- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- A deeper look at how Germantown and Collierville operate tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Molly Mehner.

She's the Town Administrator for the town of Collierville.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having us.

- Jason Huisman is City Administrator for the City of Germantown.

- Yes, Eric, thanks for having us.

- Absolutely, along with Abigail Warren from the Daily Memphian who covers both Collierville and Germantown.

So quickly define your roles.

You are not elected officials.

You're appointed.

You're both relatively new into your jobs following people who've been in the jobs for decades.

And so if you, you know, meet someone in an elevator, Molly, like how do you define your job?

And do people often say, oh, you're like the mayor, and you have to define what you do separate from these other positions?

- Correct, we are very different from what the elected officials do.

The elected officials are the policy making body for the town government.

And I am the one responsible for implementing the policies and laws that they put into place.

So basically making sure the town is running on a daily basis, and then as they want to change things, we make sure that that gets done.

- And the, am I right?

I know the Germantown mayor is part-time.

Is Collierville mayor also a part-time position?

- Correct, part-time.

- And you're a full-time position.

- Yes, sir.

- Staff position.

How do you, again, how do you define your role?

- It's very difficult to do at times.

Typically, somebody needs to be responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the organization that serves the citizens.

So yes, the elected official positions are part-time and are elected, and Molly and I serve in positions that are the highest ranking officials in the organization that are responsible for the day-to-day operations.

- Does that mean, before I go to Abigail, that you are, I mean, are you year to year, are you subject to the changes in the alderman?

I mean, is it, it's not a, you're not running for an office.

You're hired by the City or by the, I assume by the mayor and alderman, but are you free of the politics and how long, you know, are you looking over your shoulder all the time?

I mean, you know, maybe I'm just making too much of this, but Molly first here.

- Well, and it depends on the community, but city managers or administrators, typically their tenures are based on the whim of the governing body.

They're hired and fired by the governing body.

And so, yes, you wanna make sure you keep your bosses happy all the time.

And it can be quite challenging.

But I think the benefit of Germantown and Collierville is they have a legacy of very long-tenured administrators and very stable boards.

And so it's not something that I concern myself with on a daily basis.

I just do my job to the best of my ability and hope the board is happy.

- Yeah, that's very accurate.

Molly's position reports to the entire board.

The position in Germantown reports to the mayor.

The board does consent on the appointment, but the administrator in Germantown reports to the mayor directly.

- Okay, let's bring in Abigail.

- We talked about this a little bit, but you both followed, you followed James Lewellen, who's been on the show and was in office, I think he announced 25 years that he was gonna retire, but then stayed another year 'cause it took them a minute to find you, the right person.

But then you followed Patrick Lawton, who had been in office 30-plus years.

So can you kind of talk about in those first year, kind of the challenge to, what was it like to follow those people who had been in office so, so long?

- I'll go first.

I mean, I'll say that James left a tremendous foundation on which to build.

I mean, his legacy is known throughout Collierville and the state of Tennessee and beyond.

And he's done a phenomenal job positioning Collierville for success.

And so from that standpoint, it was great to come in and have that foundation already laid.

I think some of the challenges are, you know, you have staff that had worked with him for a very long time, and people in the community who, James did it this way.

And that's, you know, that's fantastic.

And James did a lot of good things, but you know, now I'm here, and I might do things slightly differently.

Both, I think had the same goal in mind as what's best for Collierville.

We just manage a little differently.

- When you see that as a professional city manager, that you have that kind of tenure, you see stability, right?

You see, you know, premier communities that are attractive to people like Molly and I.

So, you know, we were excited to join organizations that had that stability.

And obviously they're doing something right.

So we tried to download as much as we could when we joined the organization, whether it be James or Patrick.

There's a lot of good stuff that they had, you know, good and bad that they had experienced.

And so, you know, it's just a great opportunity for us to join that organization.

You know, we're standing on their shoulders, I guess you can say.

So we got kind of a lot of momentum and a and a good running start.

So we inherited a great opportunity.

- And Shelby County's kind of unique that they had city, that you had a city administrator, town administrator for so long because usually they're in the position for six years, like you said - Correct.

- With turnover on the board, so that you had, that you both, the city and the town, had administrators that long is kind of an anomaly.

- Let me, so the predecessor's there for decades, and those for both the, I know it's, I'm gonna say city sometimes 'cause it's one of the largest municipalities in the state.

Both of y'all are, but both Germantown and Collierville, massive growth, huge change over those 20, 30 years that your predecessors.

Now, I mean in the case of Germantown there, we've had Mayor Palazzolo on many times and talked about, there's not a lot more, there's no more annexation space, there's no more expansion.

- We're landlocked.

- Landlocked, you've got challenges.

It's not that you're in trouble, but you've got a whole different set of challenges than your predecessor faced when he came into that job.

- Right.

- So talk about that.

Like what is the, what now are those challenges around not, we'll get to the day-to-day stuff, which I'm actually really interested about, but sort of a vision for the next 5, 10, 20 years around growth or the lack of growth because, you know, maybe you're where you wanna be.

- Sure, well, yeah, it's a little bit different than Collierville who still still has a lot of land to work with.

Germantown is 90% residential, very much a bedroom community.

And so really when you're talking about revenue for the city, property taxes, that anchor that we certainly rely on but try not to rely on too much.

It's the 10% strategically that we need to really, you know, really focus on, how are we gonna maximize the potential of that 10%.

We do have about 1,000 homes or so that are still left to come online over the next several years, some beautiful homes, some nice developments that are happening.

But now how are we gonna maximize the 10%?

And really that's the strategy.

You can't go out, maybe you can go up, but obviously that comes with some contention and some opinions on what's the best way to approach that.

But for us, that presents opportunities for us to really identify infrastructure opportunities that we need to be investing in.

That all comes with, you know, how it impacts your roads.

So we're working on major road plans, storm water conveyance plans, things of that nature.

Those are the main challenges I guess you would say from a growth standpoint for us.

- Same thing.

I mean, do you expect the next 20, 30 years to look like the past 20, 30 years for Collierville?

- I think growth in the next 20 years will be more even, evenly distributed.

I think it'll be more deliberate.

I think when the new board is seated later this year, we will spend a lot of time talking about what growth is going to look like and revisiting our comprehensive plan, our infrastructure plans to make sure that they keep pace with development.

So I think it'll be more even Steven over the next 20 years.

- Do you, it's not a test, but off the cuff like 90% residential in Germantown.

It's a little bit different mix, quite a bit different mix in Collierville.

- Yeah, our land use mix is a little more diversified than Germantown's.

We have a lot more of the office/industrial/ distribution areas that and still have some land to grow there as well, so.

- And so you see both.

More resident, more on all fronts?

- Absolutely, I think more of everything.

- Yeah, let me bring Abigail back in.

- Can you talk about some of the changes that you've made since you came in office?

Like, I mean Jason, you may wanna something else, but I remember within the first couple months, you know, Patrick had a lot on his table, and one of the first things you did was hire a deputy administrator, move someone to your former role and kind of help delegate.

But what are some of the changes that you've made?

Because your leadership style is different.

- Sure.

- You know, Patrick was Patrick.

You can't ask someone to be Patrick 2.0, and kind of like you've already said, there's never gonna be another James.

So what are some of the changes that you've made in your time as a leader?

- Sure, where do I start?

I guess I would focus more structurally since that's what you led with.

Yes.

The span of control under Patrick had a lot of directors that were reporting directly to him.

That was the way he preferred it at that time.

We have a lot of talent in the organization, and anytime that you provide someone another opportunity, it provides another opportunity for somebody else to move up.

So we did create a deputy city administrative position who was really internally focused and Lisa Piefer does a great job with our business-like offerings that we use, the athletic club, and our library and things of that nature.

And then Andy Sanders moved into an assistant city administrator role who was our former assistant public works director and city engineer.

And he's more outward focused on development, on infrastructure, engineering, our parks and recreation department.

And he is a liaison to our school district.

And there's a lot of opportunity there.

So with those two moves, we reduced the span of control.

I still have police and our fire department, public safety, our communications, performing arts center.

Those report to me directly, and then they handle those areas there.

I think we're much more effective in that way.

Anytime you are building a team, you try to get the people in the right seats, right?

That's what it's all about.

So one of the things that was attractive to me to move into this role if given the opportunity was with Patrick's retirement, it wasn't only him, but we had a good number of people that were gonna be retiring within the next few years.

It's been now two, two and a half years I wanna say.

Seventy percent of our leadership team at the director and assistant director level are all either, most of them are newly promoted, and we've brought in one or two from the outside to be able to fill in some gaps.

- Let me talk about the, I'm stuck on the 30-year thing and the 20-year thing, and all the changes.

I mean, and maybe that's also 'cause I've been here in Memphis for, you know, 28 years, and we talk about the Town of Collierville.

You know, and I was joking with you beforehand that I didn't realize, I know people call it the Town of Collierville, but that's actually your title, Town Administrator, and yet one of the biggest municipalities, a lot of growth over these decades.

And you all are trying to find this balance that I think, and I think Germantown has its own version and other suburbs have their version of a town square that's very quaint.

That's very, very popular.

And keeping that while also allowing for industrial and allowing for new residential.

And I assume trying very much to not let people just build to build.

To say yes to a project 'cause it's gonna involve, you need 100 houses.

Someone wants to build 100 houses.

We wanna say yes.

But you want to be a little maybe more selective and careful.

- Absolutely, and that's something that James was exceptional at with his planning background.

And I have a planning background, and so we're very much in alignment in that way.

But making sure that the growth that we do say yes to is the right growth, and it's done and designed the right way so that it contributes to the quality of life in Collierville and doesn't detract from it.

- And is there generally buy-in, not just from the Board of Alderman and mayor, but also from constituents?

I mean, I imagine constituents make their way to you to say, hey, what's going on with this, that, and the other?

- Yeah, absolutely.

We hear all the time about the aesthetics.

You know, people say when you come into Collierville, you know, you're in Collierville.

There's a different aesthetic because the design standards matter, and it makes it feel like a different place.

And so that's incredibly important to our residents and our businesses.

And for the most part we have very good buy-in on that.

- Yeah.

- And support.

- You, and I'm gonna pick on Germantown, but I could pick on Collierville.

I could pick on Memphis, I could pick on any city or town in America when I do this.

So I'm not picking on you.

There are parts of Germantown, you know, some of those early, big, wide Germantown Parkway, you know, big kind of somewhat faceless six-lane roads.

And then there's been this push clearly in recent years, you think of, well, it doesn't matter, but I think it's Wolf River Boulevard where it's got bike lanes, and there are trees, and there's more of a sort of, there's clearly an attention to the aesthetics of even down to the light posts and the way things are done.

Do you look back at some of those more generic things that were done many, many decades ago and think, well, that's an example we don't wanna do more of.

Or is that just sometimes you gotta make those choices 'cause money is not unlimited.

- That's true.

Money is not unlimited.

I wanna see if I can answer your question.

You know, the beauty of a lot of what we're talking about is not a decision that Molly or Jason is making.

We have commissions that are heavily involved in these processes, and they're fully vetted, and they're made up of residents that are on planning commissions and design review commissions and things of that nature.

So at that time, you know, decisions were made that that was something that was acceptable, right?

- Yeah, the will of the people.

- And as the community continued to evolve and new development opportunities and new infrastructure opportunities, those are the standards that were put in place.

And just the other day we're having conversations about revisiting some of those areas that you may say that we need to kind of, you know, address.

Maybe we need to bring it up to the standards so that it all looks the same.

So those conversations are being had, but there's a process that they need to go through to be able to, you know, to be approved.

- Yeah, I'll bring Abigail back in.

- Since you - About 10 minutes left in the show.

- Since you've both been appointed, you were about two and a half years ago, you were about a year and a half ago, what has been the biggest challenge that you've each faced?

- Well, I think Jason should go.

- Yeah, you want me to go.

[all laughing] It's, you know.

- We're laughing because of the water, the water situation y'all had.

- Yeah, yeah, that was, that was life changing.

- Yeah.

- And life altering for everyone involved certainly.

And we learned a tremendous amount through that process.

There's no doubt we're a better team for it.

And so yes, you can start with that.

We're glad that's in the past.

We've made a lot of progress since that time.

- For people who aren't as familiar with it.

- Sure.

- Just quickly, what happened and what have you done since?

- We had a situation where we had extended power outages throughout Germantown, Collierville all over the area.

And we had generators that were running through the night for many days.

And we had a situation where the initial reports, we had a leak at a generator that was adjacent to an underground reservoir for our water supply.

- Leak of diesel.

- Yeah, a leak, yeah, diesel fuel that's in the generator.

And so, you know, we initially respond, we started getting phone calls, and so we immediately notified the community, just hit pause.

Do not consume water, use it to flush toilets until we can just figure out what's going on.

And so ultimately we had an internal investigation that was going on while we were trying to investigate the, you know, the source, how was it getting in, bringing in subject matter experts, working around the clock for several days.

It took us about six days to be able to get to the point where Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation said that we could tell our public to flush their own homes.

We had extensive flushing, after we corrected and we found the issue, eight feet underground roughly of a small nickel size hole in a pipe that was not on the schematics we had in house.

That's how long that infrastructure had been in place.

We were able to clean the system, clean the reservoirs.

- Yeah.

- And we flushed the system, and it was, it was a monumental task.

- Yeah.

- I'm very proud of our team and the work that they did to be able to get clean water flowing again.

But if you can imagine, you know, in positions like that we're in, when something like that happens, the amount of people, we have 41, we have 41,333 residents, hospitals, you know-- - And 41,000 of them called you.

- You, yeah, I think that might be an understatement.

- Yeah.

- In addition to the media and everyone else who wants to know play by play what's happening.

And so not to use all the 10 minutes, but that's essentially, so I would say that in addition to what Mother Nature does, you know, at any given moment to us.

Go ahead, Molly, yeah.

- So challenges for you.

- I think one of the, the challenges has been the lack of technology within the organization and overcoming that.

And so we've been taking steps gradually to get the organization more sophisticated and embracing technology to help with our day to day operations from finance, HR, et cetera, to meter readers.

You know, we still have guys walking around reading meters, which has led to some issues.

And so we're looking to change out all of those to automatic metering infrastructure and.

- Yeah, when you talk about meters, you're talking about water.

Y'all rely on MLGW for what, for electricity/gas?

- Electricity.

- Just electricity in Germantown's case, and in Collierville?

- Electric and gas.

- Electric and gas.

The suburbs have wanted to get seats on the board- I'm sorry.

- We do gas too.

- And gas, okay, electric and gas, okay.

Not water.

- Correct.

- MLGW, the suburbs have wanted to get seats on the MLGW board, which is owned by the City of Memphis, as of, we recorded this a week ago from when it aired.

And the City Council has kind of tabled the idea of a referendum vote in November that would approve or disapprove of that.

Do you, what is the future if, what is the future of utilities and your relationship with MLGW, if you get seats on the board or if you don't or is that more of a political question, and you guys will just wait to see what happens?

- It's more of a political.

I think that's a cause for our governing bodies to take up if they would like to pursue that.

We're gonna continue to work with MLGW as we have for years because we rely on them for electric and gas infrastructure, and we need their assistance, and so.

- And your relationship with MLGW is?

- Good.

- It's great.

- Yeah, fantastic.

- It's great, it's great.

Doug McGowan we feel has done an excellent job, and he's addressing a lot of the issues that need to be addressed, and he communicates very well with the suburbs.

You know, I, from our roles, again, not elected officials, if a third of your customers, you know, are served, it's nice to be able to have a seat at the table.

- Yeah.

- And James, I believe currently sits at the table on our behalf, James Lewellen.

- Yeah, it's a non-voting position.

- But a non-voting position.

And there's decisions that are made that impact capital investment and things of that nature.

So it just makes sense from our perspective.

- Yeah, bring Abigail back in.

- You just approved your budgets, but looking forward at the next budget, because the budget process is never done, what do you foresee, I know in Collierville there was a work session last week where the board reviewed a lot of fire requests and kind of looking and seeing if those are maybe a possibility next year.

I think looking at the five-year plan, the sports complex was, it looks like funding is slated for next year, but kind of what are those big items that you see in the budget next year?

- Is this for me?

- Both of you.

- I'll get started for the sake of time.

Yes, we are working hard on the premier sports complex.

We're gonna do everything I can or we can, including me to be able to get state and grant dollars and private dollars to be able to help make that project happen.

LED streetlights, I know Collierville are working on that.

That's important.

Infrastructure is always a top priority for us.

Oh, and the schools.

I know Superintendent Manuel was here in the past.

They've put in a $170 million request.

We've placed that in FY'27 for us to consider.

Collierville just built a beautiful high school a few years ago.

So they're looking to renovate that facility.

And so those will be drivers of the decisions that are made going forward.

- I see our budget themes staying the same as they have been the last two years.

Keeping Collierville safe, keeping up with aging infrastructure, making sure that that suits our needs for today and the future.

Retaining and recruiting employees, making sure that we're staying competitive in the marketplace 'cause he's always, you know.

- We make it difficult on each other.

- He makes it difficult for us.

And then the technology, making sure that we're embracing technology and adapting.

- A couple of minutes left.

You both I think mentioned public safety.

Your police departments are under the both of you.

Is that correct?

- Yes.

- How, what is your approach?

I'll go to Molly first, your approach to public safety.

I mean, it's obviously been a big topic nationally.

It's been a big topic in Memphis.

You know, most suburbs have not had the kind of issues that cities have had.

But what have you seen in your time in this position and how do you guys approach public safety?

- So we rely very heavily on community data policing and relying on the technology and tools that we have at our disposal to keep Collierville safe.

And Chief Lane does an exemplary job of keeping Collierville safe.

And our crime rates are exceptional.

And so that is a priority for our board.

It's a priority for our residents, and we're gonna keep doing that.

- About how many police officers in Collierville?

- Oh geez.

I wanna say we have about 80 commissioned officers.

- And again, I'm making this a test for both of you.

I apologize 'cause it's not.

The percentage of your budget that is public safety?

- Forty-seven percent.

- Is that fire, fire and?

- That goes towards public safety.

- Same questions to you, your approach to it and?

- So we exist, our organizations exist to protect and enhance the quality of life of those we serve.

Protect will always be first.

So, you know, the majority of what we expend is public safety related, police and fire.

And if you throw public works in there as first responders, it's the large majority of what we do.

We have about 112 commissioned police officers.

And, you know, anybody who's experienced Germantown, we have a very proactive enforcement-type approach.

We're out.

You see us.

We're very much engaged in the community.

Technology has been mentioned quite a bit.

License plate readers are very helpful.

A lot of surveillance that happens.

We investigate, we solve crimes, investigate detectives, you name it.

We expend a lot in this area.

It's very important for Germantown and Collierville.

And our goal is to be the safest city in Tennessee of our size.

And Collierville and Germantown are usually right up there at the top.

- The crime problems in Memphis impact you all how?

- Certainly from an economic development perspective, we've heard people say that they're afraid to come to Collierville because of the Memphis crime element.

And so it's education that we have to inform them that, you know, we're not Memphis.

We're Collierville, and just educating them on that.

But people from, who are not from the area don't understand the distinction.

- Yeah, I mean the majority of what we experience, and I'm sure Collierville also is theft from motor vehicles, shoplifting and theft of vehicles.

So those are just crimes that usually come into the community that, you know, are looking for opportunities to search through cars or you name it.

And they see opportunities in, you know, at our retail centers and from time to time in our neighborhoods.

- Yeah, we can talk more about that.

We're out of time.

Appreciate both of you being here.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Abigail.

That is all the time we have this week.

Coming up in the next few weeks, we've got the Republican District Attorney for many of the rural counties around Memphis.

We've got Tina Sullivan, who's the retiring executive director of Overton Park Conservancy.

If you missed any shows recently, we talked to the new interim President of Christian Brothers University.

We talked to State Senator Brent Taylor and John Spickler about many of these issues, the public safety and criminal justice.

We also talked to Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon.

You can get all of those at wkno.org.

You can search for "Behind the Headlines" on YouTube.

You can go to the Daily Memphian, and you get podcast versions of all these shows on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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