How A City Works

Published Aug 15, 2024, 10:01 AM

In this special episode, John has a live conversation with Memphis Mayor Paul Young. They unpack what it takes to be the CEO of a city

Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hello Alo Hello, And of course we also have our special guests of Operation Hope. John God, thank you so innovator in residence. Is that what it is that makes you a bad system? Uh? Hello Memphis, Hello, this is very cool. We've never done this before. By the way, I want to just acknowledge my friend Beth from First Horizon Bank who's here? And Keith from First Horizon Bank, my team from Operation Hope. Uh, that's here. And the heroes and heroes of this city. You know, Doctor King mayor doctor Ing only had seventy employees at his height, and his whole budget in his best year with six hundred thousand dollars. Think about now a department of the city, I mean small department, six hundred thousand, five undred thousand dollars. His whole budget in his best year was six hundred thousand dollars, and he with seventy employees, changed the world and did it without firing a shot. Indeed, and mayors are having to deal with popularity rates. If you're if you're a great mayor, you get a sixty five percent popularity rate. You're great. You're just absolutely killing it, which means at any give at the moment in time, thirty eight five percent of people actually hate your guts. I'm learning that. Yeah. But doctor King at his height, Nobel Peace Prize and all had twenty percent of the Black community support and twenty percent of the white community support, and half of the white community support was Jewish. That was at his height. Everybody else was either sitting on their hands minding their business saying it's not my business, or calling him a rebel, rouser, a troublemaker, and saying that he was a detriment to democracy. Sure, it's really hurt his feelings, you know, really, I mean I know it did because I can talk to bash Or Andrew Young was the last living lieutenant the Doctor King, my mentor who was on that balcony when Doctor King was assassinated here in Memphis, right, And I want you to be encouraged. No good d show go unpunished. Thank you, but do good anyway. I feel it. And you're looking good man, Thank you, thank you, thank you. I knew I was gonna be with you today, sir, and and and then when you when you have daus, just go and talk to your fine wife about how let her light you and say how smart you are you It's not like she does forgets. That's her job. Behind every successful man is an exhausted woman. And my wife knows your wife. You saw your wife recently and was bragging about her. And oddly enough, you know the day that you and I, I I called you by accident or texted you by accident about something, and it just so happened we were about to talk about about this tour. I'm sure you're like, what the heck is John talking about? I definitely didn't know what it was about. I didn't understand it, and and that and and within an hour my wife sent me a photo of her with your wife in Dallas. And coincidence is God's way, many anonymous. That's an Andrew Young quote. And if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan. That's and so I just want I say all this to set up a conversation. What I love about this is I get to finally ask somebody else some questions because later on I'll be the one being, you know, I guess on the hot seat. And this is something I love unpacking on my podcast, and I want to commend give commendations to my friend Charlemagne and he is the owner of the Black Effect Network podcast series on iHeart. I serve on his board, but it's his company and as a board member, my job is just to help them run a good business and whatever. They're like, Dan, you know, John, actually you are like walking financial literacy. You know you are. You know people talk about being a financial influencer. You have financial influence, You've done this stuff. Can you just do a podcast yourself? And so I agreed to do it, and it's actually taken off this Money and Wealth podcast and hopefully you guys are subscribers already. It's growing month over a month or one hundred percent, and I'm unpacking how the economy works. I've done in this book financial literacy for all. We do it at operation, but I'm trying to reach as many people as possible, democratize opportunity. And so I thought it would be cool to unpack a city. And I thought that you'd be the ideal person as somebody who spent your entire life, your entire professional career, not as a professional politician, but as a professional public servant and twenty years working in the plumbing of a city Shelby County, and here in the city working most recently as CEO of a very important business coalition. I think that since twenty twenty one, and before that, I mean I met you working with Mayor Strickland. By the way, Mayor Strickland sent me a note a couple of week text messages in the way here. He was so proud of you and so proud of the work continuing, and so you could he was rooting for your continued success, which is nice to see. He's Denail. We're at the law school now, I guess across the street. And before that you had other roles, including being a planning director, but really almost an engineer for economic development. That's the way I would describe it. So you you know, and by the way, you remind me of I did that. We launched the American Aspiration Tour with my friend Mary Andrew Dickens in Atlanta, and he's got an engineering degree chemical engineering, and so he understands details and plumbing and this. So there's new generation of leaders are detailed people. You understand the architecture and how systems work. It's really important because you're now dealing with what I call the aspiration generation. This generation is the aspiration generation. Uh, these folks, young people come to me, stop me in airports. I mean, I go to an airport. I mentioned it earlier when I spoke at the first Horizon. TSA agents are calling it. They're calling out their credit score numbers to me, six seventy Yoh, what's up. That's an impact right there. Yeah, that people going to people going to clubs and asking ladies what their credit score is and asking to do what y'all got, A job you got and whether you have a good credit score. By the way, you're marrying your business partner for life, So it's a big deal. But my point is that we're trying to get from the streets to the c suites. We're trying to go from civil rights to silver rights. So having a person like you and Mayor Dickens who understand the details and who honor those details and who operationalize that it's really important. But that train moves slowly. It's not as exciting as some of the other stuff, right, and the problems are immediate, the solutions take time, so that means people need you to understand your vision. So I don't want campaign speeches. I don't want I don't want rhetoric. I don't don't use twenty words when two will do. I'm not a voter nor a campaign bitter. Actually I was, but uh, I mean you were. He was all over me like a chief suit like he was texting emails. I off his home when I was sleeping, I had he was in my ear airaising built a machine. Yeah you know, I'm I'm kidding. He did his job and garnered a lot of support. And I only don't support political offices. I can't because I've served Republican and Democratic President's Opera JOP. It was a big tent. But he was a friend and and I wanted to show support, uh to him. And I think thought he I thought he'd be a good mayor before he was mayor, and I think he will be a good mayor for your city. You got to give him a shot, You got to. You gotta cut him some gotta cut him some slack. He just got here. Yeah, So I'm gonna ask you some questions. And I want to, like, imagine that you're reading the Wall Street Journal, but you lived in the country, your whole life, and but you got to translate the Wall Street Journal for them. I want you to translate government speak in a way that has you just chilling and talking to people and is planning to link English as you can. And I'm gonna I'm gonna try to help help you to unpack it a bit. But the one thing I'm gonna say now and I'm gonna say a little later, I've heard. I've heard from a number of people who whispered my ear because they thought I could whisper in your ear. One person, I asked, how's the mayor doing? But other people I didn't even ask their opinion. They just gave it to me. And oh, the mayor is paying a lot of attention to folks with money. Uh huh. Oh, the mayor is uh is really uh talking to these business people.

Uh huh.

Let me tell you what the mayor is. Mayor is a salesman or saleswoman. I mean this look and Maastor Young who really turned Atlanta into the international city. Now, there are other mayors in Atlanta who did other things that were really important. Keisha he Sha did suff is important. And you know other mayors fixed the plumbing issues, literally the plumbing issues, santation issues. Maynard Jackson created black wealth. Uh, that's his legacy, created black wealth. And bass Young doesn't touch that, doesn't claim that that was him. But the guy who turned Atlanta into the international city of the traditional South without question, Ambassador Andrew Young, who's ninety two years young. And so we had this opportunity to have this six billion dollar investment coming to Atlanta through Centennial Yards, the biggest investment in Atlanta since Atlanta. And this is there was this debate going back and forth at the city Council and it was raucous and dah da da da, and Bassie Young was asked, what do you think about this? He said, wait a minute, somebody, some private billionaire pause, who don't live in your city. Pause, it's how about bringing pause billions of dollars in New York southern city. And it's not mafia money, is you know? It's not booky and them your answer, your answers will say yes. You say yes before they go to another city. And you figure that stuff out and you figure out how to wrestle out of the ground and make it beneficial to your people, and you negotiate the details of it. But you don't sit there in noodle with somebody trying to get if it's something, if it has to be in front of it, as in billion, the answer is yes. And sometimes people forget the role they're in. It's easy to say no, I guess and hard to say yes. Now you've got actually execute. But as a mayor of a city, your job is to be a salesman for for in this case from Memphis, chief sales officer. Now you can to be chief I got punked officer, but you got to be chief sales officer. And this is a capitalist game. Even if you want to ship again I can say it, he can't. Even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to first collect it like a capitalist. His job, every mayor's job is to bring as many resources as you can into that city, mobilize and restle to them to the ground, and then redeploy them to help all of God's children. And if you don't understand that about your mayor, you don't understand what the mayor's job is. And he can't just talk to broke people. Am I missing something I said earlier? I say it again, you hang around nine bro people, you'll be the tenth. So that's not political, but that's the truth. And so if you don't do what I frankly what the criticism that I've been to, the critique that wasn't the critiques I've heard from you, I applied. Now if you don't do good stuff with the resources you collect, then we got another conversation. But again I started out by telling you the man's been in economic development planning for twenty plus years. He knows what he's doing. So what I want you to do is to unpack the mysteries here because people have reason to be suspicious as a big money and be suspicious of corporate My my friend's gonna hate me saying this, because I'm sure you'd prefer to keep his nose. I think Brian Jordan is a great human being. Like First Horizon Dingy, and he talked to you about he hates the crime. He hates turning on TV and just seeing crime bad for business, is bad for morale, bad for the soul of the city is as bad. Of course. The part of that is you need opportunity to offset it, which we're going to talk about it during our town hall meeting, and he's right about being bad at crime is bad for business, and so he tried to help. He talk to somebody of another city encourage him to come here. The city couldn't afford to pay for it, so he and some other people put some money up, and then somebody criticized him about putting the money up, as if it's some agenda. No, this is how things happen, and you want somebody else to pay for it?

And what am I missing here? I've heard a little bit. I haven't heard much critique. I've heard praise for paying for it. You know, safety is something just business leaders are asking for, but every resident in our community is asking for safety, and so you know, when it comes to safety and economic development. My goal is to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can from this seat to turn the trajectory of our city. Memphis is the largest majority African American city in America. And when I give that stat I say it in any room. It doesn't matter if the room is predominantly black or white or Hispanic or whatever it is. It's a statement of fact. And what I want us to do is turn that into a positive because for far too long. When you hear that, there's a negative connotation that comes with it. You think about poverty, you think about crime, you think about health disparities, and I want Memphis to be the city that's reversing that. And in order to do that, we're going to have to attack it from all levels. We're gonna have to make sure that we're locking folks up that's out here terrorizing people on the streets. We're gonna make sure have to make sure that we're giving opportunities to our young people so that they can make a better choice. And we got to make sure that there's job opportunities that our people can grow into and business opportunity and business opportunity so that you can be entrepreneurs and start the next FedEx and AutoZone and all of these homegrown companies that we have in our city. We need more, and we need our young people to see that they can be the ones to do it, because for far too many, it seems like a distant reality, like that's not even possible for me, and that's what people believe. And so what we have to do, and you know what, it's in your name, but you have to give people hope hope that they can get to another place in their lives. And you know, we're I think we are. It's a big ship that we're shifting, but I think we are starting to turn the ship.

Well again, I think it's too early. It's you know, someone say the credit is too new to rate, but I know you've been doing this for a long time, years now, executing on it in the way that people can see it. I would just encourage you to own it. Don't let people talk about and make up stuff about what role this prompt own it?

Now?

This is me, I'm the mayor. Is my initiative. Yes, I didn't want this on the city's balance sheet. We got enough things we're paying for. If X, Y and Z corporations, legal companies want to pay for it, I want them to pay for it. Next subject. I mean, so, I think it's brilliant that you got somebody else to pay for it, and it just happens to be the largest bank in Tennessee and others hopefully, and they benefit if it's successful. On the one hand, they're paying, frankly indirectly to lock up criminals, but also they'd love to fund businesses from people who turn their life around and want to go and start a business. They love to fund those loans too. You get benefits on both sides. So look, I want you to unpack what it's like to be CEO of a city. Do you have a balance sheet?

Yeah, we definitely have a balance sheet, and we have a big budget. I mean, our city budget is eight hundred million dollars eight hundred fifty million dollars roughly.

Wow.

And this year we had a pretty challenging year because as a first time mayor, first time politician period, I had to come to the people of Memphis and ask for a tax increase. And it's because our revenues didn't match our expenses. We had more in expenses than we had in recurring revenues, and we we didn't have a strong fund balance, meaning we were taking from our reserves every year and in order to so slow that down, Yeah, yeah, you just cought a whole bunch of stuff. Fun balance isn't So I just asked you one you did. He's smart, he's making smart sexy, I asked him. I asked We've been making dumb sex even way too long.

We've dumb down and celebrated making smart sexy again, I asked him one question. He just went off on a whole situation. Do you have a balance sheet? Yes, yes, you have. You had a fun balance, meaning you had more money, You had a surplus of money in your fund, your reserves. But that reserves was going down because people were trying to do the right thing and trying not to raise taxes, which we hadn't done in twelve years, right, and so you had to be a bit of the bad guy and raise the taxes in order to balance the ship. Now, in the short term, capitalists are going to say, well, that's a discouragement. It's a discouragement. They definitely said. So I'm sure you're going to get to that in a minute. I'm sure you have a plan, right, But the first thing I want you to make it clear is that you just like your household. He's got a budget. You say, yours is injured million dollars a year, and you've got income and expenses. I want to get this in a minute, But you also have some reserves, a savings account that's fund balance, and you guys have done pretty good to have a surplus. Lot of cities don't have a surplusing it just issue debt, right, And in order to protect your credit rating, the ability your credit score for a city, in order to take your credit rating, you can't just keep reducing your fund balance, right.

So, and that's exactly why we had to do what we had to do, and it was approved. And you know what I would say in return to the people that brought up the point that if you raise taxes, you're going to force businesses out because they don't want to pay taxes and they're going to leave. And my response was, we can't afford not to. We can't afford not to add more value to this community. And the job that I now have is to give them return value. They need to see return on their increased investment, which means a safer city, means that we have to be more aggressive and attacking blight, which is ripping our city apart. We have to be more aggressive in promoting the good in Memphis because Memphis is an amazing city. Like the people of Memphis have so much soul, so much energy, and.

We're just cool.

It's just a cool place to be and we have to find ways to lean into it and let the world know who we are. Lean into our arts and culture and so you know, part of our strategy is to just make sure that we're making those investments that really uplift our whole community.

So, uh, infrastructure, infrastructure, Yeah, get rid of the potholes. Yeah, make sure that you're in Atlanta. This pothole is big enough to take your whole car. Yeah, where's Joe Ane go? I don't know was the freeway? She just disappeared. So, I mean, I love I hear him. My custom rims driving over a dang on pothole. Oh, you know, you know, you know this is when it's when it hits with that food. You know, you go to the wheels the wheelshop. You don't got too much experience with this topic. So you're solving potholes, you're solving infrastructure issues. With the tax base was just a way to balance your budget. You're trying to free up some resources to do things like what what are some of your big moonshots?

Moonshots? You know I talked about blight. Right now, we are doing some aggressive actions where we're going into communities that have been starving for attention. You know, grass that's taller than me and you put together. In some instances, we are attacking those communities aggressively where we have all of our divisions of city government coming together and cleaning them up, and ultimately the moonshot goal is to have private investment come into those communities.

You hire minority landscaping companies and women all landscaping companies to do that to fix the blight.

Absolutely, that's positive, exactly, that's a part of our strategy when we went to city council. That was actually what we were promoting that we would hire community development corporations to get neighborhood groups to come together to be contractors for the city to own particular corridors. So if you think about a major corridor, I'll say Poplar Popular, even though it's a state highway, you would see individuals from that community going out and actually cutting the grass, actually picking up trash and litter, and those are things that are going to impact.

The psyche of Memphis. Memphians.

When you see people out there getting engaged cleaning up, it makes you want to be a part of it. It makes you want to get get into the get into the mix. And so what we're trying to do is get everybody to own their block. And when you think about the big moon shot. The big moon shot for me is for Memphis to be the next city in the South. And what I mean by that is every few years. Yeah, it's another itch city in Atlanta, had it, Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Charlotte. All of these cities have been the id city for a period of time, and it's time for the next one in the South. And there is absolutely no reason that it shouldn't be Memphis.

Yeah. I heard that this one of your your chamber leader was coming this later on this evening for the other public session. Uh Ted thing is his name, A very nice guy. He'd mentioned that there was a six billion dollar startup uh in Ai. Uh that's coming to Memphis. And I'm not gonna mention the name of the person doing the startup, but I do believe that the start of itself is very in the media already. Yes, but it's a really it's a really smart move for the city. And I thought about a theme for you uh uh blues bones and backbone. Uh blues bones, barbecue and and technology backbone, like if you can have it's really not a very elegant theme, but but but if you can have certain things that you rally around that people know you about. I mean Nashville's country music and Atlanta is urban music. And I think you guys can own the whole blues. You got Elvish, you got, of course that was inspired by black arts. You've got the food backbone, and you've got now I think this technology backbone, amongst others that you've specialized in. Again, let's go back now to the basics. You have a balance sheet, you had a savings account, you have an income statement. Then the simplest language possible, do you have a balanced budget. Do you have as much income coming in as you have going out or do you have a deficit. Do you have more income, do you have more expenses out? Then you have income coming in on an annualized basis, without savings without This year.

We have a balanced budget. We have actually more revenues coming in, and we'll contribute ten million dollars to fund balance.

And so come on, now, you guys get to give us some love of that. We're reversing the trend. You're a positive revenue, Yeah, positive revenue.

We're contributing ten million dollars to fund balance as long as things go as planned, and so that's the trend that we want our city to be on. And as we continue to get more economic development wins, projects like the one you just mentioned are going to help our tax roles. That's not one that we were counted on in terms of paying taxes this year. So that's going to be an even added.

Should be net revenue a few million dollars a year once I get going. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

So you know, those things are going to contribute to our bottom line and allow us to continue to do more and add more value, bring more development, bring more growth, and bring more taxes into our city.

Gofers. So balanced budget negative I mean sorry negative positive income cash flow? Uh. And you're not living from paycheck to paycheck. Uh, you're not living on borrowing. Uh. This tax Uh, this tax rate was designed to level out everything we weren't pulling from from surplus. And uh, you're you're going to make some moonshot investments, uh, some of what you've already mentioned. And how's your credit rating? We're double A.

And we recently got some news that we have we had a positive outlook. Now we have a negative outlo because of some of the things that had happened in the past, but we are confident that our recent actions are going to change that to a positive outlook.

And what are your sources of revenue?

Property taxes, sales taxes from the state. There are some fees, but you know, there's probably you know, ten fifteen million dollars, so not a significant amount. The large portion of our revenues come from property taxes and sales taxes.

Okay, everybody listen now, anybody listen to this podcast in Memphis. Listen now. The homeownership rate in the zip code I pulled up when I was at first rising early and I'm pulled up when we do our town hall. The zip code I pulled up showed a twenty eight percent homeownership rate. I don't know anybody, anybody know what that zip code was I pulled up earlier. One two six, Yeah, was it ritten? Yeah? Three eight one two six, just on the other side of downtown. So see, my man knows what the zip code is. I'm talking a lot. That's my kind of mayor. So uh. I love math because it doesn't have an opinion. I just love data. You can, guys can go to my whole financial Wellness index, pull in your zip code and I'll tell you how you live it you're put in your zip code, it'll tell you what your credit score is. And so this area has a very low credit score and it has a twenty eight percent home ownership rate. Why is that important? What did he tell you? What is the number one way they produce income? Property taxes? If you have low ownership home ownership levels, you're going to have low property tax levels. And if that home ownership is dilapidated because you have non owner occupants, you have a bunch of tow up properties that nobody claims tax defaulted property. So what you want to do is encourage people. The number one way you build wealth in America the number This is a win win for the citizens and the mayor and the city. The number one way you build wealth in America is home ownership. Without question. So the mainstream homeowners or break in America is seventy five percent. Now just study that for a minute. If your rate is twenty eight percent and the national average is seventy five percent, the easiest thing you can do, and if it costs is same a cost save amount basically to rent as it does to own. The smartest thing you can do is as soon as possible become a homeowner. Real estate values have never gone down the history of America. In the history of America. Now they go up, and then they there's a recession and they recede. Or you can have an environment and a neighborhood that is receded by the way, so they may stay there for a minute, but then once that neighborhood has been is received attention and revitalization, or the neighbor the area has have economic energy, it corrects above the line and keeps going up because there's no they aren't buying any more land, you are making any more land. So and you get tax breaks from being a home ow owner. You get right off, you get all kind of business being a homeowner. And you get that mortgage from one of the banks here, and you could be able to write off that mortgage for twenty of the thirty years and get that money back in the tax refund. There's lots of benefits. The tax code is essentially designed to benefit homeowners, so that would help you definitely significantly. And what we dribed is what we want from Memphis neighborhoods. I was in Hyde Park this morning and we did one of our blight attacks. Where we were going after all of the blight that we saw in the community, and there's so much opportunity, so many vacant lots, so many homes that are unoccupied, and there are so many people in our community that need quality housing. And I want to be able to pair those individuals families that are looking for housing with those opportunities in our community. And I want to pair.

Those opportunities with our aspiring developers, those those people that are starting in the development space and they may not have enough to do a one hundred unit apartment complex, but they can do two single family homes in Hyde Park. That has to be a part of the economic formula for what we do for our city to revive our neighborhoods.

And I want Methits to be a place.

Where the individuals that were able to live in those communities during the down years when the economy had turned and nobody was paying attention.

I want them to be able to thrive.

In those communities as they revive, as they come back. And we have an opportunity to do that because there's enough vacancy in those neighborhoods where you don't have to put people out. You can provide resources for them to be able to do home repair programs while you're taking these vacant, blighted properties and you're turning those into assets that people can build wealth from.

Just like you're talking about, are there city programs, city, county, state, federal programs that people can access to help them become a homeowner or a developer of these neighborhoods. Yeah.

Absolutely, We certainly have down payment assistance programs that are offered through the city. We have development programs through our Department of Housing and Community Development where you can get grants and loans to support private development. And you know, we have other organizations THHDA and others, other the bank programs that allow people to be able to access capital.

And so you've got you got. I mean, you have major banks in town, like what Wells, Fargo Truists first arise in regions I know off the top of my head there's a couple more. All of them have down payment assistance programs and prime mortgages for folks who meet certain criteria in underserved neighborhoods. And that could be combined with your city programs you just mentioned, right, and they use it a lot.

They use those programs to help families in our community, and you know, we want to continue to double down on those initiatives. We have some creative ideas around how to support families with you know, uh guaranteed income programs that we're trying to get off the ground, But we want to be creative to support families in our city and really allow them to achieve their dreams.

And we talked a little bit about the revenue side, and we've talked a little bit about how to enhance the revenue side. And one of the reasons I'm doing this in this way like I want to I want this mystery to be gone. Like people when they don't know what's going on, they think, okay, there's some shenanigans, right. You know, people say things to me that are crazy, Like this is one thing that people say to me just drives me. That's Oh, you know, John, I hate rich people. You don't you hate rich people to you become rich. What you hate is a game system. You just think the system is rigged and there's no way that you can fix it or participate it in it, So you hate it. And people who might be hating on you or hating on the city. They're like, there's some fishy going on, Like I don't understand where the money's going. I want to unpack that transparency. He just told you whether the revenue is coming from, right, he told you it's sales tax, right, property tax, sales sales tax and fees fees, And then you get some grants and some stuff, you know, manner from Heaven's sinde of stuff. But that's essentially where eight hundred and fifty million comes from a year. Right. Then you got this surplus because you've brought in more than you spent some one time COVID money and things like that. Okay, and now let's talk about the expense side of the balance sheet. Where are you spending your money.

At a lot of areas paving roads? We spend money on solid waste. Police, right, police, fire? Public safety takes up about seventy percent of our budget. Whoa, yeah, about seventy percent of seventy percent seventy law enforcement is seventy percent.

Seventy percent of our budget? Is law enforcement? Slow down? Wait a minute, ye, So if Memphis citizens decided to do block clubs for crime, that if Memphis citizens decided block by block that they're going to put together a community policing situation to identify problems in people, to turning the bad people, to support the young people, to neutralize the negative, to discourage people from having crime in their community, and that brought down crime. So you can redeploy some of that money to possibilities versus problems. I mean, just that seventy percent number, If you can just manage that down or or use someone's resources to even to get people more engaged in the uplifting their community, that's one big lever that the community can help you with.

Right, Yeah, definitely. I mean, the reduction in crime is something that we're all striving for. And we actually did reduce the police budget some this year by removing some of the vacant positions. That was actually how we reduced a lot of the gap that we had when we were working on our budget. But still, you know, we spend a lot of money on it, and you know, when we have decisions to make with regards to what do we cut, you know, public safety is usually the sacred col Like, you can't really touch that one.

Seventy cents of every dollar. Yeah, what are the other areas you spend money on.

Public works, you know, fixing up the streets and the roads, engineering, planning and development, housing parks, parks gets a good portion of our budget. Our community centers and those are really the basic libraries. Amazing libraries like where we're sitting in right now. This is a newly renovated historic library.

I like to get my book in this library. I'd love to have my finish a letacire for all book on the shelves over there. Yeah, I think we can make that. Heaven I appreciate that. So and then you get some federal money.

Then we get federal money for transportation, for housing, instructure, infrastructure. Yeah, so you know, and then some state dollars. We also get money from the state. So we spend it in a lot of different ways, and certainly there are more needs than we have revenues, but we try to be as efficient as we can in supporting our city.

Little known fact most mayors don't control their airport.

Yeah, so we have a airport authority where the city mayor and the county mayor. We have county mayors in Tennessee, accounty mayor. We appoint the board members the airport. So we definitely have a relationship with the airport influence, but not power. Yeah, I guess that's you can't tell them exactly what to do. You can suggest encourage exactly. Is a school district in your under your purview?

Now?

The school district is the independent body that is funded by the county government, So it's Memphians pay city taxes and county taxes, and the county tax pays for the schools.

I just like that he has the answers. I've been doing this for a while. You mean, amazed how many people in this position don't have a clue. And what would be afraid of me sitting across from them asking them actually precise questions. We just can't wait till the interview is over because all they got is, you know, platitudes and slogans and generalities. I just love I'm saying this intentionally. I know, you know the answers. How is the short term your short term things? There's good debt and bad debt. So and if you're taxing people and not giving a return on an investment, well that's just a bad that's just a bad expense from an investor's perspective. But if you're turning that if you're taking that money and investing it and things that appreciate in value, then that's actually because because it could be considered a good debt or good obligation. You have short term needs against long term needs. So short term two years, long term, twenty years, ten twenty years. Give us some sense of how you're taking the gains you've got right now and you're going to convert them into some short and long term wins.

What do those things look like? I mean short term wins. What we're looking at. We're making investments in our technology fiber. We have a fiber network that's being installed, and we are working to upgrade the camera network that we have around the city. That's a short term that'll help with crime, definitely, it's gonna help with crime and quality of life. So imagine that we well it's not imagine. We have five hundred and fifty intersections that currently have a fiber network connection and we're going to be connecting HD cameras to those intersections, and those HD cameras will allow us to have AI layered on. We're not using it for facial recognition, but object recognition. So if somebody's throwing trash on the road. We have a camera that's very clear that's going to allow us to catch them. If somebody has stolen a vehicle and it's a red mositor where they took off the license plate with a dint on the hood, we can actually see that car as it passes any of our major intersections throughout the city. And so that's a short term investment that we think is going to pay significant dividends when it comes to long term, like our capital budget CIP, that's what we call the Capital Improvement budget. We are you know, looking at things like you know, police cars, and one of the one of the things that got a lot of debate, it was only a million dollars out of like a ninety five million dollar budget. But we also invested in school facilities this year, which was the first time we have invested in schools in you know, twelve thirteen years, and it was important for me because of this one fact. I know, we're not in the education business, but one srees are our kids and they're walking in our communities, and if they're going to schools that look like nobody cares, then they behave as such. And our kids deserve to be in facilities that match what we're trying to grow them to be.

And then the other thing is it allows us to have.

An even stronger partnership with our school system because one of the things that we have in our core city neighborhoods, as we look at all the blight and vacancy in some of the communities, in those communities where you have the largest aggregated pieces of land that are opportunity for redevelopment, they are school sites. They are abandoned school buildings, And we want to be partners with the school system as we look to redevelop those neighborhoods and communities and turn those vacant structures that are generating no tax revenue into developments that are generating tax revenue that are supporting the school system and the City of Memphis.

Fantastic. As you were saying that, I'm thinking imagine an AI are robotics are stem initiated certification school or programming institute that is funded by revenue from a I'm making this up now, as I'm talking a call center that Silicon Valley or a backbone center that Silicon Valley decides, well, this is a school site, former school site, I can put my backbone from my technology center for the Southeast and riffing here in Memphis, and I can offset it with I can and I can literally create jobs by training people to do the jobs in the center of creating goodwill in the area. I'll get some tax breaks maybe because I'm doing this with the city and it's some goodwill on the way, and it's what I need to do anyway, and it's less expensive as I'm doing it in Memphis versus doing it yeah San Francisco or where. And I mean, that'sh just all the time.

I like the way you're thinking, because when you talked about the AI project, you know, for me, there's a lot of conversation around how many jobs will they create at that facility, And for me, it doesn't matter.

That's right.

What it is is a statement of innovation. We have the world's largest, strongest supercomputer right here in Memphis, Tennessee.

That part that matters. And I just proved right there just statements things. But we want to build on that.

And you know, I think I've had some early conversations with some you know, outside capital and they are definitely interested in our city.

And we're going to keep pushing the narrative. So you know, I'm sure you wake up every day a little anxious and a little angry. Because an inner city in France is called Paris, where the Olympers are happening right now. Inner city in the UK is called London. Inner city in Turkey is called Istanbul. You know, I've traveled to one hundred countries. The people honor their inner cities. We don't. These are gold mines, and you're right next to the river and you go, you know, this is a gold mine. You got to reimagine it and it puts an energy into it. Give it a business plan and you got and you give the mayor some time to unpack this because none of this stuff, the problems took a long time, and this loser is gonna take a bit of time to to reimagine. I just think that what I've heard you say is directionally correct. Uh. The balance you just described and the income statement, is it on your website somewhere? Can people go to the City of Memphis website and see how this.

In Memphisy and all the financial information is there. It may not be as simplified as we probably could be. We're working on that, but it's definitely there.

And so one of the benefits of buying a share of any kind of stock is when you buy one share of stock, you become a shareholder, and that gives you the rights and privileges of every detail of that publicly traded company. H one share, one share of stock is you can own one share, you can own a million shares, doesn't matter. You have the same rights. And what he just said was as a taxpayer of a resident, even of the city of Memphis, you have a right to see everything they're doing. And he's saying it's already available for you on the website. And if somebody's talking mess I'd encourage them to go to the website and see if there are questions or answered first. It's so easy to be a critic. Yeah, and I like what you what you're doing much better than other people are not. Doing. Yeah.

Well for me, I mean, you said you spoke about waking up every day. I wake up every day so inspired and I feel great every day because I the honor of serving as the mayor of the city.

That I love.

There you go, So I'm talking about for me, it's just about work. We just we just got to work it, and I think we're headed in the right direction. So what's your vision for twenty thirty. As we come to clothes, I want you to now we've unpacked the balance sheet, the income statement, the expense statement, We've put together a household budget. We talked about a couple of your moonshots, a couple of year priorities.

Why do I give you an observation, by the way, yeah, please. My mom always said, don't offer advice. Wise, men don't need any fools don't listen. So it's just an observation after listening to folks complain and criticize and they care, by the way, this is why they're saying it's about the city of care. It seems to me that people are just sort of passing them. They're passing each other, they're not talking to each other. And I would encourage a what do you call a coalition of the willing and an operation who can help you with this if you like. But it's the private sector, the government, the community which includes academia and media, sitting at the same table on a regular basis, sharing information, brainstorming strategies coming up. Every problem has having a beginning and middle and an end. Put things that are on the docket, that are priorities right now on the table, and give people something constructive to do at our next session. I'm just I'm gonna lay out my ideas for some things that people can do. But I think you know, people don't attack themselves, right, Yeah, I mean I did this. As you know, I've advised Republican and Democratic presidents, and I've been recognized. Our work's been recognized by five presidents from both parties, and I have known nine presidents. One I won't mention. And I brought President Bush the Sun into South central LA two thousand and two, hit that aniversary of the Ritney King riots, and the city went crazy. The leaders of some of the leaders, what is John Bryan doing? This is crazy, This is ridiculous. Why why he's bringing this man in the South Central LA? So my pastor God rest is Soul was the unofficial mayor of l A's Reverend Doctor Cecil Chip Murray of the First AMM Church and uh in l A. And and then his dear friend was Bishop Blake of Kojik, which of course we know has a treat strong presence here. And Brett was Reverend was hosting the president the events on Monday. This is a Friday. So Reverendy called me, my son, I just got a call and there's a certain congress person that is very unhappy with you at the moment, and they wonder why you're bringing this man into the to to our community. I said, well, do you mean the president of the United States of America. Last time I checked, there's not six of them, that's not three of them. It's just one of them. And it's not like we've solved all the problems in this community before he got here, Like there's serious problems. So I said, I don't care whether you republic the Republican or Democrat. I want to be somebody from to get it done party. So after I said all that, he's like, okay, you finished, my son. Okay, this person has an The LA Times is writing a hit piece on you right now. It comes out tomorrow saying that this is despicable that you're bringing this man into south central LA. I had less than twenty four hours to respond, so I said, well, rever, right, Well did they call you know that? A community leader called me, very prominent community leader told me the name. Okay, that person okay, great, Look, please tell them and call them and say, I'm going to cancel the whole thing. Excuse me, my son, No, you're sick you no, no, I'm going to call the White House. See service is doing in sweeps right now. I'm just telling to cancel the whole thing. This person's think is a bad idea. Just canceled the whole thing. By the way, just tell the young lady who called you, who I know very well by reputation, I'll know her personally. Just tell her I'm really sorry to offend her. Because there was a private meeting with the President of United States and members of his cabin including HUD and Grant giving agencies, right before the public meeting with the President of United States on Monday. And I'm so apologetic. I'm sorry to offend I had her in a meeting of eighteen people with the President United States. She was sitting right next to the president in that meeting, and I'm so sorry I've been so unintentionally offensive. So just let her know I'm going to cancel that meeting too. And about twenty minutes later, I get a call back and they said, well, my son, They said, this has been a misunderstanding. They think this is a fabulous or idea that you're hosing in this meeting. What time is the private meeting? And so the meeting went forward. It was on a Monday. It was standing room only. All the people criticized were at the front of the line trying to get a picture. Uh where the private meeting happened. By the way, and the front page story in the La Times the next day was one hundred percent positive. I don't thing it's ever happened before since that a Republican president came into a committee like that and got that kind of positive praise. And it wasn't me. It was recognizing that people don't people don't attack themselves that as long as this meeting didn't include her, it must be a bad idea. The minute that it we incorporated her, it was a good idea. And nobody washes rental cars. You let you take the car for a week, you get it and you take it back to its owner. Everybody has to have an ownership in the problem and the solution. My suggestion is bring these people in, UH, make them stakeholders in the ideas and the thought process. You're going to get a lot of great ideas that are cheap. There's somebody else's and they're willing to pay for and uh and and let them do that, give her and give the credit away. I received that. So what is your vision that you want the young you? There's somebody out here listening to this who wants to be a mayor? What's your what's your thought for them? What's your vision for twenty years for Memphis? And what is it that you want people to know right now about being the mayor of other than you love it and it's a great thing. Yeah, you know, there's there's something that drives you absolutely out of your mind. What is that? A couple let's ask you three questions. Yeah, you asked me a lot.

So in terms of what I say to the young person, I just got to say this real quick. I had one of the most rewarding experiences through throughout this whole process when I was on the campaign trail. I was in Fraser and I was just wrapping up a parade, putting all the stuff in the trunk, and these two little guys ran up. They had on band uniforms. I think they may went to Treadsman or something, but they were like where's Paul Young And where's Paul Young at? And I jumped off of the band. I'm like here I go, Man, what's up? And it's like, man, we just want to be just like you.

Man.

You look like us, Man, you got on jeines. Man, we just want to be like you man. And you know, for me, like, that's what it's about. It's showing our next generation that there's an opportunity, like I'm Memphis, Like I'm no better, no different than anybody else that's from the city. And so you know, I think that's the message to the next generation, is that I'm you, You're me, Like we can change the city together. I think in the next twenty thirty years, I want I'm already I'm always thinking of headlines. And the headline I want to see is Memphis fastest growing city in the South, Memphis the fastest to close well disparities in a community, incomes growing in the city of Memphis. And I want to see the demographic crime going down. Obviously that's a given because in order to do all those things, we got to get that. That's right, you know, those are the headlines that I that I want to manifest for this community. And you asked me a third one.

But no, no, that that was that was pretty conference. That was pretty comprehensive. And uh, if I said to you in summary, uh, that we're living in a moment in history, this is the third reconstruction, that financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation, as important as the right to vote, That a seven hundred credit score is as important as a height as a college a college degree, and I want everybody to get a college degree, by the way. But if I said these sort of really sort of cut, you know, pushing the envelope, almost radical things to you, and said to you that I think is as important to breathe as breathing in a city like this, and we need it everywhere, We need incorporate it everywhere. And if doctor King was alive today, I believe this is the work that he would be doing. What would you say to that? And that and that the US mayor need to prioritize this financial literacy everywhere. What would you say to they think it's radical to that? Is that not on your to do list? Oh, It's definitely on our to do list. I mean, I think it's at the core of all the things that we're looking to do in our city. You have a statement, I take a lot of your bars man, a lot of the lines you say, I take one of them today.

One of them I always take is one where you said history never feels like history when you sit in the it and it just feels like another day. And I really feel like we're in a historic moment from Memphis that we're going to look back at this time and say, this is when it's shifted. And in order to really get the shift that we want, the financial literacy, the capacity of our community to understand how important it is for them to be able to build wealth and have assets and pass those assets down to their next generation is so important to break the cycle of generational poverty, because that's what we're dealing.

With in many instances.

And you know, I can go into the depths of our city, but at the end of the day, it's generational poverty, and we want to break that cycle through financial literacy and to.

To bring this full circle. Some people would say banks are racist and that's why they're not making loans. Banks are on racist people are racist, and some racist people work at banks. And now in nineteen twenty the bank was racist because the bank was owned by the Xyz family. An Xyz family was racist, and they actually looked at every own application and they said, I'm gonna give Keith the loan and I'm not gonna give Joeanne the loan. That was absolutely racist. Today a bank is publicly traded. The bank is so big, with sixty billion dollars just at this bank. First arison, you guys need to make every good loan you can. I mean, my rich friends think my poor friends do better if only to stay rich. I mean, even the racist needs black people to succeed because they need GDP to ride gross domestic product. And we're all in this thing together. And so what we need to do is what we made in Memphis. If the poverty rate is double the national average, if the credit average credit score is one hundred one hundred points below than that. By the way, this is true, Memphis credit score is one hundred points below the national average. National average national average is about six ninety five. Credit score Memphis is five ninety five. If I if I'm mistaken, not mistaken, yeah, five ninety five. So you're one hundred points below, which means when you wake up in the morning. Half the people or two thirds people in Memphis are locked out of the free enterprise system and you don't even know it. You can't get a decent car loan at a six hundred credit score, a five eighty credit score. You're not getting when you go to that secondary car lot and you get a Mercedes and they take you back to paper. You didn't get a Mercedes, you had mercy. These payments and an eighteen percent interest rate? Were they smiling at you and you're saying what's the payment? When you really should have asked what was the interest rate? You never asked the interest rate when there's a when there's a whenever asked what the payment is when it's an initial rate attached. That's a mobile bomb. That that car is gonna blow up on you. Is going to fail, I guarantee you, because the real business that they're in is maintenance. They're in a maintenance rip business. And they got they took you a little down payment. They wait for that for you to call and tell you to tell you that the car exploded. That you're gonna say, I can't afford the pay for the car. You guys, does this sound familiar? You gonna take the car back. They're gonna give you some threats. They really know that how this is gonna end. They're gonna take the car back. They're gonna take all your money, they take your deposit, your down payment. They gotta threaten your credit. You're gonna give them a couple more thousand dollars, then take a couple of thousand dollars repair of the car. They're gonna threaten you some more. They're gonna rent. They're gonna sell that car to the next person that comes through the door. It's a cycle right the way you saw all this. Because again, the bank can't give you a loan. I don't care. You can go to church every Sunday, be the nicest person on the planet, pay your taxes tied at church, I mean, kiss, pay the mayor on his forehead every time you see him. And the bank still can't give you a loan because your credit score is tow up from the flow up. It's five eighty. I wouldn't give you a loan, So you gotta get your credit score up to six fifty six eighty seven hundred. At seven hundred, key starts to sing and you go to the computer at night at seven hundred, the computer just says yes, yes, the homeownership, Yes, the small business ownership, Yes, the prime credit yes, seven to fifty credit card, Yes to small business ownership. You know, all of a sudden, capital access doors open up, and now you can you start to see economic activity and energy happening again. I'm gonna go in this to some detail, but if you raise credit score is one hundred points in Memphis, you change the city. Just that one thing goes down, opportunity goes up. You make his job a hell of a lot easier, and your children have a shot. Let me tell you, y'all just got him to quote jay Z, y'all just got a million dollars worth a game of nine ninety nine. But it didn't cost you nine ninety nine, just cost you your time. I'm a good, pretty good rapper, So I want you to do me a favor. And when you respond what I'm about to say, I need you to think about the worst day he's going to have, the most frustrating day he's going to have where he gets up and it's like hurting cats, Like no matter what you do, you just can't get You can't make people happy. People are just miserable and unhappy. They're blaming it on him because rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First. I need you to be the rainbow. I need for you to give him some love so he remembers it on his toughest day and thank him for his public service because he could have done something else. Thank you, Mayor Paul Yoh, thank you, appreciate it, Thank you, say thank you. Is there anything else that you wanted to add for the sake of the podcast before we wrap?

Nah Man, this was great, incredible. It's always good to sit down to me. It's hard for me to talk because I just like listening to you. So it was great, man, And really appreciate you being here and what you've been doing for our city for many years. So you've been invested, you've been deep in and our city appreciate you. There are so many families whose lives are better, and I look at this is like, how do you gauge a good life. You gauge a good life by how many other people's lives are better just because you were here. And there are people's lives who are better just because you were here.

Man, So thank you brother. I appreciate that I'm not being raised short any like that. And I'm straight, by the way, I'm completely straight. But in the cool to see two black men up here loving on each other, and and you know, we need more of that, right you know, I'm securing myself. He secured himself. We got more enough that we need. We're about giving each other, uh, you know, trying to support each other. And that's what we needed this entire city. That's what we need in this entire country. You you you you look. I can't guarantee you that being positive is going to make you a success, but I absolutely guarantee you that being negative will make you fail. Have a great day. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Money & Wealth With John Hope Bryant

John Hope Bryant- successful entrepreneur, executive and philanthropist –will dispense his trademark 
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