You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well, let's head back down south. We checked in with Rob pro Wine down in Atlanta. Let's do a little bit north of there to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The mayor of that fine city joins us. Andy Burke is his name, joining us, Andy, Mayor Burke, I should say, nice to have you with us. Great to be there, Andy, Andy is just fine. We're about two hours north of Nashville,
I mean north of Atlanta. For oh, I know, I've I used to live down in Atlanta, spent a lot of time in your fine city. Have an amazing aquarium, and just that whole area around, their rich history of Coca cola bottling and and all of that. You're a native, So tell us, you know, in your seat, how do you deal with something like we're dealing with now, this global pandemic that obviously plays out at a very local level as well. Well. We're seeing it in real time
and it is extremely concerning. UM. In January, Force magazine said that UM that Chattanoogo is predicted to have the number one job growth in the country in I really did not think on March the eighteenth that I would be having a conversation about how we're dealing with, you know, business closures. Um, this is just the reality that we're adjusting to. And uh, you know I heard, you know,
we're doing calls with restauranturs and they're they're saying they're closed. Um, their rent might be seven thousand dollars a month plus a thousand dollars utilities. So they're saying, is this is gonna be one month, two months, three months? Because if it's gonna be six, how do they you know, or or four or five? They don't know that they're gonna be on the other side, So white pay month one and and that's really the kind of real time issues
that we're seeing in our community. I did see also, or heard earlier about mayors around the country requesting about two billion dollars for their cities. As we you know, continues to see news out of Washington, the Administration and Congress about programs to help you know, individuals, cities, states, big business as well, small business as well. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that. Well, the we have to have Washington response, and it's got to
put dollars in people paying immediately. I get that they're debating today, and I thought they just passed this package that was I guess done last week by the House, and you know, the urgency just could not cannot be overstated because is Washington missing, That is Washington missing the
urgency of all of this. I I do believe they're missing the urgency of this because we're on day sixty or whatever from the first case um of this in our in our country, and we're now passing things that I think address issues that we had weeks ago and in our city. Like I try to remind people, today is Wednesday, Like a week ago at two o'clock, the NBA season was still theoretically going on. I mean, it doesn't feel like that's been a week. It feels like
that it was a month ago. Um. But but the real time daily uptick of here's what's going on, and we see the numbers climbing and we see the changes happening, the urgency is there to say, we gotta be quick, we gotta be nimble, we gotta figure out where people are, and we've got to really help them so that they can both make it through this time, and in a consumer driven economy, how are we gonna come out the
other side? So, uh Andy, tell us about what you are hearing from your constituents, from residents of Chattanooga, because you know, we're here in New York City or in the environs of New York City and it's playing out you know, maybe a little bit differently. I mean, is their food on the shelves? Are there people you know, essentially staying home? What does it look like there? Well, we're we're working hard to um do social distancing, have a lot of people staying home? Um the grocery stores
are are very empty? Uh from on the shelves, even though we don't have the numbers that you all have. UM, I think what you would. What I try to, you know, make sure people understand is you know, y'all are the trailer for the movie we're about to be in. So you know, we're just a few weeks behind you, and we've got to make sure that we're preparing and watching all the things that New York is going through so that we have the capability to the quicker and responding
the day that it happens to us. Right, I do wonder and you know, we've talked about the importance of sharing information around the globe, around the country so that people can learn from maybe past mistakes, UM from elsewhere. UM. You know, any final thoughts. I we've only got about thirty seconds here, But as we face what's going to be probably one of the most difficult moments in our nation's history, I think that we just have to be
UM more responsive to the UM, to the changing environment. UM. It is going to continue to be the least among us who are the most affected. And so we we are dealing. We're trying to figure out when a homeless person gets UM has of coronavirus, not just what do we do with them, how do we transport it's that micro and so the thing are really severe, oologize. We have to go. But Mayor Burke come back after we get through this, because we'd love to hear about more
that you're doing in your city. Andy Burke, Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee,