Month: April 2014

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News News Blog

U of M Receives $10,000 NCAA Grant For Student-Athlete Program

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It’s no guarantee that student-athletes will go to the pros after graduating from college.

For athletes at the University of Memphis who don’t make it to the big leagues upon graduation, chances of securing a decent job may now be greater thanks to a $10,000 NCAA grant recently awarded to the school. The grant will be used to develop a career readiness program.

The U of M was one of six universities selected out of a pool of nearly 140 applicants to create a program that helps more of its student-athletes obtain employment once their college career is over. The grant is a part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) 2014 Innovations in Research and Practice Grant Program.

Due to demanding schedules, student-athletes may be at a disadvantage in developing experiential learning opportunities, according to a U of M press release. Students are required to attend numerous practice and conditioning sessions, team meetings, and travel regularly to away games; all of these factors cause them to miss classes, limits their study time, and reduces their chances for securing internships.

With the grant, a U of M research team has created a four-stage program for student-athletes that includes entrepreneurship training, project-based learning, workplace readiness training, and a practicum with a community partner, according to the press release. The research team plans to develop and pilot the program this summer.

The $10,000 grant was awarded to a U of M collective comprised of Dr. Tim Ryan, associate professor of sport and leisure management in the Department of Health and Sport Sciences; Bob Baker, director of the Center for Athletic Academic Services; Kelly Penwell, director of the Experiential Learning Lab; and Dr. Richard Irwin, associate dean of the University College and overseer of the Experiential Learning Lab.

To measure effectiveness of the U of M’s program, participants’ career readiness will be measured before and after program participation, according to a U of M press release.

Aside from the U of M, researchers at The University of Michigan, Stanford University, Springfield College, Utah State, and Purdue University. Each entity will conduct a different form of research with their grants. Other aspects include the study of parental involvement in athletes’ collegiate careers, improving student-athlete mental health, athlete imagery, and support groups for injured athletes.

Grant recipients will present their research at the NCAA convention in Washington, D.C., in January 2015.

Categories
News News Blog

Council Members Want Budget Cuts for Higher Pension Payments

Some Memphis City Council members want to pay the city’s pension deficit quicker than the plan suggested by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and, in the first day of council budget talks, began to whittle down the mayor’s budget to make it happen.

The city is supposed to pay a set amount each year to ensure the retirement system is whole. Those payments skyrocketed when the recession took a $450 million bite out of the city’s pension fund. But the council didn’t make the higher payments. Instead they made the same payments they made before the recession. But thanks to a new state law, the council now has five years to begin making the full annual payments.

Wharton’s administration put forth a plan to ramp up payments over the next five years and would pay an additional $15 million this year for a total of $35 million.

Strickland

  • Strickland

But council members Shea Flinn and Jim Strickland said Tuesday they want to pay a total of $60 million to the pension fund this year. Strickland said Wharton’s proposal to ramp up the payments would make the problem bigger over time.

“It’s going to be really hard and a we have some really difficult choices ahead of us,” Flinns said in a budget hearing Tuesday. “The reality is, if we drag this out, the public is going to see a much larger debt and a much larger tax increase.”

Flinn

  • Flinn

Tuesday’s hearings were the first opportunity for council members to weigh in on Wharton’s budget, which he presented to them three weeks ago. As the hearings began, Flinn and Strickland quickly started cutting the budget and funneling the savings to the city’s pensions payments.

The two proposed cutting new positions, travel budgets, funds for seminars and conferences, catering, and more. The budget committee approved many of those cuts, which wouldn’t become reality until the full council votes on the overall budget in late June.

Wharton has suggested changes to the city’s health care benefits, which would yield savings of about $30 million. His plan would put $15 million of those savings to the pension fund. The other $15 million would go to a reserve fund that could be used by the council to pay for emergency public safety items in the next year. Flinn and Strickland said they want at least $10 million of the proposed reserved public safety fund to go to the pension fund.

They brought their ideas to the council hearings not in writing but in spoken amendments that warranted immediate votes by council rules. This confused council member Wanda Halbert who said she wanted the information in writing.

“I haven’t talked to any of you and I haven’t talked to the administration about (these ideas),” Halbert said. “I’m not a finance guru or a legal expert so to sit at this table and have these things going on….You are asking us to vote on things that haven’t come to us yet. I’m not comfortable with that. It’s not fair.”

Flinn and Strickland said they’d continue to propose the small cuts to every division’s budget during the months-long budget process. Or, they said they’d be willing to negotiate with Wharton on a more wholesale plan to increase the pension payments.

“This is not kicking the can down the road,” Flinn said. “This is grabbing the bull by the horns.”

Categories
News

Memphis Restaurant Association Fighting Stealth Amendment by Todd

The Memphis Restaurant Association is pushing back hard against a last-minute amendment to a bill by Collierville Republican state representative Curry Todd. Details here.

Categories
Opinion The BruceV Blog

Memphis Restaurant Association Urges Veto of “COD” Bill

Representative Curry Todd (R-Collierville) has ticked off the Memphis Restaurant Association big-time. According to an MRA email alert, Todd attached an amendment lobbied for by wholesale liquor distributors to a non-related bill dealing with wineries. The amendment requires COD payment for any liquor delivered to restaurants, instead of the current 10-day window allowed for payment.

Below is the full text of the MRA email:

MRA Member,

On behalf of MRA President, Patrick Reilly, and the Board of Directors, we ask you to please take action TODAY!

Please reach out to the Governor and ask him to “VETO” HB 2027 / SB 2415 – At the bottom of this email you can click on the link to send a “Veto” letter. The amended version of the bill, specifically amendment number three restricts the terms of payment from restaurants and hotels to wholesalers so that the wholesalers are guaranteed payment at the time of delivery of alcoholic beverages. The old rule / current law allows for 10 days to pay for the liquor.

The amended bill is unanimously and vigorously opposed by the Tennessee Hospitality and Tourism Association (TnHTA). Since the creation of the three tier system, restaurants and hotels have had a ten day window by which to pay invoices to the wholesalers. This ten day window is critical to the industry and especially to smaller operators with limited purchasing power. Please contact the Governor office and ask for him to “Veto” HB 2027 / SB 2415. letter from the association:

Governor’s Office Contact Info:

Email: bill.haslam@tn.gov

Phone: 615-741-2001

Intro & Background:

During the last days of the legislative session, the liquor wholesale lobby attached an amendment by Representative Curry Todd onto a piece of legislation related to manufactures of distilled spirits.

The amendment says:
“In order to facilitate the prompt payment of state taxes imposed upon wholesalers, payment for all sales to any licensee holding a license under this part by a wholesaler shall be made upon delivery of the product and shall be made by electronic funds transfer, credit card, debit card, or such other method as approved by the commission that will facilitate full payment at or near the time of delivery.”

The amendment applies only to liquor by the drink establishments and replaces the old “ten day rule,” which read, “No holder of a license for the sale of alcoholic beverages for wholesale or retail shall sell, deliver, or cause, permit or procure to be sold or delivered, any alcoholic beverages on credit, except that holders of wholesale licenses may sell on not more than ten (10) days’ credit.”

Talking Points:

1. During the last days of session, the liquor wholesale lobby (potentially a few of the larger ones) attached an amendment by Representative Curry Todd onto HB2027 / SB2415 related to wineries. This was done with no discussion between the affected parties and without any discussion in committee, which is the normal transparent procedure. In fact, the amendment was described on the floor of the House as affecting the ways that payments could be made to the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The passage of this amendment will completely change the landscape of relations between wholesalers and retailers with a grand total of 15 seconds of debate on the House floor. It is clear that there was no open and full debate about this amendment.

2. There was no discussion with TnHTA or any of our Restaurant or Hotel members on how this could affect the hospitality industry. Since the creation of the three tier system, restaurants and hotels have had a ten day window by which to pay invoices to the wholesalers. This ten day window is critical to the industry and especially to smaller operators with limited purchasing power. This bill huts small businesses that are the backbone of the TN economy.

3. There was no agreement from anyone in our industry for any changes to the current process.

4. The amended bill treats restaurants and hotels differently from retail package stores, a change that is fundamentally unfair for businesses that sell the same liquor products.

5. The amended bill places into law contractual matters between two private parties. The TnHTA believes that if changes to these provisions of law are to be made, they should seek to lessen state involvement in private contracts, not require more onerous terms.

6. Some liquor wholesalers contend they did not know about the change – if that is true, ask them to help you as their customer and ask for the Governor to “Veto” the bill.

7. Overall, we are asking for the Governor to “Veto” HB2027/SB2415 and we are asking for immediate relief on this issue. This only hurts an industry that is the second largest in Tennessee and creates more than $16 billion dollars in economic impact, employs over 270,000 Tennesseans and pays more than $1 Billion in taxes to the government.

These are general talking points – also please reach out to your wholesalers and put the heat on them. Thank you for your help.

Greg Adkins

CEO/President

Tennessee Hospitality & Tourism Association

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Memphis Writer Hopes to Join the Hunt for a Lost Spanish Galleon

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Fly on the Wall tries to be many things for many people. In addition to posting real news so weird it seems fake and fake news so obvious it seems real, we also tell the occasional joke, trend spot cool things, and highlight bits of wonderful Memphisness that might otherwise fall between the cracks. Once in a while our bloggers like to spotlight the magnificent obsessions that drive our fellow Memphians to do the kinds of unusual things things that make our shining city on a bluff just a little more magnificent. And, of course, just a little more obsessed. This is one of those stories.

Meet Peter Ceren, author of historical fiction with fantastical twists. Ceren is currently raising funds in order to document an attempt by scholars and divers to find and explore the San Marcos, an ill-fated Spanish Galleon that sank off the coast of Ireland in 1588.

Ceren has been collecting information about the San Marcos since he heard his first folk stories about the ship while visiting Ireland 47 years ago. The San Marcos also featured prominently Ceren’s novel Waking Remembering and he hopes the followup to that first book will be a work of non-fiction about academics, divers, and adventures on and under the sea.

Here’s a video explaining the whole thing.

In the 16th-Century, anybody not betting on the Spanish Armada and its battle-hardened soldiers over Britain’s rag tag military and ratty, run down fortifications would have probably been accused of throwing away good money. The Spanish were an empire flush with New World gold, and able to claim God’s will as long as they at least pretended that the Armada was sailing north to win England back for Catholicism. But if the British weren’t at the height of their powers, England’s best sailors had at least learned a thing or two about how to fight the Spanish like pirates. Using those skills they managed win a major victory and spook Spain’s superior ships off mission and into an advancing storm off the coast of Ireland, where many troops were lost.

Previous searches for the San Marcos, a vessel with 60 bronze cannons, and 500 passengers, including royals, have proven futile.

Ceren sees the hand of fate in action. John Treacy a PhD. candidate in the final stages of his doctorate in Irish naval history isn’t so keen on the whole fate thing. But lately the two men, attracted to the San Marcos for different reasons, have been sharing information regarding the lost ship. Treacy is bringing 60 divers together for a search called Project San Marcos 2014. This is the expedition Ceren hopes to document.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tiger Trivia Tuesday

One of the biggest games on the 2014 Tiger football schedule is a trip to UCLA on September 6th. How many games has the U of M played against current members of the Pac-12?

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Categories
News

Memphis’ Rubber Face Man

Chris Davis dug up this relic of time gone by in Memphis — the Rubber Face Man, with video!

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Meet Another of Nature’s Curiosities—The Man With the Rubber Face

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The Internet is full of wonders. Take this lost bit of Memphis history, for example… Please!

Categories
News

Corner Markets Lack Healthful Food

A survey of more than 100 Memphis neighborhood markets reveals that healthy food is a rare commodity. Alexandra Pusateri reports on efforts to change the situation.

Categories
News News Blog

Untapped Event Has Huge Turnout On Opening Weekend

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Last Friday night, after the South Main Art Trolley Tour, the bar inside the Tennessee Brewery Untapped event was about four rows deep with patrons trying to get a drink. On Saturday night, they even ran out of beer.

Kerry Hayes, one of event’s organizers and the director of public relations at Doug Carpenter & Associates, said the six-week, pop-up beer garden, which had its grand opening Thursday and ran until Sunday, had “higher-than-expected crowds all weekend long.”

Hayes said the event’s sponsors reported meeting people from as far away as New York City, Massachusetts, and even Germany at Untapped this weekend.

“What was really pleasing was the diversity of visitors — black/white, young/old, suburban/urban, little kids, senior citizens, etc. It was a terrific representation of our whole community coming together to invest in good times,” Hayes said.

Tennessee Brewery Untapped will re-open on Thursday, May 1st at 11 a.m. and run until 9 p.m. that night. Weekend hours are Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. and Sundays, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

“This weekend, we’re looking forward to four days of sunny, cooler-than-normal temperatures, full beer taps, and more fun,” Hayes said.

To read more about Untapped, check out this week’s cover story.