I thought I had a better mouse trap from a policy perspective. That's what I was selling. And it's old. So, you know, in, in a way, uh, I, I, I would tell myself to your question more directly, it, it's, it's harder, the job is harder than I thought it was.
Mayor Kelly: Um, again, the problem with government is that, and this sounds like very, very much one political party, not the other, but it's not, I'm telling you, it's just an axiomatic fact. The problem with government is that it has no competition. Hmm. There's, there is no, you know, you guys are, you know, run a business.
Mayor Kelly: There's no competitor to keep the low boil on, to keep you honest. Hmm. And to make sure that you are waking up and coming into work every day with your customer in [00:12:00] mind and making sure that that things are turning. If you don't have that level of leadership in government. suff just drifts. It just drifts.
Mayor Kelly: And that's why people have become skeptical of government. But I mean, one of my missions is really to prove that government can solve people's problems. Because there are some things, I mean, again, I'm a private market guy. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, you know, I believe the market solves most problems, but the government has to be the problem solver of last resort.
Mayor Kelly: And if it's not there doing what it's supposed to be doing, attentive to the needs of the public, then you know, that's where we get the cynicism that you hear so often today.
Spencer: Well, mayor Kelly, we're gonna talk about Chattanooga and talk about some of the results from your time, but also, you know, you're a fourth generation Chattanooga.
Spencer: Yep. And so talking about the history, but before we do that. Every guest, we ask critical questions that reveal their character to us. Okay. Uh, and so I have questions for you before we transition on. That will reveal to us and the audience almost immediately. I [00:13:00] can't wait. What's inside? Okay.
Spencer: All right. No pressure. What
Mayor Kelly: are your favorite pizza toppings? Okay. Uh, this is really gonna gross people out. Um, but it's, uh, anchovies and pepperoni. Anchovy and
Carli: pepperoni. I've never met one of you.
Mayor Kelly: Well, here I, here I am. I know, it's weird. It's, it does not make me, uh, you know, uh, I, I need to, you know, uh, hit the Listerine bottle after I eat that.
Mayor Kelly: But it, I'm just, you know, you ask. I'm an honest guy. That's, that's it. Yeah. You can
Carli: order a Domino's pizza with anchovies on it. Do you? How can I think you can, or from the can at your house? I
Mayor Kelly: have a friend that has a, a pizza business and I, you know, I ask him like, will you make this for me? Put it on the menu.
Mayor Kelly: And they called it. Wait for it, the smelly Kelly. And, uh, I ordered it and they eventually took it off the menu because it did not sell well, nobody else wants to eat this pizza, but you asked. I answered it. All right.
Spencer: Yeah.
Spencer: Okay. Well let's talk about Chattanooga. So, uh, I'm born and raised here in Tennessee. Mm-hmm. From Nashville. Mm-hmm. But here, as a young kid, I was here at the aquarium. I've done [00:14:00] countless field trips here. My family here. And Chattanooga, just in my lifetime, has had meaningful ups and downs. Yes. And I feel like Chattanooga's future, not only in my lifetime but beyond that, has been in me like meaningful peril.
Spencer: Uh oh yeah. No question. And so I wonder if you could talk first about. Your time mm-hmm. With the city, and then we will expand it out from there, but. What have you observed about Chattanooga from the inside over these last four years? Well,
Mayor Kelly: as you correctly pointed out, Chattanooga has, in, in financial terms, uh, it has had a high beta, you know, I mean, it, it sort of has pored and I think part of that is structural because we're down here in the corner of the state.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, again, I was at a, a political sort of summit this weekend and, and, you know, it's, it's not. [00:15:00] Anybody's first priority except Chattanooga. So we have to be our own champions, uh, Nashville again, I I say a lot, you know, Tennessee is to Georgia as Germany is to France, right? Like we, we don't have any one big dominant city, although Nashville's certainly vying for that now.
Mayor Kelly: Yeah, we have four cities, major cities, and soon to be kind of six that are kind of all fighting for the dog bone. And Chattanooga is kind of usually the redhead to stepchild. So, you know, we really have to have forceful and direct leadership to make sure that we are, you know, on the radar. We're also, you know, a, a mid-size city and one of the things that really, uh, caused me to run for mayor was reading a book.
Mayor Kelly: Called the New Geography of Jobs about, and there are other books written about this. You know, the economy is pivoting more towards, you know, like yours, um, pursuits that are intellectual and creative in nature, uh, and away from kind of light industrial jobs. And those jobs tend to aggregate in larger metropolitan areas.
Mayor Kelly: They just do. Yeah, and you could, you know, again, [00:16:00] books have been written about why that is, but Chattanooga is really fighting for economic relevance. And so that is one of the, the main, um, elements of my one Chattanooga plan is creating a competitive regional economy. And so we've struggled with that.
Mayor Kelly: And because we have a strong mayor model, the person who is the mayor matters. A lot and without, you know, disparaging any predecessors. We've had some great mayors, we've had some not so great mayors. Uh, so it causes things to go up and down. But I mean, my theory of change is economic. And I think you have to have a very, very, I think we need, uh, a very focused, uh, attitude towards economic development, Chattanooga to include workforce development.
Mayor Kelly: Mm-hmm. You know, not just bringing in major corporations, but how that impacts people in their lives, uh, in, in order to move the city forward.
Spencer: Hmm. When you say a strong mayor model, yeah. I think I understand what I think you mean, which is that unlike some mayors in other states that don't have as much authority to move the [00:17:00] needle, maybe you believe that you've got more move the needle ability.
Spencer: We do. Is there one or two things that you could point to that's distinct about. What makes you see your capacity for change to be more powerful than what some other mayors might be equipped with in other locations?
Mayor Kelly: Yeah, it's a structural thing, which again, I didn't fully appreciate until I came in, but, but smaller cities tend to have, and I don't like the terminology, weak mayor, strong mayor, but that's how you, we will hear it referred to if you Google it.
Mayor Kelly: Um, in, in our model, you, you have a mayor without a city manager, and the mayor has a lot of power. Really, we have a lot of power. We, we need, uh, again, our city council to authorize expenditures, but it is the, the power structure's tilted towards the mayor. The mayor here has a lot of power to get done.
Mayor Kelly: A lot of things that need to get done in the weak mirror model. The mayor is part-time, and you have a city manager who typically is a very highly paid, um, [00:18:00] well-trained municipal executive who really runs things, okay? Right. And the mayor goes to ribbon cuttings and works on economic development, but doesn't have a ton of power, uh, that that city manager typically reports to the the council.
Mayor Kelly: And so it's flipped back in the other direction a bit. And there are arguments to be made. There are days when I wake up and think, you know, maybe we'd be better off with the other model. Because in those models, typically it's not, it's not a explicit quid, quid pro quo, but they don't have term limits. So you have more continuity over time.
Mayor Kelly: So if you look at peer cities to Chattanooga in South Carolina, for example, like Greenville, no term limits. So that mayor can provide a steady drumbeat of leadership over time, whereas here I have eight years and that's out. And if the next person coming in isn't great, um, or doesn't share the same values or vision, we gotta start all over.
Mayor Kelly: And that's true in Nashville, in Memphis, in Knoxville, uh, in all, all four of Chattanooga or Tennessee's major
Spencer: cities. [00:19:00] So let's zoom out some from the time that you've been there and pull some on the fourth generation Chattanoogan experience that you've got in your blood. Mm-hmm. Talk more broadly about.
Spencer: This city and really what it's been and what it is today. Yeah. Because I think the overwhelming majority of people that are listening have either never been Yep. Or maybe haven't been recently. Mm-hmm. So how do you think about plotting Chattanooga? In terms of where it's at in its history?
Mayor Kelly: Well, it's, it's a very interesting history, right?
Mayor Kelly: Like, again, this was a big epicenter for, um, for Native American culture. And it, it wasn't actually the Cherokee first. The Cherokee came in here after the Coosa got, got, uh, started dying of smallpox. Her Hernando DeSoto came through here in like 1548. Uh, the Cusa all got sick and said, this is a curse from God.
Mayor Kelly: We're out. They left. The Cherokee came down. Um, in the 1750s, people think of it as a big [00:20:00] Cherokee center, and it was, but what it has in common is, is natural beauty, right? So there were early settlers, and we are sitting within a hundred yards of where all the original settlements were in Chattanooga, along the Tennessee River, but it wasn't easily navigable because it would flood.
Mayor Kelly: And there was a giant whirlpool down here called the suck. You couldn't get a boat passed until TVA built the DAM system. But we'll fast forward to the Civil War. Um. Chattanooga essentially became a new city after civil war. And the modern history of the city is that a lot of the union soldiers who fought here.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, saw the potential and saw the natural beauty of this place and came back. And Chattanooga was kind of the, it's where the upland south and the lowland south meet. There was a lot of union, uh, people here. There were a lot of Confederate people here. It was kind of, you know, in some ways a metaphor for, for even the New South Mm-hmm. And the through line to today is really the natural beauty. Mm-hmm. And the fact that, you know, what makes the city special, and we know this, you know, from surveys, is really, you know, the quality of life. [00:21:00] And I think another big moment in our city's history, because we had, it should be said in, when I moved back here from college in the late eighties, we had the worst longitudinal growth rate of any city within 500 miles of Europe.
Mayor Kelly: There was nothing going on in chat. Wow. I mean we, you know, it was the home of Coca-Cola bottling, home of the moon pie, you know, some really great stories. But that was kind of it. And other than that, it was really languishing economically. So the city fathers at that time through this long ball, took advantage of a federal program to put in fiber.
Mayor Kelly: So that's how we came, you know, became the Gig City Internet. Fiber worlds. Yes. Yeah. Internet fiber. We can talk more about quantum research later, but that. It turned out to be, uh, almost impossibly, uh, visionary in the sense that nobody could have seen what happened during COVID, um, during COVID. Again, you know, the remote work thing came about.
Mayor Kelly: We've got, you know, gig speed internet, actually two and a half gigs you can get now for a hundred bucks a month. And if you can work from anywhere, [00:22:00] why would you not work from a place that looks like this, right? For the place with the best quality of life. So that has become our stock and trade. And we have a, a num, a tremendous amount of super talented people.
Mayor Kelly: We just had a reception this morning of, of people like that who, who are here from all over the place. You run into 'em. They've moved here from larger cities for the quality of life because they can, they can, they can work from anywhere. And I think that's our economic future. We're not gonna attract an Amazon headquarters.
Mayor Kelly: Um, we are below that line where, you know, uh, Morgan Stanley's probably not gonna build a giant high rise here. But we, we, we are shaping out, uh, an economic future that really is based around quality of life.
Carli: So you are term limited, right? And you are in your second term.
Mayor Kelly: Yep.
Carli: What are the things that you have gotten done that you're so excited about, but also what are you really trying to target before you leave office to get done and kind of leave your legacy on the city?
Mayor Kelly: That's a great question. Um, I would say two [00:23:00] things. One is, again, one of the reasons I ran coming from the foundation world was we had a lot of big projects that were hanging fire because nobody had the political courage to move em forward. And I really do not have future political ambitions. I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but again, I don't particularly enjoy politics.
Mayor Kelly: I, I enjoy service. So that said, like getting the big projects done. I mean, I just came from a ribbon cutting at the west side, which is a big old housing project that needed to be revitalized. I mean, check, we did it. Uh, I wanted to revise our sign ordinance. I, after four years, we finally got it done yesterday, I signed it check.
Mayor Kelly: So a lot of these things, uh, the lookouts we're building a new baseball stadium down in another big brownfield that's gonna be this incredibly economically vibrant area that you see when you drive in from Nashville. That area to your right. Yeah. Uh, that was just a giant rusting eyesore. Check. Right.
Mayor Kelly: These are all things that are done, um, and we'll continue to do, right? I mean, we still have work to do. We now have one of the best job growth rates and [00:24:00] wage growth rates, uh, from, from young people. And one of my goals was to make Chattanooga the sort of city where young people could move back here and find a job, which I couldn't.
Mayor Kelly: I mean, if I hadn't had a family business to move back to, I couldn't have moved back here. Most of my friends from from high school left. Um, my son moved back. From, uh, from business school in Colorado. So check. So we're making progress. Lastly though, I would say, um, again, as a businessman, like I'm really my, if I had to point at one legacy, it's reforming city government to make sure that city government, the culture changes there to one of service where, where, uh, people just are there because they're mission driven and they wanna make this the best city in America.
Mayor Kelly: And we've got some work to do to get there. But that, you know, if I had to just pick one thing, that would be it.
Spencer: Hmm. Can you talk some about the quantum story here? Yeah. Because if I had to choose a city that was perhaps unlikely 10 or 15 or 20 years ago to have this kind of story happening, [00:25:00] like this was not happenstance.
Spencer: So talk me through what has happened with this. Quantum story.
Mayor Kelly: All right. I'll try to give it as brief as I can. But you may remember that, uh, a, a famous Tennesseean Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. Yes, he did not. But what he did do, and where this all got, um, misconstrued was that, uh, you know, again, the Biden administration not getting political, but made a lot of really, I think.
Mayor Kelly: I think, uh, clever targeted infrastructure investments to help drive growth. Uh, this was really the precursor to that. During the Clinton Go Gord administration, they had a program saying, Hey, if you're a city that wants to take an interest free loan to put in fiber, because they saw the the potential, this technology, you can take it.
Mayor Kelly: And we were one of the only cities in the country that did it. So we put in municipal fiber because we had such a terrible growth rate. We were like, well, we might as well try this. And so our electric utility did this and there were a lot of people that said it would fail, or you're competing with the private market.
Mayor Kelly: It's been a. It's been an [00:26:00] incredible success. I mean, EPB is, uh, it's a public utility. It has, it wins customer service awards every year, both on the fiber and the electric side. It's incredible. And that's just for the internet side. One of the completely unanticipated aspects, however, is that. Without diving into a exploration of quantum computing, but it's computing using subatomic particles, right?
Mayor Kelly: Uh, one of those is photons, and one of the ways to do quantum computing is to shoot photons along long loops of dark fiber. Well, because ours is municipally owned and not commercial, we can do that and we can dedicate these long loops of dark fiber to researchers to do this sort of. Quantum computing, uh, and as you say, highly unlikely.
Mayor Kelly: I mean, we've still got a lot of work to do to build out the ecosystem, uh, academically and commercially to, to make sure it's fully utilized, but I am convinced it is truly extraordinary. Um, again, it's a national security issue. Only the mainland Chinese really have. Such an asset, and they're already way ahead of us in terms of [00:27:00] their ability to, uh, to do these experiments and, and move the technology forward.
Mayor Kelly: So we've got some great, uh, announcements coming out soon. Uh, knock on wood, uh, in this area. But I do think it's really important for Chattanooga, for Tennessee, and for the whole country that this move forward quickly. Hmm.
Carli: What are some other partnerships and things that you're looking to bring to Chattanooga that you're particularly excited about?
Carli: I know that's, you're modest, but I know that's a big part of your job. What else are you working?
Mayor Kelly: Well, again, midsize cities like Chattanooga really are behind kind of a, a lot of people don't see it. When you see it, you won't unsee it. But there is this kind of glass ceiling between midsize cities and larger cities.
Mayor Kelly: Um, you know, where, where corporate headquarters are, where those jobs exist, where that, I was talking to somebody this morning about the fact that, you know, there we, we struggle still, um, to get the sort of investment we need in, in philanthropic. Uh, and economic development in initiatives. 'cause, because we don't have these major [00:28:00] corporations here that can just stroke the checks, so we need to get a little further down the road.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, a little bit bigger to, and, and a little bit more, you know, visible to be able to, to play in that world, to be able to address our issues. Uh, small towns. I'm speaking, uh, later this month in Lafayette, Louisiana at a small towns conference. We all struggle with this, right? Because we have, we're big enough to have all the.
Mayor Kelly: All the problems of Chicago, all the major city problems, but we don't have the capital environment, you know, to be able to fully leverage the private sector, philanthropy and all that to solve our biggest problems. So we, we need to grow a little bit, honestly. I mean that's, that's the big thing and that's why my theory of change really is economic.
Mayor Kelly: And you know, the guy I have on speed dial more than anybody else is Charles Wood, who runs our Chamber of Commerce.
Carli: And how big is too big because. This city is so pictures, right? Yeah. Yeah. And your level of hospitality and how kind everybody is. I [00:29:00] mean, I'd imagine there is a sweet spot, right? Where you're not looking to be Chicago.
Mayor Kelly: No, you're a hundred percent right.
Carli: But you also want to take advantage of some of these opportunities. So how do you even model that?
Mayor Kelly: Well. It's, it's funny, and I've, I say this now, almost on a daily basis, we have a lot of people that are moving here, you know, with apologies to you guys from Nashville, from Austin, Texas, and people will say, this reminds me of Austin or Nashville 30 years ago.
Mayor Kelly: Mm-hmm. The trick is to keep it Austin. 30 years ago. So it's, it is, we, like, we talk a lot about Goldilocks problems, right? Mm-hmm. And smart growth. And, and I do think that's important. Zoning is important. We wrote, we, we have rewritten our zoning code, um, to encourage more density in our downtown areas.
Mayor Kelly: We're not trying to build multi-story buildings in, in our rural areas or in our suburban areas. 'cause people move there. For that they self-select to be in those places. But we can definitely be more dense in our downtown area without sacrificing, you know, what makes us a [00:30:00] great city. Uh, at the same time, you know, we just became, uh, the first national Park city, uh, in, in North America.
Mayor Kelly: And the reason that I thought that was so important was because we need to, and Nashville certainly does as well, have a, and the state does a, a very intentional focus on preserving the green spaces that we do have. Because that is what makes this place special. So we need to be a little bit bigger. We need a little bit better air service in some ways.
Mayor Kelly: We have a built-in exhaust valve in the form of Nashville in Atlanta. 'cause the hot money and the hot growth is going to go to Nashville, Atlanta. We're not gonna reverse that. We just need to, again, we need to get, get it just right. And I think we're in a, in a, in a pretty good trajectory to get there.
Spencer: Hmm. Is the airport part of your responsibility?
Mayor Kelly: 100%. Okay. Yeah, it used to be a city department. It now has an independent board so that they can, um, you know, bond and so on. But I a appoint the board members and I've appointed quite a few board new board members and. We have made tremendous progress. [00:31:00] Uh, we have a female CEO there who came up from the CFO's position.
Mayor Kelly: Um, April is doing a fantastic job there. The chairman, Jim Hall, who's a former NTSB chairman, we've already picked up quite a few new direct flights. Again, we're never gonna catch Nashville, but we need, we need a direct to Denver. We need, we're, we're, this is gonna be a big year for the airport, but it's a big part of it.
Spencer: Can you talk a little bit about that? 'cause from Nashville and seeing the impact that the Nashville Airport has had? Was one of the major Oh yeah. Changing trajectories and you know, now Nashville has a direct to London. Yeah. I mean, some of these things that really, they're building another runway to be able to have some directs from Asia.
Spencer: Yeah. I mean, crazy stuff. Yep. So when you think about Chattanooga's airport, uh, a couple questions There is, first, when you're trying to convince airlines to have more direct flights Yeah. What is that conversation like? What are you trying to persuade them? Clearly it's gotta be a business discussion.
Spencer: You're a business guy. Yeah. [00:32:00] What do you, what do you talk about?
Mayor Kelly: Well, it's a little bit like the old Field of Dreams thing. If you build it, they will come uhhuh. I mean, we have, uh, in Chattanooga a 60% leakage rate, which means, you know, airports measure PDs, which is an acronym for passenger something each way.
Mayor Kelly: Mm-hmm. Passenger departures each way and. Uh, you know, so it's, it's, the metrics are very clear. Uh, but in our logical catchment area, 60% of those people are driving to Nashville or to Atlanta to fly rather to Chattanooga.
Spencer: Okay? So that's what leakage means, is that passengers rather than flying out of Chattanooga's airport, right, they're driving somewhere around.
Spencer: So you're leaking 60% of your
Mayor Kelly: precisely. And again, they do that. Um, some of it is fair price, some of it is connection. I think people don't realize how. Valuable direct flights are because if you've ever, you know, missed a connection, had your luggage lost in the connection, uh, you know, sat there and wasted two hours, people don't wanna do it.
Mayor Kelly: And so, you know, again, the good news is in Chattanooga [00:33:00] you can drive there relatively quickly, an hour and a half or two hours and fly out. And so people do, but I mean, my point particularly to United Airlines is, you know, Atlanta, Delta's always gonna shuttle us through Atlanta, um, American through Charlotte, and that's okay.
Mayor Kelly: It works fine. Delta still has the major market share here, United, however. You know, we could be a miniature hub for United because they fly folks to Chicago. Um, and that works great, but you know, we need a direct to Denver. I think that would be extremely well. We've got some of these direct point to point, not hub and spoke airlines coming in.
Mayor Kelly: So competition helps. And if those, as those fair prices come down and more people realize, you know, I mean, I'm flying outta Chattanooga later this afternoon. You can cruise up and be at your gate in 15 minutes if you've ever tried to. You guys probably don't, but I mean, if you've ever tried to fly, fly through Atlanta on a busy Monday morning.
Mayor Kelly: Mm-hmm. Holy macker.
Spencer: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I know. I mean,
Mayor Kelly: you know, grand Central station's got nothing on the TSA line. Uh, and so, [00:34:00] you know, it's, we just need to do a better job marketing this airport and leveraging those advantages, and I think we'll get there.
Spencer: How much of your responsibility. Is marketing, because you talked earlier, you're a marketing guy.
Spencer: Yeah. And that's how you built your brand from, uh, the dealerships that you ran. And so how much do you spend of your time thinking about how to project Chattanooga to the outside world versus your responsibilities of day to day? Marrying.
Mayor Kelly: That's what makes my job so difficult because it has to be both.
Mayor Kelly: And I think mayors typically are good at one or the other, and it's hard to be good at both. I try to be good at both. Uh, but I am, you know, look, the old saying is like, to a carpenter, everything's hammers and nails. I'm a marketing guy. Yeah. So I do tend to see everything through that lens. And I do think, you know, uh, a mayor, a good mayor has to be the chief salesman.
Mayor Kelly: Or saleswoman for that city. So I think, I mean, as [00:35:00] I tell my chamber of commerce head all the time, like, you need me, I'm gonna be there. I'll be on a plane to Silicon Valley or Chicago or New York or whatever I need to be. Um, uh, like that's the first priority. I have a good COO. She does a fantastic job.
Mayor Kelly: It's not quite the same as having a city manager. Um, but I have, if I've done one thing in the last four years. And if I have one talent, Hey, hey. Uh, it's building teams and we have a great team that is now driving change, uh, through the city. And so I spend, I try to budget my time and spend half my time making sure that, you know, city operations are running faithfully and that we're responding to residents and solving people's problems.
Mayor Kelly: And then, you know, as much time as possible out there selling Chattanooga on the, on the, you know, on the local stage, on the national stage. On the global stage. Mm-hmm.
Carli: One thing I like to ask leaders, especially community leaders, is if you had a magic wand mm-hmm. If before you're out of office or maybe long after that, maybe it's a 10 or 20 [00:36:00] wand wave, year wand wave, what is one thing you would do for this city?
Carli: It could be pipe dream, it could take a long time, but what would be your one magic wand? Moment.
Mayor Kelly: Yeah, it, it's, it's closing gaps between, um, again, between the wealthiest and the, and the poorest here. I mean, we still have zip codes here with some of the worst rates of economic mobility, uh, in the country.
Mayor Kelly: And again, it's, it's, it's, it's tragic. It's think that, you know, um, your, your zip code determines your outcome in life. So it really is changing that. A map of economic mobility so that, uh, no matter what you look like, no matter what kind of household you're born into, you know, you have the same opportunity to thrive and be successful and contribute to this great city.
Mayor Kelly: Um, and that is why, you know, the one Chattanooga plan was written. That's really at the core of that one Chattanooga plan. Uh, and, and again. If it were easy, we'd have already done it. Sure. Because it involves everything from early childhood education through K 12, which I don't have much to say about, but we [00:37:00] do work very hard to support, um, all the way up through post-secondary and workforce development.
Mayor Kelly: So that, that's really it, is to create a city where that is, you know, wealthier across the board. Um, which is also a thing, I mean, Chattanooga, uh, is still a poor city relative to places like Nashville, but, but also a, uh, you know, a city where, um. Everybody kinda shares the wealth a bit more.
Carli: I was gonna say, how many levers do you have to pull?
Carli: In terms of education that K 12?
Mayor Kelly: Yeah.
Carli: In your city.
Mayor Kelly: I mean, so we do have a lot to say about early childhood education. Mm-hmm. And it is one of the seven pillars in the one Chattanooga plan because, um, I, I went through business school late in life. Um, I'll never forget, I mean, we had a Saturday lecture, um.
Mayor Kelly: About developmental psychology from, uh, an organizational management professor. Everybody left this, the lecture, basically speechless, because what he's essentially said was that, you know, by the age of [00:38:00] five mm-hmm. The bread's baked mm-hmm. You're, you're on a trajectory that is going to determine the rest of your life.
Mayor Kelly: I mean, it was breathtaking. Yeah, but I left there and, you know, did a lot more research and reading after that, and he's, and he's right. I'm shocked that we don't pay more attention as a lot of our OECD counterparts do to early childhood, like in Finland, where again, if, if you get that right, the burden really comes off of K 12 and later a lot more.
Mayor Kelly: And yet we're really focused on K 12. And, and in some ways it's like, well, if we haven't invested adequately in early childhood, then you're just moving deck chairs around on a sinking boat, right? Mm-hmm. So we try to do as everything we can to support early childhood, uh, through Headstart and through supporting the private market here through, you know, quality early childhood and, you know, through working with, you know, United Way and First Things First and Social services to make sure that children have, uh, healthy.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, experiences and, and we reduce adverse childhood experiences because those things have [00:39:00] tremendous negative outcomes, the correlations to public safety and, uh, and joblessness. So they're incredible. Right. So it is about supporting families ultimately.
Carli: Sure.
Mayor Kelly: So, um, that's, I can't even remember the original question you asked, but that No, I think that's huge
Carli: because as business owners If you look at our executives across our company and our different brands, they're predominantly women. And we've had a baby boom in our office. We have four kids of our own. And so something very near and dear to my heart is the difficulty to get childcare. For professional women, it really disproportionately caps women in the workforce when you can't find quality childcare, and I don't know about other people's kids, but my kids ha get sick all the time.
Carli: Nobody warned me how many runny noses.
Mayor Kelly: Yep. Vectors of disease.
Carli: Vectors of disease.
Mayor Kelly: 100%. And, you know, I'm, the governor's, uh, has kindly appointed me to be the city director for workforce development. And I never [00:40:00] really thought I would sit in workforce development meetings and talk about childcare. Yeah. But this is, we are in a teachable moment to your exact point.
Mayor Kelly: We're in a teachable moment around this because it's a, you know, our labor force participation rate in Chattanooga is only around 60%. That means four in ten people. In, in prime working age who could be working or not working, right? It's now, it's only seven in ten or three in ten uh, in Nashville. 70% work labor force participation rate.
Mayor Kelly: I talk to women all the time who tell me exactly that, like you do the math on the back of a napkin, and either from concerns of cost or quality. Thanks. I'll just stay home. Right. So it, it matters a lot. We, we gotta figure it out. And that's also a, it's a state level issue too. Mm-hmm. Um, but you know, again, the state is doing its part.
Mayor Kelly: We can do more. There's, we, we recently got a, a safe baby court and, and I said at the time, it's not something we did, it's, it was a state initiative and a local judicial initiative. A huge thing because if you've got a household here where there's drug use or, or criminal activity [00:41:00] and a child's in danger.
Mayor Kelly: That kid needs a fresh start, it just does. That child is going to have a tremendous impact for be for good or for evil in later life. And so I, I love that we as a state are really going all the way back to the cradle and looking at it from that perspective. And we need to kind of double down on that. I think
Spencer: when you think about economic mobility saying that you have some zip codes here that have some of the worst economic mobility potential mm-hmm.
Spencer: In the state. One thing our governor, governor Lee has spoken a lot to is the importance of trade skills. Yep. He obviously comes from an HVAC background. Yep. You come from an adjacent background. Sure. A lot of mechanics and there's a huge shortage in that space. I ran the
Mayor Kelly: shop for years.
Spencer: Yep. That's something Carli and I are familiar with.
Spencer: Yep. So when you think about how to turn the tide of that economic mobility. Is it a [00:42:00] skills based change or is it something else that. It happens long before skills and it really is like, Hey, if we're not having them read by third grade, then it's all over.
Mayor Kelly: Well, I'm sorry to say it is both. Mm-hmm. I mean, again, if it were easy, we'd have already figured it out.
Mayor Kelly: Yeah. But the, at the core of the strategy around economic mobility, it was a very insightful question is workforce development or what our European colleagues call skills acquisition. And you know, the governor and I are a hundred percent on the same page and I'm so glad he is gonna make this one of his top priorities and is the last part of his term of office.
Mayor Kelly: 'cause that is what it comes down to. I first got really interested, or one of the things that really pushed me towards public service was working on an initiative here called Chattanooga 2.0, which happened in the wake of, of, of, uh, Volkswagen coming here. And realizing that we did not have a workforce that could meet the needs of industry.
Mayor Kelly: And these are good jobs. Yeah. Really good jobs. [00:43:00] And so we are hard at work here, pivoting our whole school system to, part of it is just de-stigmatizing the trades and realizing like, you know, not every kid is going to, or needs to, you know, um. Go to a liberal arts school and go to a four year school and, you know, memorize hamlet.
Mayor Kelly: I mean, again, I came from a liberal arts background, but I also ran a, an auto shop. I used to have a, a mechanic that, uh, read Nietzche on his lunch breaks. Like, these things are not mutually exclusive, right? That you can have both and, and, you know, you can make a very, very good living in the trades. And I realized that during my campaign, black, white, rich, poor people were clamoring.
Mayor Kelly: To bring that back. Mm-hmm. Uh, so we are working really, really hard with Mayor Wat, the county mayor, and with our school superintendent to really change this. But again, a lot of it is, is cultural, is is working with teachers to, to at least let them stop discouraging people Sure. As thinking of those jobs as lesser than, because they're not lesser than you can be a well-educated, [00:44:00] well-read citizen.
Mayor Kelly: And work with your hands. I mean, the IBEW, we do a lot of really great work with the electrical union here. They're not mutually exclusive, so, uh, but it's both, it's it's basic literacy and it's, it's also getting kids exposed to internships. Mm-hmm. Uh, I mean, again, uh, our colleagues in Europe will get kids into school, um, rather out of school and into industry and expose them to certain jobs, and then they can figure out, I like this.
Mayor Kelly: I think this is cool. I wanna do this, or I wanna go to law school. Right. But it's a sorting process that we lack. Mm-hmm. We get kids here typically through, you know, the 12th grade and then just dump 'em out into the ocean. Yeah. Um, and, and we've gotta change the way we do it.
Spencer: Mayor Kelly, Carli and I are from Nashville.
Spencer: Yes. And there are 80 people a day moving into Nashville. And one of the major pain points that we have is that no one can afford houses. Yes. And people are moving further and further out from the city. Yeah. But I mean, [00:45:00] it's getting ridiculous about what the commute is gonna look like. I mean, you feel like everybody has decided to relocate to Interstate 65.
Spencer: Yeah. Is what it feels like when you're driving in Nashville. Yes. So how have you tried to look at. Affordable housing here in Chattanooga. Mm-hmm. That you've got growth, but I wonder if it is. The same challenge, a different challenge or something in between for you.
Mayor Kelly: It is the same challenge and, uh, mayor O'Connell and I were actually just together with the other top 10 or 12 mayors from around the, uh, city or rather around the state, host an event hosted by, um, I think Tennessee, about affordable housing policy.
Mayor Kelly: This has become such a huge area of crisis. Uh, because again, we're to the point, it is a bipartisan issue, right? Police, firefighters, teachers, servers cannot afford to live in the city of Chattanooga, or you know, the city of Nashville anymore. And it's a huge issue. Yeah. And we really have to think out outside the box to fix it.
Mayor Kelly: And we've done everything from, [00:46:00] uh, rewrite our zoning code, uh, to embarking on short term vacation rental reform to kind of tamp down speculation on, on, on, uh, housing. Prices so people can live in those houses rather than Airbnb. 'em. Yeah. Um, uh, gosh, we have now stood up, uh, a, uh, uh, an Invest Chattanooga fund to help fund projects at the, at the seed stage with mezzanine debt.
Mayor Kelly: We, you know, all hands on deck here. Mm-hmm. Uh, I'll say. One of the programs that Nashville has that, that we're looking at very closely, we wanna figure out how to leverage is, uh, is a program working with the faith-based community in Nashville to a lot of churches have spare acreage and they want to figure out how they can serve, serve their parishioners better, you know, with affordable housing, particularly senior housing.
Mayor Kelly: Right. The pick an area. Mm-hmm. Senior housing's fine. We need it across the board. 'cause if you, if you serve one segment, it'll open up another segment. Right. Um. But they need to know. Can you speak more about that? Yeah. Well, so they need to tell a little more about that. There's a HUD Pro grant, uh, that, I mean, you can learn more about it when you [00:47:00] get back to Nashville, um, because, you know, I, I just met with a group of pastors on, uh, Monday.
Mayor Kelly: They don't. They don't, or Tuesday morning rather. Uh, but they don't know how to do housing development, let alone affordable housing development. So it, the program that you've got going in Nashville is pairing them with technical assistance to say, okay, great. We'll donate the land. How do we go about getting the grants?
Mayor Kelly: How do we go about, you know, pairing with developers? To, to create housing on this site, which would then, you know, reasonable to assume those folks might wander over to a service on Sunday morning. Right? Yeah. Okay. Or on Wednesday night. And so, uh, it's, it's an all hands on deck thing in Tennessee. We, we've gotta be able to accommodate this.
Mayor Kelly: Uh, again, we, we, we cannot become a place that's so hollowed out that, you know, rank and file blue collar workers can't live in our cities. And, and, uh, it's a work in progress we've made, you know, thank goodness we don't. I mean, again, it is the, the flip side of all that hot economic growth. And in the same way that we're not growing quite as fast as Nashville, we don't have quite the same level of affordable housing problems you do, [00:48:00] but it's the same thing.
Mayor Kelly: It's just slightly cooler temperature.
Spencer: Yeah. Well, mayor, we cap every podcast that we do with, uh, a quick fill in the blank exercise. Okay. So I'm gonna read you a short prompt with a blank at the end. Just
Mayor Kelly: check in to make sure Paris doesn't have like a tranquilizer gun over there.
Spencer: Shoot me in the neck. You know, I'm, I'm one wrong answer. Answer. I speak freely. Okay. That's right. Yeah. All right. Uh, so here's question one. A city succeeds when its people feel blank. Loved. Hmm. That's good.
Spencer: public private partnerships work best when blank.
Mayor Kelly: Private partnerships work best when people set their egos aside for the public good. Mm-hmm.
Spencer: The most misunderstood thing about city government is blank.
Mayor Kelly: The most misunderstood thing about city government [00:49:00] is that we work hard every day to make it a better city. I mean, most people think we don't. Yeah. But we do.
Spencer: Yeah. I, I liked that earlier that.
Spencer: Human psychology has not changed over a very long time. And it won't change. And it won't change. And finding that leadership to be able to keep that boil going. Right, exactly. Like what you said earlier, because we can't wait. I mean that's I think, I think seeing. Just the evolution of Chattanooga over a couple hundred years.
Spencer: Yeah. There's been some moments where it was make or break.
Mayor Kelly: I a hundred percent. And you know, Martin Luther King Jr. Talked about the urgency of, now there's a reason I use that in my, uh, when Chattanooga planet, we talk about that a lot. Again, we have to remind people that you know, that people's lives, quite literally, uh, and sometimes metaphorically, but often, quite literally, people's lives are at stake.
Mayor Kelly: Hmm.
Spencer: Well, mayor [00:50:00] Kelly, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you, Spencer. Thank you for giving us a little civics lesson. Well, uh, teaching us about that. We got that too. Thank you very much. Uh, we're excited to see what you do with the city over the coming years.
Mayor Kelly: It's been a pleasure. I appreciate, uh, the opportunity.
Spencer: Carli, we're back from Chattanooga. We covered a lot of content. We interviewed a lot of interesting people while we were there. Mayor Tim Kelly was someone that we got to talk to and we covered everything from his favorite pizza toppings. Gross. I'm sorry, to quantum computing in Chattanooga. I mean, pretty incredible range.
Spencer: You can't say that signature required. Doesn't bring you what you want to hear.
Carli: I know we talked about everything from anchovies, right to entrepreneurship and everything in between. He was a really interesting guy coming from the private sector saying he's the non politician. Politician. I found his discussion of.
Carli: The breakdown of what it means to be a mayor. I think I even quoted Paw Patrol at one point [00:51:00] and talked about the archetype of a mayor and how Chattanooga is different from a county mayor versus a city mayor, and I felt like he did a really good job of explaining his role and what works well and how he can be most effective, and then maybe what some of the challenges are.
Spencer: Yeah, we talked about what it means to be a strong mayor, and that's not just. From a leadership perspective, it's literally, it's like pumping
Carli: iron, right? Like actually, mayor Tim Kelly can go and do bodybuilding. Just kidding.
Spencer: If that's the case, then Glenn Jacobs is gonna be able to just whoop everybody's butt for all toast.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting to hear that a strong mayor. Is more than just from a leadership perspective, but is truly that some mayors from an authority standpoint, just from a, I don't know if it's Constitution or from the bylaws, but they have the ability to effectuate change and the mayor of Chattanooga is one of those mayors, and I think that's part of what has led.
Spencer: The City [00:52:00] of Chattanooga transform itself over 50 years is that leadership has said, Hey, we're no longer going to be willing to accept a title of being the dirtiest city in the United States of America, and we envision something different for ourselves. Uh, so I enjoyed getting to hear his take of the priorities that he has, the things that are working, the things that are not working in Chattanooga.
Spencer: And what he wants to do over the balance of his time left in office.
