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00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome back to the At Scale podcast. I'm Chrissy. Alejandro joined by Graham Thomas. Hey, Graham, how are you? I'm doing great this morning. How are you? I'm great. I thought the sun was supposed to shine today, but it's still kind of gloomy out. I'm ready for summer weather. It's nice here in Nashville. We're back. We're in the seventies all week, so spring is here. I need it to happen for us because Oliver's deep into baseball season and I do not like forty degree drizzly baseball weather. So anyway, I'm excited. Based on the cold is not fun. We have a very cool guest today who has accomplished more. He's definitely younger than me and he's like made his way all the way to a pretty big deal job, I think. And, um, he also has five children. Like I hang on by a thread to run a nonprofit and also have three children. So it's it's impressive the the balance. Yeah, I agree and I know roughly how old this person is because he and I graduated from UT together. So, um, this guest I've known for a couple of decades now. Yeah. Well, it's the Hamilton County mayor, Weston Wamp. So Weston, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you. Thanks, Chrissy. I'm glad to be here. And by the way, there is no balance. I think that's part of what I've realized now. I've done this job for three and a half years and picked up a fifth kid along the way. And there's no there's no balance. Maybe it's maybe I'm trying. It's a constant effort to create some, uh, appearance or feeling of balance, but it's, uh, it's better described as chaos. And we, it's just all a facade, right? I think balance is a facade. We could go on a parenting rant, but I'm like, we're all just, I think trying to piece it all together on any given day. Yeah. That's what it feels like here. I think we are full of heart. That's all I can say. I think it's the attitude. It's the attitude of the mayor's office. But it's also how we get it done in our family. I even told my wife this morning when I was walking back from walking our kids down to the school bus, because that's kind of my part of the day. We got about a quarter of a mile walk to the bus stop, and it's always a really calm, even if everybody's been arguing until that point. Like it's a point in time where my three older kids are all like, usually in a pretty good mood, walking, going down to the bus. And we had been arguing about which jersey we were going to wear because it's like, what do you want to be in the future? And like all, you know, aspirational kids, mine want to be pro athletes and, um, so does mine. What kind of chaos in the morning is that a basketball pro athlete or a baseball? Which one? What are they picking? What sport? I think my seven year old was wearing an NBA jersey. Okay. All right. I had a Steph Curry jersey on. So yeah, but it's like there was a sort of moment of where we had pulled it all together. And I do think to your point, to anybody who saw me walking with my three kids, they would have thought, well, look at the balance that family has. I like the the terminology of you picked up a fifth one like you just found this child outside. Yeah. That's right. I ran out, I ran as a dad of four. And then I guess I'll, I'll run for re-election as a dad of five. That's fun though. I bet the kids are really cute campaigning like I was a campaign manager. I don't know if you know this about me for the Knox County mayor a thousand years ago, and it would have been great to have some cute kids to like, take pictures with and whatnot. That has to be an asset. Well, the real, the, the real dynamic for me is that I have four boys and a girl and, and the girl is the only one who's loyal to me. The boys are all loyal to their mother. And so I basically have one from a campaign perspective. I have one child and it's my daughter and she is adorable and but she's the only one who does the campaign stuff. I love it, I love it. Well, so let's back up. So you graduated UT with Graham, right? So you're forty ish and what was the journey? I'm holding on to my thirties. Are you forever thirty nine? Is this like a you're stopping at thirty nine? Thirty eight now, if I could just freeze it. Thirty eight is good. But yeah. Thirty nine this March and I'll catch up to Graham soon. Yeah. That's right. So why County mayor? What made you want to run? Why this office? Um, I think the county mayor has, um, some interesting influence, um, important influence in a county. So I can probably guess, but walk us through that journey. Yeah. Uh, so my, I got started in early stage venture capital first doing communications work for a portfolio of companies, um, was close to a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs in Chattanooga. We were all kind of in the twenty ten, eleven, twelve time frame, thinking about what big thing we were going to do to change the world. And I had grown up in a political family. I end up running for Congress in my twenties before we had any children. I almost won in twenty fourteen in a primary against an incumbent. And so, you know, for better or worse, I just kind of cut my teeth both as a kid and adolescent, but then also as a young professional, uh, as a candidate. And, um, and so waters that are like really terrifying to a lot of people were warm for me and I started a family didn't want to, you know, wanted time to go by after, uh, it's kind of close, sort of heartbreaking congressional race. And once we started having kids, like a lot of people, my, um, interests became more local, particularly around public education. I started asking a lot of questions, even in the kind of in the business sector about why things were the way they were reflected. A lot of my my own family. I was the first person in my mom's family to get a college degree. Um, but everybody in that family was successful. Most of them were tradespeople. Um, a lot of them leveraged their trade into small business ownership. And so like, I developed a lot of contrarian thoughts about the world and education and even, you know, local government. And in the meantime, Washington completely, you know, lost its mind in a way that's frankly pretty sad for somebody who grew up around it in a in a dignified way and really revered a lot of the people and leaders who I grew up around. My dad served in Congress for sixteen years, uh, from really from first grade all the way through my time at UT. Uh, so I had lost all interest in and still have lost pretty much all interest in the federal government and in our community. We'd only ever had three county mayors from the time the state constitution was amended. Um, which changed the format of county government beginning in seventy eight. Um, we had three county mayors and only two who were really elected. Our third was appointed into the position, uh, after Claude Ramsey was appointed deputy governor to Haslam. And, and so I started thinking, you know, he's not going to serve forever. Uh, in fact, he had kind of talked to me about whether I'd be interested in doing it. And, and so in our community, there was a couple things that that came together at the same time in twenty twenty two. And that was, uh, there was an open seat for the county mayor position for the first time since nineteen ninety four. It's been twenty eight years. And therefore, it was the first time in kind of modern Hamilton County government that you or even, you know, since the school systems have been consolidated. We went through consolidation of the city and county school systems in ninety nine. It was the first time we'd had a conversation as a community about what kind of county mayor you'd want. What what can the county mayor do? What? What type of vision can they lead with? And so I talked a whole lot about, uh, education and public school facilities. And, um, ultimately the, the huge, um, inequalities and, and deltas in opportunity that in a lot of ways define Chattanooga. Right? I mean, Chattanooga's got on one hand this story of an ascendant mid-sized city in a beautiful place and all sorts of outdoors opportunities. But the real defining narrative, if you're from here, is that it's a really great place to grow up for some kids and a really tough place to grow up in a lot of parts of our community. And I had the opportunity to serve on the Board of Regents leading into my candidacy, and learned a whole lot about, um, both Governor Haslam and Governor Lee's strategies and the major investments that our state was making. Really, they're one of the big differentiators, I think. I don't think we've fully harnessed that opportunity, but I've learned a lot about, uh, what options we are putting in front of both students beginning in high school, early college, T cap type opportunities. And so it made me, uh, you know, an unorthodox candidate and one who talked a lot. I mean, some people thought I was like a single issue candidate because I talked about career and technical education so much. But I did that because I thought it, uh, a recommitment to that, which was a big part of the legacy of Chattanooga recommitment to career and technical opportunities address so many of our other systemic challenges of community, whether that's wages, crime, um, etcetera. And, and so, uh, you know, I end up winning a real tough three way primary. And, and we've had a lot of fun serving and we've done a lot of what we said we'd do, which is, should be what people expect. But it's, you know, not all that common. And so it's been a lot of fun to follow through on some of the things that were just campaign ideas. Yeah. And before you were serving as mayor, you spent a lot of time thinking about debt for people in our generation, for millennials. Talk about how that intersects with your education priorities and how you're using that to to form your first term. Yeah, well, that's a big subject. You know, one of my theories about our country and how we ended up forty trillion dollars in debt is that we, um, it debt became a way of life in America kind of crept up on us. Uh, credit cards were helpful until they became tremendously unhelpful. Maybe, uh, student loan debt was helpful until it became tremendously unhelpful. And so as a country saddled in debt, justifying, you know, longer terms on everything ten year car loans, forty, fifty year mortgages, uh, and we've just overleveraged, uh, as a, as a society. And I think it's, it's that mentality that contributed to the credit card mentality in Washington. You know, I mean, I was a kid paying attention when Republicans and Democrats in Washington were balancing budgets in the Gingrich Clinton era. And now there's, you know, no real, uh, outside of maybe two dozen legislators. There's no real commitment to fiscal stewardship in Washington. I think that starts though, at a at a grassroots level. It starts at home. It starts in a K-12 environment where we're teaching young people about money and the, uh, particularly in our state, the legacy of stewardship and living within your means. We started a movement in Tennessee called In the black, just to educate people on Tennessee's traditions of doing things in the black. Also, the virtue of kind of living your life and, and managing your own household in the black. And it certainly stands in contrast to the kind of the what the world tells you to do. Uh, but, you know, look now at kind of what a beacon our state is relative to other states, um, in the country that have made shortsighted decisions, uh, trying to kind of, you know, win an election cycle versus the real disciplined leadership that we've seen in Tennessee. And, and I mean, I think a lot of that translates down, you know, at a principle level, uh, to a lot of what we've promoted, right? You're seeing it more and more in the state where young people are taking the state's offer for a near free community college experience, transferring into a four year or recognizing that in the, you know, in the new economy, um, as frankly, was the case in the old economy, the clearest path to entrepreneurship and living the American dream is, is having a set of skills. Eight out of ten people who own a small business in America are technicians. I think some people have even academics, maybe particularly academics, have this mindset that, uh, the path to wealth is an MBA and everybody with an MBA knows how to get rich when in reality, Everybody with a trade and a and a specific set of skills has the clearest path to being wealthy of anybody in our country. And I think that certainly speaks to the work we're doing here. And and during your time at TBR, that focus on technical college really exploded. I mean, you know, a billion dollar investment from the Lee administration. We've seen under the Tennessee Promise umbrella, uh, a significant increase of students leaving high school and attending our Tennessee colleges of applied Technology or Tcat has really decreased that sort of average age of Tcat student. I think when we launched, the average age was like twenty eight. Um, and it's certainly now, um, a much younger demographic. How are you taking sort of, um, an approach in Hamilton County? Let's go back to this idea of balance of balancing like this is, well, first of all, I think you have to change the narrative because there is a narrative in our country right now that you don't need college. Right? Well, what we're trying to say is let's create a bigger tent around the word college. You need a high quality degree after high school, most likely to find long term success. So how are you balancing that? Because you do have a university in your backyard. You have a well, you know, I think you have the superior model. Somebody's going to fall from the sky and snipe me right now. But the combined community and technical college, I believe, is where it's at for students. But how are you balancing those things as as you're thinking about the economic mobility of citizens in your community? I'd like to think that we're moving in a direction where in those formative high school years, we're teaching kids the importance of being able to add value to the world. I mean, some of this is, you know, I think we need to kind of demystify like there is not a specific path to a specific certification or a degree. And the world's going to move so fast now and change so fast that, uh, preparing young people to be good citizens and contributing members of society who understand, um, the adding value ultimately is going to be a recipe for being able to provide for your family and, and do great things in our country. And so it becomes about equipping them for an unknown future. I think that's one of the most challenging things when you think about education right now is, uh, you know, our best guess and, and, um, strategy around how we prepare young people for the workforce is probably more a stab in the dark than it's ever been. And so I think the more that we can, uh, tee kids up and I think particularly about boys in our community and a whole lot of minority boys who are disenfranchised with education. Maybe they've fallen behind in their middle school years and they they're presented this one size fits all model generally, you know, outside of a school system going above and beyond. Uh, you know, Tennessee curriculum is going to prepare you for college life at university. And now we've gotten good in this county. Well, I should say we've gotten better about acknowledging that we want to meet kids where they are and honor their gifts and their interests. And that one path is no better than the other path, frankly. Counterintuitively, if you learn a skill, you're more likely to become wealthy than somebody who just goes and gets a generalist four year degree. Uh, and, and so we've begun to make major investments around that. Unfortunately, um, the closure of our historic legacy career and technical school in nineteen ninety one left from nineteen ninety one until twenty twenty seven, when our new technical school opens. It left a dearth of career and technical opportunities for black students in Chattanooga. Kind of an incredible thing that we allowed that to happen. I came into office saying, we want to acquire a campus downtown. Some people thought we were crazy. We bought an eleven acre campus from Blue Cross. Um, we're in the design phase of, we think, the most ambitious career and technical school that will have an entrepreneurial component in the country. But, but part of the goal is very practical there. And it's to make sure that in the same way that in rural parts of our county, to the north and to the east, that alternative pathways that exist already for students, again, predominantly white students exist for students in urban Chattanooga. And, and I just, I bring it back home to like, we, we know I was speaking to some kids at a career and technical school a few days ago and I and we were, there's all the acronyms and we're standing in front of this TBR banner and it's got four or five different acronyms. And I just said guys like, forget all the acronyms. We're here because we're in a state where even our governor, who's a master plumber, believes that every kid has gifts, and we want to find those and lift them up and honor them. And I think that's where like, you know, that's where we're different. That's where we've got an opportunity in the state, in our community has begun to make major investments in that direction. Our career and technical school downtown will be the nicest public school facility in southeast Tennessee. It's not going to be like a nice career and technical school. It's going to be badass. It's going to be a wonderful, beautiful facility because that's how much we think it matters, right? To go and honor gifts that I think, at least in our community, have been overlooked for three decades. I love that you guys are leading there because, you know, I remember when you guys led on the whole Gig city, right? I mean, that was a huge push and everybody kept talking about it. This feels like the the new gig city where it's not only where people want to go, but you may bring people into Hamilton County because of that too. Right. I mean, is that the thought? Yeah. Well, we think ultimately. So next time you're in town, I'll show you where our campus is. You won't really be able to drive into downtown Chattanooga without seeing it. Uh, it's one hundred and eighty five zero zero zero square foot facility that we're going to redevelop. Is it the old Blue Cross headquarters? It's the lower. So Blue Cross owned one hundred and eighty five thousand square foot campus below their corporate headquarters. So it's okay. Okay. Headquarters is up on the hill. This is a facility called the Golden Gateway. That's that's down below. And, um, yeah, I mean, the vision is to go and, and create something that both serves students really well. But is, to your point, a really bold symbol of our values. You come to Chattanooga, what is that facility? Well, it's, it's of a size and scope that you won't, you'll have to notice it. And when we were just getting started, right around the time we acquired the campus, we asked the governor for a some funding in his budget amendment. And Stewart Mcquirter, who's, you know, just starting as commissioner of economic Development, really bought into what we were trying to do because he saw it as an economic development differentiator. Right? If a company is looking at our community, this becomes a very tangible and for that matter, unusual effort from the public sector to meet both students where they are and to meet, um, both current and future potential employers where they are in terms of their needs and work together. And again, to do it in the most dignified of facilities, because I still think we kind of have to put our money where our mouth is in saying, you know, all these pathways matter. Going to colleges or going to a university is no better inherently than going to a technical school. We've been saying that for a few years. The governor certainly, you know, made this massive investment in Tcats. But at a K-12 level, like, you know, the current technical schools, even here, the existing ones. They're pretty modest, right? And so part of what we're doing is we're putting this major investment into our downtown high profile real estate as a symbol to parents, students, other employers, people who visit our community. This is what we care most about. I love it. You know, one of the things I think Chattanooga does so well is like, you bring the community together. I know there's a story about a national news broadcast that kicked off in Chattanooga's downtown being polluted, and then the community came together to fix that Chattanooga two point zero. You seem to have like a, a young professional population there that like really seems to care about the city. Sounds like this partnership, like talk about that bringing the community together to support an initiative like this. Yeah. Well, I mean, Chattanooga has got some good qualities for sure, I think. I worry, let me just preface what I'm going to say, but I worry that a community that kind of gets a positive reputation for being able to change things then becomes, uh, it's not all that hard for the sort of malaise to set in that you think that you are changing everything and, and, you know, so you, you become a bit self-congratulatory, I resist that. However, Chattanooga from the eighteen eighties until today is a it's an entrepreneurial town, right? I mean, it is ultimately one of the advantages that we've got, uh, over Knoxville, like Knoxville's got this got huge state investment advantages, right. University of Tennessee is based there. Ornl's down the road, uh, TVA headquarters, we've got a big TVA presence, but I think you'd see over time, Chattanooga is pound for pound, the most entrepreneurial part of the state of Tennessee. And, and again, has been that way for about one hundred and fifty years. And so what you'll see every generation or so is not so much from the public sector as from a combination of the private sector, the philanthropic sector with competent. All you need is competent public sector leadership. Politicians are always overrated and they'll take all the credit. But you've seen generationally here, um, this kind of philanthropic and entrepreneurial drive for things to be better and to address some of the challenges. I mean, that's happened here through, you know, entrepreneurs starting charter schools, entrepreneurs kind of casting vision around public spaces. I'm a little different in that I came into office from that sector. So those are all my best friends. We compare notes and kind of dream dreams together, but I do think that's part of what is real and feels different to people about Chattanooga is that over the course of the last one hundred and fifty years, the the vision has been driven by business people and entrepreneurs as much or more than the elected officials. And at the end of the day, that's a better recipe because the incentives are all weird for elected officials. Like, you know, if you kind of reduce it down to what's real. A lot of times, you know, you're just you're campaigning all the time and I'm a free election, right? The self-imposed term limit guy. So everybody knew that I was kind of coming in on a mission. And I think it gave me a little bit of an ability to just chart a course for eight years and be a little bit less moved by the, the winds. But, um, yeah, I think there is an entrepreneurial attitude here that's different. Building on that a little bit and sort of circling back to where we started, I do wonder about just because I'm a political science nerd, like, and my son recently was having an, an AP test and it was all about federalism. How does county government, what Hamilton County government work with state government in terms of helping set priorities? I mean, you've talked a lot about education and technical education, but just economic viability. I mean, I don't know anyone that's more disciplined or thinking about stewardship than all our friend Bo Watson, who's been on the podcast. So so what does that look like? I mean, I think it's just a cool thing that happens. Bo's my state senator, and Bo helped me really right after I got elected, understand county government in a way that shaped my service. And that is, and I think shaped our relationship and the way that we've sought to work with the state. And that is that counties, unlike cities, are effectively state government at a local level. Right? A lot of policies that are enacted in Nashville end up being carried out by county government, where subdivisions of the state of Tennessee. And we've really claimed that, I'd say. Whereas even on political grounds, cities are fighting with the state of Tennessee. We've taken pride in being their kind of hands and feet at a local level. And and Hamilton County's got a little bit of a unique, uh, place in Tennessee's. Kind of financial history, uh, in the sense that we were, uh, triple, triple a rated before the state of Tennessee was I think we could lay claim to, um, having started that trend to some extent. Um, and there's just a real great, over the past few administrations and leaders of our finance department, we've set a really high bar. And I'd say the comptroller knows that we're kind of known for that in the world of local government, but we've worked incredibly close with the legislature, um, where we've just sort of embraced this attitude that we are a part of the state of Tennessee, basically. And of course, that's not as, uh, agreeable to the Democrats in our form of government as it is to the Republicans because it's, you know, like Nashville's, you know, run by Republicans. And, um, it's been very rewarding, frankly, and it's given us an opportunity to To pursue policy changes at a statewide level. There's been some taxpayer advocacy stuff, some legislation, legislation that I've been working with Senator Watson on this go round relative to to pilots, and how we can tighten up the protocols and the and the way that a lot of the policies that abate local taxes work. And and then, you know, there's been a constant feedback loop also. Uh, I think that you'd see reflected in, in some of the work that Senator Watson's done where we're, um, you know, he may even say oversharing, uh, information and needs at a local level, but we've really embraced it. I think that is the better model for county government. It wasn't really the the attitude before I got here. Uh, in fact, I got rid of our lobbyist because I just wanted to handle those relations personally. And, and frankly, I think it's kind of awkward at a certain point for a guy like me, if you're going to work very closely with your delegation or even people in the administration. It's kind of awkward to hire somebody to stand in between you and them. Uh, so I can identify with, you know, some of the folks in the legislature who are asking questions about the, you know, how appropriate it is or inappropriate it is for taxpayers to hire lobbyists to, to then lobby another former government. Because I do think this is all relational and at least in a you know, from the perspective of one of Tennessee's big counties, you know, we we would like to be aligned with the state of Tennessee, not at conflict. MM. I like what you're talking about in this relationship piece. And if if you have listened to the podcast previously, we talked a lot about AI. We've talked today a lot about career technical education. But you and I, we both have communication degrees. And one of the things AI hasn't quite figured out yet is how to sit down in a room and read an audience and deliver a message. And we talked to our team a lot about we're in the people business, right? We don't press a button and a widget comes out on the other side. I imagine you would also consider yourself in the people business and talk about that specific skill set. Maybe what we consider more of those like soft skills and how you use them every day in your role. Yeah. Well, some people would say I don't use them very well. Graham. Uh, those soft skills can be as off putting as they are, uh, you know, uh, beneficial. Well, I think it's a, it's a big part of what we think about, um, every day in terms of meeting kids where they're at. Uh, and this is, I think, relevant to every parent because we're all like, we're all terrified of what screens are doing to all of us. I mean, every millennial has this fear that we're like letting our life, you know, just drip away, you know, into our iPhone. And then even a greater fear that that's true for our kids. Tell you an example, I mentioned that at our career and technical school downtown, there's going to be a major component around entrepreneurship. Again, that doesn't maybe that those dots don't connect for some folks. But the clearest path to entrepreneurship is learning a set of skills. And we, uh, we pursue, we're pursuing this entrepreneurship pathway in part because of, um, an experience we had visiting the entrepreneurship Center in Franklin as part of Williamson County school system. And what stuck with me and two anecdotes here. What stuck with me about that visit is them talking about the incredible change in soft skill development from students who start in the entrepreneurship program, uh, to the point that they're pitching their, their company, you know, whether that's a conceptual company or an actual LLC that they're creating. Uh, because I do think, you know, we, we live in a time where if we're not mindful about giving kids opportunities to develop soft skills, it's not happening in the same way it even did for, you know, those of us who grew up in the nineties, you know, it's not necessarily like our soft skills aren't necessarily developing around a game of kick the can in the neighborhood. Uh, and see, we got to be thinking about things that I don't think, you know, people in our same roles twenty, thirty years ago were thinking about, uh, and then also, you know, the other anecdote is dealing with some inner city kids and schools. We started a leadership development program at two, uh, pretty economically disadvantaged schools. And I saw this interest in the way the world works and in soft skills and in entrepreneurship and how you put a real estate deal together and what it looks like to start a company that resells a product. And, um, and so one of the, one of the challenges here is that, uh, particularly given how fast the world is changing, I think academics aren't in a great position to know what kids want and what the opportunities are. And that's not meant to be critical. It's, it's, it's sort of self-evident if you think about, you know, even just the educational experience of a educator, and there needs to be this posture of humility from all of us in the public sector that we've got something to learn, and we've got a lot to learn from the private sector that really drives the way the world works. And I think it's true even on this, on the soft skill side. And it even comes back to where we started this conversation about, um, helping kids understand that success will come as they learn how to add value to the world. Like if you learn to add value, you will have, first of all, a very rewarding life and you'll likely make a lot of money. But you can't add value to your point. Graham. Very hard to add value in the world. And if you lack soft skills to interact with other people, that's so hard. And I mean, you have five kids, I have three. I mean, I feel like I'm constantly like, got my foot on their backs about ensuring that we are learning the skills that were necessary. when you played kick the Can out. So I mean, you know, they, they. Don't want necessarily to go. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'm like go, go tell your go ask your teacher. Like I didn't do well. Can I retake this test? I was like, the worst they can say is no. Right? And then you're exactly where you were before. I mean, it's just trying to help kids learn how to advocate for themselves like, and, and have conversations with adults and learn what it takes to negotiate. I mean, I believe in all of that and think it's a critical piece. Uh, okay. Running for re-election. What's the next four years? What's the vision? Well, we're just basically going to tell people we're going to double down on the work that we've done. Um, it's there's so much of that work to do. Um, there's so many kids who don't have the same opportunities that other kids here have. We've still got school facilities issues. We're a county a lot like Knox County or Rutherford County where there's a lot of stress around growth. And so we're trying to take a generational attitude to how we make these decisions and, and even communicate to people that at times we think we're going to make some decisions or try to make some decisions that will be more popular twenty years from now than they are today. Um, but I think, you know, my core thesis comes back to, uh, economic development is a little bit of a made up politicians buzzword. Your community or for that matter, your state's potential is, um, or even your, your economy is a reflection of the skills and talents of your people. And so to the extent that we're serving young people well and serving for that matter, adults well, when they have opportunities or willingness to be retrained like those, like that's your economy, that's your ability to do economic development, to recruit companies. It's, you can't really trick the private sector. Um, and so I, I just believe in kind of, in my sort of, I have a communications degree like Graham from Tennessee. Uh, you know, spend enough time on the Board of Regents to be dangerous, have studied this stuff as a dad and a passionate public servant. And I just think everything else kind of takes care of itself. If you do your best to honor the gifts of young people and, um, you know, the more talented and creative and confident and skilled your young people are, your workforce is incredible. Your entrepreneurial sector thrives. Companies want to come to your community because you've got talented people. Um, and I'm like, that's the only way this makes sense to me, right? And, uh, there's a lot of kind of putting lipstick on a pig that politicians do. I don't buy a lot of that. And so that, that's what we've pitched to people over the last few years. And, um, and then a big part of our work also has been around, it's connected to that. It's been around Families and just kind of blocking and tackling of a community like ours where we just want to be who we say we are. I mean, even, you know, Graham, kind of back to that point about Chattanooga sells itself real hard. We are a great outdoor community, but just to kind of continue to lean into that legacy, we just landed a state park investment at the north end of the county. That's really exciting. We we're the only county in the state with four state parks speaking of this county state relationship. And we're about to get our fifth state park. Uh, and these are quality of life things that, uh, make all the other stuff work as well, right? I mean, if you're, if whatever your strengths are, one of our beliefs has been lean into those strengths, right? Rather than go try to be good at everything, lean into those strengths. And one of our strengths historically was around career and technical education. We had let it become a weakness. We're leaning back into that one. We're going to lean into Conservation Park's efforts and, uh, go be the community that we've been telling people we are for a long time and just be iterative. Again, like, I think one of the things I'll, I'll wrap up with this. One of the things that we've become the most resistant to is the huge temptation to oversell and then hope people kind of forget about your big announcement and Under-deliver like we've got some things underway right now where we fundamentally believe we've under promised and we will over deliver. But I've never seen anybody else do that in government. It's almost always, look how great we are. Check out this ribbon cutting re-elect us. And so we're just trying to change that mindset to, you know, do the small things well, lean into your strengths, doing things a little bit better every day, uh, has a compounding effect if you'll commit to it. I love that. Well, we're, you know, our big vision is building Tennessee's future workforce. So we hope to continue to partner with Hamilton County. Appreciate your leadership. Um, and if you ever want to go deep dive, you just, you know where to find me because I think there's so much potential there. Um, and I appreciate all of your efforts under this umbrella of, I mean, you know, you've said it a couple of times now. It's like, yes, skill set, but also like allowing students to utilize their gifts and not trying to pigeonhole. And I think that's our work too, is meeting students where they are. So I think that's where you get it, right. Well, listen, I we've probably gone over on time, but even you talk of like building workforce. I think if you kind of break that down into what that means in its simplest form, like that's where it's all at. And, and most of the things we do to address the other challenges all come back to, if you get this part right, it takes care of a lot of other things. You end up with wages that set the stage for a thriving family. You end up with hopeful people, not hopeless people who are then committing crimes and getting arrested. Entrepreneurship is driven our state. It's certainly driven our region for generations. Entrepreneurship is really is catapulted by this idea that you've got a skilled. I think sometimes we limit what a skilled workforce means to look. We are attractive to a Korean investor for a manufacturing facility when in reality, the history of our state is that skilled people are also entrepreneurial people. They're people who pursue the American dream. They're people really wealthy, right? Certainly the story here. And so it's just there's all these other ways that we can address and proposals and ideas and think tanks. You know, we'll give us all their ideas about how we can fix all these other challenges in society. I, the one that makes the most sense to me is that you go and kind of harness the human potential of people in the state of Tennessee. And then all there'll be this cascading, positive generational effect. So that's why I love what y'all are doing. And I think it's what we share in common. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for your time, mayor. I know you're busy. This was great. Yeah. Thank you. Chrissy. Thanks.
00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome back to the At Scale podcast. I'm Chrissy. Alejandro joined by Graham Thomas. Hey, Graham, how are you? I'm doing great this morning. How are you? I'm great. I thought the sun was supposed to shine today, but it's still kind of gloomy out. I'm ready for summer weather. It's nice here in Nashville. We're back. We're in the seventies all week, so spring is here. I need it to happen for us because Oliver's deep into baseball season and I do not like forty degree drizzly baseball weather. So anyway, I'm excited. Based on the cold is not fun. We have a very cool guest today who has accomplished more. He's definitely younger than me and he's like made his way all the way to a pretty big deal job, I think. And, um, he also has five children. Like I hang on by a thread to run a nonprofit and also have three children. So it's it's impressive the the balance. Yeah, I agree and I know roughly how old this person is because he and I graduated from UT together. So, um, this guest I've known for a couple of decades now. Yeah. Well, it's the Hamilton County mayor, Weston Wamp. So Weston, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you. Thanks, Chrissy. I'm glad to be here. And by the way, there is no balance. I think that's part of what I've realized now. I've done this job for three and a half years and picked up a fifth kid along the way. And there's no there's no balance. Maybe it's maybe I'm trying. It's a constant effort to create some, uh, appearance or feeling of balance, but it's, uh, it's better described as chaos. And we, it's just all a facade, right? I think balance is a facade. We could go on a parenting rant, but I'm like, we're all just, I think trying to piece it all together on any given day. Yeah. That's what it feels like here. I think we are full of heart. That's all I can say. I think it's the attitude. It's the attitude of the mayor's office. But it's also how we get it done in our family. I even told my wife this morning when I was walking back from walking our kids down to the school bus, because that's kind of my part of the day. We got about a quarter of a mile walk to the bus stop, and it's always a really calm, even if everybody's been arguing until that point. Like it's a point in time where my three older kids are all like, usually in a pretty good mood, walking, going down to the bus. And we had been arguing about which jersey we were going to wear because it's like, what do you want to be in the future? And like all, you know, aspirational kids, mine want to be pro athletes and, um, so does mine. What kind of chaos in the morning is that a basketball pro athlete or a baseball? Which one? What are they picking? What sport? I think my seven year old was wearing an NBA jersey. Okay. All right. I had a Steph Curry jersey on. So yeah, but it's like there was a sort of moment of where we had pulled it all together. And I do think to your point, to anybody who saw me walking with my three kids, they would have thought, well, look at the balance that family has. I like the the terminology of you picked up a fifth one like you just found this child outside. Yeah. That's right. I ran out, I ran as a dad of four. And then I guess I'll, I'll run for re-election as a dad of five. That's fun though. I bet the kids are really cute campaigning like I was a campaign manager. I don't know if you know this about me for the Knox County mayor a thousand years ago, and it would have been great to have some cute kids to like, take pictures with and whatnot. That has to be an asset. Well, the real, the, the real dynamic for me is that I have four boys and a girl and, and the girl is the only one who's loyal to me. The boys are all loyal to their mother. And so I basically have one from a campaign perspective. I have one child and it's my daughter and she is adorable and but she's the only one who does the campaign stuff. I love it, I love it. Well, so let's back up. So you graduated UT with Graham, right? So you're forty ish and what was the journey? I'm holding on to my thirties. Are you forever thirty nine? Is this like a you're stopping at thirty nine? Thirty eight now, if I could just freeze it. Thirty eight is good. But yeah. Thirty nine this March and I'll catch up to Graham soon. Yeah. That's right. So why County mayor? What made you want to run? Why this office? Um, I think the county mayor has, um, some interesting influence, um, important influence in a county. So I can probably guess, but walk us through that journey. Yeah. Uh, so my, I got started in early stage venture capital first doing communications work for a portfolio of companies, um, was close to a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs in Chattanooga. We were all kind of in the twenty ten, eleven, twelve time frame, thinking about what big thing we were going to do to change the world. And I had grown up in a political family. I end up running for Congress in my twenties before we had any children. I almost won in twenty fourteen in a primary against an incumbent. And so, you know, for better or worse, I just kind of cut my teeth both as a kid and adolescent, but then also as a young professional, uh, as a candidate. And, um, and so waters that are like really terrifying to a lot of people were warm for me and I started a family didn't want to, you know, wanted time to go by after, uh, it's kind of close, sort of heartbreaking congressional race. And once we started having kids, like a lot of people, my, um, interests became more local, particularly around public education. I started asking a lot of questions, even in the kind of in the business sector about why things were the way they were reflected. A lot of my my own family. I was the first person in my mom's family to get a college degree. Um, but everybody in that family was successful. Most of them were tradespeople. Um, a lot of them leveraged their trade into small business ownership. And so like, I developed a lot of contrarian thoughts about the world and education and even, you know, local government. And in the meantime, Washington completely, you know, lost its mind in a way that's frankly pretty sad for somebody who grew up around it in a in a dignified way and really revered a lot of the people and leaders who I grew up around. My dad served in Congress for sixteen years, uh, from really from first grade all the way through my time at UT. Uh, so I had lost all interest in and still have lost pretty much all interest in the federal government and in our community. We'd only ever had three county mayors from the time the state constitution was amended. Um, which changed the format of county government beginning in seventy eight. Um, we had three county mayors and only two who were really elected. Our third was appointed into the position, uh, after Claude Ramsey was appointed deputy governor to Haslam. And, and so I started thinking, you know, he's not going to serve forever. Uh, in fact, he had kind of talked to me about whether I'd be interested in doing it. And, and so in our community, there was a couple things that that came together at the same time in twenty twenty two. And that was, uh, there was an open seat for the county mayor position for the first time since nineteen ninety four. It's been twenty eight years. And therefore, it was the first time in kind of modern Hamilton County government that you or even, you know, since the school systems have been consolidated. We went through consolidation of the city and county school systems in ninety nine. It was the first time we'd had a conversation as a community about what kind of county mayor you'd want. What what can the county mayor do? What? What type of vision can they lead with? And so I talked a whole lot about, uh, education and public school facilities. And, um, ultimately the, the huge, um, inequalities and, and deltas in opportunity that in a lot of ways define Chattanooga. Right? I mean, Chattanooga's got on one hand this story of an ascendant mid-sized city in a beautiful place and all sorts of outdoors opportunities. But the real defining narrative, if you're from here, is that it's a really great place to grow up for some kids and a really tough place to grow up in a lot of parts of our community. And I had the opportunity to serve on the Board of Regents leading into my candidacy, and learned a whole lot about, um, both Governor Haslam and Governor Lee's strategies and the major investments that our state was making. Really, they're one of the big differentiators, I think. I don't think we've fully harnessed that opportunity, but I've learned a lot about, uh, what options we are putting in front of both students beginning in high school, early college, T cap type opportunities. And so it made me, uh, you know, an unorthodox candidate and one who talked a lot. I mean, some people thought I was like a single issue candidate because I talked about career and technical education so much. But I did that because I thought it, uh, a recommitment to that, which was a big part of the legacy of Chattanooga recommitment to career and technical opportunities address so many of our other systemic challenges of community, whether that's wages, crime, um, etcetera. And, and so, uh, you know, I end up winning a real tough three way primary. And, and we've had a lot of fun serving and we've done a lot of what we said we'd do, which is, should be what people expect. But it's, you know, not all that common. And so it's been a lot of fun to follow through on some of the things that were just campaign ideas. Yeah. And before you were serving as mayor, you spent a lot of time thinking about debt for people in our generation, for millennials. Talk about how that intersects with your education priorities and how you're using that to to form your first term. Yeah, well, that's a big subject. You know, one of my theories about our country and how we ended up forty trillion dollars in debt is that we, um, it debt became a way of life in America kind of crept up on us. Uh, credit cards were helpful until they became tremendously unhelpful. Maybe, uh, student loan debt was helpful until it became tremendously unhelpful. And so as a country saddled in debt, justifying, you know, longer terms on everything ten year car loans, forty, fifty year mortgages, uh, and we've just overleveraged, uh, as a, as a society. And I think it's, it's that mentality that contributed to the credit card mentality in Washington. You know, I mean, I was a kid paying attention when Republicans and Democrats in Washington were balancing budgets in the Gingrich Clinton era. And now there's, you know, no real, uh, outside of maybe two dozen legislators. There's no real commitment to fiscal stewardship in Washington. I think that starts though, at a at a grassroots level. It starts at home. It starts in a K-12 environment where we're teaching young people about money and the, uh, particularly in our state, the legacy of stewardship and living within your means. We started a movement in Tennessee called In the black, just to educate people on Tennessee's traditions of doing things in the black. Also, the virtue of kind of living your life and, and managing your own household in the black. And it certainly stands in contrast to the kind of the what the world tells you to do. Uh, but, you know, look now at kind of what a beacon our state is relative to other states, um, in the country that have made shortsighted decisions, uh, trying to kind of, you know, win an election cycle versus the real disciplined leadership that we've seen in Tennessee. And, and I mean, I think a lot of that translates down, you know, at a principle level, uh, to a lot of what we've promoted, right? You're seeing it more and more in the state where young people are taking the state's offer for a near free community college experience, transferring into a four year or recognizing that in the, you know, in the new economy, um, as frankly, was the case in the old economy, the clearest path to entrepreneurship and living the American dream is, is having a set of skills. Eight out of ten people who own a small business in America are technicians. I think some people have even academics, maybe particularly academics, have this mindset that, uh, the path to wealth is an MBA and everybody with an MBA knows how to get rich when in reality, Everybody with a trade and a and a specific set of skills has the clearest path to being wealthy of anybody in our country. And I think that certainly speaks to the work we're doing here. And and during your time at TBR, that focus on technical college really exploded. I mean, you know, a billion dollar investment from the Lee administration. We've seen under the Tennessee Promise umbrella, uh, a significant increase of students leaving high school and attending our Tennessee colleges of applied Technology or Tcat has really decreased that sort of average age of Tcat student. I think when we launched, the average age was like twenty eight. Um, and it's certainly now, um, a much younger demographic. How are you taking sort of, um, an approach in Hamilton County? Let's go back to this idea of balance of balancing like this is, well, first of all, I think you have to change the narrative because there is a narrative in our country right now that you don't need college. Right? Well, what we're trying to say is let's create a bigger tent around the word college. You need a high quality degree after high school, most likely to find long term success. So how are you balancing that? Because you do have a university in your backyard. You have a well, you know, I think you have the superior model. Somebody's going to fall from the sky and snipe me right now. But the combined community and technical college, I believe, is where it's at for students. But how are you balancing those things as as you're thinking about the economic mobility of citizens in your community? I'd like to think that we're moving in a direction where in those formative high school years, we're teaching kids the importance of being able to add value to the world. I mean, some of this is, you know, I think we need to kind of demystify like there is not a specific path to a specific certification or a degree. And the world's going to move so fast now and change so fast that, uh, preparing young people to be good citizens and contributing members of society who understand, um, the adding value ultimately is going to be a recipe for being able to provide for your family and, and do great things in our country. And so it becomes about equipping them for an unknown future. I think that's one of the most challenging things when you think about education right now is, uh, you know, our best guess and, and, um, strategy around how we prepare young people for the workforce is probably more a stab in the dark than it's ever been. And so I think the more that we can, uh, tee kids up and I think particularly about boys in our community and a whole lot of minority boys who are disenfranchised with education. Maybe they've fallen behind in their middle school years and they they're presented this one size fits all model generally, you know, outside of a school system going above and beyond. Uh, you know, Tennessee curriculum is going to prepare you for college life at university. And now we've gotten good in this county. Well, I should say we've gotten better about acknowledging that we want to meet kids where they are and honor their gifts and their interests. And that one path is no better than the other path, frankly. Counterintuitively, if you learn a skill, you're more likely to become wealthy than somebody who just goes and gets a generalist four year degree. Uh, and, and so we've begun to make major investments around that. Unfortunately, um, the closure of our historic legacy career and technical school in nineteen ninety one left from nineteen ninety one until twenty twenty seven, when our new technical school opens. It left a dearth of career and technical opportunities for black students in Chattanooga. Kind of an incredible thing that we allowed that to happen. I came into office saying, we want to acquire a campus downtown. Some people thought we were crazy. We bought an eleven acre campus from Blue Cross. Um, we're in the design phase of, we think, the most ambitious career and technical school that will have an entrepreneurial component in the country. But, but part of the goal is very practical there. And it's to make sure that in the same way that in rural parts of our county, to the north and to the east, that alternative pathways that exist already for students, again, predominantly white students exist for students in urban Chattanooga. And, and I just, I bring it back home to like, we, we know I was speaking to some kids at a career and technical school a few days ago and I and we were, there's all the acronyms and we're standing in front of this TBR banner and it's got four or five different acronyms. And I just said guys like, forget all the acronyms. We're here because we're in a state where even our governor, who's a master plumber, believes that every kid has gifts, and we want to find those and lift them up and honor them. And I think that's where like, you know, that's where we're different. That's where we've got an opportunity in the state, in our community has begun to make major investments in that direction. Our career and technical school downtown will be the nicest public school facility in southeast Tennessee. It's not going to be like a nice career and technical school. It's going to be badass. It's going to be a wonderful, beautiful facility because that's how much we think it matters, right? To go and honor gifts that I think, at least in our community, have been overlooked for three decades. I love that you guys are leading there because, you know, I remember when you guys led on the whole Gig city, right? I mean, that was a huge push and everybody kept talking about it. This feels like the the new gig city where it's not only where people want to go, but you may bring people into Hamilton County because of that too. Right. I mean, is that the thought? Yeah. Well, we think ultimately. So next time you're in town, I'll show you where our campus is. You won't really be able to drive into downtown Chattanooga without seeing it. Uh, it's one hundred and eighty five zero zero zero square foot facility that we're going to redevelop. Is it the old Blue Cross headquarters? It's the lower. So Blue Cross owned one hundred and eighty five thousand square foot campus below their corporate headquarters. So it's okay. Okay. Headquarters is up on the hill. This is a facility called the Golden Gateway. That's that's down below. And, um, yeah, I mean, the vision is to go and, and create something that both serves students really well. But is, to your point, a really bold symbol of our values. You come to Chattanooga, what is that facility? Well, it's, it's of a size and scope that you won't, you'll have to notice it. And when we were just getting started, right around the time we acquired the campus, we asked the governor for a some funding in his budget amendment. And Stewart Mcquirter, who's, you know, just starting as commissioner of economic Development, really bought into what we were trying to do because he saw it as an economic development differentiator. Right? If a company is looking at our community, this becomes a very tangible and for that matter, unusual effort from the public sector to meet both students where they are and to meet, um, both current and future potential employers where they are in terms of their needs and work together. And again, to do it in the most dignified of facilities, because I still think we kind of have to put our money where our mouth is in saying, you know, all these pathways matter. Going to colleges or going to a university is no better inherently than going to a technical school. We've been saying that for a few years. The governor certainly, you know, made this massive investment in Tcats. But at a K-12 level, like, you know, the current technical schools, even here, the existing ones. They're pretty modest, right? And so part of what we're doing is we're putting this major investment into our downtown high profile real estate as a symbol to parents, students, other employers, people who visit our community. This is what we care most about. I love it. You know, one of the things I think Chattanooga does so well is like, you bring the community together. I know there's a story about a national news broadcast that kicked off in Chattanooga's downtown being polluted, and then the community came together to fix that Chattanooga two point zero. You seem to have like a, a young professional population there that like really seems to care about the city. Sounds like this partnership, like talk about that bringing the community together to support an initiative like this. Yeah. Well, I mean, Chattanooga has got some good qualities for sure, I think. I worry, let me just preface what I'm going to say, but I worry that a community that kind of gets a positive reputation for being able to change things then becomes, uh, it's not all that hard for the sort of malaise to set in that you think that you are changing everything and, and, you know, so you, you become a bit self-congratulatory, I resist that. However, Chattanooga from the eighteen eighties until today is a it's an entrepreneurial town, right? I mean, it is ultimately one of the advantages that we've got, uh, over Knoxville, like Knoxville's got this got huge state investment advantages, right. University of Tennessee is based there. Ornl's down the road, uh, TVA headquarters, we've got a big TVA presence, but I think you'd see over time, Chattanooga is pound for pound, the most entrepreneurial part of the state of Tennessee. And, and again, has been that way for about one hundred and fifty years. And so what you'll see every generation or so is not so much from the public sector as from a combination of the private sector, the philanthropic sector with competent. All you need is competent public sector leadership. Politicians are always overrated and they'll take all the credit. But you've seen generationally here, um, this kind of philanthropic and entrepreneurial drive for things to be better and to address some of the challenges. I mean, that's happened here through, you know, entrepreneurs starting charter schools, entrepreneurs kind of casting vision around public spaces. I'm a little different in that I came into office from that sector. So those are all my best friends. We compare notes and kind of dream dreams together, but I do think that's part of what is real and feels different to people about Chattanooga is that over the course of the last one hundred and fifty years, the the vision has been driven by business people and entrepreneurs as much or more than the elected officials. And at the end of the day, that's a better recipe because the incentives are all weird for elected officials. Like, you know, if you kind of reduce it down to what's real. A lot of times, you know, you're just you're campaigning all the time and I'm a free election, right? The self-imposed term limit guy. So everybody knew that I was kind of coming in on a mission. And I think it gave me a little bit of an ability to just chart a course for eight years and be a little bit less moved by the, the winds. But, um, yeah, I think there is an entrepreneurial attitude here that's different. Building on that a little bit and sort of circling back to where we started, I do wonder about just because I'm a political science nerd, like, and my son recently was having an, an AP test and it was all about federalism. How does county government, what Hamilton County government work with state government in terms of helping set priorities? I mean, you've talked a lot about education and technical education, but just economic viability. I mean, I don't know anyone that's more disciplined or thinking about stewardship than all our friend Bo Watson, who's been on the podcast. So so what does that look like? I mean, I think it's just a cool thing that happens. Bo's my state senator, and Bo helped me really right after I got elected, understand county government in a way that shaped my service. And that is, and I think shaped our relationship and the way that we've sought to work with the state. And that is that counties, unlike cities, are effectively state government at a local level. Right? A lot of policies that are enacted in Nashville end up being carried out by county government, where subdivisions of the state of Tennessee. And we've really claimed that, I'd say. Whereas even on political grounds, cities are fighting with the state of Tennessee. We've taken pride in being their kind of hands and feet at a local level. And and Hamilton County's got a little bit of a unique, uh, place in Tennessee's. Kind of financial history, uh, in the sense that we were, uh, triple, triple a rated before the state of Tennessee was I think we could lay claim to, um, having started that trend to some extent. Um, and there's just a real great, over the past few administrations and leaders of our finance department, we've set a really high bar. And I'd say the comptroller knows that we're kind of known for that in the world of local government, but we've worked incredibly close with the legislature, um, where we've just sort of embraced this attitude that we are a part of the state of Tennessee, basically. And of course, that's not as, uh, agreeable to the Democrats in our form of government as it is to the Republicans because it's, you know, like Nashville's, you know, run by Republicans. And, um, it's been very rewarding, frankly, and it's given us an opportunity to To pursue policy changes at a statewide level. There's been some taxpayer advocacy stuff, some legislation, legislation that I've been working with Senator Watson on this go round relative to to pilots, and how we can tighten up the protocols and the and the way that a lot of the policies that abate local taxes work. And and then, you know, there's been a constant feedback loop also. Uh, I think that you'd see reflected in, in some of the work that Senator Watson's done where we're, um, you know, he may even say oversharing, uh, information and needs at a local level, but we've really embraced it. I think that is the better model for county government. It wasn't really the the attitude before I got here. Uh, in fact, I got rid of our lobbyist because I just wanted to handle those relations personally. And, and frankly, I think it's kind of awkward at a certain point for a guy like me, if you're going to work very closely with your delegation or even people in the administration. It's kind of awkward to hire somebody to stand in between you and them. Uh, so I can identify with, you know, some of the folks in the legislature who are asking questions about the, you know, how appropriate it is or inappropriate it is for taxpayers to hire lobbyists to, to then lobby another former government. Because I do think this is all relational and at least in a you know, from the perspective of one of Tennessee's big counties, you know, we we would like to be aligned with the state of Tennessee, not at conflict. MM. I like what you're talking about in this relationship piece. And if if you have listened to the podcast previously, we talked a lot about AI. We've talked today a lot about career technical education. But you and I, we both have communication degrees. And one of the things AI hasn't quite figured out yet is how to sit down in a room and read an audience and deliver a message. And we talked to our team a lot about we're in the people business, right? We don't press a button and a widget comes out on the other side. I imagine you would also consider yourself in the people business and talk about that specific skill set. Maybe what we consider more of those like soft skills and how you use them every day in your role. Yeah. Well, some people would say I don't use them very well. Graham. Uh, those soft skills can be as off putting as they are, uh, you know, uh, beneficial. Well, I think it's a, it's a big part of what we think about, um, every day in terms of meeting kids where they're at. Uh, and this is, I think, relevant to every parent because we're all like, we're all terrified of what screens are doing to all of us. I mean, every millennial has this fear that we're like letting our life, you know, just drip away, you know, into our iPhone. And then even a greater fear that that's true for our kids. Tell you an example, I mentioned that at our career and technical school downtown, there's going to be a major component around entrepreneurship. Again, that doesn't maybe that those dots don't connect for some folks. But the clearest path to entrepreneurship is learning a set of skills. And we, uh, we pursue, we're pursuing this entrepreneurship pathway in part because of, um, an experience we had visiting the entrepreneurship Center in Franklin as part of Williamson County school system. And what stuck with me and two anecdotes here. What stuck with me about that visit is them talking about the incredible change in soft skill development from students who start in the entrepreneurship program, uh, to the point that they're pitching their, their company, you know, whether that's a conceptual company or an actual LLC that they're creating. Uh, because I do think, you know, we, we live in a time where if we're not mindful about giving kids opportunities to develop soft skills, it's not happening in the same way it even did for, you know, those of us who grew up in the nineties, you know, it's not necessarily like our soft skills aren't necessarily developing around a game of kick the can in the neighborhood. Uh, and see, we got to be thinking about things that I don't think, you know, people in our same roles twenty, thirty years ago were thinking about, uh, and then also, you know, the other anecdote is dealing with some inner city kids and schools. We started a leadership development program at two, uh, pretty economically disadvantaged schools. And I saw this interest in the way the world works and in soft skills and in entrepreneurship and how you put a real estate deal together and what it looks like to start a company that resells a product. And, um, and so one of the, one of the challenges here is that, uh, particularly given how fast the world is changing, I think academics aren't in a great position to know what kids want and what the opportunities are. And that's not meant to be critical. It's, it's, it's sort of self-evident if you think about, you know, even just the educational experience of a educator, and there needs to be this posture of humility from all of us in the public sector that we've got something to learn, and we've got a lot to learn from the private sector that really drives the way the world works. And I think it's true even on this, on the soft skill side. And it even comes back to where we started this conversation about, um, helping kids understand that success will come as they learn how to add value to the world. Like if you learn to add value, you will have, first of all, a very rewarding life and you'll likely make a lot of money. But you can't add value to your point. Graham. Very hard to add value in the world. And if you lack soft skills to interact with other people, that's so hard. And I mean, you have five kids, I have three. I mean, I feel like I'm constantly like, got my foot on their backs about ensuring that we are learning the skills that were necessary. when you played kick the Can out. So I mean, you know, they, they. Don't want necessarily to go. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'm like go, go tell your go ask your teacher. Like I didn't do well. Can I retake this test? I was like, the worst they can say is no. Right? And then you're exactly where you were before. I mean, it's just trying to help kids learn how to advocate for themselves like, and, and have conversations with adults and learn what it takes to negotiate. I mean, I believe in all of that and think it's a critical piece. Uh, okay. Running for re-election. What's the next four years? What's the vision? Well, we're just basically going to tell people we're going to double down on the work that we've done. Um, it's there's so much of that work to do. Um, there's so many kids who don't have the same opportunities that other kids here have. We've still got school facilities issues. We're a county a lot like Knox County or Rutherford County where there's a lot of stress around growth. And so we're trying to take a generational attitude to how we make these decisions and, and even communicate to people that at times we think we're going to make some decisions or try to make some decisions that will be more popular twenty years from now than they are today. Um, but I think, you know, my core thesis comes back to, uh, economic development is a little bit of a made up politicians buzzword. Your community or for that matter, your state's potential is, um, or even your, your economy is a reflection of the skills and talents of your people. And so to the extent that we're serving young people well and serving for that matter, adults well, when they have opportunities or willingness to be retrained like those, like that's your economy, that's your ability to do economic development, to recruit companies. It's, you can't really trick the private sector. Um, and so I, I just believe in kind of, in my sort of, I have a communications degree like Graham from Tennessee. Uh, you know, spend enough time on the Board of Regents to be dangerous, have studied this stuff as a dad and a passionate public servant. And I just think everything else kind of takes care of itself. If you do your best to honor the gifts of young people and, um, you know, the more talented and creative and confident and skilled your young people are, your workforce is incredible. Your entrepreneurial sector thrives. Companies want to come to your community because you've got talented people. Um, and I'm like, that's the only way this makes sense to me, right? And, uh, there's a lot of kind of putting lipstick on a pig that politicians do. I don't buy a lot of that. And so that, that's what we've pitched to people over the last few years. And, um, and then a big part of our work also has been around, it's connected to that. It's been around Families and just kind of blocking and tackling of a community like ours where we just want to be who we say we are. I mean, even, you know, Graham, kind of back to that point about Chattanooga sells itself real hard. We are a great outdoor community, but just to kind of continue to lean into that legacy, we just landed a state park investment at the north end of the county. That's really exciting. We we're the only county in the state with four state parks speaking of this county state relationship. And we're about to get our fifth state park. Uh, and these are quality of life things that, uh, make all the other stuff work as well, right? I mean, if you're, if whatever your strengths are, one of our beliefs has been lean into those strengths, right? Rather than go try to be good at everything, lean into those strengths. And one of our strengths historically was around career and technical education. We had let it become a weakness. We're leaning back into that one. We're going to lean into Conservation Park's efforts and, uh, go be the community that we've been telling people we are for a long time and just be iterative. Again, like, I think one of the things I'll, I'll wrap up with this. One of the things that we've become the most resistant to is the huge temptation to oversell and then hope people kind of forget about your big announcement and Under-deliver like we've got some things underway right now where we fundamentally believe we've under promised and we will over deliver. But I've never seen anybody else do that in government. It's almost always, look how great we are. Check out this ribbon cutting re-elect us. And so we're just trying to change that mindset to, you know, do the small things well, lean into your strengths, doing things a little bit better every day, uh, has a compounding effect if you'll commit to it. I love that. Well, we're, you know, our big vision is building Tennessee's future workforce. So we hope to continue to partner with Hamilton County. Appreciate your leadership. Um, and if you ever want to go deep dive, you just, you know where to find me because I think there's so much potential there. Um, and I appreciate all of your efforts under this umbrella of, I mean, you know, you've said it a couple of times now. It's like, yes, skill set, but also like allowing students to utilize their gifts and not trying to pigeonhole. And I think that's our work too, is meeting students where they are. So I think that's where you get it, right. Well, listen, I we've probably gone over on time, but even you talk of like building workforce. I think if you kind of break that down into what that means in its simplest form, like that's where it's all at. And, and most of the things we do to address the other challenges all come back to, if you get this part right, it takes care of a lot of other things. You end up with wages that set the stage for a thriving family. You end up with hopeful people, not hopeless people who are then committing crimes and getting arrested. Entrepreneurship is driven our state. It's certainly driven our region for generations. Entrepreneurship is really is catapulted by this idea that you've got a skilled. I think sometimes we limit what a skilled workforce means to look. We are attractive to a Korean investor for a manufacturing facility when in reality, the history of our state is that skilled people are also entrepreneurial people. They're people who pursue the American dream. They're people really wealthy, right? Certainly the story here. And so it's just there's all these other ways that we can address and proposals and ideas and think tanks. You know, we'll give us all their ideas about how we can fix all these other challenges in society. I, the one that makes the most sense to me is that you go and kind of harness the human potential of people in the state of Tennessee. And then all there'll be this cascading, positive generational effect. So that's why I love what y'all are doing. And I think it's what we share in common. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for your time, mayor. I know you're busy. This was great. Yeah. Thank you. Chrissy. Thanks.
