Stacey Harvey, CEO of Warrior Precast, City Alderman.
By Brad Durham
I originally interviewed Stacy Harvey on October 22, 2022. Mr. Harvey is a member of the McMinnville Board of Mayor and Aldermen, and the Board recently voted to raise property taxes by 25 cents (Ordinance 1859). Stacey Harvey voted to increase the property tax rate, and I have updated my interview with Mr. Harvey to include his comments regarding his vote on the tax issue.
The June 27 Mayor and Aldermen meeting was recorded live on Facebook. There was some spirited discussion regarding the tax increase, and it can be viewed by clicking on this link: June 27 Mayor and Aldermen Meeting.
Voting to pass Ordinance 1859 and the tax increase were Deitra Dunlap, Stacey Harvey, Keri Morton and Ryle Chastain. Voting no were Sally Brock, Steve Harvey and Rachel Kirby. The ordinance passed 4-3.
UPDATE
Stacey Harvey:
It’s my opinion that this tax rate increase SHOULD have been done in 2017 or so. Simply due to the fact that the City didn’t have the funds to pave streets for years, and in 2018 borrowed money to pave. Borrowing money is a penalty to the city residents via the payment of INTEREST. Which is a voluntary tax for not having the money we needed at the time we needed it.
We needed this increase to cover adequate equipment and to pay fair wages to our first Responders. We have had POLICE Officers SHARING TASERS…. think about that during COVID…just think about it. We have had firefighters sharing gear, running through major intersections wearing only LAP belts for their vehicle safety on 30 year-old fire trucks……
I could go on and on, but I would like to say this: I am proud of the relationship I have built over the last two years with Mayor Chastain. It has not been easy! He would agree with that I am quite sure! But we are focused on doing the right thing for this city — needs over wants, 100% of the time.
I am excited about our new board members Dunlap and Morton. Upon their election, we immediately voted to purchase a new fire engine to replace the 30 year-old one that the prior Board members voted DOWN just before the election, on the VERY night that Harrison Ferry Mountain was burning!
Had we not gotten these two new members and INSTEAD returned one prior member in the last election, we would not be here prioritizing our city employees and First Responders. Best of all…now their families KNOW the Board values their contributions to our public safety and their service to our city. We must continue to do things we NEED FOR the City, and not fall victim to the “wantsome” whims of some others who prefer to expend resources on things that do not add safety, security or value, to living in McMinnville Tennessee. Indoor pools are nice, but they won’t come to your home at 3 am and save your life. Never have, never will.
The original, complete interview…
Why are you in McMinnville?
I was born here. We moved away when I was in the eighth grade to Kissimmee, Florida and then to Fort Worth, Texas. That’s not where I wanted to raise a family. I was raised out in Faulkner Springs and I always said [that] this is where I wanted to raise my family. So, I struck out on my own with my own business when I moved back here in 1992. I’m still here 30 years later, and I’m not going away.
What do you think when you reflect on McMinnville’s future? Positive? Negative?
I think it’s… I think it has more potential than it has ever had. I think the business climate in the town is pretty good. I believe that we’ve got some challenges with law and order. We’ve got some challenges with our court system. We’ve got some challenges with our jails. We’ve got some challenges with funding our emergency services at the level they need to be funded. And I believe if we do the things that we should do, we can move into the future and still have what made us great in the past. We don’t have to forgive and forget all that stuff moving forward.
I made a statement in a public meeting that some of the policies that government offices have around here—I hear frustration from people and my comment was that in everything we do, we still have to remember that this is McMinnville, Tn. This is not Atlanta. This is not Nashville. This is not L.A. This is not Dallas. This is McMinnville, TN and we have to maintain that small-town feel. We have to do it right. There’s no reason why we have to be so heavily regulated. But you can’t put a Happy Fall, Ya’ll sign on your porch without getting a visit from the sign Nazi. We’ve got to be very careful with that. We can’t turn this into California. We’re just not going to let it happen. I’ll fight it till the day I die. Warren County, Warren County. I want people to come in here and want to be Warren Countians and McMinnvillians.
Do you think there is a difference between “McMinnville” and “Warren County?” Why or why not?
I don’t really think so. I have a friend that has put together this Facebook group called Our McMinnville. You know he has started asking folks for pictures of McMinnville. You know how hard it is to come up with family pictures of McMinnville? It’s very difficult. One wouldn’t think so, but it’s very difficult. Because McMinnville, to people who live here, is Warren County.
I started looking through, I mean I have dozens of family albums that my grandfather passed down to me that go back into the 40’s when he was in the military. He came out and became a state trooper and I just couldn’t find anything, any pictures of anything going on in McMinnville. If we were on the creek, if we were in the yard, if we were having family gatherings…if we were at Midway for a family reunion, if we were at a church picnic, there were lots of those pictures. So, I think that McMinnville and Warren County are synonymous.
If you were mayor of McMinnville and had a magic wand, what three things would you change?
Well, number one, I don’t want to be mayor of McMinnville. I don’t envy that position at all. So, can I just answer it if I can change any three things? There’s a lot. There’s so many. I don’t intend for this to sound militaristic in any way, but I think we need to get our residents to respect law and order. We need them to respect their neighbors’ and get them to respect traffic laws and speed limits and I think it has to start at that most basic level that we can’t allow criminals to go away unpunished. If I waved my magic wand I could come up with clearly defined list of expectations for every segment of our population and I would enforce those laws and expectations and develop accountability.
There is a lack of accountability that we have in our entire world and it affects us negatively here in our own home. And I would want to make people more accountable and more respectful to everyone’s ability to have their say, and everyone’s ability to protect their property and enjoy their property. And be free of intrusion of people who don’t need to be where they’re going. I don’t know how else to say that. I believe the property owners’ rights are paramount. I would make sure that the rights of the individual are respected. That would be one.
Two is I think that this area needs a lot more transparency in government as far as taxation and spending. I hope that I am doing my part in trying to bring that out. Instead of being made out to be a pariah in bringing things out in local government, if you question the priorities in spending in the local government, I would wish that we would have that expectation to continue to be ongoing that government officials are questioned and that they expect to be questioned and they appreciate an opportunity to post an answer and plead their side of the case instead of feeling attacked because government officials need to be accountable. If they make a mistake, own it. Don’t lie about it. So, I would bring a lot of truth and transparency to the administration of our rules of life in Warren County and McMinnville that need to be upheld by everybody When you are an elected official, you are not above anybody. And the elitist mentality in this area, I would do away with.
Respect. For people to fact-check your words. To hold you accountable for the things you promised you would do.
The third thing I would do is…you know we have a really bad drug problem here, and it’s so unfortunate. I did a ride-along a week ago at night with Lt. Bill Davis of the McMinnville Police Department. I was sitting in my living room on the first Friday of October and it was real pleasant, and I had the windows open and I was with my wife enjoying a nice, quiet Friday evening at home and I heard more emergency sirens than I believe that I’ve ever heard. Of course, in the summer my windows are not open because I don’t like to be hot. Because it was pleasant, I opened them. It troubled me, I knew there was some fire. So, I did that ride-along. I contacted Lieutenant Davis to see if I could do a ride-along with him. I didn’t advertise that I wanted to do it…I kept it kind of on the down-low. I wanted to see what they deal with. I believe that we have underfunded and overtaxed our emergency responders to the point of breaking them. He picked me up at my home, and the first thing that we did was go interact with some homeless people. And we went down under a bridge down by the railroad tracks by the Farmers’ Market, and there were human feces on the ground. It smelled like urine. Lieutenant Davis was talking to two individuals who are on the Sex Offenders Registry and telling them that the railroad has sent a letter to Homeland Security requesting that the local police department clean them out of that area because they are trashing up that area. He was advising these individuals that they were going to have to move. Take the weekend, find some place to move, but it’s coming. It was very respectful discourse, but it was very sad. It was very sad to see. But we had to go to the other side of the bridge to another individual that was hiding. A fourth individual that I saw because maybe there was some bond condition and Davis told them that they were going to have to move. We see homeless everywhere.
I was in a little fact-finding meeting several weeks ago with some county officials and we had a discussion about how many people are homeless in this area, and how many people are helped by HOME, that’s an acronym for Homeless of McMinnville Effort, which Lieutenant Davis was one of the founders. He is still an officer of HOME, and he’s like an outreach person for the McMinnville Police Department and HOME. One of the county commissioners in that meeting said that they had helped over 450 people in the last year—homeless people. The way that that number is recorded doesn’t tell us whether that is 450 individuals or that was the total number of aid or calls for assistance that they had performed. He couldn’t delineate that for me.
I am sorry that I am so long-winded about it, but it is a huge issue. I would find a way to…I don’t want to say help the homeless. That’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to help the homeless. What I want to do is help lost souls, help them find a sense of purpose, help them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to get back on their feet and make them productive members of society. You have to classify them. You have to classify them as ones that only need a break, those who expect a break, and those who will never be a damn thing other than what they are now. You have to call them out. You got to help the ones you can help. You got to put the ones on the road that got to be on the road, put the ones in jail that need to be in jail.
So, I don’t want to answer that in such broad terms like help for the homeless, that’s not…I want to be very specific in my answer. But I wanted to give you that back story. I would empower the people that find themselves less than or less fortunate than others. I’ll call it housing deficient. I don’t know what the terminology is, I don’t know what that is. If they are in a situation where they’re homeless, then I want to help them. But I want to …we’re not a baby bottle with a nipple extending out to where someone wants to come take a drink. You know, that’s not it. There has to be, if we are going to help them, there has to be expectations. There have to be benchmarks, and there has to be constant progress. Sure, you are going to have setbacks, no problem. I want to move that forward. I don’t want them to just stay where they are and never feel like they can go anywhere. And the ones and believe me, there are ones that enjoy that. There are folks that are homeless and they don’t want anything else. That’s what they want. That’s good. You can be that way, but you need to go be that way somewhere else. Not here. So, I would cure that.
Stacey Harvey asked at the end of the interview to make this the number one thing that he would change…
Number one should be housing. We have such a housing shortage. We have a housing affordability crisis. And there are a number of things that have caused that. One is a state law that municipalities cannot annex parts of undeveloped areas. The city used to be able to go out and annex parts of the county. We can’t do that anymore. We can’t mandate that we are going to annex anybody. We have to be invited to annex. The city’s tax base is locked. That’s it. We have very large minimum lot sizes. We have a larger minimum lot size than Cookeville and Sparta. And Smithville. I believe that’s correct. Cookeville, Sparta and Smithville have smaller minimum lot sizes. And what that does is makes the cost of real estate more expensive. For instance, the R1 minimum is 15,000 sq. ft. but it is 10,000 sq. ft. in Sparta and 10,000 sq. ft. in Smithville. So, for every two lots that you have today, you would have three.
We are in a housing affordability crisis here. If we would reduce the minimum lot size to 10,000 sq. ft., I think we would have people who own property outside the city limits that would develop and ask us to annex. It would increase the tax base in the area. That’s a real problem that we have. It is a city-wide problem, and it’s a city-wide cure. And we have some disconnect between the realities of some up-and-coming families, and the establishment of the governing institutions, I believe.
The challenge with that is that property owners are concerned about smaller, more inexpensive homes coming in next to their homes that decreases their values. It is a battle over the years…a lot of battles lost….people trying to keep apartments out of their neighborhood.
I’ve been a victim of that. I wanted to put some what is known as “aging in place” housing here. I wanted to get older, retired folks who can’t take care of their place anymore to build some small houses for them that were affordable. I was fought like cats and dogs. There were actually people in the city administration who were out knocking on doors campaigning against my private development. I caught them doing it – I saw them doing it. So, it’s a problem. Housing here is a bad problem. When you have a 1200 sq. ft. home in McMinnville that in 1999 I built and sold for $99,000 and today that same home…I’m a builder, right? That same home that in 1999 was $99,000 today is $248,000 in 23 years. Just think about it.
So now we’ve got interest rates going up to 7-8% and we’ve got real estate prices going up, we’ve got a quarter of a million dollars for a 1200 sq. ft house, a starter home with a one-car garage. What do you think that’s going to do for young families? They can’t afford to live here. They are going to have to go into the county. They are going to go to Sparta where land is less expensive. Manchester, where land is less expensive. We’re driving them away. We are not welcoming them. We are driving them away.
What do you think unites us in McMinnville?
Anger and love. There’s a fine line between love and hate.
What do you think divides us?
Opinions, which leads back to one of my first comments. I wish people would be respectful of other people and their opinions. I believe that we’re divided by…in this country…unfortunately from 2012 to 2020, we were divided by race — by the United States government within the United States government. I think they brought that back to the forefront. When you have certain actors within the government taking certain tones for the general public…honestly we aren’t divided by race. I think maybe when I was a kid you could feel that a little bit. We’re not divided by race in this town.
I have a son-in-law who is African American. He is my son-in-law. They just had my first grandchild, and that baby’s awesome. So, we’re not divided by race. I do think that we are divided a little bit by lifestyle, we’re divided by financial acumen, you know, because I think a lot of people don’t know about money, but they should know. They find themselves in an endless cycle of poverty, and there’s no way to really get out. I think that those folks that are in that situation look adversely at people like myself who have a business and employees and all this, and I wish that those folks could remember that the only difference between me and them is one break. I took advantage of one opportunity, and the led to another opportunity. I took advantage of that opportunity, and the next opportunity and the next opportunity. So, if you are not doing well financially, don’t hate on somebody who is. Now if they are from third-generation family money, and never had a struggle and they are trying to tell you how to live your life, you know, then maybe you can take exception to that.
But there was a time in my life when I was homeless. I slept in a doghouse, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And the only difference between me and them is one big break. We’re divided economically, not racially. And I do believe that the opinion of law enforcement in this area is not justice for all. I really believe that. There was a saying when I was a kid that if you’re not kin, you’re not in. Have you heard that: if you’re not kin, you’re not in? So, if you do something bad and you know the right people, you will never suffer the consequences. But consequently, if someone else who doesn’t know these people, whoever these people are, can do something bad, and then they get the book thrown at them.
I believe that there is disparity in law enforcement and the way we adjudicate crimes between economic classes. I do believe that there is evidence of some disparity, whether that’s adequate legal representation, you know, maybe that’s it. Or maybe there’s bad blood from way back between families. We have to be able to adjudicate people on a level playing field. I honestly believe that we are doing the right thing, right now. Our new district attorney and our new sheriff, I think they are going to do that. I put my full faith and trust in them. I’ve spoken to those guys and I’ve gotten extended time in the last year and a half and there will be no good old boy network. There will be no wink, wink, nod, nod, don’t worry about it down the road, that these guys are going to do it. They are going to take their posts seriously, and they are going to adjudicate anything that comes before them on a fair and equal basis. I believe that’s what divides us.
Do you agree with the direction and quality of education the Warren County public school system offers for our children? Why or why not?
I want to divide this comment into two sections. When our son graduated number three in his class at Warren County high school, he was the only one in the top ten who wasn’t dual-enrolled. Three-sport athlete. Not dual-enrolled. Graduated number three. Those people that know, if they did a little research, they would know what that means. The dual enrollment ups your GPA. It’s not a four-point scale in dual enrollment, I believe it’s 4.5. I asked them, after his freshman year at VMI, because there was a lot of discussion about the quality of education in the area. And I asked him, I mean, he went to one of the most difficult colleges in the country, hard academically, hard physically, hard extra-curricular. I mean it is brutal. It is torture up there, and in one of my conversations with him, I said, “Jacob, do you feel that you were adequately prepared in the Warren County school system to succeed in your undergrad?” He said absolutely that he was. It’s really about time management. That’s it, and he said that everybody has the same programs available to them, but if you don’t use your time wisely, if you don’t get your studying done, if you put pleasure ahead of your school work, if you aren’t self-disciplined, then he said you are going to get lost. He said that he believed that the Warren County schools prepared him to go anywhere in the country. And he has proven that to be the case.
That is pre-COVID. During and post-COVID, I believe that the lack of transparency of the school board, the programs of diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory, whether that is taught in the Warren County schools or not, and it’s kind of a muddy subject. I’ve had some people say no, and I’ve had some people say yes.
Letting gender identification in to our area — where at the middle school a middle school child that says he identifies with a female can enter the female elementary bathroom with girls. I didn’t know that was happening till last week. I was told by a county commissioner that it is happening. The words were, not that it was quoted to me, but quoted to me by a county commissioner that it was told to him by the director of schools that when the county gives him $11 million a year in funding, he’ll listen to the county. That he’s going to listen to the federal mandates, and that’s what the feds told him to do.
That’s terrible. That’s absolutely terrible. It has no place in our area. So post-COVID, I think the school board sucks. I think that the policies of the school board suck. I think the tone and the tenor that the Warren County schools are going in sucks. I think that we need an elected school superintendent, not an appointed school superintendent. I think every school board meeting should be open and completely transparent. They should be able to take addresses by the general populace in a timely and regimented manner. It is my understanding, I’ve not attended one, but I understand that during COVID they would not let people attend, even wearing a mask or not, but they televise the meetings. So, I believe that we have a huge problem in our school system.
The BD Newsletter on Education responds to some of the statements in Stacey Harvey’s interview. You can read the article by clicking on EDUCATION.
Is everything you need in McMinnville exist in terms of groceries, retail stores, churches, restaurants?
Yeah. The key to what you asked is do you have everything you need. What people don’t understand is that there is a difference between need and want. Are our needs addressed here in Warren County? Yes, they are. Could it be better? Of course. But we are not Chattanooga, we’re not Nashville, we’re not Murfreesboro or Cookeville. If you want to be one of those places, go move.
Is McMinnville doing enough for people who are economically disadvantaged, or should be doing more? If not, what should the city be doing?
We can never do enough. We can never do enough. But I think that in, well, let me say this—I don’t believe a metro government is right for this town. Or county. I don’t believe that because I don’t believe that 24 people can address the needs of 45,000. We have seven members on the board in McMinnville and we have about 14,000 people. So, every alderman represents about 2,000 people. So, if we have 45,000 people and we have 24 commissioners, the number is the same. But is the contact the same? No, it’s not. The county is more fractured than the city, I believe. It’s not as compact, it is spread out, so there’s sections of the county that they don’t know who their commissioner is.
I said that to say that I don’t want metro government. I think we could have more impact on that if the county and city could find a way to work together. And full funding. But the number one thing, and I’ve had this discussion two different times in the last two weeks — we can’t find a way for the city and county to work together. We can’t have a good old boy handshake agreement, this is the way it is, and if we are going to pool resources, we have to have a concerted effort, an operating agreement that both sides abide by, that is clearly defined. That operating agreement, with a combination of resources has to be enforced.
I’ll just give you an example, because this was a topic of conversation about HOME, Homeless of McMinnville Effort. They do great work. They need a full-time paid person to help manage these cases. They’ve got tiny homes, and they’ve got some property that the city gave them. But what’s going to happen is…they are going to be a victim of their own success. By that I mean you have Tina Higgins, you have Bill Davis, you have James Hunt all of these people have other jobs ok. I think that it’s time for the city and county to get together and fund them at a higher level and with a real strict operating agreement as to what these funds are used for. We have to be more businesslike in our approach to helping anyone. I do not think that the city and county do enough to help the economically disadvantaged, but I think that the reason we don’t do enough is we all need to work together on it. Define our target, look to who we want to be.
Look at programs, outreach in other parts of the state and to other parts of the country where this has been done successfully. Do a lot of research. Once we do that and we have an operating agreement that defines the expectations that it’s a business deal and we conduct business…then we could help a lot of people.
It’s the system that’s the bad guy, it’s not a person. You don’t have to wear a black hat and deliver bad news. We have to pool with very clearly defined delineated expectations about the use of those funds. When someone becomes completely dependent on an organization like that, they need to know that there’s a finite cut-off line that if you don’t meet a certain x-y-z expectations. Then this is over, and when there is the next person who wants to use it as a transition for a better place for them and their family, they’ll get that opportunity.
What did I not ask you that you would like to comment about regarding McMinnville and its people?
There is one thing that I think is important that most people don’t realize is that elected officials in McMinnville and Warren County are not the best and brightest that we have in this county. They are not. That’s not derogatory in any shape or form or fashion, but no elected official in this area should think that they are the best person in the area for the job. They’re just making the best marketing person that ran for the job. And if these people in their area think that they know more and that they are better than the general population, they need to be smacked in the face and brought down to reality. The truth of the matter is the best people in this county and in this city are out there every day fighting for their families, fighting for the families of their employees and they fight a battle every day. They may not have enough time left in the day to fight a battle with the city or county level, but no elected official here should think that they are the best because they have been there for 12-14 years or that they’re the best because they got elected. That’s an absolute fallacy. You’re not the best because you ran and won. You are the best of the ones that ran and that’s a small percentage of the overall population of this area. So just because you are elected, you are no better than anyone else. As a matter of fact, you may not be as near as good as most of the people around.
You’re supposed to be a public servant. There’s a lot of stuff going on right now and I’m a lightning rod. I don’t set out to be. I don’t set out to issue criticism. I don’t set out to be a flamethrower. What I do set out for is I want people to tell the truth. I want people to own their actions. Their great deeds and their mistakes. Because everybody is human. But there are some people around here who will admit to no wrongdoing whatsoever. They just won’t. They just won’t. Somebody points out somebody telling a lie, you know, then they attack the person pointing out the lie. They don’t address the lie even when it’s in print.
I honestly believe and you can print this if you want that the local political class here counts on people not remembering what was said. I believe that they think everybody has a short attention. I believe that folks are smarter than that.
The next complete interview is with the late, great Todd Herzog.
BD Newsletter 