Strickland
Jim Strickland has been the mayor of Memphis for more than a year now. He and a raft of new elected officials were sworn in New Year’s Day 2016.
He invited members of the media to his office at Memphis City Hall recently to talk about his first year and his plans for the coming years.
“I love this job,” Strickland said. “I love it every single day.”
He noted that the city’s record-breaking homicide rate has obscured other advances he and his team have made on crime. Also, he said the year has had other big successes, like ServiceMaster’s decision to move its headquarters Downtown and the big investments planned here by St. Jude Children’s Hospital and its fundraising arm, American Syrian Lebanese Associated Charities (ALSAC).
In this unscripted, unedited interview, Strickland talks cops (and why we need more and how he’ll get them), population loss, Memphis 3.0, why companies are choosing Memphis, and, of course, being “brilliant at the basics.”
He also delivers a killer line on why his new plan for the city will work and gets kind of hung up on the word “objectively” (and laughs about it).
Check it out.
PODCAST: Mayor Strickland Looks Back On His First Year, Looks Ahead
