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We were provided a comfortable four-door sedan by the university motor pool and it was July or August and there we were in this car with no air-conditioning, the nice hot summer sun bearing down on us, and the highest speed we could get out of our car, going downhill, was 47 miles per hour.
Working statewide on sales tax referendum really was the major job that I ended up having during my eight-year career at MTAS. I went there in 1960. In 1963, the legislature passed legislation that enabled cities to levy a local sales tax, but the clinker was, it had to be approved in a referendum by the electorate of the city before they it could be levied. Well, I was young at the time and saying that this wouldn't happen is kind of like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and I thought, "We'll see whether it will happen or not."
[Laughter]
Well, when I was elected mayor, the smoke and fog was so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife. I got the first federal grant to do a clean air study for Chattanooga. I also had a few industrialists who were about to run me out of town, because they thought we were gonna put them out of business. When I was elected mayor every water fountain said Colored or White. No one had trained me on what to do if someone said I'm not going to the back of the bus. So I had to be the guy in office who would take the signs down from where you ride in the bus, whether you can go to a public park, whether a restaurant is integrated or not, and if you don't think those were hot times in the old town tonight, you should have been here to watch it one at a time as to just what happened. So those were the old days.
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Herb Bingham, I don't guess it was generally known, but was a great ghostwriter. And he ghost-wrote speeches for more governor than probably anybody else in this state's history. And uh it was in service of TML that he did it also. That was his way to get some of the municipal points in the administration's program. I can't think of uh many of them in recent history while Herb was--I can't think of any of them while Herb was there who didn't have the Bingham hand in some of their text.
There's a proverb in the Bible that I like to quote, "Where there is no vision, people perish."
Herb Bingham certainly was a brilliant idea man. He could see far ahead and uh he he had lots of ideas. He was not always very diplomatic and when it came to promoting city matters, he was a real bulldog in disposition and he would push and push and push and push for the benefit for projects that benefitted the cities.
Herb would come to us the mayors and the board, and he would say, "Now this list here represents our top priorities," and I'd look at the list and there'd be twenty-five different pieces of legislation and I said to Herb, I said, "Herb, when we go to see the legislators," I said, "we go to them so often that they run and hide from us," and I said, "We're bound to be able to pare down the number of top priorities to maybe instead of twenty-five to five," and he said, "No, no, these are twenty-five," and he held his ground.
He was a tenacious man, and he did have all the cities' interests at heart, their best interests at heart, and he would pursue that with no fear, no favor.
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The best thing about MTAS is its people. The philosophy of the MTAS leadership and its consultants uh the philosophy is How Can We Best Serve the City Officials, City Governments Throughout the State of Tennessee? And it's been that way since day one and it starts at the top and it goes all the way down through the organization so the best thing about MTAS is the quality, the commitment, the enthusiasm of its people.
It has the support of a large fine university behind it with its research capabilities and and uh the assets that it has that MTAS can draw off of.
Best thing that it, it is directly involved in an enterprise that is beneficial to so many people. You certainly can feel like you are participating in um in in an activity that is an absolute necessity.
The best thing about MTAS is that it's free! And I say that jokingly, but really that is a wonderful thing about MTAS is that you get good, knowledgeable people that come and give you advice and provide you assistance.
The best thing about MTAS I think is the accessibility to the cities and the reaction time. It's tremendous. And the expertise that they have. I can't speak highly enough of MTAS. I don't really know whether they have a weak point, to tell you the truth.
I doubt very seriously if there are not, if there's not an MTAS service that the city of Pulaski hasn't used over the last twelve years, whether it be water and sewer, pub--and the finance department, particularly, and then utilities also. We've had fire study done, we worked in public safety and police, strategic planning processes, we've used MTAS for city council work plans, developing work plans for each year, budgeting, then we use the library and the library that's on the internet, so there's um we've definitely probably maybe even over-utilized MTAS.
They actually assisted the city oh, eighteen years ago in a major revamp of the budget, and to this day we're using the aspects of budget presentation that they brought to the table then.
Probably the single most thing that they do for us outside of just the consulting is the codification and I think it's very important to any city, is for MTAS to provide that service.
That's where we come into play often with Tennessee cities. What we do is we find out how other cities have done it, what they've done, what were their failures, what were their successes, so that these cities don't have to reinvent the wheel and I've seen that direct requests from cities really go up steadily over the last several years.
I've had the opportunity in less than two years to have them do major studies in the fire department, the police department, and they are right now doing a major solid waste study, not only for the city but the entire region.
I've always been impressed with the fact that the consultants come from local government background. They've been there. They've been there and done it. They've been in the trenches. They've been in city halls.
In this profession, if you don't have credibility, you don't have anything, and that's the single biggest thing I guess when you look at MTAS, is the professionalism of their consultants.
They respond to us very quickly when we have a question and want information. They gather data for us that would just take us many hours to gather if we had to do it on our own, plus they are just knowledgeable of what's happening all the way across the state and they are able to bring that information and expertise to us.
What also makes a good MTAS consultant is someone who is able to listen to you. A lot of times that's what an MTAS consultant has done for not just me but I know many, many of us, is kind of to provide you that shoulder to cry on and to help you work your way through these problems and and to perhaps even kind of give you some calm in the midst of a storm.
With our fire department, our police department, our street department, our sanitation department, any need that we see fit, whether it's just simple administration with employees, they are there always to help and all you have to do is pick up a phone and call. And it's very convenient, and that's why it makes a difference in every city, in every community in the state of Tennessee.
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