Reporter Heather Duncan sat down to talk with Mayor Madeline Rogero in September, when it was already a near-certainty that she would hold the office another four years. Her only opposition on the ballot in the non-partisan election, William “Buck” Cochran, had withdrawn from the race in June. Knowing she could only lose if a write-in candidate won more than half the votes in the Sept. 29 primary—Jack Knoxville (legal name), a marketing consultant with a quiet campaign who is the only certified write-in candidate, seemed very unlikely to do so—Rogero still tempered her tone with cautious optimism.

But the lack of a serious challenger allows her to maintain momentum on big initiatives like reworking Cumberland Avenue and the South Waterfront. Both of those efforts began under Rogero’s predecessor and former boss, now-Gov. Bill Haslam. Rogero promised to continue these and other Haslam initiatives when she moved up from being Knoxville’s community development director to leading the city. She has followed through on other high-profile promises from her first campaign, including establishing an office of business support, making sustainability a city priority, and driving investment outward from the downtown core.

In her office overlooking the rubble that was once Baptist Hospital, Rogero reflected on what her administration accomplished in her first term, as well as her goals for the next four years and beyond.

NOTE: This is the full, unexpurgated version of our interview; the shorter edited version is available here. Ellipses in this transcription eliminated only incomplete sentences when a thought was begun and then rephrased, or asides asking if the reporter was familiar with a past event. Rogero’s communications director, Jesse Mayshark, was present for the interview and made a few brief comments which are also included. 

MERCURY: To start with, I was hoping we could just take a moment to reflect back over your (probably) first term, and if you would like to mention maybe the three things that you’re the most proud of accomplishing during the last years.

ROGERO: I think the first thing is we really took advantage of the economy coming out of the recession and made some real strategic investments, infrastructure investments in our community, which has really catalyzed the private sector to make investments. First of all it created jobs, you know, got the economy going, but also we saw the private sector have the confidence to invest. So that’s one really key thing.

Another one was we had major pension reform. I inherited at the time it was $150 million or so unfunded pension liability. And it was something that everybody knew had to be done, but it’s one of those tough things that tear communities apart in some other cities with different opinions on what the solution is. I was faced with needing to reduce long-term costs for the pension and reduce long-term market risk for the taxpayers, and at the same time be able to recruit and retain qualified police officers and firefighters, so I had to balance that.

Some people, it’s very easy to say, “Scrap the system.” But they’re not responsible for public safety and thinking about how do you ask somebody to literally risk their lives. We were just at the event today where one of our police officers was honored by Safari Land Group. He was wearing one of their vests when he was shot in the chest. You know, went to a motel door doing his job, the guy opened it up, pulled out a gun and shot him.

So literally how do I get people like him—he’s got two young kids—to do that kind of work, if 20-30 years from now when he goes to retire, there’s nothing there. There’s no pension because it’s at its total defined contribution.

So we came up with a hybrid plan, which was a base defined benefit, with then up to, say, $40,000, which is indexed as time goes on. But any amount that you make after that is defined contribution. So the more money you make, the more you share in the risk with the taxpayer. So those of us who make more money, we have more risk. Those who don’t, like your police officers, your fire fighters, your public service officers who many of them don’t make a lot of money throughout their career, but yet they’re critical to the safety and stability of our community—then they have some security. So we had to balance that.

We had seven city council workshops…. But it really went well. I got the employee groups to agree to changes. Which, you know, they did not want any changes, obviously, representing their members. But they recognized we had to come up with some kind of a workable solution. So we were able to bring all that together, council supported it, employees supported it, and we took it to the voters and it was something like 76 or 79 percent support from the voters.

So to me, that was a major change. We did that in Year One of my administration, we just took it right on immediately. And then two years later we did a few more reforms, which also will save future dollars. So anyway, that was a major thing we had to tackle early on.

I think another… There’s a lot of things I’m proud of that we worked on, but we really worked to think long-term about sustainability for our community, and all facets of sustainability. We have very strong energy-efficiency program both for city government but also we recently announced the Extreme Energy Makeover with CAC and TVA and KUB has a round-it-up program.

So we’re focusing not only on making government facilities energy-efficient and more sustainable—we have geothermal going in at our new public works complex, got a big grant from the state to help with that—but also, we’re trying to help homeowners and renters to live in housing that is more energy-efficient. Instead of everyone at the churches putting in money each year to help pay somebody’s utility bills so they don’t get kicked out, why don’t we put some money into, instead of a band-aid approach, really a systemic solution, which is to make homes more energy-efficient.

And preserving our natural resources by working with our partners with the Urban Wilderness, by really promoting our parks and our greenways, creating a more sustainable lifestyle as well as focusing on the energy-efficiency piece of the work.

So overall: Making Knoxville greener, whether it’s the development we do—we have low-impact green development that we use in our projects. So there’s many facets to it, but that’s something that we have really focused on. And that’s about thinking long-term. You know, what kind of—One of the things we love about this area is our natural resources, the beauty of our natural resources. We’re about preserving that and setting things up so that it will continue to be beautiful, and we don’t squander the natural resources that we currently have at our disposal. 

MERCURY: I did want to talk with you a little about the police chief. There have been several times recently when he has made decisions regarding open meetings or open records that were not cleared by you and we apparently sort of contrary to what you were wanting to see. [ED. NOTE: Chief Rausch violated state open meetings laws late last year while participating in the selection of a new radio contract; this summer the police department briefly considered, then quickly abandoned, a policy of refusing to release dashboard camera videos to the public if the recordings had any potential value as evidence. In both cases Mayor Rogero indicated she was unaware of the issue beforehand and did not approve.]

And there have been several lawsuits that we’ve seen against the department and the city this spring involving use of force issues, that have also brought forward multiple times when there have been recordings have been absent when there were disputes between a suspect and a policeman over how a confrontation went.

Basically I want to ask you where you are with Chief Rausch: If you are still very confident in his leadership or if this has raised some concerns or issues for you that you are looking to see addressed differently.

ROGERO: I have utmost confidence in our police chief, David Rausch. He is very well-respected, not only in this area locally, but across the state and even at the national level for the work that he has done. I consistently get good reviews about him from others that have worked with him. He has been invaluable in promoting good police and community relations.

Through our Save Our Sons Initiative and other community policing initiatives, Project Safe Neighborhoods and some other initiatives that we’ve had, he has very intentionally reached out to the community, particularly the African American community where a lot of the problems that you’ve mentioned, you know, nationally, are between police and the black community.

And so he has intentionally, as I have, reached out and forged very strong relationships in neighborhoods and among leaders in the community. And we saw an example of that relationship in general with our police force recently when Office G [Gordon Gwathney] was attacked [in March] when he was I think at Walter P. Taylor Homes, and it was people in the community that came out to support him against the folks who were attacking him. So we have worked very hard at that, and that is something that Chief Rausch is personally committed to.

Meanwhile he’s also been very involved in addressing the homelessness issue. He has to enforce, but also he’s actively involved in prevention and in helping people get back into housing. He’s been a leader in that as well.

There will always be issues—we have a large department—there are many controversial and risky issues that the police department has to deal with. And there will be times when things happen: you know, we get out of synch. That’s not just between the police department and the administration. In other departments it happens in occasionally. But we pull together, we find out what the problem was, how we communicate better, and we keep working on it.

Chief Rausch and I communicate probably on a daily basis, either by email or phone call or a text. He keeps in very close contact with me. Our communications departments are working closely together. It’s just something that, when things happen, you just have to face them and get them right and continue working together.

But I don’t want any doubt left in the minds of anybody that there’s any problems between Chief Rausch and me. We are very much in synch and I have a lot of confidence in him.

MERCURY: Again, looking back… a lot Democrats and progressives were really excited when you were elected partly because you had this union background and sort of a very strong background in looking at workers. 

But at the same time you were part of the Haslam administration, and early on you said you were looking to continue a lot of the things that the Haslam administration had been doing. So I wanted to ask you, I think you’re generally seen as being a very business-friendly mayor—Do you think you have done many things any differently than Haslam would have if he had been in office for another four years?

ROGERO: I started to say that Mayor Haslam did a lot of progressive things as mayor. He really started the sustainability office. He was the one that first established that. When the federal funding ran out, I put city funding in because we knew it was something that had proven its worth and it was something that needed to continue. Mayor Haslam also started the Office of Neighborhoods. I was in community development. He approved that, and we hired the first neighborhood coordinator. That’s something that I continued.

So yes, there are a lot of things that he did that I thought made a lot of sense, and so we continued it on. Everybody, whether you’re right wing, left-wing or in the middle, needs a job. And they want a good job. And so working with the business community and trying to promote stronger businesses, a thriving economy, good-paying jobs, all of those—I don’t see those as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. They’re about creating opportunities and everybody needs those jobs. So what we did is we took—because you know, I worked for Mayor Haslam, I understood and believed in that strategy of investing public dollars strategically to maximize private investment. It worked. We saw it working in his administration. It certainly worked when I came in as the economy was coming out of the recession, as I mentioned earlier, we were poised to make even more of those strategic investments to see the private sector come back online. That’s why you see Baptist Hospital, the new development that will be there, the University Commons…

The whole Cumberland Avenue thing started under Mayor Haslam, and it takes these projects often—you start something, it might be a future mayor or two that actually sees them to fruition because these things take a long time, for a number of reasons. One is you do the public process, which takes some time, particularly for a job like Cumberland Ave. And you get the funding in place, a combination of state and local, federal. And then you do the right of way, you have to do all the construction design part, you do the right of way acquisition and bid it out, sometimes a couple times. It took us three times, I think, to get it right, because it’s a very complex project. So, but they had the right idea. We invest that money, some $17 million or so, some local and some state, and then that money then leverages—right now I think we’re at $240 million I think they’re saying they’ve got on the books—in the private development. [MERCURY NOTE: According to the city last month, it’s actually $142.5 million, much of which would likely have happened without the infrastructure improvements, developers have said.] So that’s a strategy that works, and it helps the whole community.

Meanwhile, we did other things, though, that hadn’t been done before. I supported a non-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity in city hiring. I supported the freedom to marry, signed on to the Amicus brief at the Supreme Court. So there were things like that, that we went further.

I also worked very closely with our employees groups to make sure that we were continuing to pay our employees competitively. And actually, this is another follow-up under Mayor Haslam. They had the Mercer (Group) Study which really looked at: Are we paying our employees competitively? And he had said, “You know, about every five years or so we need to look at this again.” And so we came in and did another review [in 2014], this time with Seagull… and we got some recommendations on where employees were at the right scale for the kind of job and where we needed to make improvements in the job salary ranges. And so I’ve been a big supporter of our employees, of making sure they are competitively paid with competitive benefits. And I respect the employee groups and work with them very closely.

MERCURY: Any further thoughts you might have about how your political views may have changed over the years, as you actually work on particular issues. How have you evolved?

ROGERO: You mean from four years ago, or from 20 years ago?

MERCURY: Maybe both.

ROGERO: Well you know, when you start out, when you’re young—I think over the years… I think the right thing to do over the years is the more that you learn, the more that you realize—at least I could say it for myself: The more I’ve learned over my career of 30-some years (I’d have to do the math) the more I’ve learned that governing in this role—it’s really about a balancing of interests.

One developer said to me, “You know, I was worried about you when you first came in. But you’ve really done a great job.”

And I told him, I said, “I know that you guys need to be making money and creating jobs in order for me to be able to do the progressive things that I want done in this community.” You’ve got to be able to pay for them.

And so if we have a city where there’s no private investment, then we’re not going to have the jobs we need, we’re not going to have the tax revenue we need in order to provide the amenities that people want—first of all even the basic services, to provide police, fire and public service. And that’s the most basic thing we have to provide. But if we want sidewalks, and we want greenways and parks and urban wilderness trails, and all the kinds of things that require some city investment, then you’ve got to have a thriving economy.

You have to have business. That’s why we started the entrepreneur center. People need jobs. Again, whether you’re liberal or conservative, you need a job. You want to be able to provide for your family.

So yeah, from where I started out at age 20, to where I am now at age 63, yes, thank goodness my ideas have evolved over time. I hope everybody’s does in their 43 years of adulthood.

Yeah, it has evolved. But I’m still very committed to the social issues about making sure that all people have opportunities. You know, I started the Save Our Sons initiative here, which ties in with the national Cities United effort among mayors and My Brother’s Keeper from President Obama. Because there are—You know, I believe in giving everybody an opportunity. And some people, we’ve got those who are most marginalized, the most disadvantaged, whether they’re homeless or they live in poverty, we need to do a special outreach to make sure that they’re getting the opportunities that they need to succeed. So I think again, it’s about balancing interests. And if you balance those interests, then I think you have a much more productive and healthy and progressive community.

MERCURY: You mentioned working with developers, and I did want to ask you about some of the tools the city has used in your administration toward redevelopment in particular, toward fighting blight. You’ve got a lot of different approaches that you’ve used, and I wanted to give you a chance to talk a little about what you feel like has been most effective, and maybe what you tried and decided, “Eh, this doesn’t really work here.”

ROGERO: Certainly the things that first come to mind that have been usually successful, again actually started under Mayor Haslam, that’s the Tax Increment Financing and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Those we are now seeing.

Most of the buildings downtown that have been repurposed, renovated and are in use now, the historic buildings, they have had some kind of assistance like that. Because what it costs to fix one of those buildings up, bring them up to code now, it doesn’t make sense financially for most developers when they can go out to a greenfield, you know go out to the suburbs or whatever, and build something new.

But if you value our built infrastructure, you value our downtown and know that if the heart of the city is decaying and blighted, then nobody really benefits in the city. And plus there are a lot of folks who really appreciate historic preservation, the character, that uniqueness of our downtown because of the unique buildings that we have—and we’ve lost many of them, so it’s so important that the ones we have left, that where we are able to—and a lot of these are private decisions, you know, private owners. We can try to exert our influence, which we have and we will. But ultimately it’s up to the private owners to fix these up. So if it doesn’t make sense financially, then there’s a public purpose to be used — for us to intervene and to offer some incentives.

When you look at something like Tax Increment Financing, the wonderful thing about that is that we’re not writing a check to anybody. What we’re saying is that your future taxes—so here your property is valued here (gestures low). When you get finished, it’s going to be valued up here (gestures higher).

We’re immediately going to take 25 percent of that new taxes that you pay, that you owe, and it’s going to go back into our city coffers for services and all. But the other 75 percent goes then either to doing the public infrastructure, depending on the type of TIF it is, it goes back into paying for the public plaza, or the riverwalk, or the sidewalks and the streetlights. It pays for that public—or in some cases it goes back towards retiring some of the debt on the project itself. It depends on the nature of it. So those new taxes never would have happened if this wasn’t offered.

And so immediately you get the 25 percent, you get all the public infrastructure that the rest of it pays for, all the community improvement. So even though we’re not getting the full 100 percent of taxes over those 10, 12, 15 years, we’re getting the sales taxes, we’re getting the employment, we’re getting the vitality of having people back—you know, the jobs that are created and such. And so you’re having benefit.

And then when that rolls off 10, 15 years later, then all of a sudden you’ve got the full thing. And so there are a lot of these that are rolling off now from when they first were started, and we’re getting the full taxes. But we have benefited so much from that. Because one thing: One feeds the other, too, so the next one gets done, and then the next one gets done.

So all of that has been a really — The way we’ve done it, we’ve been very careful to make sure that there’s a “but for.” You know, “But for this TIF, this project wouldn’t happen. Because the financing just isn’t there.” The bank’s only going to do so much. And there’s private equity as well.

MERCURY: Are there particular projects that have happened under your administration through these tools that are sort of the key ones, either because they were the kickoff to more activity around them, or because they were just at really important spots downtown?

ROGERO: Well when you look at Cumberland Avenue, again, you know the project started but we had to make a decision to move it forward and to continue to do that project when it got to a point. And then there are—I can’t remember now all of them. There’s so many.

Well, the Farragut Building is one that’s going to start, and that’s a huge one. That thing has been empty for a few years now, it is an iconic building on Gay Street, it is something that has a really rich history, and it’s a gorgeous building. And so that is a particularly complicated building. And when you know that as a hotel, it needs parking for people who come in. To turn it back to its grandeur, there was a package that we worked with with the developer, which council approved: A combination of a Section 108 loan, which they are paying that back, the TIF and some parking that was needed. So that was a little more complicated than some, because of the nature.

So every project is different. You can’t use one uniform package for everyone. You really have to get in there and look at the realities. And we knew a lot about that because we’d had other developers come and talk. We’d actually gotten really close on one prior to Mr. [Rick Dover, general manager of Dover Development], who has it now. So there’s one that I think’s going to be a huge success.

J.C. Penney’s is another one. That had that fabric on the front—what did it say, “Urban living” or something?  hey came in and finally had some ideas and something we could support, and we got behind that. And pretty soon it’s going to be open. Again, it’s taken a while. It’s more complicated. You know, the White Lilly building. We could get you a whole list.

MERCURY: I was looking for what you consider perhaps the most significant. Where are you envisioning going next with these incentives? Are there particular parts of the city that you’re really hoping to target? 

ROGERO: A huge one is this one, too (gestures out window across river): Baptist Hospital. And so, we already know that here’s the thing with Baptist: Just knowing that this $165 million-plus development will be going in, we’re doing the Suttree Landing Park (gestures out window). You can see it down there. You can see the dirt. We are seeing a lot of property that’s changing hands. People are buying property on Sevier Avenue in anticipation of the new development, because in addition to the park we’re also building some roads (Waterfront Drive) which will then open up privately-owned land for development there. So as a result of the hospital and the park, we’re now seeing these buildings, and new businesses are going in over near the elementary school and all. And that’s stuff that’s happened on our watch as well. OK, so that’s just one.

So TIF, that TIF financing. Over the years when I was community development director, we saw this as well: The facade improvement loans—they’re forgivable loans after 5 years. And actually we had a $500,000 pot of money for facade improvement loans for the Magnolia Avenue warehouse district, and we are seeing again—that’s another great example—if you look at White Lilly and a lot of those buildings around White Lilly, you’re seeing a lot of investment. And many of those have some kind of an incentive piece to it.

We also, one of the things that we did on my watch was put $500,000 a year for the last two years into historic preservation, a historic preservation fund. And for years we had an ordinance which is called demolition by neglect, which is kind of an odd name and confusing to people. But what it did was give the city the power that if there was an historic building that was being neglected, the city after advising and trying to get the property owner to fix it up—to not fix it up, but to secure it so there would be no further damage, then the city had the right to go in and make the improvements and spend the money to put the roof on or to board it up, put a fence up, whatever it is to secure it so there won’t be further damage, and then charge the property owner. So that had been on the books, but no one had ever put any money into it so that the city could do it. So we put the first $100,000 in and have continued to fund it.

And one of the first buildings that we secured was the old South High…. So we actually did and then we charged it back—put a lien on the property—and the owner never paid it and he owned it for several years and never made any investment, or not any significant investment, in it. So we eventually then had the authority by law to then go and to basically foreclose on it based on the lien. I don’t know if that’s the right words for it, but We basically were able to take the property—pay him the value, which was actually more than he paid for it, despite the fact that it had deteriorated. [Ed Note: The city was in the process of taking ownership of the property when it struck a deal to purchase the building from its owner, Bahman Kasraei, for $189,000 in April—$71,300 more than he paid for it at auction in 2008.] Property values change. But anyhow we have it back in our hands. We don’t want to keep it. We want private development to occur there.

So those are some examples of tools we have. What else do we have? Those are some of the main ones that we use.

MERCURY: I did want to ask: In relation to historic buildings, we’ve not had the best last year in Knoxville when it comes to historic preservation. We’ve lost some kind of key things. (Ft. Sanders houses, Christenberry House). Jack Neely—I was talking with him, and he was noting that the law department under your administration has dismantled some of the previous options for slowing demolitions. I think the main one he was thinking of was sending the design review to MPC—[the law department] saying they didn’t think that was constitutional. So I wanted to ask, is there any time a city can or should defy a developer who wants to tear down a historic building? And are there ways you can use the leverage of some of your tools, if not on that particular site, then on others that this owner is also working with? 

ROGERO: First let me say, I don’t think it’s accurate to say “They dismantled.” What they’re trying to do is, they have to look at what the law is. And we were challenged on the way that law had been interpreted. And when they looked at it, they thought they were right. And what we don’t have is a law department that is going to waste a lot of time if they don’t think that we have the legal standing.

But we’re always looking for tools. So if that’s not a tool—and it had to do with whether design review could actually rule on demolition.

JESSE MAYSHARK (city communications director): There was enabling state legislation, and the law department basically said the enabling state legislation didn’t give the Design Review Board authority over that.

ROGERO: The Design Review Board. So it’s a matter of who has the power to do that. And that’s not because (city attorneys) were sitting around trying to figure out how they could gut it. I mean, I wish we had more tools to be able to stop it. But we have to work within the law that we have. And that’s why we did the Historic Preservation Fund and funded the demolition by neglect. You know, what can we do? What resources do we have? If the law is such that we’re limited in one way, is there some other way that we can take action in a proactive way, legally, to do it?

So I don’t think it’s fair to say that they dismantled it. I think what they did was look at what legally we’re allowed to do and had to advise—advise reluctantly on what that is.

MAYSHARK: And we did come up with the demolition delay. [ED. NOTE: City Council passed an ordinance that will require a 60-day delay for any demolition of a building eligible for the historic register and not protected by some other historic or conservation district overlay.]

ROGERO: Yes, thank you. So, that’s another thing that we could do. And we worked with Kim Trent and Knox Heritage on this, and Nashville and other places. I think we modeled ours on Nashville. That there is a—when somebody – You know, people have the right, if you own the building, to come in and get a… demolition permit, if it doesn’t have a historic designation on the building. Our guys in that department, they can’t stop that. This is a legal right that somebody has.

And again this is always the pressure between private ownership and public good. And that’s another kind of thing, there’s always a constant tension between those. We had that with our blight ordinances, where people say, “It’s my property, why can’t I do what I want with it?” And we say, “Yes, it is your property, and you have a right to that, but the people next to you also have a right that you don’t devalue their property.”

You know, and so it’s always those balancing, and it’s within the law and within, frankly, the legislature that you have, and the laws that are selected. There are some things that we would like to make stronger dealing with blight, that we know if we go to the legislature right now, state legislature, we’ll end up losing ground. There’s certain laws that you don’t want to open up, because we fear that we will lose ground on that—on our ability to address blight.

And so you always are functioning within the legal framework and the political framework, basically. And so we have some things that we would go for if we thought we had a legislature that would be receptive to it, but we don’t. So we have to be realists in this.

So, back to—where was I? So we could do the demolition delay, which we did pass. So what happens now is when they come in and ask for a demolition permit, if it’s something that could be, that is historic but doesn’t have the overlay on it or the designation—there are some categories—then we require the 30-day delay [Ed. note: It’s actually 60 days], and then we let everybody know about it. And then Knox Heritage can come in or whomever and talk to those owners. And the owner may not realize that there are certain incentives that can be offered, either by Knox Heritage or by us. Anyway we can try and work it, and try to stop it.

And that was successfully done before this ordinance, actually, on Jackson Ave, when there was a building where the lady was going to tear it down. And Knox Heritage got in there in time and was able to talk to her and she realized that there was actually somebody who would buy this from her and fix it up. [ED. NOTE: That building later became The Standard, an events hall developed by Dewhirst Properties.] So anyway, there’s experience at that, where you can delay it and get some conversations going.

So we have been proactive through the demolition delay ordinance, through the historic preservation fund, and just proactively working with owners of property trying to move them towards preservation rather than demolition. That’s something that we’ll continue to do. 

MERCURY: Now, there was a case earlier in your administration when you agreed to a deal allowing Covenant Health to tear down some historic Fort Sanders houses that were within a conservation overlay that the city and the hospital had agreed to in a prior administration, in exchange for letting the city build a parking garage that would have some spaces for the hospital. Can you explain a little about why you thought that was a good deal, and what happened to it?

ROGERO: Cause there never was a deal. That’s what was misreported in this process. There were conversations about we wanted a parking garage. The hospital wanted to be able to expand. There were conversations about that, but we never came to an agreement, because if we had then it would have happened. But we never came to that agreement.

Really, there was a lot of talk about Fort Sanders, about Cumberland Avenue, about those buildings. It became—there was a lot of public confusion, I think, about all the discussions that were going on. What we were trying to do was figure out is there—like between the hospital and Knox Heritage—was there some kind of balance that could be, some kind of compromise that could be reached to save some of the buildings or to move some of those houses. And you, know, so they might not be able to save all of them, but could they save some of them? So there was a lot of discussion back and forth, but there never was a deal.

MERCURY: So was that the primary stumbling block to the deal, or was that secondary?

ROGERO: The houses?

MERCURY: Yeah, the houses.

ROGERO: Because I had never intended for it to be: You give us this land for the parking garage and we’ll agree to that. Because number one, I don’t have that authority. That’s why this thing was so—there was so much miscommunication out there, because if I had wanted to, I couldn’t guarantee to the hospital—I didn’t want to. I never wanted those coupled together. That was never my intention to have that. Number one because I think that’s a totally separate issue: the preservation of those houses, and the need of the institution to expand—that’s one issue. Another issue was the need for Fort Sanders and Cumberland Avenue to have more parking.

And our original agreement with the hospital on making a surface lot available—there was an agreement on just even opening up the surface lot—that was something that had already been in place, but had never been implemented yet. So we were trying to get that agreement, you know, finalized: “Let us use the surface parking lot,” which we now have, we ended working on that. And eventually we need a parking garage. And it would benefit them as well.

But in those conversations, the hospital wanted to marry those together, but we were never comfortable with that. I understand why they would, you know: If they’re going to work with us on this, would we work with them on that. But I told them, I told Tony Spezia [Covenant Health President and CEO], “I don’t—These are not coupled in my mind. The whole issue of the parking garage is one thing. And then the whole issue of their expansion, their valid need to expand, and the valid need of historic preservation, that’s another thing that needs to be worked out.”

You know, I feel like the hospital and Knox Heritage needs to work together to figure out some kind of a compromise on that. Is there something that can work to compromise that? And I still think that needs to happen.

So anyway, plus here’s the other thing. I don’t vote on—this has been a couple years, so I have to think through—it first had to go to the Historic Zoning Commission, and it would then have to go to City Council. I can’t deliver the votes on either one of those.

MAYSHARK: And MPC in between.

ROGERO: MPC. So, like, three things. So it wasn’t my deal to make. That’s what was so erroneous about the communication about that. It was never my deal to make. I don’t control that. Now, I can make a deal with somebody about, you know, that I will propose Tax Increment Financing, but to go through those three bodies—I had never intended to go fight that at those three bodies, to encourage them to support that as a deal for parking. To me, those are totally unrelated.

But you get into conversations with people, and you start looking at, “What are the options?” So things get thrown out there on the table. But then I made it clear to the hospital—I called Tony Spezia and said, “We need to move on from this. The parking garage is one issue. Your expansion and historic buildings are another. We can help bring a compromise. If we can help bring some kind of closure to that for the parties involved, we will do that.”

But we need a parking garage. And so we started looking for other places, you know. We’re working on resolving that right now with the parking garage… with other property. I mean, we would still talk to the hospital if they were interested in doing it. But I mean, they’re two separate issues as far as I’m concerned. And I think that we didn’t communicate well in the beginning on that. But there was a lot of miscommunication out there in the public about it. And we probably weren’t clear on our intentions. So I can see where it would be miscommunicated.

MERCURY: Would you ever—if the city had previously agreed to something like a historic overlay, do you think there is an appropriate time for a later administration to come back and—do you necessarily honor that?

ROGERO: Well the conservation overlay is there on the books, right?

MAYSHARK: It would have to be amended by Council.

ROGERO: So yeah, any ordinance, any things on the charter—we change the charter every two years, there’s something to change the charter. You know, as times change, as people change, as attitudes change, there might be a reason. So that’s why you pass the laws the way you do and the majority of council can vote to change it. And there will always be those tensions among various interests.

We’re big proponents of historic preservation. I’m also a big proponent of jobs in our city and of a hospital downtown. You know, we’re losing St. Mary’s as a general hospital. So the fact that you have Fort Sanders, which is basically a downtown hospital. So again, there’s the balancing of interests: How can we make sure that we have a thriving hospital with lots of good jobs and care for citizens close at hand, and at the same time not lose the…  historic character and integrity of the neighborhood? It’s not easily solved.

MERCURY: Another development question related to downtown: Obviously downtown has been blooming and we’ve seen all kinds of interesting new businesses, a lot of theme restaurants, a lot of bars and boutiques. We’re still not seeing a lot of supports for sort of regular people who might live downtown, things like a pharmacy or easy access to a grocery store, or the kind of developments that lead to more people really living downtown who are not in the high-income area—and I’m thinking about, there are some really nice new lofts. 

ROGERO: I can’t afford it.

MERCURY: Has downtown become a sort of playground destination that is not so much a residential—are we doing all that we could do to better develop the residential possibilities of downtown, and is there more that the city could do to attract certain types of businesses that would be a support to that?

ROGERO: First of all, we’re getting a pharmacy. A pharmacy is supposed to come in—it’s been announced, hasn’t it? It’s been announced—in the Phoenix building. You know where The Daily Grind Coffee Shop and the dry cleaners is. So there’s going to be a pharmacy right there, which is good.

Something like a grocery store—the problem with a grocery store is they have a certain radius they attract, and you have to have a certain population. And the city actually intervened years ago to really try to bring a grocery store to Five Points, and the market really couldn’t hold it. And so it wasn’t a success. It was a great success in clearing up blight. It solved a lot of issues, and so there were a lot of successes to it, but a grocery store couldn’t be sustained. 

But I think when there are enough people living downtown, this is one of those free market things where a grocery store will come in and say, “Hey, there’s enough of a market here and we don’t have other stores close enough nearby to conflict with it,” then there might be a time for a larger supermarket.

But what we have instead is we have University Commons. And I know a lot of people downtown who catch the trolley for free and they go to University Commons. And now there are many other places besides just the Publix and the Walmart there. And then they catch the trolley and they come back home. In fact I saw some people walking from the bus station heading east with Publix bags. So people from all over are either walking to the transit station or taking a bus to the transit station, and then going to University Commons.

So I would love for there to be enough people and other kinds of activity going on to where a larger supermarket, one of those urban vertical supermarkets, wanted to be there. But that takes time. That takes the right economy. That takes the right numbers of people.

MERCURY: And I was just kind of throwing that out there as an example, but there’s all kinds of things like having doctors… we have one dentist I think, dry cleaning —

ROGERO: Dry cleaning we have, in that Phoenix Building.

MERCURY: There’s the one, yeah.

ROGERO: And again, so that’s not something you want government to prop up, those kind of services. What you want is for government to do the public infrastructure to make it to where people want to come down, where the buildings—You know, I think our proper role is if a grocery store bought a big old empty building, one of our old historic buildings, and wanted to come in there, then we would come in with—if all the “but for’s -” were there—to fix the building. But not to prop up a business artificially. I don’t think that’s our role, nor is that a smart thing for us to get into. 

So what we do—One of the things that I am concerned about, is when downtown years ago, before the recession, started coming back, there were condos. Because there was a condo market and the banks were lending for condos. Post-recession, I’ve asked them—they can’t get the bank money for condos. So it’s still in apartments. And really with apartments, you have a greater chance of getting more variety of incomes anyway than all-expensive condos, right? So there’s some balance again to that as well. Having a balance of apartments and the housing. 

So when it first started, the cost of doing this and the risk in the beginning was such that we ended up with a lot of what are now pretty expensive condos, right? But there’s also the student housing market down there, so students are moving in.

But one of my concerns is, as we get more residential downtown, I want to have workforce housing. I want to make sure that some of the people that are working in the banks and the restaurants and the dry cleaners and the pharmacy and the places that we do have downtown, that we will have down there, that that they can afford to live there too.

And so, that’s something that in my second term as we’re working on these projects, and particularly the ones that we control, I would like to see if there’s a residential format—How do we put the projects together so to where there’s workforce housing in addition to the higher market housing?

And that’s something that a lot of cities face… When you meet people that move here, I mean that live downtown, you’ve got the students. You’ve got the young professionals.

Also I’ve met several couples from out of town that are looking for a place to retire. They didn’t want to live in the ‘burbs anymore. They didn’t want to do all that. And they just fell in love with Knoxville. And there’s just little pockets of people downtown that enjoy that. Now, they can afford better places, because this is their retirement. They’ve sold their big house in some suburb, you know, made a lot of money in another city, and then can afford to buy downtown. So you want folks like that.

You want—You remember years ago, downtown got into trouble because all the people with money and the businesses went elsewhere. Now we want that investment back downtown, but we also want what I call workforce housing. Again, a balance. A balance in housing stock is what I would hope to see. 

MERCURY: Just as I asked about the things you were pleased about getting done in your first term, I wanted to ask what your big disappointment or disappointments might have been, something that you really wanted to see happen that you couldn’t make happen for one reason or another. And then, to piggyback on that, what are your biggest goals or your first priorities coming into what is probably your second term?

ROGERO: (knocks on wood) Don’t want to jinx anything. Can you hold that for a second, there was one question you asked me, you said something about you’ve got all this activity downtown so what’s next? One thing I do want to stress, we have had a focus on downtown because—whenever I go across our community, if you live in West Hills, or in Fountain City, or in Holston Hills, or in Lindbergh Forest, the success of downtown impacts all of us. Because if the heart of your city, the heartbeat of your city, is decaying, then it’s a drag on all of us. More money goes into calls for service for police and fire and codes, and it’s a downer. All the resources are going.

So the benefits you want as living in the city—you can’t afford to provide them, because you have this downward economy rather than a healthy one. So it’s to everybody’s advantage when urban neighborhoods and the core of our city, when we see investment there. 

MERCURY: I wasn’t implying that there wasn’t value in downtown. But I know that y’all are sort of working outward–

ROGERO: But what I want to say about that though is, but some people don’t, who are living on the outskirts. Sometimes they think, “Oh, they’re putting all that money downtown.” Well, it’s important. But we’re only putting some, but the reality is the private sector is putting most of it in. But we’re fixing the sidewalks, we’re fixing the utilities, you know, we’re doing the things to attract.

And we say that that’s everybody’s neighborhood Downtown is everybody’s neighborhood. You know, people come down. Plus, some people actually live there. And more and more people are.

So then the next step is, that same strategy with the TIFs and the PILOTS and the facade programs, the infrastructure improvements, is to go out to the older commercial corridors. And when you enliven those, Then you also help the work that’s going on in the neighborhoods. So that’s why we’re doing the south waterfront, which will help the neighborhoods adjacent to it as well as being a huge economic opportunity for the future of our city.

That’s why we do Cumberland Avenue. Ultimately, when you think Cumberland—some people have said, “Well Fort Sanders, all those old houses—it’s just a matter of time before they’re all down.” I hope that’s not true, because what we want to do is move a lot of the density to Cumberland. We’re seeing a lot of those student apartments and all. I’d like to see Fort Sanders be housing for professors, you know, where you’re back to single-family homes in some of these, because the students all want to live in high rise, you know, dorms, right? Nice, new facilities right on Cumberland Avenue.

You know, so I still have hope that Fort Sanders, that we can still preserve a lot of the wonderful infrastructure and beautiful historical character of that neighborhood. But you’ve got all those tensions: Expanding university, expanding hospitals, and historic preservation. So there’s a lot of tensions there we have to work through.

But Magnolia is something that—we’ve invested in Chilhowee Park, we’ve invested close to $1 million in Walter P. Taylor Homes renovations in Five Points area, we’ve done a lot of different facade projects, we’re doing a lot in neighborhoods. And now we’re also starting on the lower end of Magnolia, and we’ve got a four-block streetscape plan, which will eventually work its way out. But it’s a big, long street, with lots of opportunity to have new investment. So we’re focusing on finishing up downtown, and we’re already seeing a lot of private investment as we do those infrastructure improvements on the urban corridors.

But still—this is the point I wanted to make—while we’re doing all of this, we are still making improvements to Westland Drive, to Merchants and Clinton Highway, Prosser Road. We are not just focusing—people say, “Oh, they’re putting all the money there.” If you look on our engineering blog, it lists all the different projects we’re doing, and they are literally all over town. People are being inconvenienced by orange construction cones everywhere they go. Okay? And I say that the orange cone is our new city flower. And if you’ve not been inconvenienced yet, you will be.

But that is a sign of progress. Many cities—I go all over with these mayors’ conferences I go to, and people are lamenting, “We’re not investing in our infrastructure. Roads are failing, bridges are failing.” We’re doing that investment. And we actually continued it through the recession. The Haslam administration continued to do that. And we were poised to just jump even more to escalate it as we came out of the recession to keep those private dollars coming in.

MERCURY: I know there are tons of things that you are looking forward to, but if you had to pick a few to spotlight that you really want to get done in your next administration, mention those.

ROGERO: Okay, let’s see. Where do I start? We have a new bicycle facilities plan and… we’re finishing up on identifying some priorities for greenways connections. We put money into these, and I want to see some improvements on those—really on our complete streets. It’s bikes, it’s bike paths, greenways, sidewalks and transit. That’s something that I want to see us improving and having some more accomplishments to talk about there. We’ve got plans for them, and we’ve got funding, and we want to do that.

I would love to… there’s obviously these projects that are started that we want to bring to completion. OK, so, there’s lots of stuff. So I’ve got four years, hopefully. I want to have a plan in place and progress on the State Supreme Court site. Hopefully we can get that resolved and moving, and even to completion. Jackson Avenue: Having a plan for that. Having a decision made about what we’re going to do with the coliseum and the auditorium. Those are three major projects that we are talking about.

Also, I’d like to see the next public building that we really need to make some decisions on is the safety building. It’s a very old, ancient, decrepit, non-ADA compliant for police. And so I’d like to have a plan in place, if not already started, on a new public safety building.

MERCURY: This is the one on (Howard Baker Avenue)?

ROGERO: Yes. It wouldn’t necessarily be there, but that’s the building we’re talking about… Those aren’t the ones that are the sort of sexy things to do, but again, if you’re going to invest in infrastructure, you have to invest in city-owned infrastructure, like the public works complex, which that will then be there for 50+ years, and it’s what they need to do their job and to preserve the equipment we’ve purchased—expensive equipment, and all of that. So I’d like to have a plan in place and be moving towards…

So with all these projects, we have to figure out how do we fund them. How do each of those get funded? What’s the private dollars that can come in when it’s the sites I’m talking about, planning for the public dollars that will go into the safety building, which will be police and fire. Originally this was police and fire. Police needed more space, so fire moved out. So really, ideally we would have a new center that would have them both. And you know, every 50 or so years you have to do this. If you’re actually thinking ahead.

So those are some of the, just, many projects. So actually we’re going to sit down soon and kind of lay all this out and figure out what can we finish, what can we get started and hand the baton over to the next person. But we certainly want to have it in place. We have a lot of big ambitions.

There are some historic properties that will go unnamed right now, but that I really hope we can find some good resolution for in my term. There are quite a few. We’ve got a lot left to do. And we know how fast these four years have gone, and so we can’t wait a minute to get moving on all of these because it will be gone like this (snaps). Our time will be up. And I just want to make sure that we’ve set a good steady course. And I hope that we’re very progressive, that we’re visionary in a practical way so it can get done.

MERCURY: So when this four years is up, what is next? There’s been some speculation about whether you might have any interest in the governor job, or a cabinet job if that became available. What do you envision for yourself?

ROGERO: I envision a long vacation (laughs), number one. I really, honestly, nobody believes when I say—Everybody assumes that if you’re in office, that you always dream for your next office. But that’s not the case for me. I love what I’m doing. I really do want to see a lot of changes.

At this point, I have no interest in being governor. At this point, I have an interest in finishing my four years and then finding what opportunity I might want to do at that time. You know, partial retirement, jumping into something else, I don’t know. It’s really too soon to tell.

MERCURY: It’s going to go like that (snap), you just said.

ROGERO: It’s going to go like that. I know. But it’ll be clear. I’ve made a lot of connections in this region and across the country. There are consulting things I could do, groups I could work with. I really don’t know what I want to do. Except I want a vacation. I’m pretty sure about that. A long vacation. All my staff needs a long vacation, too.

But I really am not positioning now for another position. I really want to do this job. If an opportunity comes along, I’ll weigh it and decide if it’s for me or not, but I really like what I’m doing.

And when this four year finishes, I’ll be 67. That’s still pretty young. I still have a lot of good years ahead of me. But how do I want to spend those years is something I and my husband and my family will be discussing over the next few years.