TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #253: Local government, building a strong town, and bitcoin on the balance sheet with Mayor Scott Conger

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Join Marty as he sits down with the Mayor of Jackson Tennessee, Scott Conger, to discuss: - Being the 3rd Mayor of Jackson in his family - The day to day of leading a small city - How Mayor Conger approaches taxes for the city - How Mayor Conger became interested in bitcoin - Bitcoin's role in local government - Local v. Federal government - "If not me, then who?" - much more Follow Mayor Conger on Twitter Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse when you download the app. Lend at Hodl Hodl is a new non-custodial bitcoin backed lending platform, that allows peer to peer lending and borrowing between users, globally, anonymously & on your own terms. Create you offers & set your own terms on lend.hodlhodl.com Compass Mining. Compass wants to democratize bitcoins hashrate and give everyone the ability to strengthen the network while mining bitcoin profitably. Thanks to Compass, it’s never been easier to mine bitcoin. Check them out at compassmining.io Braiins. Braiins are leaders in the mining industry; running Slush Pool, creating firmware to make miners more profitable (Braiins OS+), and building out Stratum V2 to help further decentralize mining and make Bitcoin more robust. Check out their mining profitability calculator.

What's up freaks, it's your boy Marty Bent here to introduce this episode of Tales from the Crypt. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mayor Scott Conger from Jackson, Tennessee to talk about his recent foray into Bitcoin, but more focused on what it's like running a city, the problems that mayors face, the type of solutions they try to bring forth for their local communities, the difference between politicians at the local level versus the federal level, the distance that the federal level has from the information source of local communities and how they really can't affect, or they can affect it, but they can't effectively allocate capital, I guess is what you would say, to these local communities.

They take broad brush approaches to every city. They treat every city as fungible when it's not. So this episode focused a lot on local governance and turning towards that, especially in times of distress like we've had in the last year with COVID. It's an interesting episode in terms of getting some insight into what it was like for the mayor of a relatively small city during this trying time. This report was brought to you by our good friends at the motherfucking Cash App! if you're listening to this on wednesday may 19th when it was recorded and posted

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Also, Slush Pool is a major upgrade coming. It's going to allow you to split rewards, work manually, and pick different reward thresholds for when you want to have them released to you. Also, they're getting Dark Theme for 24-7 hash rate monitoring. that's easy on the eyes. So follow slush underscore pool on Twitter to see the announcement when the pool update goes live. Enjoy this rip freaks. We've got a very strong individual running a very strong small town in the form of Jackson, Tennessee. Enjoy it. You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.

If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt at your boy marty bent here on a beautiful wednesday morning sitting down with the mayor of jackson tennessee scott conger

scott welcome to the podcast oh thanks for having me this morning really excited i'm really excited uh thank you for coming on i know you're extremely busy man and um you've sort of hopped onto the bitcoin scene recently coming out saying hey you got laser eyes you're you're throwing your weight behind bitcoin uh as the mayor of jackson tennessee and this is something a trend that we've been paying particular attention to here at tales from the crypt and the broader bitcoin community over the last year with covid i'm sure we'll talk about the lockdowns how that affected um your city particularly but there's this trend towards localization and a sort of shift towards jurisdictional arbitrage on a state-to-state level but i'm very interested to talk to you

and what it's like running a small city. But before we jump in, you're the third mayor in your family of Jackson, Tennessee. Is this correct? Yeah, three of us have been fortunate enough to serve in this position. My great-great-great-grandfather served in 1861 and 1871. And then my grandfather served in this position from 1967 to 1989. And just long enough ago to still have some employees here at the city that worked for him that now I get to work with and I can't see too much,

but right here at the desk I'm sitting at. And then also the nameplate on the desk are my grandfather's. So this was in another office when I moved into City Hall and worked around and got it moved up here so I could use the same desk. So it's pretty cool. That's really cool. It's something that a lot of Bitcoiners talk about a lot with low time preference or lowering your time preference and building a strong family in a strong town.

And I was telling you before we hit record that I was at a wedding a few weeks ago and I had a buddy in the shipping industry who was telling me that he does a lot of work with Jackson because of the fact that Pringles is there. So you open a can of Pringles, look on the bottom of it, made in Jackson. We even not only make the Pringles, but the nice tubes that you really just can't fit your hand in. Those are also made in Jackson, too. Yeah, so what's the local economy like? I, again, caught some of your episode with CK from Bitcoin Magazine saying you're sort of a hub city within Tennessee. So our city population is right around 68,000. And so, but our county population is right at 98,000. We serve, you know, we're in the middle of rural West Tennessee.

We're 89 miles from Memphis. We're, you know, two, two and a half hours from Nashville, Tennessee, right on I-40. So our service area is about half a million people. So we have rural counties around us. They come here to work, come here to do shopping for their health care. entertainment and so while our population is 68 000 on any given day we're at 120 130 000 in the city with people coming in to do various things and so we've we've been a hub since we've been established we actually be celebrating our bicentennial this year uh in culminating august

of 22 and so we've been a rail hub um you know we have like the interstate running through here and And so we're manufacturing industries real heavy here as well. We're the only hospital, I think there's two more hospitals in the rural West Tennessee, but we're the, our hospital system is the number one employer in West Tennessee. And so we provide healthcare out through clinics and everything out there all located here in Jackson. So is it a tight-knit community in Jackson? What's it like running a city of 68,000 people? You know, it's a little big town in Jackson because so many people come in and out. And so, you know, any given time, if you're going to a restaurant or you're going to an event going on in the city,

then there's a likelihood that you're going to be sitting next to someone or having a conversation with someone that doesn't live here. And so I think there's tight-knit communities around the city. But as far as just our diversity goes, and we have so many people coming in and out, gives us a lot of opportunity to meet new folks and tell them about Jackson and bring them back here. Yeah. So what's your focus? It's your day-to-day like as a mayor. Oh man. Last year, I'm sure it's been 14 months. I took office July 1 of 2019. So I had a good, you know, seven, eight months of, I guess you'd call it normalcy before a pandemic hit. You know, but the focus that we have here and it has been since I ran for office and we

want to do everything transparent. We're going to do it inclusive. I'm going to make sure we're driving efficiency and how we operate and provide services. And then our focus is that we have our infrastructure, public safety, quality of life. I want to make sure people feel safe. We were, we have some, you know, I think with a lot of local governments and financial issues that we have to work through that we are working through and can put that investment in our infrastructure and then make sure people have something to do and they

want to live here that they want to move here they want to come visit jackson and so those are the three focuses so everything that we do uh whatever initiative it is we ask the three questions is it transparent inclusive efficient and does it fall in the categories of infrastructure public safety quality of life yeah keep it simple stupid right you can you know you can do a bunch of things in those categories right uh and so as long as it falls there we can keep our focus uh because i I think if you start trying to multitask too much in too many different areas, that's where you get in trouble. You overreach. I think that, you know, no fault of any other previous administration. I think it's the overreaching that's happened that's kind of put us in our financial situation.

So we have to really bring it back in and focus on the basics to get us through where we are. Our debt service payments are really high right now. We have about three more years of that. and then we'll have a lot of capital freed up and so we got to it really requires us to focus on the basics to make sure we're providing the services we're realigning and so that we're we're preparing for the future you know i'm probably way different than most politicians uh my number one goal is not to get my number one goal is is not getting reelected right i'm i'm here to make jackson sustainable better and build it for the future i would i want to get reelected um but i don't make every decision with that in mind i make every decision on how's it going to better position

jackson for the future uh how's it going to make sure that my my three and five year old and they grow up that jackson's a viable city for them to stay and live in um and so it's it's about building that foundation and building for the future yeah now like we we were discussing before we had recorded the the book strong towns that um is really um always on the top of my mind because it's crazy when you think about like you as a local politician you're closest to the information source of what your citizens actually need and i think big problem in the united states right now is we've turned it heavily towards the federal government making a bunch of decisions for the whole country a bunch of people in dc far far removed from the source of information which is

local citizens and small towns around the country and we've come to find that these broad brush decisions that are made uh in dc tend to uh basically treat different parts of the country and affect different parts of the country different drastically differently there's no one size fits all sweeping legislation is going to impact everyone equally and fairly uh and so it's that's why i'm i've been driven toward local government because you see that impact on a daily basis and it's much quicker not as quick as i want to be but uh patience is something i've learned is much quicker to see you have an idea and see it come to fruition and see the impact that it has the local level uh than anything that's going to happen at the state

federal level yeah yeah it's again like i think people are starting to wake up to this fact yeah maybe we do need to like sort of get back into the hole and and focus on local localities and decisions made at that level and be more grassroots about what's going on all politics are local. It's so disheartening to see the voter participation at the federal level. You see at a presidential election and we're seeing 63, 64% voter participation. You get local elections, we're at 24. And so just that disconnect of the understanding of the decisions that are made at city council level, county commission level, those have a far greater impact on your day-to-day lives than anything that Congress or Senator of the White House decides. Yeah. And that's why

it's very interesting that bitcoin's in the mix now and seeing who uh gravitates toward bitcoin who puts their neck out there and says hey like yeah as a as a city as a state we're going to invest in bitcoin and this is a personal decision we're making and so obviously that's why we're sitting here talking today is because you are one of the few mayors throughout the country who has decided to um take a risk and throw your weight behind bitcoin in some regards so what was the process that that led you to make that decision to inject yeah pandemic treats everyone differently and it has an effect on people and you you end up spending a lot more time on this and in searching the internet because you're not able to go do things um and so twitter i think is really what

kind of opened me up to it and looking at it and seeing articles and reading about it a little bit and um then and seeing what mayor suarez was doing in miami and you know we're we're west we're not exactly miami um no but we we have the nice fork of deer river here we don't have the the ocean but uh you know and looking at what he was doing thinking that's it's really interesting i like the way he thinks and the drive and the the direction he's going i don't know though if if jackson would do that just because the dynamics are very different and the more i looked and the more i read and and started having conversations with people um it really looked at something no we don't have to do it to the level of what miami is miami is much bigger than jackson but if we want

to back to what i was talking about sustain the future for the city for the citizen and set up that ability to succeed in the future you know right now we're asking ourselves questions that have or in it do we want to buy a fire truck or do you want to pave a street do we want to to refurbish a building or do we want to do something else i want to get us to the point in the future however long that takes that we don't have to ask the or question we can just say and we're going to do this and we're going to do this because we're so financially solvent and we're in a much better position to be able to have those decisions and so uh you know one uh one conversation i had was with a local guy here who got into bitcoin back in 2015 uh started in late 14 with the sole purpose

of disproving bitcoin uh doing his research and four months later was you know driving to to memphis and getting to the bitcoin atms and putting his jump drive in and purchasing bitcoin so um the the light bulb moment for me the aha was he's in the fencing business and so lumber is astronomical right now uh and his comment was yes lumber is if you're looking at u.s dollars lumber is crazy expensive way more expensive than it was last year but you look at it in terms of sats it's actually cheaper than it was this time last year and so looking at that ability that decentralization of it the the long-term appreciation of the assets you know we get into the short-term volatility and until mass adoption is it's going to happen there's going

to be short-term volatility we're seeing that right now but the long-term appreciation of the asset and the utility of it i think will only enhance and increase yeah i think in terms of like and that's another thing i've been saying a lot like in terms of something that's very aligned with the ideals that this country was founded on freedom of speech freedom of association property rights sound money actually was another um tenant of the the founding of this country that people to just gloss over but bitcoin stays true to that and extends it to the future and to the digital age and And I that's why I'm so appreciative that you as a mayor are sticking your neck out and doing this vocally, because I think it's imperative that I think it's a it's a great equalizer as well, too, right?

Because, you know, kind of we're getting a blockchain task force together here in Jackson. I think we're scheduled to meet here in a couple of weeks of looking at what we can do as a city. And we know that we have some hurdles to get over in our state legislation for us to be able to mine and hold the Bitcoin on our balance sheet. But we can do other things. We have a retirement system for our employees. We have a deferred compensation system for our employees that goes into an IRA. But what if we have another deferred comp system for our employees that they can utilize payroll deduction to invest in Bitcoin to just take that out, utilize that DCA and not look at it like I do every five minutes. But, you know, do that. And, you know, this with everyone else is the great equalizer. Eighty six percent of people in America have a smartphone and that's that's all you need. And you can utilize that to to really create that wealth and and just level the playing field. Right. Because everyone can participate. I think it's part of the education piece.

Right. You know, people will. Well, Bitcoin's, you know, what, thirty eight thousand, forty thousand right now. but you know it's when it's 65 000 a couple months ago no one can afford it i can you know only rich people can't afford it well you don't have to buy the whole coin let's let's look at the satoshis and how you can buy those and the education piece on what really it is yeah no it's uh the unit bias is is a massive sort of mental blocker that a lot of people have to come overcome but uh yeah we'll come with time and i think the make that that's a great thing like a city could do like america do like to your your employees okay educate like we have the ability to um to help you dca into this asset you don't have to buy a whole bitcoin right right there um and it's

incredible and again it's people closest to the source of information what their citizens need they need something to protect themselves from inflation and the city helping them do that is incredible i'm from philadelphia originally and actually my dad sent me last night uh there's there's a restaurant in philadelphia that's actually uh enticing because we have this problem now where everybody's getting unemployment nobody wants to go back to work so this this one restaurant company in philadelphia is enticing people by giving them um like a 200 bonus if they sign up but they're also going to educate them about bitcoin and cryptocurrency oh wow yeah incentive that um draws people in and so we have to get creative on that and the education piece is

is crucial um of that block yeah well you're mentioning you guys have some hurdles to come over uh to overcome in terms of legislation to allow yourselves to actually put bitcoin on the balance sheet and mine bitcoin i guess for any other uh city officials that may be listening to this podcast what what are some of the hurdles that you you're seeing personally and how you want to overcome them yeah i think the really only hurdle is i think we have some support uh at the state level i know that i've talked to other mayors around the state that uh that support this as well but just the the statute that's written in tennessee code doesn't allow local governments to hold they define what you can hold um on your balance sheet is as an investment

and no crypto bitcoin or anything is not is not in the definitions of what you can hold so it's not a you can't do this it's just not in definitions of what you can do so it has to be added to allow us to do that and so uh our legislation meets um starting in january and it goes about april or may as their session so they're not a year-long session so just something we got to prepare for and uh get some some sponsors for next year to allow us to do that you guys allowed to hold cash allowed to hold cash yeah the coins cash just say that hey we're holding cash i'll let you talk to the comptroller about that and that's uh i'm a little more shoot from the hip like oh no we're just holding cash it's digital cash but it's cash yeah yeah i love

to be able to do that the comptroller frowns on that they they are they follow in this very specific definition yeah yeah uh and so i guess what what else is or i mean you talked about when you're making decisions for your local city like what was what were some of the struggles that you saw over the last year the effects of lockdown well i think just as a city standpoint and it's still affecting us today. Um, planning, um, how do we budget and how do we plan? Because we went into our fiscal years, July one to June 30, um, you know, pandemic hit us in March. Uh, we went into this fiscal year, not knowing, you know, is sales tax going to tank our hotel, motel tax? You know, what is that going to be? That's a lot of our revenue source. Uh, we actually plan for

a 10% reduction in our sales tax revenue. Um, we've been very fortunate and I think that's because folks have been printing money like crazy. So, you know, stimulus have come in, the panic buying, a lot of those contributing factors, unemployment. And so the buying power hasn't gone away. And so we've actually seen a 7.5% increase of our sales tax revenue from FY20. And so great swing for us. We've been very conservative, unfortunately, at that time,

because we had a huge deficit in our budget i furloughed 193 employees uh laid off 24 employees my department heads are phenomenal along with every employee here they they took a five percent reduction in their salary for the furlough period of 16 weeks i enacted a 15 reduction in my salary for 15 weeks which uh was interesting and so you do those things going this is what i'm going to do we're going to we're all in this together and not thinking that the city council actually sets my salary. And so I can't just go to HR and say, reduce my salary by 15%. So I don't get taxed on that other 15% that I want you to reduce it by. And so I got paid the full amount, got taxed to the full amount and had to turn around and write the 15% to the city. So the government still got

me twice. But, you know, we did a lot of cuts, you know, really realigned how we were going to to operate. And so we're positioned now on a $12 million swing. We're looking at an $8.5 million surplus revenues over expenses by the end of this fiscal year, because we've taken those precautions. And because I think that our revenue projections have been much greater than what we anticipated. But as we're planning for our budget this year, at some point, that's going to flatten at some point, that's going to decline because the stimulus will stop, unemployment will stop. the extra unemployment benefits will stop. And so where does that leave us in buying power of sales tax revenue?

And so you go from one instance on the other end, you can't plan because you're expecting a reduction to now you've seen such an increase that you can't plan forward because you know, at some point that's going to stop. You don't know when it is, don't know what the decrease will be. And so it's, it's been, it's been difficult for us as an organization and, you know, our small businesses struggled, our hotels struggled. You know, We, fortunately, were not in that lockdown phase as long as others were.

And we've been, our health departments there, man, they're rock stars here. And so we're actually, if not in the top three, we are the top county in the state of vaccination distribution. And so we've hit the message. We got together very early on how to protect our citizens. You know, the goal was for us, it wasn't about taking rights away. It wasn't about, you know, keeping people from getting COVID-19. Our goals were very simple, protect our most vulnerable population and to protect our hospital capacity. That was it.

We're the only hospital, inpatient hospital that can treat COVID-19 between Memphis and Nashville. And so we're serving, you know, 19 counties. And so we had a census, you know, we were at one point, they were, our hospital was nervous on what the overflow was going to look like. You know, people because you're having to quarantine people and nurses are getting COVID and doctors are getting COVID. And so those are our goals. And we got to the numbers that we felt comfortable with. And we relaxed any of the business closures very early on. We relaxed capacity issues very early on, kept a mask mandate until March. But we saw our numbers decline. And right now we're in for our county is five, four new cases a day.

And so, you know, our vaccination percentage is right around 50% in Madison County. So it's, you know, our people have really stepped up across the county and across the city. And I think a lot of that is just a testament to us being very direct on what our goal was. And then being able to reduce and relax some of those restrictions. And then, you know, now traveling was an issue. Hotels still didn't get, didn't see a lot of pickup until late fall. But it wasn't because we didn't allow them to. We wanted to make sure that our businesses had every opportunity they could

to be successful and worked with them. I mean, that's one of the tragedies of last year is the shuttering of small businesses and the demolition of small. My parents run a coffee shop in our town outside of Philadelphia. They were affected pretty aggressively. My dad works at a couple of restaurants. They had to shift to a takeout model and all that, Obviously, it was nowhere near where their revenue should have been.

Obviously, the stimulus does help out, but there's a lot of small businesses that didn't make it through this. And it's a shame. But on the other side, I probably see the silver lining. You saw the drive for technological pushes on adoption, on how you do business. You saw the innovation from people of, I can't have you come in and sit down like you normally do. This is what we're going to do. We're going to offer outside seating. we're going to turn the sidewalk into seating we're going to have to go you know our state said

alcohol is important we're going to allow you to have to go drinks from restaurants uh so you know there was that innovation piece on how can we make it work to the best of our ability and uh you saw a lot of people step up and do that and really get creative yeah yeah no that is there's a some changes that were made in last year you think will stick after this after we it back to normal and like outside outside dining is that i think so you know we've we've talked about how do how do we encourage that how we can encourage those changes so we're looking at some of our local zoning ordinances on on parking lots you know historically we've required a massive amount of parking for a retail space well retail has changed we've seen that from e-commerce

and we don't we don't build roads for 30 minutes of congestion so why do we build parking lots for a month of congestion and so how do we change that to encourage green spaces to encourage walkability uh to get those outside dining i know that our our state has said i think through next year the year after they're allowing to go alcoholic beverages so you can you know call up a restaurant order a margarita come pick it up and take it to the house probably better than an at-home margarita i'd hope so well and so how do you how do you view taxes as a mayor in terms of adding new taxes reducing taxes what what is that so our goal has been uh that's the last thing that i want to do i mean it's you know we we've talked about that and in the way that

our budget is structured our budget is 77 million dollars uh right now 11 and a half million of that 77 million goes to debt service so um our our principal balance is not bad it's we paid off 11 million last year. So we're at 68 million. End of this year, we'll be right around 59, 60 million. The structure of the debt was what is really hurting us because we have balloon payments until FYI 24. And so that's, it really hamstrings on how we do things. And so that's, you know, worst case scenario, let's just say everything fell out and we couldn't afford to pay our police officers and firefighters. And I had to go and say to the taxpayers, this is what we have to do. I'm not going to I will never do that until I've gone through every opportunity to drive efficiency

and how we operate and that's I think there's just a lot of ways that government can operate efficiently and that's what we've been doing I think that's also again the silver lining of the pandemic government not excluded from having to get innovative and creative on how we operate and so we've implemented technology across our system to allow us to monitor to to utilize fuel efficiency to make sure that we're operating to the most efficient capability and reducing our costs so that I'd never, I never want to go to ask the taxpayers for more money. We want to make sure that we're doing things as great as possible. Yeah. No. And the reason I asked that is because I have this, this thesis, I wrote a newsletter probably about a month ago now, this, this one

called the last tax because Great American Mining, the company I work for, we talked to a lot of states that have a bunch of natural gas and particularly states have been affected by the federal ban on fracking on federal tax um and there a lot of these states are no income tax but like would Tennessee yeah furlough workers and cut federal uh state workers before raising taxes and so trying to think how to get creative with bitcoin to mine like bitcoin mining particularly like if you have stranded energy sources or excess capacity at a power facility center. The ability with an investment

in some mining infrastructure at the city or state level to plug in miners and just have those SATs roll into a permanent fund, that makes it so we don't have to raise taxes or fire employees. It makes a lot of sense,

but I don't know. And this is a goal for us to be allowing to hold it on the balance sheet so that we can have that asset appreciation and so that we never have to get to that point that our assets are appreciating at a much faster rate than inflation is going up yeah but does this seem like a viable option like mining particularly you think yeah you know that was the original idea that we had was you

know if we spend you know several thousand dollars and set up mining for us um and then you know just to start we could we have space in our buildings and do it in off peak hours that allows our local energy authority to to plan and balance and so no peaks and valleys they can just they can set and maintain uh we have you know we're with tva our energy authority is fantastic and so we have we have the opportunities to do that we have we have low energy cost um we were the first city in the state to have gig fiber internet um problem is we didn't tell anybody and so uh one of the cities across the other side of the state was the second city but they told everybody the first one and so now they're considered the first because they because we

didn't tell anyone do what you guys better rivals now no i just i like to remind them when i talk to someone from from that area hey y'all say y'all were first but uh just because we didn't tell anyone so uh we have those opportunities we have the gig internet we have low energy costs uh our property taxes are low cost of living is low i mean you look at a house right now even with the inflated market is 150 dollars a square foot as in that's inflated market right now um so no no state income tax um so we we have all the amenities of of a city that that can focus on that that future economy infrastructure we just got to get there and we got to we got to promote the ideas that can do that yeah no i mean it seems like people are flocking towards these states

and cities from the Northeast and West Coast, particularly. But if you don't tell anybody how good it is, then they go somewhere else. And so it's our goal now is to start telling people what the opportunities are. Have you seen people starting to seriously consider it that you wouldn't expect? I think we're starting to get some inquiries. Our housing market, like I said, is in play. It's very tight right now. So we're having to figure out, you know, what can we do to expedite the process of

new construction. And like you mentioned earlier, unemployment, it's hard to get people on the job site. And so I look at it as a great problem to have that we're having to build more houses because people want to come here. And so I think right now we haven't quite turned that corner yet of those newer technological companies and industries in 21st century. We're still very much healthcare manufacturing focused, but all it takes is one just to start that snowball down the hill and then we can open up the floodgates

here. Tennessee's a beautiful state, Freaks. I've had the pleasure of driving through the Smokies a few times and going to Nashville a couple times. I didn't realize it was a no-income tax state until I got here. No-income tax and ours is

our local taxes here for property is $1.96 per $100 valuation on on the house um and then the if you live in the city bay county as well it's 233 so yeah very low yeah now it's a considering the how hot the real estate market is across the country it's it's encouraging to see that you guys aren't uh as hot as a lot of the markets and across the country because it is getting insane again the philadelphia area people are paying like cash same day ten percent oh yeah they're doing that here too we've talked to several realtors that uh they have to cap the bids because the house want to praise for as

high as their the offers are coming in at it's we live in weird times we live in weird times and so i guess that's another question like if let's say the fed and the federal government are truly running the national like economy into the ground with inflation and printing uh like bitcoin's obviously a way that you can help um sort of protect yourself from that future inflation uh hopefully and but like how else do you prepare like a local city if if this is uh if we're truly at a moment where it seems like the fed and the and the treasury are losing control of of the money printer that's a great question that we ask ourselves quite a bit i think the alternative in bitcoin right now is really for me the only viable safeguard um because you know

inflation is just simply devaluation of the dollar that's it um you know your dollar your buying power gets reduced with inflation and so um you know we have to look at ways to reduce that um you know a dollar to a dollar five years ago is now you know worth 65 cents something like that So it's tough because for us locally, now you won't be able to pay your employees. You know, we're looking at how do we give bonuses? How do we provide cost of living raises knowing that inflation is going to hit the highest mark since 2008? You know, the cost for us to do business is increasing. Concrete is increasing.

We want to build sidewalks. Asphalt is increasing. We want to pave roads. so it's it's that balancing act right now and and you know that's why i think that the adoption of bitcoin is not going to be top down it's not going to come from the federal government of adoption it's going to have to be from the local level up on it as a safeguard and protection from what the federal government is doing and so you know you get in there and that disconnect of the people that you're serving because you're so far removed it's hard to see the impact that you're having on

on those people and so that's why i think this movement is going to have to be done at the local level and then go up that way yeah no that's why it's extremely encouraging to see that you're you're offering uh before you get this legislation passed that would allow you to hold bitcoin on the balance sheet or mine bitcoin you're you're allowing your citizens to dca and like that's arguably one of the best ways you can do it is that the citizens of your city just become coin holders overall and then they're just becoming individually wealthy over time yeah absolutely protecting themselves and then they're able to get back to the city they live in the strong town have you read the book strong towns yet i haven't it's on my list you got to read that man it's uh

time to get to sit down and read is difficult between the job i have like my wife and i have a three and a five-year-old so the other day i was sitting down trying to read a book and literally could have been staring at the wall drilling for four hours and my name would not have been called the moment i picked the book up both kids daddy daddy like just did y'all plan that that's like i i have a a 15 15 month old son now it's crazy to think but no no it's it's um i i know that struggle actually the background behind me is a book i'm reading right now the uh the ordeals of liberty the third volume of like a thomas jefferson biography um but yeah no i i broke into it yesterday for for the first time and i've been wanting to read it for months and i got

like 20 pages in it was like all right you're done no more reading yeah 20 pages i'm impressed that's not i only get like five in for my kids start father i mean as a father of young children that fathers with young children it's pretty pretty uh i don't want to say stressful but it's like it really makes you think about the future and how what we're setting up for our children correct like oh absolutely yeah and that was a conversation you know i was elected to office when I was 35, and so, you know, my son was, gosh, 15 months old when I was elected. My daughter was, I think, just turning three, and so, you know, when I announced my son was six months old, and so it's, the question was, you have young kids, why? Well, partially was

the reason why, selfishly. We wanted to make sure my wife and I had the conversation, of do we want to just hope for the best and go about our daily lives and hope that when our kids are grown, go to college, wherever they go, we want them to come back here and see Jackson as a viable option to live and to raise their family? Or do we want to have an active role in creating that opportunity for them? And selfishly, I don't want to have to get on a plane to go visit my kids and grandkids at some point. I want to drive two, four hours. I want to be able to drive around the corner to see them because they chose Jackson, not because mom and dad guilted them into living in Jackson, but because it's a viable option for whatever field they want to go in. And, you know,

I think in a lot of times as a dad, I've learned this. Grownups really don't know how to talk to kids. You know, they always ask, what do you want to be when you grow up? I don't ask my kids that. I mean, you know, my daughter is about to be five and she's a veterinarian one day and she's an astronaut the next day i just you know let her mind go and uh because because it gets kids think about what they want to be when they grow up man they can be anything they want to be you know who's who's to say that in 20 years when they're choosing careers i mean there's there's careers that we hadn't even thought about yet that are they're going to be there and um it's exciting to think about also a little nerve-wracking uh but that's why i gotta put the work in today

i don't think five-year-old marty uh could have could have even said like i want to be a bitcoin podcaster at the time yeah no it is and that's a very um very strong and and bitcoin like mentality it's like if not me then hell if the government's not going to fix the money the federal government's not going to fix the money then fuck it we'll excuse my language we'll yeah i'll go do that not not really um uh it's really admirable and you're taking the bull by horns make sure that your kids the future that you would like them to have yeah i think it's you know this responsibility all has parents and if everyone's role is different um especially in a in a local setting uh you know my grandmother my mom my wife are all public school teachers so

you know they're they're making sure that the next generation is prepared in their role um you know whether you work in an industry or factory uh whatever your role is to create that environment for other people to be successful to cheer people along when they're successful and to make sure that we're all helping each other out yeah yeah well thank you for doing what you do at the local level and i i'm happy uh that you exist the scott congress of the world exactly it's this the best job you can anyone could ever have no matter how stressful the days are it's uh i i love where i i live um i love getting to serve people and you know like i said i'm not always the most politically correct person uh and uh very uh very sarcastic at times but um you know i do with intention of

making sure jackson's gonna be better not only today but tomorrow and in the future well you're on the right podcast for political incorrectness that's for sure no and then i guess you guys got a beautiful landscape and a beautiful town to live in in jackson too right like yeah not as not as mountainous as uh as east tennessee uh we're more agriculture and and there's some hills but uh we've got a lot of history um you know it's uh i think i gotta look at my grandmother's house they she's lived there since early 50s and she has a piece in her house that came through the cumberland gap i mean you see the hand-blown glass in there so i mean the history here is is is amazing here in west tennessee and and what is transpiring what has come through jackson um you know international

and that mean national federal railroad started here in jackson ivy tigers you know i can look out my office window and see where his office was here in downtown jackson so it's a a lot of history md anderson from jackson you know the song jackson from johnny cash and june carter you know there there is you you go online and say people well it may be about jackson Maybe about Jackson, Tennessee. Carl Perkins is from Jackson, Tennessee. They were talking about Jackson, Tennessee. So it's a lot of great history here.

It's actually one of my brother's favorite artists and songs. Oh, yeah. That was one of the songs I sang to my kids when I was trying to walk them to sleep. Nothing popped in my head the first night was Johnny Cash. First song was Folsom Prison Blues. So that's my kids. I've learned that song from me trying to get them to sleep.

That's not bad. We need more kids listening to Johnny. cash oh yeah yeah better than uh cardi b i would say you know the first time i think i tried my my daughter's like three or four that song came on on alexa and she looked up i said you recognize that song she yeah where do i know it from why is it saying it to you every night try to get you to sleep it's uh it's embedded deep in your brain yeah yeah ah well thank you for joining me i know you're extremely busy man um is there anything before we wrap up here that you you'd like to articulate to the freaks out there whether it be in regards to small government how bitcoin

can help out um living in a town of 68 000 people and yeah my goal is we don't stay 68 000. i want to i want to keep growing and bringing people here i think jackson's a great place um and and love it here and you know we're looking at ways that we can provide a foundation for the future here in jackson we want to we want to not only just make the city successful we want people to to be successful we're looking at ways outside of the norm to financially empower people uh you know we were one of the five cities across the country that received a grant from cities for financial empowerment this last year to create a blueprint to financially empower people and um we want everyone to be successful and whatever whatever that looks like for them you

know my success is different from your success and what that looks like individualized success but uh to realize their potential and you know as long as i'm in this office i'm gonna cheer anybody on that comes to jackson who wants to do something good well i wish you luck freaks go check out jackson tennessee and uh it seems like an incredible town it's got an incredible mayor at least i tell you come to city hall as long as i'm here doors open so come on in i sort of want to come check out that desk just uh just to say it's great and our director of maintenance guy he refinished it and it's i mean it looks almost brand new so it's it's great it's uh it's low time preference passing deaths down from grandfather to grandson well mayor conger

thank you for joining us i hope you have a an incredible rest of your day and uh keep fighting a good fight man thanks appreciate you too all right peace and love freaks