Mayor’s AMA: Musk, MATA, Feagins, Paving, Drive-Out Tags, Tax Incentives

On xAI, Young said he separates the “personality from the project.”

Memphis Mayor Paul Young answered questions about wide-ranging topics in his AMA (Ask Me Anything) session in the Memphis subreddit Monday.

Memphis Redditors wanted to know his positions on Elon Musk and his xAI supercomputer, what’s happening at the Memphis Area Transit Authority, why the road from Memphis International Airport is so bad, what he thought of the Dr. Marie Feagins/Memphis Shelby-County Schools situation, drive-out tags, and more.

Young responded with (what appeared to be) pretty straight-forward answers.

On Elon Musk, for example: Young said he understood “why some people are wary of working with a billionaire who has a larger-than-life personality, but I separate the personality from the project.” He explained that city, county, and state taxes invested around $100 million in the Electrolux facility and it was sitting vacant. Now, with, xAI it’s drawn a $10 billion investment here that could mean “tens of millions of dollars annually in tax revenue.”

Below, we’ve pulled most of the answered questions from the AMA:

xAI and Musk:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

MATA:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

The airport road:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

On Feagins/school board:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

Drive-out tags:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

Beyond tax breaks:

Comment
byu/PaulYoungMemphis from discussion
inmemphis

For the full conversation, head over to the Reddit thread here.

Toby Sells