Weekly Update

Friends, 

Earlier today, my mayoral portrait was unveiled in the Hall of Mayors in City Hall. As you can imagine, today was a very special day for me and my family, and i wanted to share my remarks with you for those not able to be there in person with us. You can see my portrait and read my remarks below.

Thank you all for being here.

Mayor Wharton—thank you for being here, and thank for your service to Memphis and Shelby County. Mayor Wharton has made more of a positive impact on Memphis and Shelby County than any other person in recent history.

Mayor-elect Young—I know the future of our city is bright, and I know under your leadership, you will take it to higher heights.

Mayor Harris—Thank you for always being a great partner during our time together.

Thank you, Alan, Ursula, Ken, and Doug, for your kind words (even though they are what I wrote for you to say).

In all seriousness—thank you. I appreciate you all more than you will ever know.

Thank you, Glenda, for making me look better than I actually appear. You really did a wonderful job on the portrait.

I cannot tell you how unlikely it is that I am Mayor and that my portrait will be hung here for years to come.

First, I was 11 years old, living a great life in Louisville, Kentucky, when my father moved us here. I didn’t want to come.  I came kicking and screaming—in fact, my mother also came kicking and screaming—we didn’t want to move to Memphis.

Second, no one in my family was in politics; they always voted, but they weren’t actively involved politics, and I had no family here other than my parents and brothers.

Think about this—on my father’s side, my grandmother was a waitress at a hotel restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida, and my mother’s parents owned a liquor store in Gary, Indiana.

No way their grandson should be mayor of Memphis. I wish they had lived to see it.

What a great country we live in that my story and so many others like it have been able to unfold.

Now, how did I get here?

How did this regular guy who didn’t want to live here become mayor?

First, I fell in love with Memphis, and the longer I have been here the stronger that feeling has become.

Second, I am the luckiest guy in the world. I am the most blessed person I know because I have had the best family, friends, and coworkers that ever existed.

Every blessing and every success I have is directly related to the city of Memphis and the people with whom I am connected. Every single one.

Thank you to, my parents, Jim and Judy Strickland. They are so remarkable. Their love surrounded me and my brothers. They sacrificed for us. I learned the importance of hard work, the value of education, and the power of volunteering for your church and community from the two of them. And my two brothers, Mike and Brian, they bring joy, humor, and comfort to our whole family and me.

Now, my wife, Melyne. How incredibly lucky was I to get her to marry me? And to stay married for 27 years? Well, I met Melyne on Harbert Avenue in Central Gardens, and it was love at first sight, at least for me; for Melyne, it took some time. She is strong, smart, hard-working, loving, and fun. She is a force of nature.

I absolutely could not have been mayor without her support and sacrifices and her willingness and ability to pick up my slack with our family.

Melyne, I love you. I admire you. Thank you.

To our two children, James and Kathleen, I am so extraordinarily proud of you two. I hope you know that. I have worked hard personally and professionally so that you will be proud of me. Thank you for your sacrifices and the inspiration you give me.

To everyone else—thank you. I learned a long time ago when the list is long its best to thank people as a group. You know who you are, and I cannot thank you enough.

To my friends, you mentored and taught me about elections and politics. You helped me practice law. By your upstanding actions, you challenged me to be a better person. You have made my life better and more enjoyable and enriching. And you got me elected.

As mayor, I am so proud of the people with whom I have worked and so proud of the accomplishments these last eight years, and I am so thankful to all of you because you are 100% responsible for those accomplishments.

Thank you to our partners outside our administration, such as the Memphis City Council, Tennessee State Government, Shelby County Government, our members of Congress, all the City Boards and Commissions, the City Employee Associations, Clergy and other faith leaders, EDGE, business and neighborhood leaders, and the Boys & Girls Club of Memphis and many other great non-profits, including the ones that operate city-owned facilities.

In our administration, from our current and former Senior Leadership Team members to the directors and deputy directors of all divisions to every firefighter and police officer who put their lives on the line every day, and to all other city employees, you folks are incredible public servants. Thank you for your service.

You have done so many great things, but I will highlight three categories and a few accomplishments under each:

1. We have done everything a city can do to rebuild a police department and attack the root cause of crime,
2. We have improved city services to the public and
3. We led the effort to create opportunities for Memphians, and the Memphis economy has momentum.

 First, we have done everything a city can do to rebuild MPD and attack the root causes of crime.

You created the recruitment and retention programs and incentives to grow our department and allow us to withstand the challenges of COVID-19, unlike New Orleans, which has the lowest number of officers since 1948, and Minneapolis, which has the lowest number in decades.

You hired 1,136 Police Officers and promoted 1,301.

You lowered false alarms by 22% so police don’t waste time responding, and that’s 5,625 hours saved.

You are the ones who answer over 1 million 911 calls every year. And you are the ones who decreased the time to answer those calls from, on average, 1 minute to 8.9 seconds.

You doubled our summer youth jobs program and our program capacity for youth in our community centers and libraries. You made our summer and spring camps free and inserted literacy programming.

You added 3,400 teens to after-school programming in 10 high schools through Boys and Girls Clubs, where 100% of them graduate high school, and 100% go on to higher education, join the military, or get a job.

You opened new pathways to successful lives and careers for the homeless; for those needing second chances, such as those with criminal records; disconnected youth ages 16-24 who are not in school and not employed; and for those without a high school degree.

You expunged over 5,000 criminal records.

You employed hundreds of homeless individuals and those with criminal records through Work Local and the Public Service Corp.

Second, we have improved our services to the public.

You went above and beyond during COVID by:

• Taking ownership of the mass vaccination process with just 48 hours’ notice from the State, improving the process, and administering over 350,000 vaccines.
• Taking over the food distribution for school students and running it for 11 months until in-person school resumed.
• Learning contact tracking and providing the bulk of that service, and
• Operating a communications system to reach all citizens on a daily basis.

You improved our library system and earned the top award for the best library system in the country two years ago.

You improved our fire department and achieved the highest national rating for the first time since the 1960s, putting us in the top 1%.

You removed about 200 abandoned and blighted billboards, and

you are installing LED bulbs in our city’s 78,000 streetlights.

You increased paving by 72% (I love the smell of freshly poured asphalt in the morning)

 After two years of intense work with 15,000 citizens, you created our first comprehensive plan in 40 years--Memphis 3.0, and it has won national awards and has resulted in investments being made in under-invested neighborhoods.

You created and implemented Accelerate Memphis, $200 million in investments made in our parks and neighborhoods across our city, particularly in underserved areas.

Including the Accelerate Memphis funds, you have invested over $200 million in our parks and community centers, building new ones and improving the others. For comparison, the normal amount spent in eight-years is about $40 million.

You did a complete $245 million modernization of our airport concourse and a $200 million overhaul of the Renasant Convention Center.

You built a $65 million Youth Sports Complex and a $30 million tennis facility.

You completed a total $60 million award-winning reimaging of Tom Lee Park

You figured out how to successfully remove monuments to the Confederacy, Jim Crowe, and segregation. And you put up monuments to the Suffrage movement, the Ida B. Wells Plaza and statue, the MLK Reflection Park, and the I AM a MAN PLAZA, which is the only monument in the world honoring sanitation workers.

You converted over 20 acres of land at Overton Park to public use.

You built, rehabilitated, or incentivized the building or rehabilitation of 18,000 affordable quality housing units.

You created the Healthcare Navigator that diverts those with mental health challenges away from jail and those without urgent health care needs away from emergency rooms to appropriate care.

You fully funded the pension system for the first time since 2006.

You improved our credit rating with the bonding agencies. And you did all that without raising property taxes.

Third, we led the effort to create opportunities and careers for Memphians and the Memphis economy has momentum.

You increased the City’s MWBE spending from 12% to 27.4%

You led to the creation of universal pre-K education for the first time ever.

You created the opportunities I have mentioned, and many others, and you streamlined the City approval process for businesses and led as a part of a team in economic development that have had these results.

• Jobs are up.
• Unemployment is down.
• Salaries are up.
• Poverty is down. (To its lowest point in decades)
• Home property valves are up in all neighborhoods.
• Tourism has increased.
• Film and television just had a record-breaking year.
• There are over 10,000 good-paying jobs available right now.
• And we have free job training available.

Memphis is a city of great opportunities, and there are pathways to prosperity for all persons, with all backgrounds.

You have also planted seeds that will pay off in future years, in addition to Universal Pe-K.

You created the first-ever dedicated funding source in Memphis history for public transportation, and you are implementing a transit plan over the next 7 years for a markedly improved system.

You have created a deal for fiber broadband to 85% of all homes and businesses in 7 years and incentivized others to do the same thing.

You have completed the first half of the first-ever study of the aquifer—so we can learn how to save it.

That’s a lot, but it’s not everything you did.

Thank you all for what you have done.

I have truly been honored to have worked with you.

I’d like to finish on the topic that binds us all in city government—service to others. I see it every day through your actions and words.

For me, it was a slow realization of one of my purposes. I saw my parents volunteer to coach and teach young people about our Catholic faith.

I also listened to my mother's family at the home of my great-aunt and uncle in Indiana. The adults were at the table, and the kids back a bit, like the second row.

You see, they were a bunch of Irish Catholics (except for my Slovak grandfather), and often, talk would revolve around Notre Dame football and the only Catholic President at the time, John Kennedy.

Near the same time was the Presidential election of 1976, President Carter versus President Ford. It was the first presidential election that I had paid attention to.

My interest was piqued.

Being Catholic and motivated by my family's admiration for JFK, I started studying him.

I read stories about him, watched the movie Missiles of October, and read the book he wrote, Profiles in Coverage.

And I became inspired by his call to service. This call was epitomized by his most famous saying, which is from his 1961 inauguration address.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

That stayed in my mind through high school and college. I kept up with local, state, and national politics and became involved with student government at Memphis State.

Near the end of law school, I decided to read the entire New Testament at once. It actually took me four days.

Obviously, I had read and heard the entire New Testament over my life. But never at one time.

What overwhelmed me was that God was calling me—requiring me—to serve others, especially those less fortunate. Parable after parable, lesson after lesson. Jesus said, “Serve”. My favorite is the Parable of the Talents. The light bulb went off.

The call that President Kennedy gave me as an American fit hand-in-glove with my call to serve as a Christian.

So, I started volunteering at a soup kitchen the same month I graduated from law school, and I was off and running on one of the most fulfilling journeys of my life.

So, I end today with a lesson about service I have learned from reading the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King.

The night before his death, as you know, he spoke just a few miles from here and delivered his Mountaintop speech. Part of that speech was about the parable of the Good Samaritan.

You know the story: A man was beaten and left on the side of the road, and many people passed him without rendering aid until a Samaritan came by and helped.

Dr. King theorized what was going through the minds of those who did not help. They might have worried that they, too, would be robbed and beaten if they stopped. Dr. King said they must have thought: If I stop, what will happen to me?

While the Samaritan reversed that and thought:

If I don’t stop, what will happen to him?

That is the mindset of every city employee. That is certainly the mindset of the Chiefs, Directors, and Deputies with whom I worked.

And so many Memphians have that spirit too, like my wife, who has volunteered to tutor 2^nd graders on reading skills at Dunbar Elementary for over 6 years.

I encourage everyone who can serve to do so. Teach a child to read. Mentor a child. So many Memphians need you.

If you don’t stop, what will happen to them?

Thank you for the professional honor of my life; I’ve loved this job.

God Bless you, and God Bless Memphis.

Enjoy your weekend!