Mayor Scott Conger
State of the City Address Transcript
January 15, 2025
So it's my honor to stand before you today as the Mayor of our incredible city. So as we embark on the next chapter of our city's journey this year, the theme of today's address captures the present momentum and our future opportunities and aspirations: "Growth For All." So I want to share with you how our efforts, our investments are ushering in an exciting new era of growth; one that benefits every resident in Jackson: from every neighborhood; from every background.
So we're seeing the fruits of our labor; the results of thoughtful planning and dedication of our city's workforce. But most importantly, we're seeing the growth that is sustainable; that is fiscally responsible and aimed at creating long term value for every citizen. Thriving local economy shapes the quality of life for every resident. Now, over the past several years, Jackson has experienced remarkable growth.
But it's the investments we're making today that will pay for a brighter future. These investments, not only our infrastructure and facilities, but in people and opportunity, and in a shared vision for a prosperous community. The city of Jackson's growth is no accident. It's the product of deliberate decisions. Decisions that create a favorable environment for businesses to thrive. Whether it's our growing downtown district, our flourishing business corridors, or the new opportunities emerging in underdeveloped areas: the city is experiencing a transformation.
Earlier this year, we celebrated the opening of our Dixie plant -- a $425 million investment, which is the single largest investment in our city's history. This project was the first major industrial recruitment project I was on, so it was really special to see it come to life. And just last month, Jackson received the commitment from Aluko Group, which is a South Korean company that will invest over $36 million in our community and create 55 highly paying jobs.
At this at this plant, Aluko will manufacture aluminum battery casings for operations at Ford Motor Company's Blue Oval City as the first supplier to establish operations in our area. Aluko Group will play a role in supporting SK while driving economic growth throughout the region.
Existing businesses are also demonstrating their confidence in Jackson. Just the week before Aluko made their announcement, Bobrick Washroom Equipment doubled down for the third time. So however you want to say that tripled down, I guess investing $17 million right here in our community, creating 26 new jobs. However, growth just isn't about numbers. It's about people. Our commitment goes beyond attracting businesses. It's about fostering an environment where every citizen has an access to opportunity where the benefits growth for all felt by all. That's why our investments in infrastructure, public safety, housing, quality of life and streamlining government processes is just as critical as our work in attracting companies. We're committed to ensuring that no one is left behind is our city and our economy grows.
A thriving community is one where citizens feel safe, secure and supported. Now our police and fire department play an essential role in ensuring that Jackson remains a safe place to live, work and raise a family. Their dedication and hard work are essential to our city's success. In many ways, 2024 was a banner year for our police department, which I believe under the leadership of Chief Corley, is the best police department in the state of Tennessee.
This past year, our officers engaged in more than 1500 hours of community service in all corners of Jackson. That includes active shooter trainings, women's self-defense class, trunk or treats, numerous career days, and the relaunch of our Citizens Police Academy. We believe that these efforts, as well as the efforts to increase officer pay and incentives like take home vehicles, has led to an increase recruitment of individuals looking to serve our community.
This year, JPD was able to recruit 30 new police officers, double that of two years ago. More officers means more police presence on our streets, more engagement in our community and less burnout for our existing officers. Increased engagement and greater presence have contributed to falling crime rates across our city. Last year saw assault and burglary cases drop by 20%, rape by 40%, motor vehicle theft by 31% and robbery down 27%. Additionally, JPD ceased 212 illegal owned or used firearms off our streets. Meanwhile, these drugs, especially fentanyl, continue to flow into our country. Our Major Crimes Division in one single warrant seized 75g and 4000 fentanyl pills. That's enough fentanyl to cause a fatal overdose for over half the city's residents. But our police department just in focused on fighting violent crime, but safety and quality of life crimes, too.
In 2023, JPD and my office heard concerns over speeding and traffic safety. JPD's traffic unit issued more than 4300 citations and 68 arrests last year. What I appreciate about Chief Cooley's leadership is how he seeks to maximize JPD's impact even when resources are limited. For example, they use recovery funds from motor vehicles to purchase e-bikes, which can be utilized for special patrols in downtown and large events. And our newly high tech cameras, which are able to solve a multi-state ATM robbery that involved one of our local banks.
In 2025, JPD is finalizing, after much community input, their five-year strategic plan, which provides direction of the initiatives for the department. Once completed, this plan will be made available to the public and will outline strategies and objectives required to achieve those goals. It is important to remember that our justice system isn't just about locking people up. It's about rehabilitation. Take the work of the Recovery Court for example. In 2024, 12 participants successfully graduated its program and many more of its participants were able to purchase vehicles, obtain driver's licenses, obtain housing, all while staying substance free. These efforts in the launch of our mental health court this year, breaks the cycle of trauma and substance abuse that is often the precursor to the other, more violent crimes.
Our fire department continues to lead the way with excellence as well. Whether it's through community outreach or the expansion of training, we're equipping our first responders with the tools they need to protect our citizens. In 2024, our fire department responded to over 10,000 incidents and conducted 536 inspections, improving fire safety across our city. What I love about our fire department is they're not just reacting, but they're being proactive. Throughout the course of the year, they educated over 50,000 residents through CPR classes, fire extinguisher trainings, school outreach events and smoke alarm installations. Chief Friddle and his team, they're never satisfied, and they're always looking for a way to take JFD to the next level. So they enhanced training. Our firefighters underwent 30,000 hours of additional training last year, and recently, our fire department was the fifth fire department in the state given the approval to conduct in-house EMT basic training. This allows for faster deployment of new EMTs in our community to tailor their training to Jackson's needs and saves our taxpayers over $100,000 a year. Also in 2024, they implemented new technology to reduce human error in alerts and improve dispatch efficiency, and launched a four-minute city, the first in the nation. The four-minute City program trained over 200 CPR volunteers, enhancing survival rates and medical emergencies. What makes me most proud is our firefighters remember that they come to work ready to serve every day, even those outside of our community. In October, they collected and drove over 300,000 bottles of water to our neighbors in East Tennessee. These investments in safety not only yield returns in the form of a stronger, more resilient city, but they also foster a sense of trust and confidence among our residents. Every dollar we invest in public safety is a dollar that makes Jackson a place where people want to live, work and raise their families.
The growth of the city hinges on the strength of infrastructure. This year, we've made tremendous and remarkable strides in improving our roads and other systems. In 2024, our street department closed out 1866 asphalt tickets, fixing potholes throughout the city, as well as milling eight miles of asphalt. For 2025, they're focusing on replacement of sidewalks and handicapped ramps to make it easier for those in wheelchairs and other disabilities to move throughout our city. Additionally, they'll focus on giving roads a cleaner and more appealing look by cutting medians, trimming along roads, and our signs department cleared obstructions like bushes, debris, and other stuff from over 500 signs this year. Not only are they working hard every day to improve the quality of the roads, but their safety. Last year, our traffic signals team installed six new camera systems to better manage traffic and purchased three new backup systems for our busiest intersections along the bypass to ensure our signals never go down. Our four-man team works and they responded to over 162 incidents at all hours of the night all year to ensure our roads are safe and our intersections are operating correctly.
Arguably, there is no more basic service or more favorite service of everybody than solid waste. In our Health and Sanitation Department, led by Leilani Mills and her team focuses every day on the efficient and cost effective services here in Jackson. In 2024, our H&S crews responded to over 37,000 bulk waste collections. But they also lead the city's charge on protecting our environment with recycling center, which diverted 1186 tons of material away from our land fields and experiences over 900 visitors monthly. For 2025, they aim to introduce new programs to further engage the community in recycling, promote student led initiatives, and explore further cost effective improvements for solid waste disposal.
One of our biggest initiatives this past year was the launch of our 311 Call Center. So people can call, report potholes, submit request, cart repairs, all the non-emergency things. Since its launch in March of this past year, our 311 Call Center closed out nearly 3500 tickets and issues throughout the city improving your government's responsiveness.
But we're not satisfied. Under the leadership of our Public Works Director, Austin Clark in 2025, we're exploring a waste transfer station and commercial recycling center. This facility will streamline our operations, increase recycling capacity, and promote sustainability by diverting more material from our landfills. Under Austin's leadership, the city is also developing and preparing to execute a stormwater master plan that addresses current challenges and prepares for our future city's growth. This plan prioritizes the critical infrastructure needed to reduce runoff and enhance sustainability by safeguarding our city's homes, businesses, and natural resources. Whether it's improving our roads, responding to citizens’ request or ensuring reliable waste management, our public works team works tirelessly to ensure that our city's infrastructure keeps pace with our growth. Every project completed, every improvement made, every investment in our future an investment that yields real, tangible benefits for the residents of Jackson.
Our growth is not just about expanding, though, but about expanding the right way. Our Planning Department works to ensure that Jackson grows thoughtfully with attention to the needs of our citizens. These efforts are essential in creating a Jackson in our city that can accommodate growth, while maintaining the character and quality of life we all cherish. Since the inception of our city's Blight Elimination Program has demolished 95 dilapidated houses. These vacant lots will be used to build quality and attainable homes. This year alone, the city's Community Redevelopment Agency received and approved the sale of 20 new lots for residential construction. Our planning department also continue with the coordination of Jackson Walk Redevelopment Project. This newest construction consist of additional 132 apartments. Meanwhile, our Housing Department successfully address over 920 code related violations and complaints. Additionally, our Planning Department reviewed 47 commercial and industrial site plans to continue the growth in the city of Jackson, the site plans and that are just one piece of the puzzle. In 2024, our Building Department conducted over 11,000 inspections and issued over 6500 permits, ensuring this growth complies with the safety and quality standards. I'm so proud of the work they've done this year. They had an audit by the state, and the Building Codes Department was recognized for having no deficiencies in its inspections and safety procedures.
Jackson is also leading the way, leading the way on innovative ways to encourage growth. Just this month, Jackson became the first city in Tennessee to take advantage of a new state law that allows us to approve small multifamily buildings with a single stairwell. This added design flexibility has been shown to improve space efficiency and reduce construction costs up to 25%, all while maintaining high safety standards. In 2025, our Planning Department will be busy still starting the construction of an improved Airways Boulevard improving the people's perception of Jackson as they drive into downtown. Additionally, they'll be completing sidewalk and bike and pedestrian projects such as the Bemis Multipurpose Trail and work with industry experts to successfully redevelop the Jackson Plaza, which I believe personally is the greatest opportunity to successfully attract new attractions to our city. Additionally, our building team will continue its cross-training program for inspectors. This will enhance our department's efficiency and effectiveness.
Our commitment to growth for all extends into our Parks and Recreation program. We believe that green spaces, recreational opportunities, community events are just as important as the investments in infrastructure and business development. The growth of our city must be balanced with an investment in quality of life. Last year, we installed three new playgrounds in Conger Park, Malesus Park, and Paradise Park and installed additional lighting around the walking trail at North Park. These improvements are part of a new Parks Master plan that lays out how we're going to take our parks to the next level in the coming years. Cypress Grove, arguably our most unique park, repaired its facilities to reopen and restore the Rockwell Observation Tower. Fairgrounds completed their exterior renovations. This year they're working on some landscaping. T.R. White got a facelift as well. 2024 The West Tennessee Health Care Sportsplex, adding shade structures and seating on all 17 fields, ensuring a greater comfort for spectators, parents, grandparents. The investment solidified the Sportsplex reputation as a premier destination, hosting over 1800 teams and 100,000 visitors, culminating with this year's being named the 2024 USSSA National Complex of the Year. We don't stop there. We want to try to get artificial turf and all those fields so we can make sure to stay competitive with all those sportsplexes around us. Our largest facility, our Civic Center, manages 2 to 3 events every week and is already booked out through 2026. In 2025 they will see the necessary upgrades that can ensure we can host events like Miss Tennessee Volunteer Pageant, Miss America Volunteer which is the biggest and largest economic development week for our city.
It's not just facilities we're investing in, but it's programs as well. The registration division achieves significant milestones this year. Y'all, I don't know if y'all remember have kids in 2019. If you want to register for summer camp, you have to go stand outside of Westwood at 4:00 in the morning and hope to goodness you didn't have to use the restroom and just have to wait. Now we do that online. And so we had 4000 participants in our program, and next year they'll be rolling out new software to streamline operations even more, add a new classes to our Bemis Ceramics Center and then, we'll have programs to increase awareness around fresh produce at our farmers market. This year under the athletics department, they manage construction of 12 additional pickle ball courts and plans for 16 more courts and upgraded facility lighting in 2025, so people can achieve more of the fastest growing sport in our nation.
Under the leadership of Aaron Hardin, the new director of our Carnegie Center of Arts and History, the Carnegie started a free membership program for local patrons. They'll be launching art classes for children and adults, music classes, concerts, and stage performances. Additionally, the first exhibition launching in February, will feature works from artist Brian Burks and will draw an audience from all around the country. In 2024, The Ned produced three full-scale productions, eight camps for children and teens, and two theatrical tours. These three productions alone saw over 4000 guests, many who were first-time visitors to The Ned. In 2025 they're looking to continue to expand those opportunities. Meanwhile, at South Jackson, the community center saw an 11% increase in visitors due to the offerings like the senior games, computer literacy programs and the annual pickleball and cornhole tournaments. Listen, if you're not serious about pickleball and cornhole, don't go to South Jackson because they'll put you to shame out there. With plans to launch a fitness program and afterschool program for the community's youth. Those numbers are only going to increase.
And we talk about our fairgrounds again. They hosted the International Food and Art Festival this past year, which was our largest event yet, with over 20,000 people there. Let me tell you how our city employees come together. Now, if you all remember, the week prior to that was the fair. It rained a little bit that week, and if you drove to the fairgrounds the Monday after the fair, you thought, how in the world are we going to have an event this weekend? Our city employees are how we had that event that weekend. They came together. Several departments stepped up in a big way, made this happen. They were putting out sawdust. They were moving dirt. They were getting things done. Even JPD stepped up with their helicopter, had the biggest fan ever to help drive the grounds out so we can make sure and have 20,000 people at the fairgrounds that weekend.
So, most of our parks programing is open to everyone. I love how they also target specific audiences within our city. For example, their free weekly exercise classes for seniors saw over 450 take advantage of these opportunities. Meanwhile, our third Hub City Youth Health Expo had over 400 kids learn about health, education and fitness. It's because of the hard work and dedication of Tony Black, our Director of Parks and Rec, and his entire team that these improvements have been possible, and their work is being recognized across the state. Our parks have received grants and donations like never before. For example, Cypress Grove received nearly 400,000 to repair its boardwalk from TDEC and another 400,000 for our senior center, which is set to open this summer. 2025 is set to be our biggest parks year yet, launching our Park Partners Foundation, installing new signage, which our new sign at Conger Park if you haven't seen, is nice. We started there because of somebody drove through it and we had to replace it, so that's where we started. And hosting our inaugural State Games this summer. See, parks are essential to building a healthy, connected community, whether it's a walk in one of our newly renovated parks, participating in recreational programs, quality of life is important for the benefits of growth.
Additionally, I'm very proud of the results and initiative of our team to reduce blight, beautify our downtown, and improve not only the financial health of our city government, but our citizens too. In 2024, our Love Your Block initiative conducted over 70 home repairs across 14 homes, helping our most vulnerable seniors stay in their home and stay safe. See, next year, our goal is to repair the 10 to 12 homes and redevelop blight through our recently launched Vacant Property Commission. Also, we launched our mobile tool shared, empowering partners in our community like church groups to conduct additional service projects. And our public art initiative led to two crosswalk art installations help make downtown more attractive. In 2025, we plan three more installations and launching a block party program to help our community come together even more in our neighborhoods.
If you're looking for a great podcast and want to stay connected, Kenny has launched East Main: 101. First episode, not that good. It was the guest's fault. Not the not the host fault. The rest of them fantastic. It gives you a more information about the people who work for our city. And meanwhile, efforts like our Financial Empowerment Center help ensure the Jacksonians have the means to succeed in our growing city. In 2024, the center provided free financial counseling for over 150 families, helping them pay off nearly $400,000 in consumer debt, with clients seeing an average credit score increase over 20 points. I see Matt there. I appreciate the partnership we have with United Way to provide that much needed resource.
Rest assured, all you animal lovers out there, Jackson isn't only investing to take care of man's best friend and cats. We're also investing in our animals too. So in 2024, Animal Care Center took in more than 1300 animals and responded over 2000 calls for service. And finally, in 2025, we're going to open up a brand new facility that's going to increase our capacity by 70%. And we're also going to repurpose a bus to add a mobile veterinary clinic for onsite vaccinations and clinics to help prevent the spread of disease.
Before I wrap up, I want to share as Jackson continues to grow, how your city government continues to evolve and improve to support that growth. For example, our I.T. Department installed security cameras at numerous facilities like Westwood, our tennis center, our Sportsplex, and installed a mobile device management system to increase the security of city owned devices in 2024. And this year, we will be launching a new work order system, which will save our 311 Call Center employees over ten man hours a day dealing with our new system in a legacy system, inputting that information in. And there further advancing in our wireless internet infrastructure for South Jackson to support larger classes. Our Purchasing Department updated procurement standards citywide in 2024, ensuring greater accessibility and clarity for all of our departments and vendors. They also implemented a contract management system, centralizing leasing and budget information to improve oversight, and launched the city's first Vendor Opportunities Expo, helping to connect local and regional businesses, which they plan to grow this year. Our Maintenance Department completed nearly 1500 work orders to maintain city buildings and assets like installing illegal dumping cameras and replacing all the wood and all the benches and tables in our parks, as well as pressure washing our city sidewalks. Our internal auditor continues to work with our newly established Audit Committee to strengthen the oversight of our finances and internal processes.
But it's not just about improving buildings, equipment, processes, but city government's number one asset is our people. In 2024, our risk management team coordinated an employee health fair and a three day mental health education event for our city's first responders. And in 2025, they plan to launch our first full first responders mental health program.
So I want to reiterate, the growth we're seeing in Jackson today is just the beginning. Every department, every initiative, every investment are part of a broader vision, a vision of a city where every citizen has the opportunity to thrive. Today, we're laying the foundation for a Jackson that is stronger, more resilient and efficient on delivering its promises by prioritizing fiscal responsibility, empowering community led solutions, and reducing unnecessary barriers, we're building a city where growth is both inclusive and sustainable. As we look ahead, whether through investments in jobs, public safety, infrastructure, or quality of life, our goal is clear: to build a Jackson that benefits everyone now and in the years to come. So everyone here guests, business owners, community leaders, residents, city employees, I want to thank you because it's not just us. Your contributions make Jackson not just a city we are today, but the city we aspire to be tomorrow. We've got to continue working together. We've got to continue growing together. And with that, we can create a Jackson that works for everyone.
Thanks.