This week’s meeting of the Rotary Club of Knoxville began with Suzanna Navarro introducing new Member Christa Rosenberg.
Next, Rachel Ford introduced the club to the upcoming Legacy 110 Campaign that the Rotary Foundation of Knoxville will be embarking on as part of our 110th anniversary celebration. We are one of the only Rotary Clubs in the nation that has their own endowment fund, and we have a goal of increasing the corpus of that fund to $2M over this course of this campaign. This endowment is used to fund out scholarships, service activities, and community projects. We will be hearing more about this campaign in future meetings.
Next, Dave Winstrom introduced our guest speaker, Indya Kincannon. Indya is the 69th and current Mayor of the City of Knoxville. Mayor Kincannon began with her quick response when anyone asks her how the city is doing. Her response is “crime is down, housing is up, and the Vols are winning!”.
Mayor Kincannon continued by stating that Public Safety is her number one priority. In her time as mayor of the City of Knoxville, both violent and property crimes have continuously dropped. She attributes this to unprecedented raises for both the Police Department and the Fire Department as well as the implementation of body cameras for the Police Department.
She went on the speak extensively about Project TLC (tender loving care) in which specific area of town are targeted for increased police presence, community engagement and public polling. The first neighborhood to participate in this project was a eight-block area in East Knoxville. As part of this program, the city knocked on doors and worked with community organizations and churches to speak with as many people in the community as possible to understand their safety concerns. Understanding these concerns, along with increased police presence as resulted in zero homicides or non-deadly shootings in the 18 months since the program’s inception. The city is currently working to expand this program into Montgomery Village and Western Heights.
Next, Mayor Kincannon spoke about the advantages and challenges of Knoxville being a growing community. We are quickly approaching 200K people within the city limits. This influx of people into our community has led to a housing crisis within the city, leading to high increases in rent and new home costs. She went on to explain steps that the city is taking to aid in this crisis, including a fund that bridges the financing gaps of private developers to help get housing up faster. Since 2020, the city has contributed $48M to this fund, resulting in 2,600 new homes. She also spoke about the development of a Developer’s Round Table that brings developers together to tackle snags in the current permitting process. This has brought about faster permit filings and executions. 1500 permits were issued in 2024 and over 36,000 next-day inspections were performed.
Finally, Mayor Kincannon spoke about the new Covenant Health Park and the revitalization of that are of our downtown. He was enthusiastic about the mixed-use properties as well as mixed-income housing in the area and stressed the importance of building strong communities through these initiatives.
The meeting concluded with questions from members of the Rotary Club. Some questions that were asked pertained to public safety in the downtown area, including the installation of bollards and replacement of obstacles to protect pedestrian traffic as well as the procurement of horses by the KPD for use by mounted police officers. The city currently has two horses and are preparing to purchase two additional. Their presence will be seen in the downtown area as well as during festivals around the city, including World’s Fair Park.
Other questions arose around citizens’ concerns with affordable housing in their areas. Mayor Kincannon explained that we need to continue to break down stereotypes about affordable housing. She discussed that most people will be renters at some point in their lives and that affordable housing is necessary to serve many in our community, including teachers, first responders, and trade professionals. She also addressed what the city is doing to try to tackle the issue of homeless persons within out community. She explained that city’s efforts to increase affordable housing, build care facilities for those that need mental health support, and the importance of continuing to lobby the state for the funds to erect a mental health facility here in Knoxville; something that we do not have and desperately need.