Things weren't moving as quickly as you thought they should be?

Largely. Yes. So

when you come in, let's dust off and find out what we've got. Shovel ready, for lack of better description.

You got it. Yeah. It was the Episcopal forgiveness of sins talks about, I'm always thinking about this, you ask for forgiveness for things done and left undone. And in leadership, the left undone stuff, it weighs a lot heavier. And so that's, again, I think about that almost daily.

So when you think about your responsibilities to the city and you think about those almost daily, what are those most important things that the average person doesn't think about?

Well, again, the racial wealth gap here is a huge part of it. And it doesn't play well at the country club, you know, but I don't care, right? Because it is a critically important thing to move in the city forward. And it's one of those things that you don't, you don't think about it. If you are a person of privilege, whatever your color is, but the gaps in income and net worth here are really, really, really gross, grotesque, very broad. And divided economies don't work. They ultimately don't work. And so where this kind of comes full circle to working for everybody is the work that I did prior to being in the mayor's office on Chattanooga 2.0 and what we call in Europe, they call it skills development. We call it workforce development. But the way that you get people making more money is to train them in new careers, which dovetails very nicely to the goals of industry, right? And so that is how we will wind up moving the city forward. Not a lot of people think about that. But it requires, and Marwatha's been a great partner in this regard, It really is going to require some significant reform in the way that our schools work, in the way that our certificate programs work in two year schools and and frankly, reform at the state and federal level, which I've been very involved in. So that is a real opportunity for us. And but it's one of those things that most people are like, huh? You know, they just don't. You wouldn't think about it unless you were in government. You wouldn't.

No, and I don't think the average citizen understands the racial gap when it comes to incomes. And what's being done about it now, at least from my perspective, places like Chattanooga State and their workforce development and the teaming up with just someone like the Association of General Contractors and what they have done. It's almost like we poo-pooed skills and send people to college to get a degree.

Well, you know, I blame it on the Cosby show, but there was a, well, look, there was a, you know, look, everybody should have the chance to go to Harvard, right? Will everybody go to Harvard? No. And more importantly, I think the problem we had was what we used to call vocational education became, I think, fairly or unfairly. It was as though that was for these people and college was for these people and nothing we do should ever preclude, you know, an alternate pathway. Right. I mean, that I think is a problem is that it became, well, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. I mean, you can make a really good living. The mayor of, uh, of Tempe, uh, and I, um, Corey Woods, we're just on a panel at the national league of cities. He's an African-American gentleman. I mean, went to, went to college, but I mean, he, he and I are co-chair of the education task force for the national league of cities and had a really productive panel talking about the same thing because we – there are great careers there and they're not – they don't preclude critical thinking. They're not lesser than, I mean, in any way, shape, or form. is a huge step in that direction that we did with the associated general contractors, the county to train kids in construction careers, which again, Mayor Wamp, very eloquently pointed out is also a pathway to entrepreneurship because a lot of those guys will wind up and women, you know, owning their own electoral contracting businesses or, you know, any number of general contracting or subcontracting businesses. It's we've got to get back to that in Chatt is an area where I think Chattanooga is leading and can continue to lead the country.