Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Mayor Scott Conger of Jackson, Tennessee to the newsmaker line to discuss the recent growth spurt in his city, crime, and goals for the new year.
Leahy: We are joined now on the newsmaker line now by Scott Conger, the mayor of Jackson, Tennessee. Good morning, Mayor Conger!
Conger: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: Well, we’re delighted that you accepted our invitation to come on. I’ve been down in Jackson. Lots of people drive through Jackson as they go on I-40 as they’re going from Nashville to Memphis. And I have been down there. And you remember Mike Slater, who was the radio host there?
Conger: Oh yeah.
Leahy: Great guy. I was there. I think there’s what 1380 is the AM station down there. I guest-hosted for him a couple of times before he lit out for San Diego. I think he’d rather be back in Tennessee these days.
Conger: Well, I don’t blame him. We have a lot of folks coming to Tennessee from that area, so he needs to join the group.
Leahy: Come back. So tell us, how long have you been Mayor, and what did you do before you became Mayor? Is it a full-time gig or a part-time gig?
Conger: Well, it’s a full-time gig. Some would say full-time plus some. It’s a 24 hour a day job. I’ve been Mayor since July 2019. Before that, I was an executive at United Way of West Tennessee and also served on City Council for two terms.
Leahy: So, you know the score. Where are you from originally, Scot? My family has been in Jackson since 1832.
Leahy: Oh, you’re newcomers. (Chuckles)Â
Conger: Just getting warmed up to the city.
Leahy: So 1832, that would probably be what your great-great-great grandfather came from North Carolina, perhaps. Or what was close.
Conger: Very close. Three greats. Great great great grandfather came from North Carolina.
Leahy: If your family has been in Tennessee since the early 1800s they almost certainly came from North Carolina because, as you know, until 1796, Tennessee, at first it was a territory, but then before then, was part of the state of North Carolina.
Conger: They moved to Jackson 10 years after. Our county just celebrated Bicentennial 10 year anniversary last month. And we’re getting ready to celebrate our Bicentennial, going through a year of celebration and culminating in August of next year.
Leahy: That’s great. We’ll go down there. We’ll do a broadcast during the celebration. We like that idea. How big is the city of Jackson now?
Conger: Well, today we’re about between 68,000 and 69,000. I’d say in about five years, we’ll be closer to 75,000.
Leahy: I think that’s probably right. What is driving the growth of Jackson, Tennessee?
Conger: Well, some would say that the election in 2019 with a new Mayor drove that growth. (Laughs)Â
Leahy: I was about to suggest that Scott. It must be the new Mayor. (Chuckles)Â
Conger: No, I think Jackson has a lot of potential. And we’re just now starting to realize our potential being on an interstate. We were the first city in Tennessee with a gig fiber network to every home and every business within the city limits. The Megasite, we’ve had it.
We’ve been working on it. We’ve been developing it. And the biggest hold-up has been the sewer. And thankfully, the governor said earlier this year, we’re going to fix the sewer line. And now we have the Blue Oval City coming to Haywood County, which is about 30 miles down the road from Jackson.
Leahy: It’s just 30 miles. So the Megasite where Ford got about $870 odd million dollars in financial incentives to set up an electric truck manufacturing facility. And there’s, I guess, a battery company there as well. That’s just 30 miles west of Jackson?
Conger: Yes. My understanding is that it’s a complete OEM. They’re going to make everything that goes along in those vehicles will be on that site. So it’s 3,500 acres, I think, is what they’re going to be utilizing.
Leahy: And that’s part of the growth. But there’s more to the growth. How far is Jackson from Nashville? 120 miles.
Conger: 120 miles from Nashville, 80 miles from Memphis.
Leahy: Exactly. You may think this is an odd question. Are people living in Jackson and commuting to Metro Nashville? Are you seeing any of that?
Conger: I think we’re starting to. We talk about that in some of our meetings that Jackson, I think, is starting to be viewed as a bedroom community to Nashville. Because let’s be honest, if you’re driving from Franklin to Nashville, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive. (Leahy laughs)Â
Leahy: Let me just tell you, not at 4:30 am in the morning when I come in from just south of Franklin to Nashville. (Conger laughs) Here’s the interesting thing. If you look at commutes in Southern California, a two-hour commute is not unusual. I mean, that sounds crazy, but that is true.
Conger: (Inaudible talk)
Leahy: Yeah, but if you compare so during the morning if you wanted to drive, if you lived on, let’s say the Eastern outskirts of Jackson, and you were commuting to Spring Hill or you’re commuting to Franklin. How long would that drive be?
Conger: I’d probably guess right around two hours or a little less.
Leahy: Little less. Probably a little less. Yeah. Very interesting. What’s the downside of the growth that you’ve seen in Jackson?
Conger: Well, I think the downside will see is property reassessment. We’re having a housing issue right now. Affordable housing is an issue. You and look at our property values that have increased dramatically over the last year and a half. People finding homes or starter homes.
People are graduating college or starting a family or just getting married you’re seeing them rent a lot longer. Now we’re getting to a point where renting is an issue. We have several developments laid out plotted out, but with supply chain issues, with worker shortages, it’s just taking them longer to build those houses and to build those apartment buildings.
We’re at a time now we’re seeing the need because I think right now on the market, active is about 200 properties. An average time for a property to be on the market is three days or less. They’re moving fast.
Leahy: With rapid growth often comes an increase in crime. Are you seeing an increase in crime in Jackson because of the rapid growth?
Conger: I think nationally we’ve seen an increase in violent crime through the pandemic. I think for us, though, we haven’t seen as much. We’ve been below the curve on that for several reasons. We have a great police department that does a phenomenal job, great police chief, and the administration there.
And because of where we are and we’ve experienced that high traffic, which you mention of people driving through Jackson from Memphis to Nashville, we’ve seen that in the past, and our police department has tried to really look at that of people coming off the interstate that committing a crime and then jump back on the interstate. That’s really where we’ve seen the increase.
Leahy: Interesting.
Conger: So we’re working on that. We’re trying to get some technology to help us with that to help our police officers. We just invested an extra million and a half dollars in our police department to pay our police officers more.
We’ve given them all a raise and trying to recruit more police officers because those guys have a thankless job. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate our guys and ladies in the police department.
Leahy: Scott Conger, mayor of Jackson, Tennessee, what is your number one priority for Jackson in 2022?
Conger: I think smart growth is what we have to focus on. I think a lot of times we can see the excitement and the opportunities that we have and just go after the first big shiny thing that we see when a developer comes in and says, I want to do this. It’s great.
And then you get a bunch of track houses put up that don’t add to the value of the city. So we have to have smart growth in our commercial areas and in our residential areas. And we’re starting some things. We’re getting a new master plan to do that.
We’ve tried to remove restrictions for commercial development. We removed parking minimums in October. And so now you go to any commercial development like Walmart, Target those areas. You just see the seas of parking that I would venture to say some of those parking spots have never been parked in.
Leahy: (Laughs) You’re growing that much. All those parking spots are being taken up because of the growth in Jackson, Tennessee.
Leahy: Mayor Scott Conger, thanks so much for joining us. Come back again, please.
Conger: All right. Thank you.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
