Passion was at the heart of new Bartlett Mayor David Parsons’ first State of the City address delivered during Tuesday’s monthly Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

After just 45 days as the suburb’s mayor, Parsons talked about what he and his staff have done since the first of the year and his plans for the suburb’s future.

“We’ve been aggressively working hard on so many fronts,” Parsons said.

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Those fronts include trying to identify a new industrial park area in northwest Bartlett, working with the chamber to address some of Bartlett’s empty commercial spaces and meeting with Memphis officials last Friday about ongoing sewer capacity issues.

“We had a very good meeting on Friday with Mayor (Jim) Strickland. We’re sitting down and looking at solutions that we’re both happy with,” Parsons said of the options to improve Fletcher Creek sewer capacity issues.

Parsons, who has been a Bartlett resident for 43 years, graduated from Bartlett High School, and throughout his time living there, he has served on more than 30 boards and commissions for the city.

“One of my core principles is: We want to have a community so that when your child, your grandchild graduates from Bartlett High School, there’s the amenities here so they want to stay,” said Parsons, who served five terms as Bartlett alderman from 2002 to 2022. “There’s a path for them from the high school through TCAT (Tennessee College of Applied Technology) to an employment picture, and not at minimum wage.”

The mayor, who won against three other candidates in November, also wants to address the city’s empty commercial spaces. Currently, Bartlett’s commercial vacancy rate sits near 3%. Parsons and city officials have already met several times this year with the chamber to discuss ways to get tenants into those vacant spots.

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“I want somebody working totally on that 3%,” Parsons said. “We’re going to identify benchmarks and give them a targeted list of our top five to really aggressively seek some of these biggest places.”

Since the first of the year, he and his staff have also been meeting with some of the city’s largest landowners in hopes to find more space for an industrial development park.

“We’re looking at places that would help us grow either with distribution or hopefully industrial manufacturing that would assist BlueOval (City), with access to the (Tenn.) 385,” Parsons said.

Parsons, a general contractor and former president of the Tennessee Home Builders Association, also touted the fact that the Bartlett Police Department is adding more personnel, taking its numbers up to 140 uniformed officers.

As proof of his trust in the city and its employees, Parsons noted that the top positions in his administration are locals who know Bartlett well.

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“We’ve got hometown people leading your city, not some cat out of New York who’s trying to build a resume... and then leave here,” he said. “That heart (of city employees) is 12 months a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. People are working hard to make sure the quality of life in Bartlett is the best it can be.”