Weekly Update

Friends,

 

In this week’s Update, I want to talk about couple items that, in my opinion, are the meat and potatoes of local government—paving city streets and working to keep our city safe.

 

Let’s talk paving first.

 

When we came to the mayor’s office in 2016, one phrase that was often touted by our administration was our goal to be “brilliant at the basics”. It doesn’t get more basic than paving our city streets. It’s not sexy and you’re not going to see it on the news each day or read about it in the newspaper, but in the long-term, it is one of City government’s key functions.

 

Our administration has more than doubled paving. From July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2021, approximately 1,774 lane miles have been paved. Of that total, roughly 1,218 lanes miles have been paved since 2016.

 

In order to increase paving, (as you can imagine) we had to significantly increase our paving budgets. Since 2011, the City has allocated a little more than $158 million to paving. Of that total, $112.5 million has been budgeted since we came into office in 2016.

 

As we move into the last two years of my final term as mayor, we have every intention of keeping our foot on gas to get more of our city streets paved.

 

Public Safety

 

It’s no secret that improving public safety and reducing violent crime has been a top priority of this administration. It’s also no secret that finding solutions to this decades-old challenge is no easy task.

 

We’re trying to tackle it from all angles with more activities for our young people through our parks, community centers and libraries, our newly created Group Violence Intervention Program, while also increasing the pay and benefits to retain and recruit more police officers.

 

I wrote a few weeks back about the newly created (11/12/2021) Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods Unit (SCORPION), and I want to give another update on its work. See below for recent stats since starting the program.

 

 

While these are incremental numbers, they each represent fewer stolen guns, drugs, and criminals out on our city streets.

 

Thank you to Chief Davis and the Scorpion team for their hard work in this important area.

 

Thanks to Comcast: Earlier this week, Comcast hosted a community celebration to promote digital equity. The event was in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Internet Essentials, Comcast’s low-cost broadband adoption program. As a part this ceremony, our Office of Youth Services’ MPLOY Program was awarded $10,000 and 200 Laptops.

 

 

As a refresher, our MPLOY participants take part in professional development activities with goals that focus on themes such as career planning, setting goals, financial literacy, interview techniques, and resume writing. The professional development component of the MPLOY Youth Summer Experience takes different forms, according to the age and work industry of the MPLOY participant. The Comcast grant donation will support the youth participants in the 2022 Summer MPLOY program.

 

Been training all year for this: Not really, but I am excited to help host the thousands who will be participating in this weekend’s 20^th Annual St. Jude Memphis Marathon. It benefits the life-saving work of our own St. Jude Children’s Research hospital and serves as a great chance for us to showcase our city to the many visitors who come to support and participate in the race.

 

If you’re planning on traveling downtown this weekend, you might want to check out this site for road closures.

 

Have a great weekend!

 

Yours,