(soft music) - After eight years of leadership under Mayor Andy Berke Chattanooga has an opportunity to select a new mayor.

What are the priorities for our city?

And who has the experience to lead Chattanooga for the next four years?

We'll talk to candidates for Chattanooga mayor coming up next.

Support for this program is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) Welcome to the first of our mayoral forums.

I'm your moderator Ray Bassett, host of Scenic Roots on WUTC 88.1 FM.

The following organizations have partnered to create this series of forums, United Way of Greater Chattanooga, the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.

WTCI and WUTC are the media partners in this endeavor.

We appreciate the work from each of these organizations that has gone into making this series of forums a reality we'll be focusing on three main topic areas during these conversations, the local economy, cradle to career education and our civic infrastructure.

Now I'm happy to welcome our candidates for this forum and to have them introduce themselves to you.

Starting with Dr. Elenora Woods.

- All right, thank you for the opportunity to be here today and for the invitation.

I'm a Chattanooga native born here in College Hill Course.

I practiced dentistry for 31 years.

I started my own business 31 years ago as a sole proprietor.

And since then I have been in the community in various ways of working in the community from the civic standpoint and also just working in the community from a neighborhood perspective and a people perspective, giving back to this community in an enormous way just to make our community better.

I'm very glad to be here in this position now to do even more for Chattanooga.

I've seen the insides and the outsides of the community from the corporate level all the way down to the neighborhood level.

And I understand now being involved just what this community is lacking and what we need to do to create a better Chattanooga.

- Thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson - Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm a local businessman having spent 25 years in the automobile business here in Chattanooga.

I'm a hometown boy.

You'll find my roots are humbly grown deep into the soil here.

My father was a World War II veteran who truly lived the American dream.

And my mother worked at Woolworths for 40 years.

So a lot of my childhood I grew up in Woolworth.

I'm a relentless problem solver and to make it in the automobile business it's all about solving problems.

I'm a team builder and a people person and I've spent many years as a coach and a mentor developing people is one of my strong suits.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson Ms. White.

- Yes, I'm Kim White.

I'm a homegrown also.

I went to Hixson High School.

I graduated from UTC.

I left the community for 20 years working for a Fortune 500 company, building teams and growing market share.

And in 2003, my husband and I decided that we wanna put down roots in the community.

I came back here in 2003 without a job I wanted to make sure I had a way to find and use my voice.

I start off working managing Senator Bob Corker real estate company with 2 million square feet, getting engaged in the community, serving on boards such as Langer, getting back involved with UTC.

Governor Haslam appointed me to the UT Board of Trustees which I'm still on.

For the last 11 years I've been president and CEO of River City Company which is a private nonprofit focused on downtown redevelopment and had the opportunitY of bringing in $1.2 billion in investment and seeing our downtown grow.

I've been encouraged over the years to use my voice in a bigger way and I'm excited to have the opportunity to use my background, skillsets, my business nonprofit and the experience I've had working besides city government for the past 11 years to to really make a difference in all parts of our community.

- Thank you Ms. White Mr. McLaren.

- Hi, how are you?

My name is Andrew McLaren.

I'm coming to you from a blizzard up in New Jersey have come back from a job in New York.

What I do for a living is I protect people.

I protect people all over the world.

I've worked in over 70 countries doing private investigations and protecting people.

And I wanna protect the people in Chattanooga.

We have a skyrocketing crime problem that's out of control.

We have more and more homeless people.

And I think that the ways to fix our city is to have people participate, get people energized and we're grassroots, we're out getting people jobs with livable wages.

we're out mentoring people, gang intervention, preventing kids from going down the wrong path.

So I think that I'll be a good mayor because we're able to incorporate everybody and get everybody excited and get to use out to vote.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

And the rest of the candidates now to the questions starting with the economy here in Chattanooga.

What should the city do to foster a more inclusive economy for all Chattanoogans during this pandemic and beyond?

And what would you do to ensure that companies receiving tax incentives are benefiting Chattanooga residents?

We'll start with Dr. Woods and we'll go around answers to a minute please.

- The first thing that we have to do is to make sure that people are prepared to receive the jobs.

We're doing a terrible job with the educational opportunities in the city, especially in the jobs that we have that are afforded to people in the city of Chattanooga.

Therefore many people in the marginalized communities are left out.

We're doing a terrible job with bringing our young folk in from the cradle to career.

And that from early childhood education we see a tremendous gap, a tremendous gap between the lower socioeconomic communities and those that are more fortunate.

So the first thing that we have to do is to close that educational gap so that everyone will have an opportunity.

And then secondly, create programs that will get us there.

I'm very fortunate in that I was able to do some of that.

I created EW Professional Career Training Center that gave welfare women and men the opportunity to move from welfare to work for the past 20 years.

So I understand the need to give those that are less fortunate a hand up in the community to be educated.

- Thank you, Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- Well, one of my initiatives my team will work together to create a joint partnership with local building trades representatives and other educators throughout the city to create a jobs training facility.

This program will be connected to academic requirements and aimed at high school juniors and seniors with a goal to provide them with marketable skills after graduation.

Also our local employers will have trained, ready, willing able manpower.

I think there's a gap out there and I call it the millennial balance and my generation certainly was focused on working hard and creating wealth to accumulate the wealth.

So somehow that has to change as well within those groups that they have to realize it's time to roll up your sleeves and go to work.

Thank you.

- All right.

Thank you Mr. Wilson Ms. White.

- Yes, thank you.

Well, there's no doubt especially with COVID, there's a lot of small medium sized businesses that are hurting and one of the things that we're gonna do in my administration, one, we're not gonna be a passive observer.

We're gonna be an active partner and we're prepared to have an office of small business support going out into the community, into the neighborhoods, working with small and medium sized businesses to make sure they have the resources to continue to grow.

So many new businesses have started during COVID and we wanna be an active partner helping them do that to take away the barriers to doing business in our city.

So I think one of the best ways is going out and looking neighborhood by neighborhood what the opportunities are and working with the people where they are, where they live and where they wanna start businesses.

That's one of the first things that we'll be doing.

We absolutely need to jumpstart our economy and we have a great opportunity coming out of COVID when so many people wanna be out of the larger cities and Chattanooga is a beautiful place to be.

So we are primed to be able to go out and recruit businesses and provide more jobs throughout the city for all kinds of different levels.

So we're excited about the opportunity to actually do that.

The mayor's office is the number one sales person for the community.

And again, we're gonna be very active doing that.

I think in doing that in order to provide incentives if we provide any incentives for a company there has to be a strong community benefit and we need to make sure that what they agree to do there are callback things that you could actually come back and make sure that they pay back any incentives if I don't perform.

So I think incentives are one of the tools in the toolbox, but we do have to make sure that the process is transparent and that it does provide a significant community benefit in order to do so.

- Yes, hello.

I believe in full participatory budgeting.

We need to get the community involved.

We need to have small businesses.

I wanna create a robust small business task force where we sit down and we talk with small business owners about how we can best help their small businesses.

If people don't have money to spend and we can't stimulate the economy.

So we need to focus on livable wages.

I want $15 an hour for everybody who has a minimum but I would encourage to work with small businesses so that they don't go out of business because I understand there's a lot of challenges for restaurants, for instance to where some of their employers rely on tips.

So maybe it doesn't make sense to have them paying their employees $15 an hour.

It also comes down to bad deals.

So we wanna make good deals.

I wouldn't support the dip and paint deal, nothing against dip and paint, but they got a free property that's valued at $9 million and they only have to hire 150 Chattanoogans.

We need to put a greater emphasis on a trade schools so that when companies like Volkswagen get massive federal contracts they're gonna hire people from Chattanooga not Bradley County, not Cleveland.

We need to empower our people with these treats.

And I believe in...

Thank you so much it's been a minute.

Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

And now for our next question we go to Alyssa Patterson.

- Hello, so my name is Alyssa Patterson and I am a junior major in social work with a minor in criminal justice in Middle Tennessee State University.

I am also from Chattanooga Tennessee where I graduated from CSAS also known as Channel School for the Arts and Sciences.

So my question for the mayor candidates is what would you do to pull the younger group of people like myself who are about to graduate from college or have just recently graduated from college to Chattanooga and hopes of finding a job or a career that is stable.

Thank you.

- And we'll go around to our candidates again, answers to a minute please, starting with Dr. Woods.

- Okay, I'm very much aware of how we're losing our homegrown young folk to other cities because of lack of opportunity.

So we're gonna create a task force designed to specifically deal with that issue.

Number one, we have to create a space for our young folk, my children in particular, one or two or three of the same individuals that have the same problem, they wanna leave Chattanooga because there's not opportunities for them.

So we have to create those opportunities in our community so that we keep our young folk here.

And that would mean of course, creating business, creating other opportunities through jobs and workforce.

And those are the things that we have to do that we're not doing right now.

We're not making sure that our young and talented young folks stay in Chattanooga.

And that's gonna be one of the number one things that we do in Chattanooga if I'm elected as your mayor.

- All right.

Thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- Thank you for that question.

You'll see that I'm been fortunate to have traveled the world and I have international experience.

So I plan to use all of those attributes as well as all of my connections in the city to create jobs and recruit industries to town.

There's no doubt that there's just right down the road here in Atlanta, there are some very, very big opportunities for young people like yourself.

So we've got to draw those industries into the city so that those jobs are here.

There's always gonna be a certain percentage of people leave because we can't have all the industries, but I envisioned a gradual transition from conservative manufacturing to more progressive manufacturing.

There's no reason they can't be manufacturing computer chips here which would create a tremendous opportunity for our local union trades to build the facilities.

Thank you.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes as someone that left right after college because there wasn't a lot of opportunities here I understand how important is to make sure that we retain talent and it goes back to absolutely going out and recruiting more business and growing our own.

So it goes back to the office of small and medium sized business support how do we actually encourage people that wanna start and grow businesses?

And how do we go out especially right after COVID like I said before, we have a great opportunity to highlight all the natural resources of Chattanooga and bring more regional opportunity here, look into Nashville, look into Atlanta.

So to keep jobs and keep young people here and talent here you have to have the opportunity and that starts with jobs.

I have a history of bringing in $1.2 billion of investment to our city and I wanna do this in a bigger way throughout our city.

- Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- Chattanooga is a unique city.

It's this unique city.

We have to protect our environment.

We are halfway between Atlanta and Nashville two thriving cities.

My hobby is making films, producing films.

I wanna try to entice the entertainment industry to come into town and to pay people to give them a mandate where we can make it a great place to film, but you have to hire locals.

There's a lot of talent.

Arts brings in roughly $162 million into the city every year.

A lot of young people were interested in doing hip hop music, painting, arts, I wanna fully champion and encourage people to explore their talents.

And we can do that through helping small businesses, through identifying what young people wanna do in placing the careers that they can thrive in and that they can enjoy.

And lastly, I'll say that we again need to put an emphasis on trade schools because when these opportunities come to work in these big plants and factories we need to be able to put people from Chattanooga into these jobs that pay well, and that pay livable wages.

So it comes down to global wages and protecting and empowering small businesses.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

And now our next question for the candidates, how should the city provide a comprehensive approach to support students beyond the classroom whether through youth and family development centers or tackling problems such as mental health during COVID-19?

We'll start with Dr. Woods.

- Number one, and this is something that I'm very passionate about.

We are not utilizing all of the programs that we have are already in place in such a way that it's getting to those people that need it.

And one of the reasons is because people don't know how to navigate the system is too difficult.

They don't know where the resources are.

They don't know how to reach out to get those resources.

So if I'm elected mayor, I'm gonna simplify the process.

There is no reason for us to have as many programs as we have.

And when you go into the rooms where they offer these classes there's no one there.

And from my communities, the minority communities we're the ones that need these resources yet we're the ones that are taking the advantage of it because we don't know where to get them.

So one of the things that we have to do is create a better system to reaching out to the marginalized communities, especially with mental health.

Every weekend I go out to the tent cities throughout the city, and I'm just amazed at the fact that these people are in the community with these mental illnesses yet we walk over them every day.

So I'm gonna make sure that we take care of our mental illnesses throughout our city and make sure that people that live in marginalized communities are not overlooked like they have in the past few days.

Okay thank you.

- Thank you.

Yes, and a reminder to everybody try to keep your answers to a minute.

Mr. Wilson.

- Allow me to say the last thing, excuse me.

I don't think the last thing we need is another set of programs.

I hired a gentleman to pour concrete for me one time and I've been fortunate.

I listened to everybody so I have lots of mentors.

But this gentleman at the end of the day said it as good as it could be said.

Everybody at some point, every tub at some point has to set on its own bottom.

So I think it's time for people to be responsible for their sales.

There's multiple programs in place and understand nobody's using them.

So I think we've gotta create jobs and opportunities for people and then they've got to go do it themselves.

I wanna show this I did a little research on mental health.

Go look for yourself.

The last thing the government needs to be in is the mental health business.

At least at the local level, I'll leave the last part of this in 2009, they cut $4.35 billion from the budgets that we're still in with mental health.

So it's a tremendous problem but it has to come from the federal government and then maybe we can administer the care.

But as far as we have to pay for mental health we got to budget for it.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, thank you.

I think as I've been going out and visiting in the neighborhoods a couple of things that have become apparent.

One, every neighborhood has different needs and different challenges.

And the second is that we have Youth and Family Development Centers scattered throughout our city.

We have 15 that are great assets for our community that are under utilized.

What I plan to do is actually working with the community and looking at how we actually program these.

So there is afterschool programs there's tutoring, there's mentoring, looking at how we actually bring resources into the community, whatever that looks like.

So I think it is identifying what resources are out there.

We have 1400 amazing nonprofits in the city and I think it is us getting a relative table and figuring out where the gaps are and what the city's role but I do know that using the Youth and Family Development Centers as the community center for those neighborhoods gives us an opportunity to highlight where resources are.

And I plan to do that.

- All right.

Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- I agree that youth and family development services are so important.

Childhood trauma is one of the most difficult things to deal with because it affects people for their entire life.

So we have to get to kids and help kids before they experienced this trauma.

And if they're experiencing abuse or food insecurity we need to help them immediately.

I think the mental health, I understand it's very expensive and yes, we need to try to get as much federal and state money as possible.

But this comes down to the human element, a level of empathy to where no amount of money is gonna solve this what we need to do is hire people that really care about people and are proactive and go the extra mile.

And don't just work nine to five.

I take phone calls at three in the morning sometimes for my fellow veterans or from first responders.

And often it just is a shoulder to cry on.

It's letting them know that we care.

And as mayor of the city I'm gonna let people know that we care and we're gonna go out, we're gonna find them and we're gonna help them and we're gonna be extremely proactive in helping them and helping them navigate the system that's often bogged down and filled with bureaucratic red tape, that's intimidating.

- Thank you Mr. McLaren.

Our next question comes from Wendy at UTC.

- Hi, my name is Wendy Jang and I'm a junior at UTC.

My major is exercise science with a modern in nutrition.

And my question is, one of the purposes of the partnerships between UTC and the City of Chattanooga is to help foster civic engagement and train future leaders in our area.

Unfortunately, a perceived lack of employment obviously results in many students leaving after graduation.

What kind of relationship do you envision having with UTC and its students if you get elected?

And what would you do to ensure that Chattanooga is a place where students would want to stay and begin their careers?

Thank you and I look forward to hearing honest answers from you guys.

- And thank you, Wendy.

And now to the candidates answers to a minute please.

Starting with Dr. Woods.

- Okay.

I'm very happy to hear that question because one of the things that I was responsible for in my school EW Professional Career Training Center was to make sure that we got at least 97 to a 100% job placement rate.

And the purpose of doing that is to make sure that when people complete their program, they have a job.

So it is the responsibility of the university and the different businesses in this community to put these students in with an employer or a business so that while they're in their training they can already have that relationship established.

And so we did was to establish relationships while they were in training so that when they completed their program they pretty much had a job.

And that's what we have to do is create partnerships between UTC and the businesses that are here in Chattanooga.

- Thank you, Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- Well, we must all work together and that's strong, weak, rich and poor to build upon the foundations and the cornerstones that have already been laid by great leaders in this city, with the additions of Volkswagen and Amazon.

And that's just part of the story.

We've got a great training hospital here.

We've got a beautiful river and mountains and streams.

So you will find me showcasing those attributes all over the country to attract industries into the city and create job opportunities for the graduates and for others.

Thank you for that question.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, well, this is a question near and dear to my heart as a UTC alum and a former chair of the foundation and on the board of UT, the trustees I've been working especially the last 11 years in my role at River City Company, connecting the town and gown and working to students and seeing opportunities to downtown and working to bring the community up on the hill to see the talent at UTC.

We've been working on internships and really how do we bring students and give them exposure to all the great companies.

We're fortunate to have so many great companies we're here right in the heart of our community.

So bringing students and giving them exposure but then also taking the community up and putting them on advisory boards and getting them involved with UTC so they can see the talent.

I've had a front row seat to that and very proud of the connections that have been made.

And we can continue to grow that.

But I think we have a great resource with those 12,000 students at UTC is a great talent base for our city.

- Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- Thank you so much for the question.

I've got so much respect that ration for students.

Students ended the Vietnam war.

Students help paramount the civil rights act.

Students are the best and the brightest of the next generation.

There's a quote that I like, "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors "we borrow it from our children."

I think if you're gonna be doing an internship you should be paid.

I want you to get paid.

It's about relationships, assembling teams.

So I want you understand that if I'm mayor our administration is gonna be fully accessible and we're gonna build strategic partnerships with colleges and with businesses.

And we're gonna work with teachers and work with the Dean and work with the heads to make sure that when you get out of college, you're not stagnant, you're not falling behind in student debt.

And you're able to go right into the job force.

And like I said, my door is always gonna be opened, I'm fully accessible, and we're gonna be working as well as we possibly can to make sure that you get a livable wage once you graduate college and even while you're attending school.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you Mr. McLaren.

Next question, on policing.

What changes would you make to policing here in Chattanooga after last summer's protests which brought calls to quote, "Divest money from" Or quote, "Defund the police."

Steering that money toward more social services and greater community oversight.

Answers to a minute please.

Starting with Dr. Woods.

- Well, first we have to understand that monies that are put into programs usually are specifically aimed for that particular program.

So we can't move money, especially if it's grant money or funding from the government to another different program that will be misappropriation of funds.

I think we have to be intentional number one, about doing a better job of getting funding for education and other programs in the city.

But with the funds that we have for the police department we need to utilize it better, we need to utilize it better, get rid of bad cops, get rid of bad cheese and then bring in a new supply of officers and also do more training with the ones that we have with community policing, breaking it down to this level where they're able to control themselves which is more training when they're in communities maybe cultures that they're not familiar with.

So we have been a victim African-Americans I can speak on this.

We have been a victim in our own communities from police brutality.

You all know me as a civil rights activist.

I have fought continuously over the past 20 or 30 years for criminal justice reform.

I will continue to do that until we have a better police department even recruiting both outside of Chattanooga using whatever means we have to to draw better police officers to this community.

If that means is the programs to get them here then that's what we'll do.

We need to also work with historical black colleges and universities to bring African-American to our community to make our police force resemble our demographics in Chattanooga.

- All right, thank you Dr. Woods Mr. Wilson.

- Our team will work to secure our neighborhoods with more training, more diversity and enhanced and improved retention programs for the police department.

I understand that a lot of the problem they have they get the officers trained with one of the world-class training systems it's out there.

And then we lose those officers to other markets because of low pay.

So we've come up with a plan to enhance the retention program so that they're enticed to stay with us for longer periods of time.

And then as the officers to be more involved in the communities like when we were kids they were called peace officers and that we actually respected them when we saw them we knew we could run to him if we needed help.

So we'll all work together to create a more trusted environment between the officers and the community through those initiatives.

Thank you.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, thank you.

As I've been out into the community one thing that I've heard over and over again it doesn't matter what community I'm in that they want to see more police officers that are part of the community.

And how do you build that community of trust?

That takes more resources, not less.

They've got to be able to recruit the best and the brightest.

They've got to be able to retain police officers.

They've got to be able to recruit minority police officers.

So they have police officers that look like the community that they represent.

So that takes more funding, not less.

But we also need to walk alongside them with mental health professionals and addiction treatment professionals.

Because a lot of the calls that I get need additional support.

So it's not replacing the police officers with those but it is actually having an additional support And then making sure that we have enough people that can become part of the community and get out of the cars.

So I look forward to giving them the resources they need so we can recruit the best and the brightest that can become part of the community and that can build a community of trust.

- Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- I love the Chattanooga Police Department.

I went to the Citizens Police Academy and graduated from that and did a ride along in Robin the most dangerous neighborhoods of Chattanooga.

Currently we have 462 officers.

We're supposed to have 500.

The reason is because we're losing guys, people and women, they're going to better paying departments.

That's why I wanna raise the salary of every officer by $10,000 each that's gonna help us retain the best officers, increase morale.

It's gonna reduce the civil litigation misconduct lawsuits.

I'm going to fire bad cops.

I'm gonna fire Police Chief Rodney due to vicarious liability for all the scandals.

And I'm gonna implement Glen Scruggs to lead the department.

Glen's currently the Assistant Chief and was an outstanding homicide detective.

We need to change the culture in policing.

Most of the officers are great.

Some of them are not.

We need to be ready to call balls and strikes and hold people accountable be either corrupt or they're breaking the law.

I want officers to put a greater emphasis on community policing.

We have 34% of the city's African-American only 17% of the CPD is black.

So I wanna recruit more officers that actually come from the communities that they patrol.

And how do we do that?

We do that by elevating performance, respect levels, reaching out to the community.

And again I will never defund the Chattanooga Police Department.

We will however, increase their performance and morale.

- All right.

Thank you Mr. McLaren.

Next question for the candidates, transportation.

How would you prioritize meeting the city's transportation needs?

From fixing overdue repairs to long-term goals that would make the city more livable and welcoming for all Chattanoogans?

Answers to a minute please.

Starting with Dr. Woods.

- Well, first of all, we have to make transportation available to everyone in every community.

One of the problems that we are having is that there are some jobs, for example that don't have bus routes and there's no way for them to get there other than to rely on other transportation modes.

We have to make it affordable or free to all especially our students and especially those in our elderly community.

That will cut down on a lot of carbon in the atmosphere if we would use the transportation system that the city provides that's one thing.

Infrastructure is a must.

We have got to fix our roads and our highways.

And one of the things that I would love to do is to put in a tows, look into the research of what it would take to bring tows to the state of Chattanooga for cars coming through our community, tearing up our roads and highways.

So that is one way we will take care of those issues.

- All right.

Thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- Well I've been studying the 2016 study that look at building a railroad from downtown and Robin area out to the enterprise South area.

And I've talked to the head railroad guy here in town in an hour the lady CARTA was more than kind, and she spent an hour talking about that with me, but she explained that there's plenty of transportation all over town and it's underutilized.

I will say I think everybody's got their initiative in place but I'm gonna take on the potholes with roads program instead of just fixing potholes right before the elections, which what seems to happen.

So I'd have to study that a little more but talking to the director at the CARTA, she says there's plenty of transportation all over town.

So I guess we'd have to take her at her word but I'd have to dig deeper into that to see what the needs really are and then work to create a way to fix it.

Thank you.

- All right, thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, look, if we're gonna grow our community and we need to grow our community, we've got to make sure our infrastructure is representative of how fabulous our community is, and it's not.

We've kicked the can for a long time on roads and other infrastructure issues.

So I do have a comprehensive plan of how we plan to fix it.

I've committed to put $3 million more in the budget to begin with but also how do we leverage funds from T.dot that we're not taking advantage of.

How do we make sure when there is an infrastructure bill from the federal government that we're set and we've identified the problems that need to be taken care of.

So it's a comprehensive approach, not fixing potholes but it's actually paving the problem and taking care of paving problems for the long term.

In regards to CARTA, CARTA is one of the most underfunded public transportation systems in the country.

The routes don't go where people are but they've got to be an active partner at the table.

And I plan on bringing them to the table when we start talking about development and growth and jobs.

And again, we've gotta be able to get people where they work and we're not doing that right now.

So we'll take a hard look at what we ended up doing with with CARTA, but with infrastructure and roads that needs to be jump-started we're way behind the curve.

- All right.

Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- We definitely need more bus routes.

There's not enough bus routes.

We need to strategize so everybody can get to food places, avoid food deserts and they can get to their jobs.

We wanna encourage more public transportation because it's good for the environment it puts out with CO2 into the atmosphere.

I wanna bring a trolley system in there I think can attract tourism and excite people and get people to think that public transportation is cooler.

I disagree with the bike lanes being put in because I think it clogs up traffic, but I like bikes.

I like the idea of it.

I don't think it's that practical with the way they've established in the city.

We do have massive infrastructure shortcomings in our city and we can't just put a bandaid on this.

We need to really think long-term and put in more money from the budget and it's gonna require millions of dollars, but this is something that we have to do.

It's been neglected for far too long in our city and I'm gonna make infrastructure priority of our administration.

Thank you.

- Thank you Mr. McLaren.

And now for our next question about the arts.

What is the role of local government in the arts?

And what new arts related policies or programming would you bring to the city?

Answers to a minute please starting with Dr. Woods.

- The arts can bring funding to the city.

We have to include the arts in our budget proposals and they shouldn't necessarily have to go through a long tedious BFO process.

I'm committed to making sure that the arts is not just something on the side as a program as we normally treat them that they are integral part of our government.

And that means creating more programs and more opportunities for the arts to be a part of our government.

It brings in foot traffic.

It brings in cultures of diverse backgrounds to one place, music and entertainment and all of the wonderful shells and great programs that we have bring people from around the world to our community.

So the arts it's gotta be in the very top of my priority as a mayor to make sure that we keep those programs alive and well because we need the arts more than they need us.

We need the arts.

- All right.

Thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- There's a saying, art gives meaning to sadness.

So I'm not sure like what that carries, but I will say in my notes as I went through this and I've gone through this process to become elected mayor I do have in my notes, provide more funding for PBS because there's no doubt that's one place I can set my grandkids down and trust that they're going to get good quality programming but I'm a very conservative person by nature.

I know that if we put a piece of art on the side of the road it may be easy to pay for it upfront, but it requires maintenance.

So as Kim White has indicated there, there's not really been the focus on taking care of our roads and bridges.

It's only been on building more expanding.

So I think it's time we slow the building down a little bit and focus more on the responsibilities of the infrastructure and taking care of it.

That's not necessarily the arts related question but I think arts has more responsibility with private investments and in the government we will do what we can to support it but it's got to come from the private sector.

Thank you.

- All right.

Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White - Look, I know for a fact that the arts are a huge economic driver for our city.

It's one of the intangible that's one of the reasons Volkswagen came here was the beauty and the authenticity of Chattanooga.

So it's a huge part of who we are as a city.

The fact that we have a great philanthropic community that has helped contribute to that is an extra plus.

There was a public art program already in place at the city that I would continue but art is more than just public art.

Art is really programming.

It is like, how do we program the parks?

How do we actually show who we are as a city?

Not just the big parks downtown but parks in the neighborhoods.

So I would work with our partners and we have a lot of partners in the serene to see how the city can help with programming parks.

As we actually do projects downtown to make sure public art is a piece of that.

And that's what we've done.

And most of the time that has matched two for one by the private sector.

So I think it is something that we need to celebrate and highlight.

And I plan to continue to embrace a public art program that is going on at the city.

- All right, thanks Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- Arts is near and dear to my heart.

I consider myself an artist.

There's a quote that I liked by Queen Victoria, beware of artists they interact with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous.

The arts represent the culture, the soul of our city.

And it brings in tourism.

It brings in about $162 million into our economy every year.

But this is what beautifies our city.

This is what makes the city magical magnetic.

So we have a place in government to help fund artists like Seven and Genesis Degree Kid, Cameron Williams you're not just painting, but hip hop and poetry.

And I believe that this is what life is about, life isn't just about paying bills and dying.

It's about enjoying it.

And I think that our government can help champion afterschool programs where kids can express themselves and it keeps them away from drugs and crime.

So I will fully invest into art, into our people and into our culture.

And I just love art and I think it's magnificent.

And my favorite artist is Best Walk.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

Now for our next question we go to Reginald from the Bethlehem Center.

- My name is Reginald Floyd Smith II and I'm the Executive Director of the Bethlehem Center here in South Chattanooga.

I have a two-part question to the mayoral candidates running for mayor of Chattanooga.

Part one would simply state, how will you address and provide access to affordable housing for Chattanooga citizens?

And the second part of that is, how will you balance that with new development all around the city of Chattanooga without displacing current low income residents?

- And thank you Reginald.

Again to the candidates answers to a minute please.

Starting with Dr. Woods.

- Well, first of all, we stopped moving people out of their neighborhoods just because the city has an aggressive desire to bring more homes to this community for the purpose of just increasing the tax base.

My people have been victimized by this and that is gentrification.

We have to keep people where they are.

I know heavy code enforcement was used with the main street area just to run those people out of that community and gang that territory for the purpose of building homes, that they knew those people would never move back because they couldn't afford it.

If I am the mayor, this will not happen in your community.

It's happening right now with College Hill Court.

That is a prime area.

A prime property per Chattanooga and anytime there's prime property and there's poor people living there we've seen this community through our city government take that property by any means necessary.

We're not going to do that anymore.

We're not going to continue this gentrification and particularly African-Americans out of Chattanooga.

We are seeing a degradation of African-American communities and we're seeing a increase in homelessness because once these people are moved from the project, for example they have nowhere to go.

And some of the folks that are in administration offices now responsible for that.

- All right, Dr. Woods, thank you.

Mr. Wilson.

- Well, I have a team studying the TIF program now and I understand that that is part of the program that was used to do exactly what you guys are talking about.

So we've come up with a plan that we're gonna form five block by 10 block areas in maybe East Chattanooga on park and some of those areas and call these sips for Chattanooga incentive financing programs.

We're gonna work with the county to get tax abatements for 10 years and try to do away with sewer taxes so that some developers can actually go into these areas and develop some affordable housing.

But we hope we can create some excitement around that with the sifts and that's my deal.

And it'll take some time and energy and effort and lots of great people that are already in place to put it all together work with the county and get those tax abatements created for.

- Mr. Wilson, thank you.

Ms. White.

- Yes, affordable housing is an issue all over the country and Chattanooga is no different.

We really have an opportunity to make some headway in Chattanooga, utilizing a couple of different tools.

First of all, the city has about 500 parcels that are back tax or derelict properties that need to be put back on the tax rolls.

And we can leverage those properties to actually make sure that those are developed with affordable housing.

The second is a lot of our codes and rules and regs don't allow for things like assessory units or garage apartments, things that are less expensive to build, but do add to the neighborhood.

So going in and looking at what the codes are currently my plan I do have a comprehensive plan is that we'll put $2 million a year into an affordable housing fund.

And we're gonna partner with organizations like Chattanooga neighborhood enterprise and some private developers who this is what they do.

I think what's happened in the past is that the city is marked in a silo.

And affordable housing is complicated and it takes all of us working together to make sure that the right thing to take place.

So the city has a couple of levers that we can use with our own property, putting out affordable housing fund.

And I am gonna bring someone on my team that will focus solely on affordable housing.

We feel like we can bring 700 units of affordable housing during my first term.

- All right, thanks Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- This requires us to be able to suspend our egos and put humanity over greed and put people over profit.

I'm gonna work with the NAACP, the Unity Group, the Equity Alliance, the Bethlehem Center to make sure that everybody has a seat at the table.

Yes, CNE, Caleb, all these organizations are gonna be there.

We're gonna utilize HUT funding as well but we're gonna make sure that we don't push people out of their houses.

If somebody's struggling, instead of hitting them with more code enforcement, we're gonna get volunteers and get community neighborhood associations.

And we're gonna help rebuild people's houses for free.

By motivating people and by doing the right thing.

I don't believe in fighting people or kicking people out of their houses because they're poor.

We're gonna wage a war on poverty and end the war on the poor.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

Next question, on early childhood education, what steps would you as mayor take on early childhood education to ensure that all of Chattanooga's children are adequately prepared to achieve success in the classroom?

Starting with Dr. Woods.

- This is true and dear to my heart because I see so many children, zero to five at home with their parents or being babysitted because they can't afford to put their kids in school or they're so poor.

They don't have the programs there to assist them while they go to school and their kids be in daycare.

So from zero to five, which 86% of the brain is developed during that age group, we have to make sure that all kids if possible are in the classroom, we're gonna put millions of dollars, millions of dollars in early childhood education, something that we're not doing now.

So we're gonna be looking for those funds from the government, from private foundations, from private dollars to help us raise the funds that we need, and also recruit better teachers from zero to five.

We've got to do that as well.

And so we are really, really behind in early childhood education in the city of Chattanooga.

This is leading to the pipeline to prison that we're seeing in the third grade.

So if we get them from zero to five, we won't have problems in kindergarten, we won't problems in the first, second and also the third grade.

So that is one of my priorities of the top three is to make sure it's adequately funded.

And then we give everybody a chance.

- All right, thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- My two kids are 33 and 35 now.

And before and after school program was a blessing to our family.

These programs helped raise our kids.

You'll find my administration focused on finding ways to improve these departments, helping to pry the basic needs, but improve the efficiency not spend millions of dollars that we don't have.

Thank you.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, I agree early childhood education is so important and we're losing so many people out of the workforce women especially because they're struggling with childcare.

I think the city's role is to be one, to be a partner, to be an advocate and help collaborate.

There is an already, an early matters coalition of 40 organizations working to identify what those gaps are and how do we expand those seats?

And I think it's the city continuing to play a role in working with those partners to identify do they need bridge loans?

Do we need early childhood scholarships?

Which we're doing now.

And I would continue to do that, but it's not to get into that business to early childhood business.

It is really how do we actually partner with the faith-based community and with the other partners that are already doing that we need to expand and in anything that the mayor's office can do to shine a light on it and talk about the importance of it we'll be involved with, but having additional seats is bodily important for quality childcare.

- All right, thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- There's a lot of bureaucracy and charities that say that they're gonna help childhood education but I get phone calls and messages all the time from single mothers who are worried about finding daycare for their kids who are back in virtual learning.

And they have to choose to stay home and not make money and maybe get fired from their job for taking care of their kids.

I'm the type of person that I'm aggressive.

I'm proactive.

We're gonna assemble a team that goes out and gets things done, a taskforce and is proactive and grassroots.

There's all these people that are struggling.

The last thing we need to do is to just throw more money blindly at more bureaucracy and charities.

So what I believe is this is a mandate.

This is something that we have to focus on.

We have to prioritize.

And if I need to put into a plastic bag tax, I talked about we've got more pieces of plastic in the ocean than fish right now.

A lot of cities and states have a plastic bag tax 10 cents if you want a plastic bag, if you don't have a reusable canvas bag, we're gonna take that money from the plastic bag tax and put it directly into early childhood education.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren.

And now we go to Gabriela at UTC with a question.

- Hi, my name is Gabriela Jackson Olson, and I'm a freshman at UTC majoring in nursing.

Given recent events across the country and in our nation's capitol many Chattanoogans seem deeply divided over the issues that students often see in our own communities, including racial divisions policing and economic inequality.

How do you plan to unite children against despite so many differences when it comes to politics and policies?

- Thank you, Gabriela.

And now to the candidates for their answers.

Answers to a minute please.

Dr. Woods.

- Yeah, one of the reasons why you see such a racial divide is that there is such a racial divide in disparities of education of opportunities with funding for various things that we need in our community or we're frustrated at not having jobs, not having enough money to take care of our families.

So we unite when the entire community puts their arms around these problems and began to work together to solve them.

Right now the wealthier people are doing their thing and the poor people are trying to survive and nobody is paying any attention to the eels.

And it is our responsibility as a government to do everything, especially a mayor to unite the people in the community that they serve.

And so what we've got to do is close these disparity gaps.

We've gotta work on the educational disparities, the economic disparities.

One of the things that I hate happened is that the African-American Chamber of Commerce was dismantled.

And for some reason, people in this community thought that the chamber of commerce could solve all the problems they just put everything under one.

And that has been the worst thing that has ever happened when that happened we saw less jobs and opportunities in an African-American community, less business growth in the African-American community, less housing development in the African-American community.

So I'm going to bring back the African-American Chamber of Commerce because it needs to be individualized and realized so that we can deal with those issues.

- Thank you Dr. Woods.

Mr. Wilson.

- Well, all those are serious issues there's no doubt, but I'm a product of busing.

We grew up in a community.

We walked to school, walked to school first, second third grade, not uphill in the snow both ways but then we were bused into another neighborhood.

That neighborhood was bused up all the city folks moved out.

So it's a big problem.

So I think I'm probably one of the only candidates who really got busted in the middle of that.

But you know what I did at 13 years old I started my first job at the Red Food Store in the produce department and I've worked ever since.

So really 99% of us, it is just through work that our opportunity to get by all those problems exist.

So, I mean, roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Thank you.

- Thank you Mr. Wilson.

Ms. White.

- Yes, since the beginning of my candidacy I've been out of the neighborhoods, listening to people, trying to understand different perspectives.

A lot of it's just communication, making sure that people have hope and have opportunity and they see opportunity for themselves.

And it does boil down to creating job opportunity.

How do you actually have that economic disparity gap close?

How do you solve the educational disparities?

And how do people see that they play a role in city government or how they see a role in their community?

And what I'm excited about is making sure one, that my administration looks like the community that the boards that we actually appoint look like the people in the community, that when decisions are made it starts from the neighborhood up.

It's not top down.

So as we do city planning it's making sure that the neighborhood has a voice.

We work with the city council rep. We work with city government and we're all pulling the same way.

But one of the things that really propelled me to run for city mayor is the fact that I have a history of partnerships and collaboration in solving difficult problems by bringing people to around the table.

I just wanna expand that table and make sure that people see themselves and see more opportunity.

- Thank you Ms. White.

Mr. McLaren.

- I believe in full participation from everybody but I recognized that the protests were getting really heated.

I helped organize meetings between high ranking cops and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

We've also had gang members and former gang members sit down and talk to us.

And I've been able to get guys to leave gangs or stay in the gangs as long as they agree not to commit crimes and put them to work.

I'll never tell somebody to put down drugs or put down a gun if I can't get them a job.

And I've sat down with black leaders with all different Latino leaders in our city about what are we gonna do to help people, to truly help people.

And I think that a lot of issues come from poverty.

It comes from people feeling hopeless, people feeling oppressed.

I'm gonna fire bad police officers.

We're gonna work from the ground up.

We're gonna get people jobs at livable wages.

We're gonna protect people when they're abused.

I believe in having the most diverse administration possible.

And we're gonna protect people if they're discriminated against LGBTQ, black, Muslim, Jewish, whatever artificial separations that people use to undermine you.

We are gonna protect all people and we're gonna welcome everybody to the table and we're gonna love people.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. McLaren, and thank you so much to all of the candidates for participating in this conversation about Chattanooga's future.

We want to thank our candidates for their willingness to participate in this forum.

And we want to thank all of our partner organizations that made this series possible.

I'm Ray Bassett.

Thank you for watching.

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Thank you.