EP 30: State of the Cities, Eclipse and Turbo Growth
If we gather up a bunch of "State of the City" addresses from mayors across the U.S. and rub them together, what happens? Well, the National League of Cities does that kind of work, and it's enlightening. We talk with NLC about its latest examination to find out what today's mayors are saying in chorus and why -- after a chat about a rare total solar eclipse over a gem-studded mountain town. Show notes: Franklin Mayor Bob Scott - http://www.franklinnc.com/mayor-bob-scott.html NASA's online hub for the Aug. 21 solar eclipse - https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/ Mike Jones' Pumpkin Roll footage - https://youtu.be/Ep7jvMVOfrc NLC report, "State of the Cities 2017" - http://nlc.org/SOTC NLC resource, "How to Deliver an Effective State of the City Address" - http://nlc.org/resource/how-to-deliver-an-effective-state-of-the-city-address
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. You know, demonstrate through personal stories and anecdotes, put data in human terms over just numbers. I have a total elected experience of, thirty nine years with two years on the planning board prior to that. When you find yourself being in rural areas, sometimes the community has a tendency to die, and it can die pretty quickly if you don't stay on top of it. So there's gonna be significant, I think, opportunities for redevelopment
in in big box areas as well as malls. This is the type things that mayors put up with.
We hang out with a few different mayors from different kinds of towns and then see if we can overlap their conversations to find some common shapes with some talk about the amazing spectator sport of hurdling pumpkins down a steep hill. My name is Ben Brown and this is Municipal Equation from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. Episode 30. Back in June, I headed out to the Western tip of North Carolina in the mountains, bound for an old gem mining town called Franklin. When you start to get close to Franklin, you'll see roadside businesses where you can mine for gems by dumping buckets of dirt and rocks into a flume to see what's in there. It was actually a lot of fun. And when you roll into Franklin proper, you begin to see rubies all over the place. Not like on the ground or sparkling off the hills or anything. The mining industry has kind of moved on from there, so it's more thematic to Franklin now. With different kinds of businesses incorporating rubies or sapphires into their logos and names. On New Year's Eve, they even drop a giant ruby from the sky. That's not why I was there though. The purpose was to find the mayor, a man named Bob Scott, and profile him for Southern City Magazine because he's led an interesting life and has a quirky career history that's all over the map, from journalism and photography I covered snake handlers,
the rainbow family, all of these weird things that happened out west.
To time in the National Guard. Went down
during the Cuban crisis and joined the South Carolina National Guard. Eventually, to public relations and back to journalism. And it was kinda in the heyday of newspapers. They made money back then. Then into law enforcement from a few different angles. One zero six chosen for the two hundred and fifth session of the, FBI National Academy from North Carolina.
And then into elected office after his wife, Nancy, who was already on the town board decided to step back and make way for fresh blood. Even as her husband, Bob Scott, and a lot of other people in town were saying, no. No. No. Stay on the board. And furthermore, you need to run for mayor.
But she wasn't swayed. No. She wouldn't do it. So I figured out that if I told her I would go run, that that would make her go down and sign up and run again.
But at the last minute, Bob Scott was signed up, and Nancy wasn't, starting a long series of terms for him on the board of aldermen and now as mayor. He jokes that it only worked out for him because people mistook him for his wife on the ballot. Again because people just saw the last name Scott, and they thought they were voting for my wife. Okay.
They didn't know that Much of my conversation with mayor Scott was like that. He's very gregarious, good humored. And you've been here how long again? I've been here since '67. '67. So I'm kind of thinking about staying now.
It's great. It's growing on here. It is kind of rolling on here. Yeah. Which seems to be a quality of greater Franklin too. A good nature town that has a lot of fun and, I learned, has a lot of festivals that bring in thousands of people a piece. Festivals that celebrate music and arts or cultural heritage, like Scottish, Cherokee. And then there's one that I wish I had asked more about at the time. So last week, I got mayor Scott back on the phone. Hey, mayor. It's Ben Brown. Hi there, feller. It's a pumpkin festival held every October. But what got me interested was something he mentioned called the pumpkin roll, which involves hundreds of pumpkins barreling down a steep hill,
and it brings out a lot of people. Oh, the pumpkin roll is the pumpkin roll is probably our premier we estimate it draws between five and six thousand people. Last year, children rolled more than 700 pumpkins down the town hill to see which one would come first. And and that's our plane to fame is perhaps just the largest pumpkin roll in The United States. Oh, yeah.
So so what does that look like? I mean, it's just a a a series of pumpkins barreling down a hill all at once, or are they do they do it separately? Or They they roll three at a time. Three three contestants will line up behind a barrier,
and then we'll, we'll say go, and they'll turn their pumpkins loose, and they're numbered. Oh.
Oh, still going.
Oh, that thing's gonna win. That thing's gonna win. That thing's gonna win.
And one of the things you have to watch out for is the spectators can get run over by a pumpkin if they're not that wide. We just have a lot of fun up here. So
Has a spectator ever been hit?
We've had some near misses. We'll put it that way. Me being one of them. I'm glad you survived. No respect for the mayor whatsoever when it comes to a pumpkin.
Oh, it's coming right at me. It's coming right at me. No. It's coming up right at Joanna.
Oh,
holy moly. Oh, keep going. It hit me.
But there's another aspect of Franklin right now that's bringing it and the surrounding region a lot of attention.
I do not know of a empty hotel room anywhere in Western North Carolina right now. Highlands is booked up. Franklin's booked up. Some of the other towns throughout Western North Carolina are already booked and have been for quite some time. We understand we're probably even gonna be getting a lot of international visitors because there are people that follow these things all over the world. There are there there are estimates that we're gonna have tens of thousands of people,
coming for the eclipse. The eclipse, a total solar eclipse you must have heard all about by now. It's gonna happen August 21. And according to NASA, it'll be the first total solar eclipse to visit the Continental United States since 1979 and the first to cross it since 1918. So people are freaking out about it. And there's a good reason that Franklin is where a lot of people, an estimated tens of thousands, plan to gather for it.
Lot of, the small towns in Western North Carolina, which, like Franklin Andrews, we're all in the path of totality.
If you're in the path of totality, that means you're gonna see the eclipse in its purest form, the best possible way to see it. It's gonna get really dark for about two minutes and thirty something seconds. And that's gonna be really magical for a lot of people. Of course, not everybody treats an eclipse the same way. For some reason, when these major and rare celestial or astronomical events occur, people start whipping out the prophecies and apocalyptic predictions. And, of course, you also find all kinds of astrology related stuff and, you know, believe what you want. But there do seem to be some people in mayor Scott's town who think he has the power to impact when the eclipse actually happens. Plus, I got accused of why did why did I set the eclipse by Monday when it should have been on the weekend? I mean, this is
this is the type things that mayors put up with. People give you a lot of credit.
Of course, there is some real science and a lot of attention being paid to this eclipse. Some will be studying the sun's corona and the temperature of it, and some will be trying to drive some kind of data about the actual size of the sun. There's a lot to look forward to, and then there's just the sheer spectacle of the eclipse itself. And mayor Scott says it's the biggest thing on Franklin's plate right now. So right now, that is the big issue.
We've ordered several thousand pairs of, solar glasses. The Chamber of Commerce is already out of those glasses. They've given out thousands of them. So this is gonna be the big deal, right, in the immediate future.
Franklin is a busy place. In fact, when I was driving through Main Street in the downtown core, there wasn't a single empty building, 100% occupancy. From Ruby City Gems, which is right across from Town Hall, on down to a brewery, which actually occupies the old Town Hall Building. More broadly, though, Franklin is like a lot of post recession small towns where there's a lot of transition and a lot of change. And outside of the downtown core, some empty buildings just kind of sitting there. We have too many empty buildings
scattered around the town. We have some areas, that quite frankly have been neglected and have gotten very, very rundown with urban blight. But that also means potential. One of the things that I really wanna do is to get a program together where we repurpose and reuse existing buildings and rehabilitate some of our properties that, have fallen into pretty bad, repair and see if we can't do that. Rather than rather than building more buildings, what have you, let's repurpose and rehabilitate the buildings we have now.
So, let's just say I'm, you know, a member of the public. I hear the priority and I say, you know, why not public safety or why not the children or you know, what what what kind of makes this, more of a timely kind of priority for Franklin?
K. I I'm a very strong believer in the broken windows theory. Yeah. And that is, one that left unrepaired eventually results in in more things that, deteriorate. And and I strongly believe in that. And if you take care of things like they should be taken care of, public safety does not become so much of an issue because a lot of public safety issues are because of urban blight. So if we take care of the urban blight, in many ways, that takes care of your issues concerning public safety. Drug use, vandalism, those type of things, vagrancy. When you when you bring a neighborhood up to, up to par, everything else kinda takes a back seat. The drug use, the vandalism, all of that takes a back seat. So that's why it's so important. Sometimes we overlook those areas that we need to rehabilitate.
So you could say that rehabilitation kind of fits with an overall category of economic development, which is consistent with what mayors across the country wave as their top priority. And we know this from research of the National League of Cities. Every year, NLC analyzes state of the city speeches from mayors all across The US, like a 120 of them, to see what the common themes are, the most uttered phrases and tones.
This is the only national analysis of mayoral state of the city speeches, providing a window into the issues that city leaders care about most. In their state of the city addresses, mayors express their priorities for our cities, focusing on the economy and infrastructure, keeping community members safe, and investing in the future. This is Brooks Rainwater from the NLC during a public unveiling of the latest report. This is the fourth annual State of the Cities report. When we began this project, the environment here in Washington DC was very different. Now while most of our eyes are glued to endless investigations and far reaching budget cuts at the federal level, mayors are still hard at work solving the biggest issues facing our communities and our country. Local leadership is critical to move America forward. Today, as we release State of the Cities 2017, the federal government is creating challenges to city growth and innovation, and local leadership has never been one.
I'm Trevor Langan, research associate at the National League of Cities. And, you were a, one of the authors of the report, the state of the cities report. True. So this report is is done annually. How do you do how do you do it? How do you collect and analyze this kind of info that you reported on?
So the state of the cities is a content analysis of mayors' State of the City speeches, and for a lot of cities, that's the most important policy speech that a mayor will give in a given year. And so what we do is we collect those speeches, typically over 100 of them. This past year, I collected 120, from cities all over the country, you have cities of different sizes. So what we do is we keep those stored in a software called NVivo which is a qualitative data analysis and so we do sort of two tiers of analysis. First is a test of 10 major topics, major themes we've come up with. So that ranges from economic development to public safety to health and data and technology.
And so when you were sampling this, text and this information, what stood out to you? What what was the the top focus when you analyzed all these speeches?
So somatically this year, we noticed four different things that cities are improving financially and that's allowing them to invest more in their communities or or to fill backlogs that have arisen from the Great Recession. We also saw that mayors are continuing to speak about issues of equity, even more than in years past. Also, there's uncertainty at the state and federal level with preemption from states and also a new administration in, Washington. And then last, cities, as always, are are innovating and preparing for the future and filling in those gaps that may come from other levels of government. So those are the major themes that came through in the way that mayors are talking. But in our analysis, economic development is the number one issue and it has been for, every year we've done this analysis.
So with economic development being such a broad topic, you know, what are they saying about it? What's in the context of that topic of economic development? Are they talking about how well their policies are doing, or are they expressing concerns or challenges? Or
Yeah. So an economic development is definitely a large topic. I think that's partly because, that's what people expect city leaders to focus on, on job creation and business attraction. And that's a lot of the tools that cities have to, to change their communities, you know, to bring businesses in by giving them tax incentives or to train workers to meet the skills that are needed of those new businesses or existing businesses. And so that's, you know, a bulk of a lot of speeches are focused on that. You see mayors talk about baseline statistics of how many jobs were created or unemployment rate, how many businesses moved into the community, how many businesses that were there that grew or expanded. And so that takes up a lot of the speech, but it's important because that's what people come to expect out of cities. And a lot of times these speeches are delivered in a chamber of commerce, and so that I think that colors what is actually discussed and what the expectations are for the speech.
Of course, some cities are just growing like crazy. That's a challenge of its own. There's more demand and there is supply.
And geographically, we're one of the smaller counties in the state, and we're about 90% built out so that demand
to live in the city continues to grow. This is Bill Saffo, mayor of Wilmington, North Carolina. We're growing up from what I consider a big town into a major metropolitan area and a good sized city. Wilmington is an historic port city on the Carolina Coast with a really desirable downtown on the riverfront and not far at all from popular beach fronts. So it's a big tourist area, but some thanks to its reputation as Hollywood East. A lot of movies and TV shows have been made there. Dawson's Creek, one Tree Hill, Eastbound and Down, Matlock. And movies like Blue Velvet, Iron Man three, Empire Records, The Crow, tons and tons more. About a 120,000 people live there right now, making it potentially the eighth most populous city in North Carolina,
but, again, without much geography to work with. And we have a, a projection of population increase of about 57,000 people within the next twenty five years. So we're gonna be a very densely, packed community, a very urban
city, and a very urban county. So economic development is happening in Wilmington,
pushing other kinds of immediate needs to the top. So from my perspective, sitting where I'm sitting currently today, I would say the number one issue for us is transportation. We're looking alternative modes of transportation. We passed transportation bond several years ago, $55,000,000. We're looking at several significant interchanges in our community that are a total of about $600,000,000
that will be done over the next ten years. Of course, this means a lot of growth outside of the city limits too. The two counties,
that, joined us the the New Hanover County being Brunswick County and Pender County are two of the fastest growing counties in the state. So our projected population, right, as far as our MSA, is gonna go from about 350,000 people to about 650,000 people also within the next twenty five years. So we're gonna have a lot of people moving here and, you know, moving those people around and also, preserving the quality of life that, has made this place so great is gonna be, it's gonna be critical. It's gonna be, it's gonna be a significant balancing act for all the elected officials, not only today, but in the future.
With so much growth, you got a lot of new people coming in who maybe don't know the institutional issues that you guys are facing or the legacy issues that you guys are facing. Mhmm. And then you have a lot of people who are, you know, lifetime residents or people who've lived there for a long time. Not everybody agrees on everything at the same time. So when you when you have these growth management issues, transportation, housing, everything, it's a constant education campaign, public education campaign. So do you see the public kinda understanding the the complexities here? And, is that message out there?
No. And I think that's probably the failure of most governments is explaining that. And I think more public input, more public meetings, where you can explain the dynamics of a community. You have a lot of new residents that have moved here for a lot of different reasons. And, of course, when they get here, they don't want it to grow any further any any larger than what it is because they've they've moved here for that ambiance and that kind of, small town feel, but it still got the feel of a of a of a big of a city also. Mhmm. And that and and that is slowly leading us. So those growth issues is something that we are always struggling with, and I think we need to do a much better job as municipalities to explain to the citizens what we're trying to do. I think when we have an opportunity to sit down with them and to show them and to talk with them and to explain to them exactly what our plans, are meant to do and and and having the input from the citizens. But it takes time. It's laborious because you got to literally get in there in small groups and really explain your position as opposed for it to be explained to the general public through social media and some concept where others have opinions that sometimes people think that are facts. Right. Mhmm. And I think that's probably the most difficult thing I've seen as the mayor of a city is trying to get that information and sharing that information and having that exchange between the citizens and their government as to, you know, how a city should grow, why are we going the way we are, what are we doing to protect the open space, what are we doing to protect trees, how do we take care of stormwater, which is all part of our of our development patterns? But some citizens don't see that or understand that or don't have to take the time to read through an ordinance to understand every intricacy of an ordinance. That if you take down a tree, you have to replace it with four trees. If if you if you're creating stormwater, you have to capture all that stormwater. If you're creating traffic, additional traffic on the roadway, you have to make improvements to that roadway. Lot of that information is is never explained, and people think that, you know, a developer or somebody that's developing property arbitrarily just throws out something on the ground and and not really viewed. And that's something that we need to do a much better job in in in, sharing with the communities to what we are doing and how we're doing it.
Clearly, there's a lot to sort through. Big challenges, major funding questions,
huge need for cooperation at all levels of government. But, you know, it's also an exciting time to be here. It it it's exciting to see what's happening. It's exciting to see the energy and the people that are moving here and the people that are retiring here and the people that wanna be here and the people that are opening their businesses here and the Mhmm. College students that are coming here to go to university and some and a lot of them which are staying here. And then, of course, the job opportunities slowly with that kind of population growth will get more opportunities to people that may have had to move away, but may be able to find a job here because you have more people here, you have more jobs here. So for the first time, I can remember I see now that most of the major projects that are going on in the community are being done by people from out of town. It's an exciting time, and I just feel that the thing that all of us are gonna be struggling with it on the elected side is trying to keep this balance, and protect the quality of life the best we can moving forward.
Another angle that mayor Saffo sees is how people are buying products these days. This is the thing we've been talking about for a long time, of course, about the ease of online sales and free shipping offers versus traveling to brick and mortar stores. Not a brand new thought, but one that mayor Safeway sees manifesting in Wilmington right now, which brings a whole new aspect into local development and what the city will look like in the future.
In in any community, you see the retail shops, small little retail shops that years ago were were were predominant in the eighties and the seventies don't exist anymore. So you it's harder for people to rent out retail property. So a lot of these larger box stores in coming years, may change dramatically. We've already seen, you know, Kmart, which was a big box store in Wilmington Right. Has gone away Mhmm. Primarily because of Walmart and and and Costco and and and Target. Well, even Costco and Walmart and Target may change in the next fifteen to twenty years with what this Amazon revolution is doing to retail, not only in retail, but also the malls. Mhmm. So there's gonna be significant, I think, opportunities for redevelopment in in big box areas as well as malls. And now them getting into the into the grocery store business with all the grocery stores that have proliferated in the last, you know, ten years. Who knows what that means for the grocery store business in the future? So I see there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for redevelopment and infill development that's gonna take place in the next, you know, ten, fifteen years. Yeah. And if we're already beginning to see that. And so we'll begin to see the infill development take place in Downtown Wilmington where people taking vacant lots that were parking lots, and now they're starting to put buildings on because the value of the land has become so great. So there'd be more demand for parking decks. And then I see outside some of the big box areas being a right for redevelopment and opportunity where you can put housing with the retail. So it's gonna be an exciting time and the and the community is definitely gonna change the way it looks and feels. But hopefully, we can retain that small town feeling that has drawn a lot of people to the community and to the area.
Alright. So let's flip into a rural community that's looking for jobs and industrial prospects. Bethel, North Carolina has about 1,600 residents in the Northeastern part of the state that seen hardships. Town officials in Bethel say the town once upon a time was thriving with business until a bypass diverted traffic from town. Mayor Glorstein Brown has been active in keeping Bethel in the conversation toward prosperity once again. If you were giving a state of the city speech right now, what would you find yourself talking about the most? You know, what what do you think is sort of the the big priority right now categorically for Bethel?
For Bethel, I think economic development, growth, because we are a rural community, in the county. And, when you find yourself being in rural areas, sometimes, your community has a tendency to die, and it can die pretty quickly if you don't stay on top of it. Right. And, and I just think, my biggest priority right now is hoping and praying that someone will look at vessel and say, okay. This is where we wanna come and set up shop, and this is where we want to come and bring businesses and and, commercial as well as industrial. And, and intel, that would bring more more rooftops, more houses, and bring more people. And and
and that's what I'm that's my biggest focus right now. So is there any certain ingredient that, that you're looking for that that you think will will finally be the hook that the industrial, prospects need?
Right now, we as a board, that's what we are, you know, we're talking about, and we're looking into what it what can we do and, to try to create the atmosphere that we would be looked upon.
One thing mayor Brown is doing as an active member of the North Carolina League of Municipalities is routinely grouping with fellow municipal officials from neighboring towns and towns far away in the state to trade ideas and get away from the idea of rural versus urban and discuss rural urban regionalism and partnership. It's symbiotic, and they know it's in their interest and the state's interest to work together to win economic successes
where they're needed. Like a domino effect. Mhmm. If we can ever get the right get get that right hit on that on that chain of dominoes, I just think it will continue to fall
and for a positive matter. The town is also working with the community college on workforce training, recognizing that, you know, manufacturers won't wanna locate where there's a lack of the skills they need. The community college is actually,
helping a lot within the whole base of Pitt County. I mean, they are offering all the courses and trying to, find out from different industries, especially even though none have have not settled here yet. But in Greenville and and other areas of the county, they are asking what are you looking for. And they and and the industry will tell them that a lot of them right now, I do know that welding is very, very, high in demand. Mhmm. And so, that that's one of the big, hot ticket items at the community college is to try to get a lot of people into the welding. Some auto mechanics, you got brick masonry and different things in construction. So, but I'm just excited because they're able to go and and they don't have to stay in one or two years if they don't want to. They can go ahead and get the training and and and hands on training and come out with a certificate in maybe three to six months. And they, pretty much start out, and the companies are able to bring them on board because they don't have to wait. And I think that's what industry looks for when they're in a community or looking to bring businesses into areas.
While some cities are looking to ramp up on business opportunities, others are just as much trying to diversify their tax base and even boost the percentage of residential, which could be a safeguard for the tax base in the event of a business decline. Zebulon, North Carolina is kind of booming right now with growth and reads really hot on projections, coming right off a long time status as a small town. And one guy who's seen it all there is mayor Bob Matheny. I have a total elected experience of, thirty nine years with two years on the planning board prior to that. Matheny is also the 2017 president of the North Carolina League. Describe Zebulon for anybody who might not be familiar.
Well, Zebulon is, is a small municipality in Eastern Wake County, which is located with Raleigh. Most people know where Raleigh is. I'm I'm proud of I'm fond rather of saying that Raleigh is on the out outskirts of Zebulon. You know, we're we're a small town in the eastern part of the county, and and like the rest of the county, we're experiencing a lot of growth. Our motto or mantra is the town of friendly people, and, we're working very hard to retain that as we continue to grow.
If you were giving a state of the city speech right now, what do you find yourself talking about the most categorically?
Well, we we're experiencing growth in its economic development. And, one of the the unique things about Zebulon has been that, we have a very heavy or strong industrial commercial tax base. About 70% of our tax base is industrial commercial, which is extremely, unusual. So what we've been, concerned with is trying to balance that back with more residential growth. And now we're seeing that. It's coming along. It's been a real effort to get, you know, utility expansions in so that it would facilitate growth. We merged our utility system with the city of Raleigh. That that's real focus is trying to manage that, that new growth that's coming in. We're We're starting to see a lot of developers that are not local developers. So, and I'm not saying it's bad. It's just different than than when you're working with hometown boys. So, you know, we're going through that transition right now.
What what kind of gross, growth projections are you guys looking at over the next, you know, ten years or twenty years? Or well, you know, right now, we're a little over 5,000. I I would say within ten years, we'd easily double that.
And then, twenty years, we might double that.
Of course, I realize every mayor I've spoken with for this episode represents a town in North Carolina. Different kinds of town for sure with different dynamics, but let's scale back out again with Trevor Langan from the NLC for a national perspective. So economic development is the standout. What else? What what else is on that list of topics that mayors are focusing on?
So public safety is always a close second or third, and it was second this year, major topics. And so with public safety, they're talking about transparency in a lot of cities, implementing body cameras. Also, infrastructure is something that people expect mayors to talk about. And so, they talk about roads and bridges, but also they're talking about active transportation and improving quality of life through bike paths and walking trails Sure. And reducing fatalities of, you know, pedestrian. That's really popular. And then affordable housing has become an increasing issue over the past couple of years we've done this analysis.
What have you seen that has changed in terms of ranking the popular themes or topics, over the years?
We've seen some movement, I think, in housing as affordable housing and improving the housing housing stock has become really important for city leaders. We've also seen public health increase in intensity, in mayor speeches as city leaders are focused on building a culture of health in their communities. But really, in relation to each other and the major topics, they they stay in pretty much the same. There's a lot of stability and I think that's the major takeaway of, you know, people come to expect in cities of public safety and economic development, infrastructure and making sure finances are well managed. And then you've got sort of middle tier stuff like, education and health care that may not be directly within the city's power that might be handled at the county or state level. But mayors are still talking about how they can use their position to influence, making a community healthier or better educated or dealing with, you know, youth during the summer when they're not in schools. Right? So, you see those things, mayors being very innovative and smart about how they can use their limited sometimes powers to influence, public policy.
Yeah. I I do hear that a lot with the implementation of, you know, greenways and bike paths and, bigger investments in parks where they want people to kinda be out and enjoy that healthy lifestyle. And and then on the flip side, there are other, you know, sort of crises that are kinda gripping the nation like the opioid abuse piece. I mean, that that's another thing that that mayors have really kinda picked up as a mantle to to fight abuse and and strive for healthier communities. And I and and I guess ideally, you know Definitely. There are certain institutions that institutions that put up these, you know, annual health rankings. You know, it's a source of pride when a city or a county, pops up high on that. I think that, helps them stand out. You know? I don't know if that figures into, you know, when companies look for
sites to, position their workers or I mean, I I feel like it would, but I, you know, I I don't know for sure. Yeah. That's definitely true. I think that when businesses are looking for a community to expand into or move to or start in, They're looking at the political leadership to see the tone of what a community values and if they can envision their future employees living and enjoying the the resources. I think amenities as you know seen through all the different policies we look at our city analysis, amenities are really what's most important to attracting businesses and there's movement away from, just giving out, financial incentives or tax incentives to to attract and grow businesses. It's really about building communities and making people healthier and better educated to either attract business or just improve quality of life for for people. It's not not only economically related. It's, you know, mayors really care about their neighbors, in the in the community that they're serving.
The NLC report is online at nlc.org/s0tc. Trevor also worked on a guide for mayors called how to deliver an effective state of the city address. I'll have links to both in the show notes at towncloud.com/municipalequation. So what do you think? What didn't I get to in this episode? What do you think needs to be pointed out when it comes to mayors as policy leaders? Or whether the priorities described here in this fairly high flying examination are as they should be? What do you think is the top issue facing your city right now besides the eclipse,
for example? We need to look at our infrastructure. Like so many towns, we our our infrastructure is aging. We had hoped to be you know, that there would be all kind of money, assistance coming down from Washington, but I have yet to see it. And the the only way we're gonna be able to do it is by increasing our property taxes, and I just don't want to do that if we can avoid it. But so many of the old infrastructure grants, community development block grants, they've gone by the wayside both at the, state and national level, and and this is this is affecting us.
Mayor Bob Scott again. You can read all about him, his life, and his plans for Franklin, and the new issue of Southern City Magazine. It should be out anytime. I'll tweet it out. It'll also be at nclm.0rg as well. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities, which makes this podcast possible. And I'm super excited about some of the upcoming episodes we've got planned. They're gonna be some of my favorites. I think they're gonna be yours too. If you end up disagreeing or if you have a good topic for an episode, email me at bbrown@nclm.org or tweet to me. The handle is at muniequation,@muniequation. You should also follow and interact with us on Instagram and subscribe on iTunes, where we would love it if you took thirty seconds to leave a friendly review. Also, big thanks to Mike Jones, whose YouTube videos of the Franklin pumpkin roll were the source of the audio that you heard earlier. I'll link to those as well in the show notes @soundcloud.comslashmunicipalequation, where you can get all the past episodes. Thanks again for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon. This is Ben Brown.
