Reporter Heather Duncan sat down to talk with Knoxville 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 Her only opposition on the ballot in the non-partisan election, William “Buck” Cochran, had withdrawn from the race in June.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 interview was edited for length and clarity, and in a few places Rogero’s comments were summarized in parentheses for the same reason. For a lengthy, unexpurgated transcript of the interview, go here. Check out our other election coverage at knoxmercury.com/elections2015.

Take a moment to reflect back over your first term—what three things are you most proud of accomplishing during those years?
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.

Another one was we had major pension reform. I inherited… $150 million or so unfunded pension liability….. 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. It’s very easy (for people) to say, “Scrap the system.” But they’re not responsible for public safety and thinking about asking someone to literally risk (his life). So we came up with a hybrid plan. 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.

We really worked to think long-term about sustainability for our community. So we’re focusing not only on making government facilities energy-efficient and more sustainable… but also, we’re trying to get homeowners and renters to live in housing that is 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.

Police Chief David Rausch has made decisions about open meetings or records that you didn’t approve, and the city has faced several recent lawsuits over use of force. [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.] Are you still confident in Rausch’s leadership?
I have utmost confidence in our police chief, David Rausch. 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, Project Safe Neighborhoods and some other initiatives that we’ve had, he has very intentionally reached out to the community—and particularly the African American community, where many problems have arisen nationally.

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 “Officer G” [Gordon Gwathney] was attacked [in March] when he was, I think, at Walter P. Taylor Homes. And people in the community 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 he’s also been 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 and we get out of sync. That’s not just between the police department and the administration. In other departments it happens occasionally. But we pull together, we find out what the problem was, how we can 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. 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 sync and I have a lot of confidence in him. 

Many progressives and Democrats were excited when you were elected because of your Union organizing background. At the same time, you were part of the Haslam administration and indicated you hoped to continue many of its initiatives, and you’re generally seen as a business-friendly mayor. Would you have done things differently than Haslam would have if he had been in office four more years?
Mayor Haslam did a lot of progressive things as mayor. He really started the sustainability office. When the federal funding ran out, I put city funding in because we knew it was something that had proven its worth and was something that needed to continue. Mayor Haslam also started the Office of Neighborhoods. 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 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. That’s why you see Baptist Hospital, the new development that will be there, and University Commons.

The whole Cumberland Avenue thing started under Mayor Haslam. 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… in the private development. [ED. NOTE: According to the city last month, it’s actually $142.5 million—much of which would likely have happened even without the infrastructure improvements, developers have said.]

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.

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]. And so I’ve been a big supporter of our employees, of making sure they are competitively paid with competitive benefits.

How have your political views evolved over the years?
The more I’ve learned over my career of 30-some years… 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.”

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.”

If we want sidewalks, and we want greenways and parks and urban wilderness trail and all the kinds of things that require some city investment, then you’ve got to have a thriving economy. You’ve got to have business. That’s why we started the Entrepreneur Center. People need jobs.

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. But I’m still very committed to the social issues about making sure that all people have opportunities. 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 I believe in giving everybody an opportunity. And some people, those who are most marginalized, most disadvantaged, whether they’re homeless or they live in poverty, we need to do a special outreach to make sure they’re getting the opportunities that they need to succeed.

You mentioned working with developers. Talk about what tools you think have been most effective for the city in encouraging redevelopment or fighting blight, and which you might have tried and decided don’t work here.
Certainly the things that first come to mind… again actually started under Mayor Haslam, that’s the Tax Increment Financing and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes. 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. 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… 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… 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… or in some cases it goes back towards retiring some of the debt on the project itself. So those new taxes never would have happened if this wasn’t offered. 

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.”

Where are you envisioning going next with these incentives? Are there particular parts of the city you hope to target?
(She lists Baptist Hospital and Suttree Landing Park as major drivers for redevelopment on the South Waterfront. She also discusses the Magnolia Avenue warehouse district and the buildings around White Lilly, many of which have benefited from the city’s facade improvement loans.)

One of the things that we did on my watch was put $500,000 a year for the last two years into… 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… 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. 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 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. We were basically able to take the property—pay him the value, which was actually more than he paid or 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.] We don’t want to keep it. We want private development to occur there.

On the topic of historic buildings, we’ve not had the best year in Knoxville when it comes to historic preservation. [ED. NOTE: Several historic Fort Sanders houses are slated for demolition by UT, and new owners tore down the Christenberry House in West Knoxville hours before City Council passed an ordinance that would have delayed the demolition]. Jack Neely noted that the law department under your administration has dismantled some of the previous options for slowing demolitions, like sending the design review to (the Metropolitan Planning Commission)—saying they didn’t think that was constitutional. 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 site then on others that this owner is also working on?
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 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 it’s a matter of who has the power to do that. And that’s not because [law department 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 (demolitions). 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. 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? (She discusses City Council’s recent passage of the demolition delay 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.)

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… we’ll end up losing ground. So we have to be realists. 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. 

Early in your administration you agreed to allow Covenant Health to tear down some historic Fort Sanders houses within a conservation overlay in exchange for letting the city build a parking garage with some spaces reserved for the hospital. Explain why you thought that was a good deal, and what happened to it.
There never was a deal. That’s what was misreported in this process. There were conversations about (how) 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.

Because I had never intended it to be, “You give us this land for the parking garage and we’ll agree to that.” In those conversations, the hospital wanted us to marry those together, but we were never comfortable with that. Their valid need to expand and the valid need for historic preservation, that’s a thing that needs to be worked out. You know, I feel like the hospital and Knox Heritage need to work together to figure out some kind of a compromise on that.

Plus, here’s the other thing. (She explains it would have to be approved by the Historic Zoning Commission, MPC, and City Council.) It wasn’t my deal to make. I had never intended to go fight that at those three bodies, to encourage them to support that as a deal for parking…. But we need a parking garage. And so we started looking for other places.

We’re big proponents of historic preservation. I’m also a big proponent of jobs in our city and of having a hospital downtown. You know, we’re losing St. Mary’s as a general hospital. So 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.

Downtown has been thriving with lots of theme restaurants, bars and boutiques, and there is plenty of upmarket condo and apartment space. But there are few businesses to support a working class residential population downtown. Could the city be doing more to attract or incentivize businesses like doctors, pharmacies and grocery stores downtown?
First of all, we’re getting a pharmacy. A pharmacy is supposed to come in the Phoenix building. The problem with a grocery store is… you have to have a certain population. 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. It was a great success in clearing up blight. 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.”

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 (to Publix).

But that’s not something you want government to prop up, those kinds of services. (She explains the appropriate role for the city would be to wait for a business to approach Knoxville about opening a grocery store in a historic building; then the city could help with incentives and infrastructure.)

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.

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 they can afford to live there too.

We have had a focus on downtown because… if the heart of your city, the heartbeat of your city, is decaying, then it’s a drag on all of us. 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.

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, you also help the work that’s going on in the neighborhoods.

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. I’d like to see Fort Sanders be housing for professors, where you’re back to single-family homes in some of these, because the students all want to live in high-rise… nice, new facilities right on Cumberland Avenue.

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. If you look on our engineering blog, it lists all the different projects we’re doing, and they are literally all over town. 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.

What would you like to achieve in your next administration?
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, you know, it’s bike paths, greenways, sidewalks, and transit.

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….

Also, I’d like to see the next public building that we really need to make some decisions on is the safety building [ED. NOTE: on Howard Baker Avenue, where the police department is housed in a building Rogero calls “decrepit”].

So with all these projects, we have to figure out how do we fund them. 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. And you know, every 50 or so years you have to do this.

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.

When this four-year gig is up, what’s 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? [ED. NOTE: Halfway through his second term as Knoxville’s mayor, Haslam announced his plans to run for governor.] Everybody assumes that if you’re in office, that you always dream for your next office. But that’s not the case for me. 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. I have made a lot of connections in this region and across the country. There are consulting things I could do, groups I could work with. 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.