Month: July 2003

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Cover Feature News

Budget Crunch

Now you see it, now you don’t.

What seemed last week to be a done deal on a Shelby County budget for fiscal 2003/4 came undone this week as the county commission, meeting in full session, plucked seven cents from the provisional 32-cent property-tax rate increase proposed last Wednesday by the commission’s budget committee.

Missing in action after Monday’s commission meeting were: a four-cent component to cover additional operating costs for the city and county schools; and three cents from what had been a 21-cent proposed increase in the county’s general fund. Left intact were an additional seven cents for service of the county debt and — for non-Memphis residents only — another five cents to cover the costs of rural school bonds to build a new Arlington school and renovate several other county schools.

As things stand, the general county tax rate will rise by a total of 25 cents, bringing it to $4.04 per $100 of assessed value. County property-owners outside Memphis proper would find their rate up another nickel’s worth, to $4.09. The Memphis owner of a homestead evaluated at $150,000 would pay an annual county property-tax rate of $1,515, up $94 from the current assessment of $1,421. A similar homestead outside the city limits would cost its owner $1,534 annually, up by $113. (See “City Beat,”page 9.) But county taxpayers are well advised to keep their wallets holstered and their household budgets on hold. None of this is certain. The changes made Monday may well be amended before the commission meets again in two weeks to take up its scheduled third and final reading of a budget that is already overdue.

County government meanwhile chugs along on a continuation budget at last year’s spending levels. But the elected officials and other department administrators have made it abundantly clear that they prefer that state of affairs to what is coming. Most of them, in hearings conducted by the commission over the past several months, predicted results bordering on catastrophic if seriously deep cuts ended up being required of them. (See sidebars.)

The commission itself is in a state of tenuous balance. On one side of the debate are such hold-the-tax-line commissioners as Bruce Thompson and David Lillard, both still in their first year of service and both determined to bring a new outlook and a new stricter methodology to the county’s budgeting process. On the other side are the commission’s Democrats, who maintain that their constituencies would be harder hit by severe budget cuts affecting county services.

An important side issue has been that of the rural school bonds, a departure from past practice whereby capital expenditures for new schools in Shelby County have been appropriated at a 3-to-1 ratio favoring city schools over county schools, in conformity with a state average-daily-attendance (ADA) formula. The rural school bonds would, in effect, do an end run around that formula by assessing only county taxpayers to pay for them.

In general, Democratic commissioners have opposed the rural school bonds precedent while Republicans, most of whom represent the affected suburban communities, favor it. In practice, the issue has been made part of the complicated on-again, off-again budget negotiations.

A primary broker of the provisional deal reached last week was budget chairman Cleo Kirk, a Democrat. He and other commission Democrats — chairman Walter Bailey, in particular — have made it clear that their acquiescence in the bond issue (which they continue to vote against) was contingent on an acceptable tax rate.

Kirk and the other Democrats — all save Bailey — remain on board for a compromise solution after this week’s excision of seven cents from last week’s tax-increase proposal. It was Bailey who proposed the four-cent item for school operating expenditures, and he remains committed to it. “I’m going to take a stand,” he told Kirk after Monday’s meeting. “I may vote against the tax rate without that money for the schools.”

If he does, and is not assuaged by concessions and add-backs elsewhere, and if there aren’t enough votes to force an agreement on a new tax rate, the county rate will remain at the current rate of $3.79 per $100 of assessed value.

Some hearts might be broken by that outcome, but they wouldn’t be those of Thompson and Lillard, who have been insisting on annual zero-based budgeting procedures — i.e., ones requiring that all appropriations be justified anew — begun early in the fiscal years preceding approval of a new budget. And they would not be those of the chorus of homeowners and conservative activists who, like Shelby County Republican chairman Kemp Conrad, bombarded commission members with complaints after the apparent cutting of a deal last week.

One commission member in particular was hot-boxed: Tom Moss, a homebuilder whose outer-county district — shared with Lillard and Joyce Avery — is the site of the proposed new Arlington high school and of the other school renovations that rural school bonds would finance.

It was Moss’ decision to break ranks with his fellow Republicans that led to last week’s apparent budget deal, and it was Moss, too, who took the initiative in trimming back portions of that deal this week.

“There ain’t any formation,” was Moss’s heated response last week to complaints from colleagues Thompson, Lillard, and GOP chairman Conrad that he had dropped out of the Republican formation.

Said Moss of his commission critics: “They’re immature as politicians and immature as commissioners. We’ve got some social obligations in county government, whatever they are. There’s no point in playing games and asking questions without offering conclusions. We can’t do all the budget reform this year. It’s like Jell-O. You squish down here and it squishes out over there. The bottom line is, we’re saddled with [former county mayor] Jim Rout’s refinancing. It’s come home to roost. We started out there. Then you’ve got [county trustee] Bob Patterson’s situation, underestimating — and I don’t fault him for it — what the property-tax appeals would be, and we’re $15 million under expectations there. And then we’ve got obligations, certain functions we’ve got to fulfill.”

Moss pointed out, “As far as party solidarity goes, what do you make of the fact that all of the elected officials we’ve heard from, with one or two exceptions, are Republicans? They’re saying they can’t live with the kinds of cuts some want to make.”

As Moss sees it, something had to give in budget negotiations. The bottom line for him was the rural school bonds issue, which had been stymied for months. “You want to come away with something in your hand, whether it’s future budget procedures or something tangible like a school. I came away from it with Millington High School reconstructed, the elementary school reconstructed, Lucy School redone, and the school at Arlington. They’re all in my district.”

Anyhow, said Moss about his decision to break ranks, “We’ve had too much of this partisan crap. You’ve got to look out for your district. You’ve got to look out for your constituency.”

There was a good deal of speculation in Republican circles, not all of it flattering, about Moss’ motives in joining with commission Democrats to make a budget deal possible. Some of his GOP colleagues wondered if he hadn’t made an arrangement similar to the alleged one involving his vote as a newly appointed commissioner to make Shep Wilbun Juvenile Court clerk back in 2000. “No,” said fellow GOP commissioner Linda Rendtorff in her colleague’s defense. “Any deal Tom made with the Democrats was paid off then and there.”

And there was an argument, pressed by Channel 13 reporter Allison Triarsi in a confrontation with Moss after Monday’s commission meeting, that the commissioner might have been unduly influenced by the fact of his owning some 30-odd lots in the vicinity of the proposed new Arlington school.

“That’s pretty lame,” said Moss, who responded that he was representing his constituents’ interests, not his own, and maintained that the proposed Arlington school boundaries would not necessarily include his lots.

There was no doubt, however, that Moss was subjected to enormous pressure after last week’s committee vote — technically ending with a 6-6 tie since Democratic commissioner Julian Bolton, assumed to favor a higher tax rate, was absent.

So on Monday he got together with two Democrats — Joe Ford, who has been swing voter on many partisan-inflected issues, and Deidre Malone, who, like Moss, was said to have received pressure from constituents to make further reductions. They agreed on the seven cents worth of reductions in the proposed tax increase.

In opening the budget discussion Monday, Malone said she had been moved by “conscience” and constituents, and, wishing to avoid a “major mistake,” promptly moved to subtract the four-cent school component. Moss quickly seconded and her motion passed, Bailey objecting.

After some more parliamentary back-and-forth, Moss introduced his own proposal to subtract another three cents across the board, and it, too, with Bailey and Kirk objecting, would pass.

Things weren’t really that straightforward, of course. To grasp the general air of confusion that accompanied the by-the-seat-of-the-pants negotiations on Monday, you just — as the saying goes — had to be there.

There was, for example, a resolution from Bolton, who proposed separating the two components of the amended budget deal. For differing reasons, enough commissioners on both sides of the budget issue sided with him to force separate votes on the tax-rate question and the rural school bonds issue. That led to one of the more bizarre moments of a bizarre and frenzied day when Thompson and Moss, whose rhetoric concerning each other had bordered on the ballistic, came together briefly after the meeting to commiserate.

This was over their shared anxiety about Bolton’s actions, which they feared might endanger prospects for rural school bonds, the one issue they concurred on. Chairman Bailey, no friend of rural school bonds, had ruled that the votes at a third and decisive reading would follow the order of tax-rate first, bond issue second. That was the sequence at Monday’s second reading when the votes had been on hand to approve both the newly configured tax rate and rural school bonds.

Thompson, especially, nursed suspicions concerning Bolton’s motives and a fear of potential deal-breaking by the commission’s Democrats — all of whom were on record as preferring to keep the traditional state-established Average Daily Attendance (ADA) formula by which capital construction funds were allocated to city and county school districts in a three-to-one ratio favoring the Memphis schools.

“Once they get the tax rate they want, what’s to prevent their voting their convictions on rural school bonds and killing them?” Thompson wondered out loud after the meeting. In practical terms, the question related to Commissioners Malone and Ford, Democrats who voted Monday for rural school bonds. (So did Michael Hooks, but Hooks switched his vote to no for the record when the outcome was certain.)

Concern over separating the tax-rate and school-bond issues was initially shared by others, including County Mayor A C Wharton, who worriedly asked Chairman Walter Bailey later whether the rural school bonds issue might come to him separately and in advance of a third reading on the tax rate.

“No,” said Bailey, “because we didn’t pass an authorizing resolution to go with it.”

The rural school bond issue seemed to be over the hump — though it could be endangered if Bailey follows through on his discontent about the loss of the four-cent component for operating expenses for city and county schools. That appropriation, amounting to some $5 million, would be allocated according to the ADA formula. Though both city school superintendent Johnnie B. Watson and county school superintendent Bobby Webb beseeched the commission on behalf of the four-cent component, Webb’s objections were conspicuously more pro forma than those of Watson, who spoke of “agonizing” choices that would be forced upon him if the item were not restored.

Webb and county school board president David Pickler, both of whom have insistently lobbied the commission for months on behalf of the rural school bonds issue and, in particular, on behalf of the proposed new Arlington school, seemed satisfied with the half-loaf that was apparently within their reach on Monday — the five cents, to be assessed on non-Memphis residents only, tentatively approved by the commission.

The fact is that the four-cent component for the school systems’ operating expenses was conjured up only last week by Bailey, who dropped it into the provisional agreement at a budget-committee hearing.

“That’s more or less the way we’ve been doing business in all areas. We start out with a high figure, which is then subject to negotiation downward,” said Thompson, who pointedly noted that he did not doubt the sincerity of Bailey’s motives — nor the seriousness of the chairman’s threat to withhold his assent from a tax-rate formula that did not include the four-cent item, or some major fraction of it.

Not all of the cleavage on the commission concerns partisan differences. Some of it is nuanced according to even racial/social lines. At one point, when Lillard was holding forth on the issue of closing down the beleaguered Oakville Sanitarium, Kirk responded angrily, “When it’s a matter of where poor people or black people are, that’s what gets cut.” And he challenged the good faith of Lillard, Thompson, and others wanting to hold the tax line. “You’re not going to vote for anything anyway. I wasn’t born this morning.”

Nor was potential discord among the commission’s Republicans limited to that between Moss and the GOP majority. Republican Commissioner Joyce Avery made a point of publicly embracing Moss after Monday’s meeting. Avery, a supporter of full funding for the county Health Department and Oakville vigorously nodded when Moss suggested she might have been the victim of a “stab in the back.”

That was a reference to several actions directed at Oakville Monday by Lillard, who — supported by Thompson — disparaged the institution’s viability and quality of care for residents, suggested it should be closed, and moved unsuccessfully to make Moss’s proposed across-the-board three-cent cut apply only to the mayor’s component of the budget.

Negotiations for the current fiscal year lasted through last August, and it may be that this year’s budget is destined for a similar course. Then again, Bailey, Thompson, Lillard, and others may find enough reason to suppress their doubts about the emerging compromise and pass something like the jerry-built formula arrived at Monday.

On the evidence of the turbulence manifested so far, however, there is a fair degree of certainty that the great fussbudget battle of 2003 will get even fussier — perhaps even dramatically so — before it is finally resolved.

Square Knot

Health department faces cuts from four funding sources.

Last week’s provisional budget agreement on the county commission seemed to afford the Memphis/Shelby County Health Department a reprieve, reducing the department’s proposed budget by a little more than $117,000 but insulating the department from the outright cuts that the commission had mandated for other departments of county government.

But with the scuttling this week of that prior deal and the call for dropping 3 cents from the county’s general budget, the Health Department will also have to do some trimming. Director Yvonne Madlock has indicated her department might be able to cut operating costs by as much as 5 percent.

But that’s only part of her concern. As with many county divisions, the local budget provides only one source of the total Health Department budget, which was approximately $55 million last year. At stake in any reduction formula are matching funds from city, state, and federal sources.

“I am certainly grateful for the acknowledgement of the commitment of public health that the Commission has made in supporting our budgets to the extent that they did,” said Madlock. “But remember that 80 percent of our budget dollars are spent on providing services, so if you have cuts the only way to absorb them is through reductions in staff.”

Tightened federal and state revenues and tough economic times have already resulted in staff and program cuts in Madlock’s division. When Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen mandated a 9 percent across-the-board cut for all state departments this year, the Tennessee Department of Health passed on a $450,000 cut to the Memphis/Shelby County Health Department. As a result, nine employees and four programs were lost: an adolescent pregnancy program; Parents Encouraging Parents, a support program for families of developmentally disabled children; alcohol and drug intake and case management; and a family outreach program geared toward Hispanic families. A syphilis elimination program and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) resources for low-income mothers have both been on the receiving end of federal cuts.

“When people hear that our budget is the same as it was last year, it is and it isn’t,” said Madlock last week, before the specter of new cuts reared itself. “Not that our situation is unique in county government, but ours is exacerbated by expansion, increased service level, and the mandate of providing health services.” One of those contractual obligations which has increased costs for the department is the agreement to provide health services at the county jails. A contract of $5.9 million for services for next year (which was deferred by the County Commission last week) includes funds for increased staffing levels and medication costs. Budget cuts will not affect jail services, but will have to be accounted for with service reductions in other areas.

Already the department has phased out an estimated 45 to 60 vacant positions. The county’s nursing staff has decreased from 117 nurses last year to 96 this year. Given the local budget proposal, some 15 to 20 more positions will be lost, all in the service delivery area. “I think the public will be aware of the cuts because every one of them is providing some kind of direct service and if you remove that level of staff from the workforce I think the value of their work goes away. These are not easy decisions and we will try to minimize the effect on the public, but we cannot say there will be no impact,” said Madlock.

Just how bad could the situation get? Madlock doesn’t know. Luckily, phase one of smallpox vaccinations has been completed, with a large number of nurses, doctors, and administrators prepared in case of an outbreak, and local cuts do not affect other immunization efforts. But with health emergencies — like the West Nile virus crisis of last year — always a possibility, a reduction in services could force administrators to petition all levels of government for more funding.

“We probably are at a point where some things that we’ve come to expect as routine services just won’t be there,” said Madlock. “These are adult decisions that we as an adult community have to live with.” — Janel Davis

Leaner and Meaner

Already squeezed hard by pending budget cuts, Sheriff Luttrell now faces more.

When Mark Luttrell ran for sheriff, his platform included overhauling the department into a lean and mean operation. Little did he know how lean it was going to get.

Under the provisional county budget proposed last week, the sheriff’s department stood to take an almost $8.5 million hit, a hit that Luttrell said would have a significant impact on the department.

“I am concerned,” Luttrell said last week of the cuts. “When we submitted our budget in the spring, we did it in good faith. We cut $19 million and 500 positions and now they’re asking us to come up with another $8.4 million.”

And that prognosis, dire as it was, did not even include the impact of new cuts that the loss of three cents from last week’s anticipated tax-rate increase will force.

The department remains one of the most expensive items on the county’s budget, but it also suffered a higher percentage of reductions from its original original budget. Even at the $123 million figure that was proposed last week, Luttrell faced a struggle.

He said the additional monies will have to come from cuts to personnel or operations, the bricks and mortar that help the division run effectively.

“It will be bread and butter type things that will have to be sacrificed,” said Luttrell. Things like not updating the department’s fleet of vehicles or its weapons. Luttrell says he already feels that the department doesn’t have all the equipment it needs in its patrol cars to make it as efficient as it could be.

“If we start cutting people,” said Luttrell, “it will cut back on our response time. It will cut down how much we can deal with drug issues and gang activity. We have officers in all the high schools in Shelby County. All those areas will be impacted.”

In a statement to the county commission last week, Luttrell said that with fewer deputy sheriffs, patrols would become more reactionary. More of the deputies’ time would be spent answering service calls rather than looking for people breaking the law.

“We’ve seen significant problems in the area of criminal behavior,” he said.

As an elected official, Luttrell could file a salary petition to have the court sanction the amount of staff he needs, but he says he probably won’t do so. “If we see our manpower decrease to the point that we can’t carry out our duties, we have that recourse. It’s an option. I want to avoid that if we can.”

One area that’s seemingly safe, so to speak, is the beleaguered Shelby County jail at 210 Poplar. Because of a mandate stemming from a 1996 federal court case, Luttrell had to go before federal court judge Jon McCalla before cutting personnel positions inside the jail last March. Both McCalla and the attorneys for the inmates agreed to the staffing reduction, but deputy jailers said it would make the jail more dangerous for staff.

“If we make any more cuts at the jail, it would unravel the sensitive arrangement we have with the federal court and I’m not willing to do that,” said Luttrell. “It would be financially catastrophic for the county.”

The sheriff hopes to get to a point where the jail and the department are running so efficiently that he can make additional cuts, but stresses that he’s not there yet. “In two or three years, if we stay on the plan, we’ll become more efficient and still meet the mandates of that court. To do that,” he said, “we need more training and better management. Cutting $8 million will not fix the problem. — Mary Cashiola

Categories
News

Those Curvaceous Greeks

I made it all the way through college without learning a thing about the ancient Greeks. It wasn’t because nobody was trying to teach me, and I did learn a few things here and there. But the people telling me that Greece was the high point of civilization, that Greece should somehow matter to me as a 20th-century American well, they seemed a bit out of touch to me, even if they may have been right. They were almost as bad as the English department asses who insisted I memorize the opening to The Canterbury Tales. I refused, flunked the class, and became a history major.

But after college I went on a trip that included Egypt and Greece. And while I admit that the first lines I wrote in my journal in Athens were about how good-looking the women were, I wound up thinking the ancient Greeks were onto something.

It certainly wasn’t the kind of crap that was in my guidebook, which read, in part, “There’s a message whistling ’round the ancient stones of Greece. Prepare for it, listen for it. Once you hear it, you are changed forever. In days to come, whenever petty, temporal irritations enter your life, you need only think of the stones of Greece to dispel them forthwith.”

These days, when I read those lines, I have to admire the hustler who got paid to write them. But when I was 23, my reaction was, “Why do people feel compelled to write like that?” Besides, I had just come from Egypt, and the ruins there make the ones in Greece look like well, my fellow travelers in the Athens hostel disparagingly called them “broken stuff.”

It’s funny, in fact, to go back and read what I wrote all those years ago. I described the Parthenon in my journal as “pretty impressive — plus the historical significance, I guess.” I also gave it credit for apparently having straight columns. No person can be as jaded as a young international traveler: “Parthenon? Did it.”

But what hit that earlier version of me, wandering 20-something that I was, were the caryatids. The caryatids were originally columns on a porch, but now they’re in the Acropolis Museum, which I recall otherwise as being one seriously dull place. And what is a caryatid? Well, it’s a woman. And that’s why they were so different from what I had seen.

Check out ancient Egyptian art sometime. Do the people even look like people? They’re tall and stiff, with their arms folded in front of them and one foot slightly ahead of the other, and the women basically look like the men.

But the caryatids are women. They’ve got long hair, robes, and breasts. They have curves. They look like real women, with feelings and grace and sexuality. In all my time in Greece, I didn’t see one painting of somebody singlehandedly squashing a horde of Hittites.

Looking at these women, I sensed that a light of understanding had come on. I looked around the Parthenon, and it all started to make sense to me. It’s about humanity. Egypt was all about the afterlife and power and the divinity of the ruler. The Greeks built theaters and had government-funded plays — for the public.

The Greeks built libraries and bathhouses, which I had already visited and dismissed as “broken stuff.” But they were places of leisure and pleasure, two words not associated with ancient Egypt.

Just down the hill from the Parthenon is the 17,000-seat Theater of Dionysus — Dionysus being the god of wine, whom the Greeks, according to my guidebook, celebrated with “ritual celebrations which included intoxication, orgies, human and animal sacrifices, and hysterical rampages by women called maenads. The most controversial practice involved uninhibited dancing and emotional displays that created an altered mental state known as ecstasis.”

To a 23-year-old who had, by this time, seen a few Grateful Dead shows, this was speaking my language. I had to wonder, though, why uninhibited dancing and emotional displays would be more controversial than human sacrifices.

Still, I couldn’t imagine the pharaoh sitting down for the latest exploration of human drama by some local playwright, much less an orgy and perhaps a hysterical rampage. It was obvious to me — as obvious as the Parthenon looming above me — that somewhere between ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, people had figured out that life, in large part, is about kicks.

I thought back to my college days and wondered why my haughty professors couldn’t have explained this to me. But they were outmatched by my indifference, and besides, some things you have to see for yourself. And I don’t mean see the Parthenon; I mean see the culture. I didn’t care anything about ancient Greek culture, even when I stood among its ruins and read about it in guidebooks — until I saw its curves.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Seventy Years Down the Drain

More than 50 members of the Maywood Homeowners Association applauded as Hugh Armistead described his plans to convert Maywood Beach into a planned subdivision and gated retirement community.

During the one-hour meeting held Tuesday night, June 30th, at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Olive Branch, Mississippi, not a single person objected to the closing of the pool, which has been a popular swimming and picnic spot for Mid-Southerners for more than 70 years.

Armistead, an attorney who has owned Maywood since 1987, explained, “Previous owners told me that the more people you have, the more money you make. Well, I discovered that the more people you have, the more risk you take, and the more problems you encounter.”

A developer named Maurice Woodson opened Maywood on July 4, 1931, naming the beach after his wife, Mae. The sand for the beaches was trucked in from Destin, Florida, and the pool, with its slides and waterspouts, was promoted as “the beach within reach.” Times have changed. Armistead mentioned “a huge amount of crime coming in” and alluded to the previous Sunday when a young man broke into a car in the parking lot. Police were called to quell the fight that broke out when the thief tried to escape by running across the beach. That incident, he said, convinced him to close the facility one day earlier than originally planned.

The other factor was the increasing liability. “We’ve had a remarkable safety record,” he said. “In the past 15 years, we’ve never had a loss of life or a major claim. But that pool is more difficult to [life]guard than the beaches on the coast. The sand gets stirred up and it’s hard to see into the water.”

Most places like Maywood are no longer privately owned because of limits on liability insurance, he explained. “If the city or state owned it, there would be a $250,000 cap on any lawsuit. That’s the law. But I could be hit with a $6 million suit.”

Armistead outlined his plans to convert the parking area into lots for nine homes. The pool will be filled in and converted into a retirement community with as many as 30 residences.

“My intent is to capture the feeling of Harbor Town,” he said. “I’ll have an architecture committee come up with design guidelines. But I’m going to do this right. I’m not going to do anything bad and then run off,” pointing out that he has lived in the area for 52 years.

“I think I’m speaking for everyone here when I say I’m glad to see this,” one homeowner responded, and his comments were met with applause. “It’s a real credit to our community. Every year, I’ve seen more and more people just driving around out here — not the kind of people who would be visiting, either. We’re lucky we haven’t had a crime spree.”

Residents asked questions about keeping the trees, extending water and sewer lines, and adding fire hydrants. One concern was Mirror Lake, which is replenished by runoff from the pool. Armistead said he wasn’t sure how the lake would be affected by his project.

Even so, everyone seemed pleased with the news. “I’d rather see a real community here than that pool any day,” said another resident.

That sentiment wasn’t echoed by visitors who came to Maywood the day before, expecting to splash in the pool one last time. Instead, they were greeted by a scrawled sign reading “WE ARE CLOSED” tied to the locked gate.

“Oh, the Woodsons must be turning over in their graves,” said one white-haired woman, peering over the wrought-iron fence. Workers dismantling a trampoline said that people had come by all day long, taking pictures of the Maywood sign and the pool, which had already been drained. “There were two women who drove here from Virginia,” said one fellow. “Some people even took off from work to be here on the last day.”

At the Tuesday meeting, Armistead said that selling Maywood wasn’t an option, nor was keeping it open. “It’s not that I just got sick of it and decided to close it,” he said. “That’s what I want y’all to understand.”

After the meeting ended, one young woman walking to her car said she didn’t understand. “He didn’t even try to advertise it,” she said, shaking her head. “He just wanted to close it. I’ve been swimming here for 17 years, and now I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Tzomvorgha

Ruins

(Ipecac/Magaibutsu)

Progressive rock has reached a weird critical apex when the Mars Volta grace hip fashion spreads. That band, an admittedly strange mix of Radiohead, Fugazi, Yes, and Fates Warning, enjoys attention based on looks and connections first (it’s fronted by the former afros in At The Drive-In) and sound second. The Ruins, I can almost assure you, are not very good-looking.

The Ruins have been plying an unclassifiable form of prog rock, mainly in their homeland of Japan, since 1985. They are a bass/drums duo that often manages to sound like 10 players instead, and that, combined with schizo time changes and shiny production, sets the Ruins apart from younger apprentices like Lightning Bolt.

Tzomvorgha is the Ruins’ 17th (that’s right, count ’em again, 17th) full-length release. No matter what flavor of bombast you prefer, you can take comfort in the assurance that the Ruins will get to it in a matter of seconds. If you hear an influence more than once, it might be Yes (albeit a confrontationally loud reading of Yes), the Minutemen, crossover thrash-metal, or likeminded buddies the Boredoms. The vocals, when they bother to have vocals, jump from operatic screams to the voice of a hyper, talking small animal or dwarf variety or in the case of “Wanzhemvergg,” a curious (and male) interpretation of a diva.

This album sounds like it’s smiling, and its playful genre-hopping frees Tzomvorgha from the confines of its poker-faced avant-garde noise community. After all, the Japanese have never taken their musical experimentation so seriously as to take the fun out of it. To prove this point, Tzomvorgha closes with both a reverse Black Sabbath medley and a two-minute Mahavishnu Orchestra medley. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B+

The Ruins will perform at the Hi-Tone CafÇ Tuesday, July 15th, with Adios Gringos and the Uninvited. This will be one of only six U.S. dates on their current tour.

Liz Phair

Liz Phair

(Capitol)

Okay, first things first: Despite all the furor that would have you believe that Liz Phair is a disaster on a par with, oh, Lauryn Hill Unplugged, Phair has already had her gargantuan disappointment. It was called Whip-Smart, and her fans gave her a pass for it because, like her debut masterpiece, Exile in Guyville, that sophomore slump was recorded for indie Matador and fit into the same aesthetic template.

So the outrage over Phair’s first record in five years isn’t just over its quality but over the fact that it’s a “sellout,” a major-label record that intentionally and purposefully rejects the strictures of indiedom and that has Phair palling around with professional song doctors (most notably, Avril Lavigne production team the Matrix).

I was pretty put off at first myself, mostly because Liz Phair sounds so different from Phair’s other records, with more conventional song structures, more generalized lyrics, and a less personal sound.

But it seems odd that anyone should take particular exception to this direction. Exile in Guyville itself was a love/hate letter to indie rock, and there was no reason to expect that Phair would still be trying to please that crowd in her mid-30s. She seems more comfortable in the role Liz Phair places her: as Sheryl Crow’s gal-pal and Avril Lavigne’s cool aunt.

So once I got past the sonic differences, my biggest disappoint wasn’t that Liz Phair isn’t more like Exile in Guyville, that it isn’t confessional/confrontational, but that it isn’t more like 1998’s Whitechocolatespaceegg.

The outrageously underrated Whitechocolatespaceegg (its title a reference to Phair’s then new-born son) boasts crystalline songwriting with a healthy focus on the lives of others, and I miss that record’s artistic ambitions, the richness of its cast of characters. But if that record was a product of a life change –Liz Phair as married mom –then Liz Phair is an artistic reintroduction determined by yet another life change: It’s a return to single life presaged by Whitechocolatespaceegg‘s brutal divorce song “Go On Ahead.”

Liz Phair‘s best song, and most atypical, is an acknowledgement that grounds the sex-positive dating songs that surround it: On “Little Digger,” Phair’s son finds her in bed with a man who isn’t daddy, setting up a tough, questioning chorus. This crucial fact of life established, the rest of Liz Phair, the best of it anyway, goes on to claim a life for its author, and whaddya know, Phair has plenty of wisdom to impart to Avril and more than a few tricks that Sheryl could learn from too.

“Extraordinary” and “Love/Hate Transmission” are audience songs, rejecting expectations, paradoxically embracing the freedom Phair gets from her chart-pop bid. But the sex songs, unsurprisingly, are the best. The faux-generic should-be single “Rock Me” (over the actually generic real lead single “Why Can’t I”) has had more than a few shots taken at it, its tale of a fuck-and-run relationship with a sweet, dumb, video-game-playing twentysomething a metaphor for Phair’s musical courtship of the mall-pop crowd, except that it’s such a knowing metaphor (“Your record collection don’t exist/You don’t even know who ‘Liz Phair’ is,” she enthuses). “Favorite” is a silly/astute metaphor — lover as comfy undergarment — that works so well Shakira’s probably already mapping out her cover version. “My Bionic Eyes” could make Phair the smartest, toughest sex goddess in Clear Channel heavy-rotation. And the “H.W.C.” (“hot white cum”) isn’t “dirrty” so much as real, a sexed-up goof (the title refrain chanted over girl-group handclaps and a harmonica hook) more Sex and the City than Xtina and Britney. — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Run to Ruin

Nina Nastasia

(Touch and Go)

Nina Nastasia has a great voice — strong, evocative, dusky, and sultry. So what? There’s an army of gifted female singers with tremendous voices and little to no songwriting skills — from Edith Frost to Neko Case to Norah Jones — and some of them are becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart.

If her physical voice is typically atypical, Nastasia’s writing sets her apart. On her dirgelike third album, Run to Ruin, she displays a unique gift for evoking specific situations in few words. On “You, Her & Me,” Nastasia describes a drug-hazed road trip to the beach, during which a friend — the “her” in the title — overdoses: “Stay in the conversation while she’s in the rear seat/Maybe she’s not listening to us/The thoughts in her hands are distracting enough.” Then, begrudgingly, “I walk to a pay phone, call for an ambulance, hate her like nobody knows.”

When story is less emphasized, the songs suffer. In “On Teasing,” a woman drowns, but Nastasia’s pretentious approach pushes toward melodrama even as it robs the event of meaning: “‘Be you coddled or cocky, I’ll have you for eats!’ cries the great sea, and drags her below by her feet.”

In all of these songs, something gets lost as Nastasia translates the words into music. Perhaps her particular poetry is better suited to a chapbook than an album. —Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Categories
Music Music Features

Justified Comparison

Grizzlies season-ticket-holder Justin Timberlake claims Memphis in the opening moments of Justified, his late-2002-released solo debut, so does that mean the city can claim him right back? Of course, as much as civic boosters might want to add Timberlake to the portfolio, doing so would be a bit disingenuous. He may call Millington home, but Timberlake’s career has a lot more to do with Orlando, and, more importantly, his music is purely mass-media, chart-pop progeny in which geography is totally irrelevant.

Besides, as Justified makes clear, the musical King that Timberlake is interested in emulating isn’t a product of Graceland but Neverland. Justified is a blue-eyed answer to Michael Jackson’s 1979 coming-out party Off the Wall, its intended homage telegraphed by admittedly silly liner photos that show Timberlake sartorially outfitted and posed to evoke vintage Jacko images. The good news — as a week of comparison listening has convinced this critic at least — is that Justified is the rare wannabe to match its model.

The comparison of the two records is unavoidable: Young, coltish male pop-star breaks from Svengali-driven teen-pop group that had been dominated by his presence (Jackson actually released several solo albums between his Jackson 5 stint and Off the Wall, but that album was both his first as an adult and his first outside of Motown) and teams up with super-producer(s) of the day (for Jackson, Quincy Jones; for Timberlake, Timbaland and the Neptunes, who produced 11 of 13 tracks) for a disco-fied bid for adulthood that happily turns into both a commercial sensation and a great album.

You might argue that Timberlake’s vocal precocity is the result of his background as a showbiz kid (a product of Star Search, The Mickey Mouse Club, and the Orlando teen-pop factory) rather than a result of any actual life experience, but how does that make him any different from Jackson? Timberlake is no match for the young Jackson as a pure singer, his vocal instrument lacking the same ear-popping quality. But, if anything, Timberlake delivers the cagier and more personable vocal performance when it comes to selling a song or a persona, deftly deploying a deep vocabulary of tricks and affectations: asides, chuckles, falsetto sighs, cracked-voice ache, spoken-word over a beat, dynamic flourishes.

Some of Justified‘s finer vocal moments are borderline cutesy and probably certain to turn off listeners predisposed to dismiss him: the way he dips into falsetto to sing the girls’ part of the male/female call-and-response on “Senorita” and the little chuckle after “Gentleman, good night. Ladies good mornin'” on the same song, the shout of “drums!” near the fade on “Like I Love You,” and the soft-spoken-word that ends “Take It from Here.” But these are moments more in line with the Jackson of “I’ll Be There” than Off the Wall, a more erotic update of Jackson’s preternaturally skilled vocal gravitas.

Though Justified scores big all over — Timberlake delivering a credible Missy Elliott impersonation on “Right for Me,” negotiating Timbaland’s Eastern rhythms on “(Oh No) What You Got,” asserting his vocal personality amid a Neptunes production that would bury a lesser artist on “Like I Love You” — it stakes its claim as an honest-to-goodness great album with a three-song suite in the middle.

This section begins with the lovely ballad “Take It from Here” (a change of pace Ö la Off the Wall‘s “She’s Out of My Life”), a confection so airy that it might be more worthy of DeBarge than Jackson. This is the track that most gives the lie to the somewhat popular theory that Justified is Timberlake as marionette, merely a product of Timbaland and the Neptunes’ creative genius. In this case, Timberlake’s relatively gentle persona seems to have driven the production, a swooning bed of strings and acoustic guitars that is more romantic than the Neptunes have ever sounded before, indeed more shameless in its elevation of beauty over attitude than seemed conceivable. (And put across with such aplomb that the song survives some of the record’s clunkiest lyrics: “Let’s fly away to Sweden/Through the Garden of Eden.”)

The sequence is capped with another Neptunes track, the pure disco bliss of “Rock Your Body,” which might be a knowing reference to the Off the Wall standout “Rock with You,” the feverish rhythm-guitar that drives the Neptunes’ track seemingly the sonic cousin of the same feature on Jones’ original, with Timberlake riding the undeniable groove as effortlessly as Jackson.

But it’s the middle song in this sequence that might set Justified apart. “Cry Me a River” (yep, the Britney Spears kiss-off single from last fall) is one of those dense, extraordinary Timbaland productions, a bittersweet symphony composed of rain sound effects, grave and ethereal sampled intro vocals, electro-classical melodic riffs, beat-box-like vocal snippets, skittery drums, and chantlike backup vocals, all adding up to a sonic maelstrom similar to but even more dramatic than Timbaland’s Aaliyah masterpiece “Are You That Somebody?” This is “teen-pop” turned avant garde, in which Timberlake plays an aggrieved lover turned bitter and menacing, with Timbaland as the devil perched on his shoulder. If Justified were modeled on Prince rather than Jackson, “Cry Me a River” would be its “When Doves Cry,” because there’s no precedent for it on Off the Wall, and it’s sure a lot weirder and scarier than Thriller‘s “Billie Jean.”

Timberlake closes the record with an unbearably schmaltzy Brian McKnight ballad, as bad as anything *NSYNC ever recorded, as if to leave the listener with a little bit of doubt. But if any more evidence were needed to confirm the outrageous success of his transition from teen-pop pin-up to adult artist, Timberlake chose wisely in a tourmate. By sharing a bill with Christina Aguilera

for his homecoming concert this week at The Pyramid, the

effortlessness of Timberlake’s emergence will only be underscored by the desperate awkwardness of Aguilera’s similar attempt at career transformation.

Those looking for an embodiment of teen-pop growing pains or rooting for a pop tart to fall flat will have to settle for Aguilera, because, unlikely as it may seem, Timberlake has already leapt past such questions.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Thanks for the Mammaries

To the Editor:

As one of the owners of Lost In Paradise, I feel that it is necessary to assure our public and all code officials that our store does not sell “outits” (Fly on the Wall, June 26th issue). Regardless of Elite Memphis‘ obviously extensive knowlege of such things, I’m not sure that such an item even exists. Furthermore, I will make it a store policy never to sell such things should they become a fashion in the future. Any outit-type apparel that leaves our store will have been made so strictly by the customer’s own creative interpretation of how an otherwise-intended garment can be worn.

All nonsense aside, please allow me to clarify to your readers that we have a golden reputation in Memphis for carrying a variety of fine clothing for women of all ages and most sizes.

Tom Walton

Co-Owner, Lost In Paradise

Memphis

Dean’s Got Game

To the Editor:

I’d like to thank Jackson Baker for visiting our fund-raising party for Howard Dean, and for mentioning our event (Politics, July 3rd issue). However, I urge him to rethink his conclusion that our “spottily attended” neighborhood meeting in honor of Dr. Dean’s candidacy means that his outlook in Tennessee is “marginal.”

How many other candidates for president have inspired people — ordinary, non-politico types — to begin meeting monthly this far in advance of the primary season? How many other candidates have grassroots representatives showing up at local Democrat meetings wearing buttons, shaking hands, and talking up their candidate? How many other candidates have devoted followers who are taking the initiative to generate interest locally, without a paid staff and without direct supervision from the national organization? None but Dr. Howard Dean.

Dean’s message has stirred us to get involved. Finally, we have a candidate who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, who doesn’t sugarcoat his message for easy digestibility, and who stands by his convictions clearly and unequivocally.

The number of Dean supporters has grown steadily since the first group of six diehards met back in February. Our July meeting boasted more than 50 people. Fifty people won’t change the world, but 50 people who each talk to three or four other people can suddenly turn into a vibrant movement. And that’s exactly what’s happening. We are talking to our friends, writing to the papers, calling the talk shows, passing out flyers at local events, raising funds, reaching out to others who are fed up with the lies of the Bush cabal, and spreading the good news of Howard Dean to everyone who will listen. That is grassroots activity at its finest, and that’s far more than any other candidate has going on. Including the incumbent.

The doctor is in. Watch out.

Brian Mott

Memphis

Fire Hazards

To the Editor:

Although I do not particularly care for fireworks (Buzz Poll, July 3rd issue), I think there is a place for them. I live in Cooper-Young, where most of the houses are old and basically tinder boxes. There was a jerk down the street setting off bottle rockets and aiming them in my direction.

If one of these rockets had hit in the wrong area, the entire block could have gone up in flames.

I do not feel that people have the right to endanger lives and homes. If they want to go out in the country and shoot them, fine. But to shoot them in a tightly packed area such as Cooper-Young is extremely dangerous and should be illegal. I am not a prude or a bitch, but I don’t want my car — or my flowers — burned.

Sandra Zepik

Memphis

Dang

To the Editor:

Never again will I read your biased publication!!!!

Ran W. Foster

Memphis

The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Reporter

In Hot Water

City council to examine outdoor vendor ordinance.

By Mary Cashiola

“Everybody knows me over there,” 71-year-old Cassie Cannon says of the Lamar- Airways Shopping Center. “Even babies who are just starting to walk. They know me. I’m the snow cone man.”

For six years, Cannon set up shop every weekend at the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center, selling everything from candy to snow cones to corn dogs out of his truck. He says he had more customers than Kentucky Fried Chicken and never had a complaint once in all that time. But now the truck sits in his driveway.

Early last fall, the city decided to turn up the heat on street vendors and began to enforce a 1992 ordinance. Almost ever since, Cannon’s truck has been grounded. In November, after being cited by the health department, Cannon went in front of Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter and was told to cease operations until the city changed the ordinance.

City councilman Myron Lowery isn’t necessarily trying to do that, but he does think the council should have a discussion about the ordinance. Earlier in the year, Lowery proposed several changes to the ordinance, but they were met with objections from both code enforcement and the health department. Lowery says he can see the issue from both points of view, as well as that of the street vendor’s.

“It’s a difficult question. Store owners who pay rent and utilities are opposed to having vendors outside their doors,” he said at a recent council meeting. “I think it’s something we need to look at.”

Cannon, a retired city sanitation department worker, says he needs to sell concessions to make ends meet and that he’s open to inspection from anybody, anytime. “All we want is a year-round permit. … The shotgun they used was they don’t want you cooking in public, but they’re doing the same thing at the fair. They’re doing the same thing at Memphis in May. What’s wrong with mine?”

Shirley Shack wants the same thing: a vendor’s permit. Last week, Shack went to the Essence Festival in New Orleans. Shack, who bought an $800 permit from the city to sell turkey legs and corn dogs, had been to the festival twice before and called it “very lucrative.”

“You make five to 10 times the money you put in. At least five,” she said.

Shack, who has been a vendor for 10 years, sees it as a win-win situation for both the vendors and the city. “In Atlanta, for the Olympics, the city charged vendors $1,000. There were 5,000 vendors, so the city made $5 million for that one event in Atlanta. The Essence Festival in New Orleans is a huge event,” she said. “They have 2,000 vendors coming, so they’re making $1.6 million. You get the picture. If Memphis says it’s okay, we would pay the money.”

For the Lewis/Tyson fight June in 2002, Shack rented a space from the owner of a parking lot near The Pyramid to sell her products. She says that is the sort of thing the vendors want to see allowed.

“We’re not asking to set up on the street corner,” Shack said. “We want to set up on private property. That’s what they’re forgetting.”

The council is expected to discuss the matter in committee on July 15th.

Beat It!

Pervert on the prowl in Evergreen?

By Mary Cashiola

Since January, the owner of a house on Avalon has been scared to leave her house in the morning. When she did in early May, for instance, she found the top of her 1993 Nissan dented and a used condom lying on the windshield.

She is one of several women in the Evergreen area who have been victims of harassment and exhibitionism in the past year. Although one suspect was identified in May, victims say another younger man has apparently taken his place.

“He knocks on the door or rings the bell and then he masturbates on the porch,” says B.J. Massengale, an Evergreen resident. “He’s not afraid of anything. He’s not afraid of people or the dog. Last night he was here around midnight.”

Massengale says the original late-night visits began two years ago and happen maybe once or twice a week.

“The little old ladies over here are all petrified. There’s a 78-year-old woman who opened one of her doors while he was doing his thing,” said Massengale. The man then made several obscene statements to the homeowner.

According to police incident reports, an exhibitionist has been spotted on both Avalon and Tutwiler in the past few months, and Massengale says residents on Evergreen, Jackson, and Willett have also been hit.

“We’ve called the police each time and they always come and search the neighborhood. They’ve told us to try to get a picture,” said Massengale. “The last two times they haven’t written down our names or anything because they know us.”

The resident on Avalon said she’s been targeted for eight months, usually on holidays, and it’s enough to make her want to move. “He doesn’t hit the men [who live] on the street or the couples. It’s just the women, so we know he’s watching us.”

She says he usually bangs on her doors and windows in the middle of the night and she’ll usually yell at him to go away.

“The time he dented my car and left the condom full of semen, I heard him but I was tired. I just thought, ‘Oh, it’s the pervert again,'” she said. “[The police] said I could have him arrested for denting the top of my car, but that was it.”

Memphis police are investigating this situation. They advise residents not to open their door to strangers.

Getting Wild

E! party show to feature Memphis.

By Bianca Phillips

Locals know Memphis can be a hot place to party, but E! Entertainment plans to let others in on the secret when they air an edition of a party travel show featuring the Bluff City.

Wild On!, a television travel guide for party-goers, features clips of people romping around popular nightspots. The show usually focuses on the obvious hotspots, such as Costa Rica or Miami, but producers are currently working with Budweiser on a special “Bud Rocks” series that will highlight four rock bands and their hometowns. The Memphis segment will feature a performance by Saliva, as well as a tour around town with frontman Josey Scott.

After filming the Saliva footage, the show’s producer brought in host Cindy Taylor (left) to showcase the local nightlife scene. Footage was shot at Club 152, Raiford’s Hollywood Disco, Alfred’s, and Pat O’Brien’s.

“I’d never been to Memphis, and I actually only had two days to set this up,” said producer Jeremy Berman. “It helped going around with Josey Scott. He suggested Raiford’s. But I asked everyone, from cabbies to people just hanging around.”

The Memphis segment will fill half of a one-hour episode that will air later this year.

Satellite Launched

New community court opens in Orange Mound.

By Janel Davis

Beginning Thursday, residents of Orange Mound will get their own community court to handle environmental problems. The newest environmental court satellite location is the fourth of its kind begun by presiding judge Larry Potter.

“I always wanted to go to this area because there is so much community involvement,” said Potter. “These types of courts are only successful in areas where residents are willing to do something about the problems.”

The court will be housed in the Senior Citizen Center on Douglass Avenue and will be in session the second and fourth Thursday of each month from 1:30 p.m. until the docket is cleared. More than 15 cases are already set for Thursday’s docket. Potter will hear code violations brought by various agencies including the police department, fire department, and zoning and building code departments.

Thursday’s opening session completes a three-year effort by Potter, community residents, and city councilwoman Janet Hooks to establish the court. Potter said the process was delayed due to his health issues and difficulty finding a suitable location.

In addition to the satellite locations, Potter hears environmental and traffic cases in the main courtroom at 201 Poplar. The Orange Mound court joins those in Frayser and Whitehaven which meet twice a month, and the Millington court which meets the first Thursday of every month. If caseload is an indication, these satellite locations have been successful. Potter will hear a record 76 cases during the next Whitehaven session, which averages 30-40 cases. The Frayser location averages 20-30 cases each session.

Categories
News News Feature

CITY BEAT

NO WAY OUT?

This week’s property tax hike is too much, and property owners will flee to neighboring counties. Or it’s not enough, and services will suffer. Nobody’s happy.

For starters, the rhetoric is overheated. The sky isn’t falling. The proposed 25-cent hike in the tax rate amounts to a few Grizzlies tickets or an evening at the casinos to most homeowners. In May, Fitch Ratings assigned a AA rating to Shelby County’s $153 million general obligation debt and affirmed its AA rating on $1.22 billion in outstanding bonds. Fitch Ratings spokesman Mitch Burkhard said AA means the county has very high credit quality and strong capacity for payment of debt.

“Shelby County’s AA general obligation bond rating is based on a deep, diverse, expanding economy, manageable debt burden, and sound historical finances,” says the May report. “Concerns about fiscal stability, which abated in the last few years, have been renewed. These concerns are somewhat offset by the county’s past track record of raising revenues and controlling expenditures to meet challenges of similar magnitude, but maintenance of the county’s strong long-term rating will rely on the resumption of stable financial operations.”

The trend is bad. Memphis property taxes are 60 percent higher than Nashville’s. With the proposed increase, homeowners will pay a combined city and county property tax rate of $7.27. The rate in Nashville is $4.58. Property taxes on a $200,000 Nashville home: $2,290. A $200,000 Memphis home: $3,635.

Comparisons between Memphis and Nashville are old hat, but lately the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce, not exactly a bunch of naysayers, has noted a couple of unflattering ones. In 1980, Memphis was the largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, but now Nashville is. The Chamber says Nashville has a better image to outsiders and gets more new residents than Memphis, where growth is mostly due to births.

The tax base is shrinking in Memphis and growing in Nashville. Memphis has more people on TennCare, more people in jail, more failing schools. Nashville is catching the high-profile companies. In June, Nissan North America announced that it is moving production of its Pathfinder SUVs from Japan to just outside of Nashville, bringing an estimated 1,500 new permanent jobs to the area.

Shelby County has done the easy things, like refinancing its long-term debt wherever it can to take advantage of low interest rates.

“The county’s overall cost of borrowing is just under five percent,” says Jim Huntzicker, director of finance and administration. “For the most part, older higher cost bond issues have been refunded and cannot be refunded again.”

The county plans to refinance two issues that carry an interest rate over five percent, saving about one percent on $150 million and less than a penny on the tax rate.

The administration says a 16.5 percent cut from every division of county government would make a tax increase unnecessary. The commission scuttled that.

Commissioners John Willingham and Diedre Malone suggest a payroll tax, but the last time it was proposed (by the City Council) FedEx launched an all-out assault against it.

At least four suggestions have been made to cash in on unusual public assets.

  • The city could sell Memphis Light Gas & Water, raising an estimated $800 million and triggering a cut in city property taxes. Mayor Herenton proposed this in 1999 and was roundly criticized, but if city taxes went down, the city could take over some county expenses, just as it geographically takes over parts of the county by annexation.
  • A Pyramid casino, taxed at the 12 percent rate that Mississippi and Tunica tax their casinos, would raise at least $25 million a year. But the state legislature and possibly the Tennessee Supreme Court would have to take favorable action first. The Detroit News reports that Detroit gets $170 million, or 10 percent of its general fund budget, from taxes and fees on three casinos opened since 1999 to compete with one in Canada.
  • Selling or leasing 10 percent of Shelby Farms (450 acres) could result in a one-time windfall or annual lease payments of $1 million or more, say suburban developers. No other urban county has such a big piece of undeveloped land at its center.
  • The county has one more “asset” it could put in play: the jail. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest private prison company in America. Its headquarters are in Nashville. Its chief executive, John Ferguson, is a former Shelby County resident and former Tennessee commissioner of finance under Gov. Don Sundquist. CCA operates several municipal correctional facilities, including the Metro Detention Facility in Nashville and the jail in Tulsa, Okla., which used to be run by the sheriff. With 1,400 inmates, the Tulsa jail is the largest private city jail in the country.

    Tulsa pays CCA $45.81 per inmate per day. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office budget, which includes law enforcement as well as the jail, is $134 million.

    All of these ideas are dismissed as wacky or politically unrealistic or both. But the reality is, other cities are doing them while Shelby County continues to raise property taxes on a shrinking tax base.

    • Categories
    News News Feature

    CITY BEAT

    NO WAY OUT?

    This week’s property tax hike is too much, and property owners will flee to neighboring counties. Or it’s not enough, and services will suffer. Nobody’s happy.

    For starters, the rhetoric is overheated. The sky isn’t falling. The proposed 25-cent hike in the tax rate amounts to a few Grizzlies tickets or an evening at the casinos to most homeowners. In May, Fitch Ratings assigned a AA rating to Shelby County’s $153 million general obligation debt and affirmed its AA rating on $1.22 billion in outstanding bonds. Fitch Ratings spokesman Mitch Burkhard said AA means the county has very high credit quality and strong capacity for payment of debt.

    “Shelby County’s AA general obligation bond rating is based on a deep, diverse, expanding economy, manageable debt burden, and sound historical finances,” says the May report. “Concerns about fiscal stability, which abated in the last few years, have been renewed. These concerns are somewhat offset by the county’s past track record of raising revenues and controlling expenditures to meet challenges of similar magnitude, but maintenance of the county’s strong long-term rating will rely on the resumption of stable financial operations.”

    The trend is bad. Memphis property taxes are 60 percent higher than Nashville’s. With the proposed increase, homeowners will pay a combined city and county property tax rate of $7.27. The rate in Nashville is $4.58. Property taxes on a $200,000 Nashville home: $2,290. A $200,000 Memphis home: $3,635.

    Comparisons between Memphis and Nashville are old hat, but lately the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce, not exactly a bunch of naysayers, has noted a couple of unflattering ones. In 1980, Memphis was the largest metropolitican area in Tennessee, but now Nashville is. The Chamber says Nashville has a better image to outsiders and gets more new residents than Memphis, where growth is mostly due to births.

    The tax base is shrinking in Memphis and growing in Nashville. Memphis has more people on TennCare, more people in jail, more failing schools. Nashville is catching the high-profile companies. In June, Nissan North America announced that it is moving production of its Pathfinder SUVs from Japan to just outside of Nashville, bringing an estimated 1,500 new permanent jobs to the area.

    Shelby County has done the easy things, like refinancing its long-term debt wherever it can to take advantage of low interest rates.

    “The county’s overall cost of borrowing is just under five percent,” says Jim Huntzicker, director of finance and administration. “For the most part, older higher cost bond issues have been refunded and cannot be refunded again.”

    The county plans to refinance two issues that carry an interest rate over five percent, saving about one percent on $150 million and less than a penny on the tax rate.

    The administration says a 16.5 percent cut from every division of county government would make a tax increase unnecessary. The commission scuttled that.

    Commissioners John Willingham and Diedre Malone suggest a payroll tax, but the last time it was proposed (by the City Council) FedEx launched an all-out assault against it.

    At least four suggestions have been made to cash in on unusual public assets.

  • The city could sell Memphis Light Gas & Water, raising an estimated $800 million and triggering a cut in city property taxes. Mayor Herenton proposed this in 1999 and was roundly criticized, but if city taxes went down, the city could take over some county expenses, just as it geographically takes over parts of the county by annexation.
  • A Pyramid casino, taxed at the 12 percent rate that Mississippi and Tunica tax their casinos, would raise at least $25 million a year. But the state legislature and possibly the Tennessee Supreme Court would have to take favorable action first. The Detroit News reports that Detroit gets $170 million, or 10 percent of its general fund budget, from taxes and fees on three casinos opened since 1999 to compete with one in Canada.
  • Selling or leasing 10 percent of Shelby Farms (450 acres) could result in a one-time windfall or annual lease payments of $1 million or more, say suburban developers. No other urban county has such a big piece of undeveloped land at its center.
  • The county has one more “asset” it could put in play: the jail. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest private prison company in America. Its headquarters are in Nashville. Its chief executive, John Ferguson, is a former Shelby County resident and former Tennessee commissioner of finance under Gov. Don Sundquist. CCA operates several municipal correctional facilities, including the Metro Detention Facility in Nashville and the jail in Tulsa, Okla., which used to be run by the sheriff. With 1,400 inmates, the Tulsa jail is the largest private city jail in the country.

    Tulsa pays CCA $45.81 per inmate per day. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office budget, which includes law enforcement as well as the jail, is $134 million.

    All of these ideas are dismissed as wacky or politically unrealistic or both. But the reality is, other cities are doing them while Shelby County continues to raise property taxes on a shrinking tax base.

    • Categories
    News News Feature

    HOW IT LOOKS