Month: February 2015

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Hats in Ring for Vacant Democratic Chairmanship

Chairmanship candidates (l to r): Reginald Milton; Randa Spears; Jackie Jackson; Hendrell Remus; Barbara Cooper

UPDATED



As of Saturday, when chairman Bryan Carson was forced to resign by the Shelby County Democratic Party executive committee for serious irregularities with the party’s finances, local Democrats are without a chair.

For the time being, that void will be filled by acting chairman David Cambron, who had been party vice chair, but a new permanent chair is due to be named next month in a two-step voting process. First, Democrats will gather on Saturday, March 14, at First Baptist Church Broad Ave. to select delegates to the party convention, which will be held at the same location two weeks later.

At the party convention on March 28, the delegates will elect a new executive committee of 29 members, who in turn will name a new chair for the forthcoming two-year period.

Given the embarrassment the party has just experienced, the identity of the next chairman may have more than usual weight in determining the party’s future prospects.

Del Gill

The known candidates so far are Reginald Milton, a community organizer, County Commissioner and member of the 11-member party steering committee; Randa Spears, a special events contributor at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, recent campaign manager for 2014 county mayoral candidate Deidre Malone, and also a steering committee member; Jackie Jackson, a FedEx administrator and recent candidate for the state legislature; Hendrell Remus, a security service entrepreneur and recent candidate for the County Commission; and Del Gill, a longtime party activist and recent ex officio member of the party executive committee.

Also considering a chairmanship bid is state Representative Barbara Cooper, who is reportedly being urged to run by an ad hoc combine of talk-radio host Thaddeus Matthews and longtime party activist Greg Grant.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Oh, Puck

When I moved to Memphis from Pittsburgh in the early 1990s, my son, who was 11 at the time, was a hockey player. He worshipped Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He’d even been to a Stanley Cup finals game. His greatest fear about moving South was that he wouldn’t be able to play hockey.

So I asked around, and it turned out, there was a local youth hockey league. At the group’s pre-season organizational meeting, when they learned we were from Pittsburgh, they asked if I could skate. “A little,” I said. Then they asked if I knew the rules of hockey. “Yes,” I said, “pretty much.”

“Good,” they said. “You’re a coach.”

And so, for the next three years, I spent many nights and afternoons in the Mid-South Coliseum, coaching the “red team.” We took the “big ice” whenever we could get it. The only other rink in town was at the Mall of Memphis, where spectators carried shopping bags and munched fast food and wondered out loud what the hell them kids were up to.

So, for what it’s worth, the Coliseum used to be a great spot for at least one “youth sport” — which is the foundation around which the city’s proposed Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) is being spun. But, as Toby Sells’ cover story makes clear, the place has been mothballed since 2006 and, depending on whose numbers you believe, it will take many millions to bring it back to viability. In the meantime, the local youth hockey program has moved to Southaven, along with most of the concerts that would logically work well at the old 11,000-seat venue.

Now, a growing movement to stop the destruction of the Coliseum is running smack-dab into the city’s plan to reinvent the Fairgrounds. Both sides have work to do before the issue is decided.

As others have pointed out in these pages, the city is asking taxpayers to trust the city to be able to “develop” the Fairgrounds without putting all the cards on the table. We don’t know who or what might move in. A hotel? What kind of hotel? Youth sports? Really? The competition in that market is fierce. Retail? Big box? Boutique? Fast food? There are lots of loose parts in play.

In the case of two other iconic local public-private partnerships — the Bass Pro Pyramid and the Sears Crosstown Building — the partners are known and the surrounding neighborhoods are pretty firmly behind the projects. In Cooper Young, on the other hand, opposition is building to the TDZ plan, in general, and to the destruction of the Coliseum, in particular.

Maybe a compromise can be concocted. Maybe not. But it would behoove the city not to ignore the will of a determined bunch of citizens. There’s a reason that I-40 doesn’t run through the middle of Overton Park. Memphians can be a stubborn bunch. And if you try to cross the blue line ahead of the puck, they will check you.

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Cover Feature News

The Coliseum: Should it stay or should it go?

Echoes from my boot heels clicked thinly off the asphalt and bricks outside the Mid-South Coliseum. I paused and looked way up to its domed roof before I walked in. Driving up Southern Avenue was the closest I’d ever been to the building before. My only real fascination with it now was story research. I had no idea why anyone would want to save the Coliseum — or tear it down. I had no idea I’d find the answers to both questions under the big dome.  

The service entrance was open on the east side. It was the large, roll-up gate where 18-wheelers would load in lights and sound gear for concerts. I stepped forward and my foot falls were muffled as I passed through the tunnel and into the still air and massive darkness of the Coliseum’s dome.

Photographs by Brandon Dill

A shaft of light from the door exposed three or four white semi-truck trailers parked close to the center of the floor. They sat under the old scoreboard, which was analog but still big by today’s standards. I knew the trailers housed the pieces of the old Memphis Grand Carousel, now destined for the Children’s Museum of Memphis. But what made me pause was how easily the Coliseum swallowed those huge truck trailers.

I touched base with the city official who had let us all in — a television news crew, a video production team, reporters and a photographer from The Commercial Appeal, and me. The official said to just go and look at whatever I wanted, a golden permission slip.

Pictures of what’s left inside the Coliseum.

Crumbles of loose black material (that looked like dirt but weren’t dirt) were scattered over the floor, but the place wasn’t as much dirty as it was cluttered. Stacks of chairs; rolls of chain link fence; paisley couch cushions stacked on pallets; a giant red “M” peeking out of a crate. Kyle Veazey, the CA‘s politics team leader, told me it was the old “Memphis” sign from the now-demolished Lone Star concrete plant downtown.

Tiles were missing from the once-white ceiling. It reminded me somehow of the incomplete Death Star from Return of the Jedi. Nails and bits of metal clinked away from my boots as I walked. I clicked on my phone’s flashlight.

Outdoor light shone through on the west side of the floor. The concourse looked like it had been just closed the night before. With a broom and a mop, the place would be ready for guests. Several office windows were shattered, vandalized. Fluorescent light bulbs stuck out of the tops of trash cans. The entrance doors had been broken and boarded up.

On the second level, rows and rows of empty seats sat folded. I unfolded one and sat down. Veazey laughed and reminded me how dusty and/or moldy I’d be. I jumped up, thinking of the decade of mold on my back and the slow death that was sure to follow. But even in the brief time I sat in the chair, I could imagine seeing a show or a graduation there.

The day before I’d seen a photo of the Beatles playing the Coliseum. I mentally overlaid the image where I thought it should go. I mentally replayed the YouTube video of Jerry Lawler’s and Terry Funk’s “empty arena” wrestling match in 1981. I imagined David Copperfield making 13 audience members disappear in his 2001 “Tornado of Fire” television special. And then I thought about the last show, in 2006 and how the final sounds at the Coliseum were the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s heavy metal Christmas music.

Old tickets to Coliseum events

I remembered another internet picture of Cher and her then-husband Gregg Allman walking from a Coliseum dressing room. I wanted to see those dressing rooms. A single fluorescent bulb flickered and buzzed down a long dusty hallway, like something out of a creepy video game. A boiler somewhere knocked and moaned, right out of Scooby-Doo. I saw a flash to my right and found CA photographer, Mike Brown, shooting in the only dressing room with any light. 

I poked my head into a team dressing room down the hall. It had a king-sized mattress and a weathered copy of Vibe magazine that asked: “Is Mase for real?” Then I spotted a concession stand with an open door. A dried up bag of nacho cheese. A stack of Bud Light cups from three logos ago. And a menu board: Large Coke = $3. Draft beer = $4. Nachos = $3. Polish dog = $3. Underneath the prices and the logos, someone used the letters to write “EAT SHIT THANKS”

Toby Sells

I understood why people want to save the Coliseum. It’s huge, it doesn’t seem to be in terrible shape, and there are a lot of great memories in there. But its size seems to equal the behemoth effort it would take to bring it back to life and actually make a go of a successful business inside.

But it’s a place big enough for dreamers, and the Coliseum is the center of a dream for a cadre of Memphians who believe that the place where so much of the city’s music, sports, and entertainment history happened should be preserved.

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, also has a dream for the Fairgrounds, and the Coliseum doesn’t belong in it.

No one knows yet what will happen when those dreams collide.

Save the Coliseum

The Mid-South Coliseum should be saved, not just because it holds a lot of history, but also because there’s a good potential use for the building that speaks to the city’s brands in music, wrestling, and basketball.

That’s the vision of members of the newly formed Coliseum Coalition, a group that has organized a grassroots but sophisticated movement to save the building and ensure public input is heard on any plan to redevelop the Fairgrounds. 

The group (and general sentiment against the proposed youth sports complex at the Fairgrounds) is growing. The Save the Mid-South Coliseum Facebook group has swelled to 3,540 members in a few weeks. The official Mid-South Coliseum Facebook page has more than 11,000 likes.    

“We think it would be shortsighted to raze the Coliseum to pursue what we think is a fairly poorly thought-through plan that might leave tax payers on the hook and might leave Midtown with something it doesn’t want,” said coalition member Marvin Stockwell. “For that, we’re going to sacrifice a place that contains not only so much history — music history, especially, which is Memphis’ strongest brand — but basketball for sure. Before we had the Grizzlies, we had the Tigers. And then wrestling, I mean [Jerry] Lawler fought Andy Kaufman there. It’s not just the memories, it’s the possibility.” 

Stockwell, and Coalition members Mike McCarthy and Jordan Danelz, gathered last week to talk about the Coliseum at Cooper-Young’s Java Cabana, a stone’s throw from the building they’re trying to protect. 

The three wanted to clear up a few things from recent media reports: their efforts are not fueled entirely by nostalgia, they’re not fighting progress at the Fairgrounds, but it is true they don’t have a clear idea of what the Coliseum should be or even could be.

What they do believe is that the building should be saved. They point to the success of revitalization projects such as the Chisca Hotel, the Sears Crosstown building, the Tennessee Brewery, and Broad Avenue. They say that government leaders should listen to the community, especially those who would be neighbors to the proposed youth sports complex for the next 30 years of the proposed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ). 

Memphis is missing out on major opportunities by keeping the Coliseum closed, McCarthy said, noting that his daughter recently saw Jack White at Snowden Grove in Southaven, Mississippi. 

“We live right over there on Nelson,” McCarthy said. “I could’ve just walked over there with her to the Coliseum to see the show and every bit of tax money — or money, period — that was spent could’ve been generated inside Midtown. The Coliseum could be the largest tax generator in Midtown, given the opportunity.”

The big snag there is the non-compete clause in FedExForum’s  contract with the city of Memphis. The clause says an “important element of the success of the Arena Complex is to limit direct competition” from the Coliseum or the Pyramid. It mandates any show with more than 5,000 seats is the sole property of the Forum. 

The Coliseum has more than 11,000 seats. Coalition members are still analyzing the language of the non-compete. Does it affect only new places, or renovated places, or both? But it’s a huge question that hampers the way forward for any new idea the group may have for the Coliseum. 

“That’s why you’re at a disadvantage when you try to say what it could become,” Stockwell said. “That’s an unbelievably huge variable that’s going to make you go one way or another.”

But ideas are there for the Coliseum, and they keep coming: A rock-and-roll museum. A brewery. Give it to the University of Memphis Tigers. A music venue. An ice skating rink. A basketball museum. A soundstage for local film and television production. A wrestling museum. A rehearsal hall for touring acts.

A city report puts the price tag at about $32.8 million to bring the Coliseum back to working order. The largest chunk of the money ($8.6 million) would be spent just to get it current with the Americans with Disabilities Act. But McCarthy doesn’t trust the figure. 

“If the Liberty Bowl was saved for what [former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton] said was going to be $50 million, which turned out to be $9 million, then the Coliseum can be saved for probably $9 million or $10 million as well,” McCarthy said. “That’s not just pulling a figure out of the air. That’s based on the Liberty Bowl, which was built at the same time with the same reinforced steel and concrete and everything else.”

Danelz said the youth sports complex idea (at the heart of the current Fairgrounds redevelopment plan) has failed in numerous cities across the country. He said the current process has not been transparent and criticized Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s plan to get the TDZ first and divulge a more detailed plan later. 

“They’re saying, don’t worry about it; let’s get that money and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing,” Danelz said. “In what Business 101 class can you say, ‘Let’s get a loan and then figure out a business plan’? Would you pass that class? 

“Yet, here you have the highest power in our city government saying exactly that for $220 million. They have nothing on the table to show us — no blueprints, no private partners, nothing.”

Wharton and Lipscomb have seemingly hit the pause button on the project for now and the Coalition members said it’s a welcome sign. They hope to have planning sessions with community members, conversations with Lipscomb about the Fairgrounds plan, and some pre-vitalization events (a la Brewery Untapped or New Face for an Old Broad) to bring people to the Coliseum and get them dreaming about its potential.

“If you went to Orange Mound, Belt Line, Edwin Circle, Cooper Young, you would be sorely pressed to find any citizen of Memphis who wants to tear down the Coliseum,” McCarthy said. “This is all coming from the top down. We’re better than that.” 

Tear it Down

The Mid-South Coliseum should be razed because it’s too costly to renovate and it doesn’t fit in with future development plans at the Fairgrounds.

That’s according to city officials who believe the Coliseum has to go in order to move forward on the proposed Tourism Development Zone retail and youth sports complex at the Fairgrounds. It’s a point that does not seem to delight to Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, but he’s repeated that the demolition is an integral part of making the Fairgrounds a sports and retail tourist destination.

Back in 2009, O.T. Marshall Architects said it would cost about $29.5 million to fix the Coliseum. They looked at everything from drywall and kitchen equipment to plumbing and sprinklers. 

A year later, O.T. Marshall revised the figure to about $32.8 million. They said the building would have to be brought up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards ($8.6 million), get seismic structural updates ($5 million), get a new roof ($550,000), new flooring ($2 million), and general code updates in mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and fire protection and alarms ($9 million).

Code Solutions Group LLC analyzed code issues inside the Coliseum in 2009. They found that the layout of the building creates a “dangerous condition in the event of an emergency.” A plan to fix the problem would require 168 sections of hand rails, dozens of new stair steps, replacing the ceilings inside the arena and in the concourse, more than a dozen new bathrooms, adding a new lighting system, adding a sprinkler system, and more. The report noted that the building is a “landmark” but questioned if the costs of upgrades to the Coliseum would better serve Memphis than a new building.

“If a dedicated performing arts venue, seating 8,000 to 12,000 people is needed, then a new building with a full working stage, fly gallery, proscenium protection, good acoustics, theatrical lighting, and adequate exit capacity for the designed seating, and with full sprinkler protection might be the right answer,” said the 2009 report. “While the Coliseum is a unique building, there is physically no way a 1960s multi-functional facility could be redesigned to provide this type of venue.”

During the final three years of its active life, the Coliseum lost more than $880,000, according to city documents. In 2006, it was on course to lose at least $300,000.

So, city leaders looked closely at the Coliseum. In 2006, they were hoping to attract new events such as hockey, soccer, or arena football, but only if the tenants could work within the terms of the FedExForum’s non-compete clause.

They considered new federal tax credits to keep the Coliseum going. They considered the pros and cons of demolishing it or even building a new structure. In the end, the Coliseum was mothballed. It’s now used primarily as storage for truck trailers containing the Memphis Grand Carousel. 

Lipscomb said the building has been in “full shut-down” since around 2006, meaning limited utilities and no heating or cooling. He told the Memphis City Council earlier this month that he has been in talks with the Coliseum Coalition and will continue to talk with them about efforts to save the building. 

“I don’t have a dog in the fight one way or another,” Lipscomb said. “I just want to make sure that whatever we construct — either the renovation of the Coliseum or a new building — satisfies the needs for our future.”

To Lipscomb, that future includes getting into the youth and amateur sports business. It’s the cornerstone of his plan for the redevelopment of the Fairgrounds that also includes, a hotel, retail shops, and restaurants. 

“Youth sports” include indoor activities such as basketball, volleyball, cheerleading, gymnastics, track, and more. Those sports require what Lipscomb calls a multi-purpose building — one that can be transformed inside to accommodate all the different sports, and “the Coliseum is not feasible as a multi-purpose building.” 

Kevin Kane, president of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, concurred. “If you want a first-class indoor youth sports complex, you cannot physically do that inside the Coliseum,” Kane told council members. “I’m not an architect, but I can tell you, you can’t do it. Even if you gut it out, you can’t make the Coliseum where you can have six or seven basketball courts in there. There’s no way.”

Kane’s comments came after a question from councilmember Harold Collins, who said he envisioned a new building that could be used for youth sports and then changed to house concerts and even large high school graduations. Kane told him youth sports is one thing, “but if you want an arena, maybe you should figure out a way to fix the Mid-South Coliseum.”

Other council members questioned Lipscomb on the viability of the youth sports market. He pointed to a letter he said he got from Amateur Athletic Union President Dr. Roger Goudy that Lipscomb said it read, basically, “if you build it, they will come.”

“I know a lot of people have been critical [of the youth sports idea] but there’s a big market for that, still,” Lipscomb said. “So we have a great opportunity for that. 

“Some people will say we missed the boat on that. They’ll say, Memphis is not positioned to be a youth and recreation sports team and amateur athletics city. So, I think this letter dispels that myth.”

But the Coliseum still stands. City officials have taken a step back and invited the Urban Land Institute to have a look at their plans and the Fairgrounds, to determine if the two are a match.

Council members also made it clear to Lipscomb earlier this month that any development at the Fairgrounds will first need the council’s approval.

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News News Feature

Next Stop: Belize

This is not a threat. It is more a cry, a lament for a city I have come to embrace for more than 30 years. Consider this a pre-farewell to Memphis, but with a few caveats thrown in.

My wife and I made a decision a few months back to earnestly begin preparations to leave Memphis and retire to the country of Belize. It’s not like it’s going to happen for a couple of years, because of our job commitments, but this May we’re doing a scouting trip to see firsthand if this is truly where we want to spend what’s left of our “golden years.” The prospect of leaving my sons, her daughter, and our grandchildren comes with natural trepidations. But, then when you weigh the alternatives based on what we’ve seen and what we project will be the future for us in a city with a myriad of problems and few solutions, it only seems to make our choice clearer.

Sometimes making hard decisions can be as simple as getting out a pen and paper and listing the pros and cons, in this case, for either staying or leaving.

What if we stay? There’s the great probability we will be paying increased city property taxes, based on a proposed refinancing plan advanced by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s administration. The “scoop and toss” refinance strategy of dealing with the city’s mounting debt, if passed by the city council, most assuredly will hang like an albatross around the necks of taxpayers for the rest of this decade. To refinance $134 million in debt and borrow another $75 million to keep us solvent can only lead to higher taxes and cuts in services.

The apparent tacit approval of this plan by the same state comptroller who rattled our cages about “kicking the can down the road” when it came to addressing outstanding pension debt just last year, should be viewed as both curious and alarming. This is completely aside from Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell’s straightforward assessment that unless Insure Tennessee is resurrected in some fashion, county property taxes might have to cover the possible $70 million shortfall Regional One might face as it’s forced to deal with unreimbursed indigent-care costs. Do we want to stay around for all that to happen?

The upcoming 2015 city election and the slate of announced candidates running for mayor and city council positions offer little hope of changing the status quo. The leadership vacuum we’ve suffered from continues to create a huge “sucking” sound of desperation. Crime continues to be a problem; poverty remains a stifling detriment to our city’s growth potential; and the gap between the haves and the have-nots cripples any vision of attaining the “One Memphis” philosophy our feel-good mayor once espoused. As for challengers, I’ve heard nothing but criticism for the incumbent, but little in the way of concrete solutions advanced by any of them. Granted the economic picture is somewhat brighter, except it will take years to develop an educated workforce that’ll benefit from any influx of higher playing businesses.

Before I completely assume the role of Oscar the Grouch, let me tell you why it’s going to be hard to leave Memphis. Where else in this country are you going to find a city with such rich history and an open appreciation of it? We are a city that embraces both champs and chumps. We are a city with an unmatched musical heritage that could be enhanced if we encouraged and fostered new artists to make their careers blossom here, as others have before. We are a city that plays as hard as we work and does both without apologies to anyone. We are a city that mercilessly lampoons stupidity and loudly cries foul against perceived bigotry and racism, while still able to reach out with genuine compassion to our own or to strangers in need.

As I said, we still have a couple of years left in the “City of Good Abode.” In that time, as a reporter, I’ll continue to try to do stories that inspire us, enrage us, and expose the human condition, and in the process hopefully make a difference. I am very blessed to have the twin swords of television and print media to accomplish those goals. Our ties to Memphis will always be eternal. Then again, who knows? I hear the mosquitos grow pretty big in Belize. If so, that could be a big one on the con side.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Condomonium at Playhouse on the Square

When artists Erin King and Mary Allison Cates got their box of 400 condoms from Choices to use in designing a dress for Condomonium, they envisioned peacock feathers.

And so for three weeks, they set about flattening, spray-painting, hand-glittering, and bejeweling the prophylactics to create hundreds of “feathers” for an evening gown to be modeled at the third annual Condomonium event on Saturday at Playhouse on the Square. Theirs is one of 16 gowns and dresses created with condoms by local designers for the event.

The third annual Condomonium

The event is a fund-raiser for Choices Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, and proceeds will support the center’s reproductive health education program and patient assistance fund.

At the event, models display the condom dresses. Attendees are given five wrapped condoms when they arrive, and each condom counts as one vote. Each model has a bucket, and the attendees place condoms in the buckets for their favorite dresses.

Besides the main event fashion show, there will also be a burlesque show and a flashdance to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex.” Artists will be selling condom jewelry and accessories — earrings, bracelets, bowties. And there’s a “naughty bits bake sale” (think vagina cupcakes and boobie truffles).

“In Shelby County, the rates for STIs [sexually transmitted infections] and teen pregnancy are both very high. Condom use is one of the most-effective, most well-researched, and proven ways to address that,”
said Katy McLeod Leopard, director of community partnerships for Choices. “Not only is this a fund-raiser for Choices, it’s also a great way to get people touching condoms and laughing at them. We want to normalize condoms and condom use.”

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News The Fly-By

Wind Energy Coming to West Tennessee

CREDIT: Clean Line Energy

Wind energy may soon be blowing into West Tennessee thanks to a massive wind farm project based out of Oklahoma. The project, however, is still working its way through the approval process.

The Tennessee portion of the larger Plains and Eastern Clean Line wind energy project is located north of Millington, just inside the Shelby County limits. The project will span more than 700 miles to include Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee, aiming to deliver 3,500 megawatts of wind energy to more than a million households.

The project, spearheaded by Clean Line Energy, is currently undergoing a federal environmental impact statement review by the U.S. Department of Energy. A public meeting was held earlier this month to gather comments, but the public has until March 19th to provide comments at www.plainsandeasterneis.com.

The environmental impact statement identifies the proposed route for the transmission line. Since the route will cut through individual property owners’ land, Clean Line Energy is seeking comment on the route. In most areas, the final easement of the transmission line will be between 150 to 200 feet wide.

Clean Line Energy

This map shows how wind energy from Oklahoma will be distributed to homes in Arkansas, Tennessee, and beyond.

Because of the right-of-way needs for the project, the Plains and Eastern Clean Line has stirred up some opposition from landowners, especially in Arkansas. But Max Schilstone, the director of business development for Clean Line Energy Partners, touted wind energy’s affordable cost and eco-friendliness.

“The actual cost of generating wind energy has dropped dramatically,” Schilstone said. “As utilities such as [the Tennessee Valley Authority] look to broaden their assets and are seeking other ways they can provide affordable energy to their customers, they look at all resources. Wind energy is one of those components that has now become very affordable and one that has garnered a lot of attention. It’s clean [and] it doesn’t have emissions.”

Scott Banbury, the conservation programs coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Tennessee chapter, said the 4,000 megawatts of power that is proposed to be generated by the wind energy project could be the answer the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is looking for as the authority updates its Integrated Resource Plan, which addresses energy needs over the next 10 to 15 years. The TVA provides the power that MLGW sells to Memphis residents. The wind energy will be going through the TVA grid and can be sold by the TVA.

“We believe [the TVA’s] plan needs to be met by renewable energy sources,” Banbury said. “The Sierra Club is encouraging [TVA] to make commitments to buy that power, rather than wheeling it through to other utilities.”

“The reason Western Tennessee was chosen is because TVA has one of their largest connection points that can accommodate the size of the project we’re developing,” Schilstone said. “The project is a large infrastructure opportunity, even though it is a small footprint of a right-of-way.”

The project will also offer hundreds of jobs to Memphis-area residents, according to Schilstone.

“One of the big aspects of the project is to ensure we drive as much job opportunity to the local community as much as we can,” he said.

If everything goes according to plan, construction to build the wind structures can begin as early as 2016. Delivery of wind power could begin by 2018.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Spring Training

It’s still a little less than two months — April 17th, to be exact — before candidates for city offices can even pull a qualifying petition from the Election Commission. And it’s nearly five months after that until the November 3rd election itself — seven month total.

For emphasis, let’s put that last figure in Arabic numerals: 7 months before Memphis voters can finish signaling their intentions on city offices — encompassing the lengthy span from now, when major league baseball teams are beginning spring training, to a date when the World Series is likely to still be happening.

And yet the roster is rapidly filling up for the most important race on this year’s election calendar — that for Memphis mayor. With the formal announcement of candidacy on Monday of this week by Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, the number of well-known names still expected to be on the mayoral ballot has shrunk to two — City Councilman Harold Collins, who appointed an exploratory committee last fall and former Memphis School Board member and New Olivet Baptist church pastor Kenneth Whalum Jr.

[IMAGE-1]Whalum is forthright about his own plans, which to a great extent are based on an understanding with Williams, whose views on city matters overlap with his own. It boils down to this: “If Mike follows through and picks up a petition when the time comes and files, I won’t run,” says Whalum. “If he doesn’t, it’s 100-percent certain that I will.”

Already declared, besides Williams, are incumbent Mayor A C Wharton, City Councilman Jim Strickland, former County Commission Chairman James Harvey, current commission Chairman Justin Ford, and former University of Memphis basketball player Detric Golden.

And, while Ford, who has commission business to attend to, has not yet finished stockpiling his artillery, and Harvey has not yet begun to fight, the others are already doing battle. Strickland is speaking lots and firing away at Wharton on an almost daily basis via Facebook and Twitter; Williams and his supporters are active on the same social media; and the mayor is playing his bully pulpit for all it’s worth, materializing in numerous speech appearances and press conference formats that allow him to do double duty as city official and candidate for reelection.

And Golden, who has yet to demonstrate what his political base is, is turning up at public events, including those held by other candidates, and for well over a year has been conspicuous by driving around town in a car that is tricked-out with signs advertising his candidacy.

The mayoral-campaign activity so far is a form of spring training, and, like its baseball equivalent, it is a way of working the kinks out, finding a groove, and getting the jump on the competition. For that reason, Collins and Whalum won’t be able to procrastinate much longer on revealing their own intentions, and an announcement from one or both of them may well beat this issue to the printer.

There’s another reason why time is of the essence: money, which is a finite resource, especially here in hard-pressed Memphis, and won’t stretch far enough to cover every candidate’s needs. In a certain sense, it’s a matter of first come, first served, and the most accomplished self-servers so far are Wharton and Strickland. Both of them have been at it for a while — with receipts through January 15th showing a campaign balance for Wharton of $201,088 and for Strickland of $181,595.

The others have some catching up to do.

• As one of the first commenters to the Flyer‘s online coverage of the event said, “A very sad day, indeed, for the Shelby County Democratic Party in more ways than one.”

The event in question was the forced resignation on Saturday of Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson, well-liked in his own right and the son of the widely admired Gale Jones Carson, a former local party chair herself and the longtime secretary of the state Democratic Party.

In a nutshell, the younger Carson had, on the fateful Saturday, faced a no-holds-barred interrogation into his oversight of party finances by the party’s executive committee — 76 strong, at peak, with roughly 50 on hand for the occasion, which was closed to the press and public. Saturday’s meeting followed two prior closed-door meetings with Carson last week by the party’s smaller 11-member steering committee, the second of which had resulted in a unanimous vote of “no confidence.”

All three meetings had been called out of a sense of crisis that developed from Carson’s repeated failure either to address party members’ concerns about the state of party finances or to deal satisfactorily with ominous promptings for an accounting from the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. The bureau had already levied three $500 fines on the local party for late or incomplete submissions of financial disclosure statements and threatened another of $10,000, along with a showdown meeting in Nashville in March.

There were two immediate issues: The first was a disclosure statement that had been overdue since October 28th. Carson would hurriedly prepare one and submit it, such as it was, to the bureau on Wednesday, February 18th, the same day as his second meeting with the party steering committee and their vote of no confidence.

The other issue was even more troubling. It concerned an ad hoc audit, prepared at the request of the steering committee by Diane Cambron, wife of David Cambron, the local party’s first vice chair, and Dick Klenz, longtime president of the Germantown Democratic Club — both with unimpeachable reputations for fair-mindedness.

The audit showed that, since last September, Carson had made 63 withdrawals from the party’s bank account, in an amount totaling $8,437.89, and could produce no receipts for what he contended had been cash payments on behalf of the party. Even allowing for figures submitted in what Carson called a “self audit” (again, unaccompanied by receipts and made difficult to trace by virtue of the chairman’s having arbitrarily switched the party banking account), there seemed to be an amount of $6,091.16, which the Cambron-Klenz audit referred to as “unsubstantiated.”

Carson maintained in all three meetings with party committees that he had done nothing wrong and that the apparent discrepancies were the result of an overload of activity during the 2014 campaign year, coupled with the fact that he had been compelled, he said, to try to function as his own party treasurer.

That last was another fact that confounded committee members, who had thought that party member Jonathan Lewis was functioning as party treasurer. It turned out during the week’s discussions that Lewis had shied away from the service and had not registered with the state after being given a glimpse by Carson into the actual state of party finances.

In any case, the predominant mood of the party executive committee on Saturday was to reject Carson’s explanations, as well as his expressed wish to maintain at least a titular hold on the office of chairman (while handing over actual control to first Vice Chair David Cambron) through the party’s scheduled March caucus-convention rounds that are scheduled to produce a new executive committee and chairman on March 28th.

Vice Chair Cambron has been named acting chair, and he announced that one of his first acts would be to open a new party banking account this week, so as to provide a revised and reliable financing accounting from the ground up.

Beyond that, there has been no word from anyone speaking for the party to take further action or pursue legal remedies and no apparent appetite for doing so.

Various online commenters on the matter have made a point of noting that the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office has issued a warrant of “theft over $500” against Axl David, former treasurer of the Young Republicans in that Middle Tennessee county, for what Sheriff Robert Arnold called “several discrepancies in the management of Club funds.” But no one has demonstrated any analogy between that situation and the one in Shelby County.

Bryan Carson, meanwhile, apparently still intends to seek the open District 7 City Council seat in this year’s city election. In January, he finished one vote behind Berlin Boyd in a council vote to name an interim District 7 councilman to succeed Lee Harris, who had resigned to assume his new duties as a state Senator.

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News The Fly-By

New Initiative Aims to Curb Domestic Violence

Kamekio Lewis still remembers the night her former boyfriend chased after her with a knife as she ran barefoot through a neighborhood. When she slipped and fell, she was captured, dragged through the nearby woods by her hair, and brutally beaten.

“He took me to an abandoned house,” Lewis recalled. “My mom ended up finding me some kind of way the next day. Charges were filed: kidnapping [and] assault. I ended up having to be hospitalized. I had a concussion.”

Lewis’ abusive relationship lasted more than two years before she escaped by entering the army. She hasn’t looked back since.

A new comprehensive response to domestic violence, called the Blueprint for Safety, has been launched to aid people in situations like Lewis’. The initiative is intended to assist victims from the time they experience domestic violence and contact a 911 operator through law enforcement’s response and the offender’s prosecution.

Lewis’ story of domestic abuse is all too common. There were 247,069 reports of domestic violence offenses made to the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System (TIBRS) program from 2011 to 2013. More than 70 percent of victims were women. Across the nation, one in four women is projected to report domestic abuse at some point in their lives. Domestic violence typically involves physical, emotional, verbal, economic, and/or sexual abuse by one person against their spouse or partner.

Last Thursday, Shelby County’s Blueprint for Safety initiative was introduced during a news conference at the Urban Child Institute. Members of city and county government, local law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District’s office, Shelby County District Attorney General’s office, General Sessions Division 10, and the Family Safety Center will collectively implement the program.

The initiative seeks to enhance services provided by 911 dispatchers, law enforcement, and victim/witness services to domestic violence victims. It will also strengthen the rehabilitative efforts provided to offenders by the county’s domestic violence court.

The Blueprint for Safety is being funded by a $300,000 federal grant administered through the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office on Violence Against Women (OVM).

“The Blueprint for Safety is an approach to domestic violence cases that coordinates agency responses around the shared goals of safety and justice,” said Bea Hanson, principal deputy director of OVM. “It closes the gaps between what victims of violent crime need from the criminal justice system and the way in which the system is currently responding. The whole point of the Blueprint is to make sure that we’re keeping victims safe and holding offenders accountable.”

Memphis is the fourth city to adopt the DOJ’s Blueprint for Safety model. The initiative is already being implemented in St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota, as well as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Although it was revealed during the news conference that around 8,000 domestic violence cases occur in the Memphis area annually, the offense appears to be on the decline. According to Operation: Safe Community data, reported cases of domestic violence have decreased more than 16 percent locally since 2011.

The Family Safety Center has been connecting victims of domestic violence with civil, criminal, health, and social services since 2012.

Olliette Murry-Drobot, executive director of Family Safety Center, said the nonprofit would play a central role in helping fully implement and sustain the Blueprint for Safety initiative.

“[We] work closest with victims and have direct knowledge of the impact that the criminal justice system has in the lives of victims,” Murry-Drobot said. “Our tasks are to keep the criminal justice system focused on the experiences of victims and to ensure that their responses keep those experiences at the center of what they do.”

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Maps To The Stars

Among a certain kind of cinephile, director David Cronenberg is a legend. He cut his teeth in the grindhouse 1970s, creating a string of low-budget horror films that revolved around truly disturbing themes: the melding of flesh and machine; the medical terror of your body betraying you; and the existential horror of being a ghost driving a skeleton covered in meat. Classic-era Cronenberg began with 1979’s The Brood, a psychedelic horror show in which children turn murderously against each other and their parents. The 1980s for Cronenberg were particularly fruitful, with the head-exploding telepath horror Scanners; the sick TV parody Videodrome; the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone; and the definitive example of the body horror genre, his 1986 remake of The Fly. In the 1990s, he made a movie out of the unfilmable William S. Burroughs drug memoir Naked Lunch and the similarly challenging J. G. Ballard adaptation Crash. In the 21st century, he has collaborated with Viggo Mortensen for crime thrillers A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. And now, at age 71, he has turned his dark lens toward Hollywood with Maps to the Stars.

Maps to the Stars

The film begins with Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a mousy, slightly gothy, young woman arriving in Hollywood, as many young women do, on a bus. The first person she meets is Jerome (Robert Pattinson), a limo driver who takes her to a vacant lot in the Hollywood Hills where she says the home of child star Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird) burned down.

Agatha gives off some pretty creepy stalker vibes — especially when she claims to be internet friends with Carrie Fisher — but the real creepshow starts when we meet Benjie, an entitled Hollywood brat, who is contemptuously meeting with a dying young fan. Benjie’s last film Bad Babysitter, he tells her, made $780 million worldwide, and his mother Christina (Olivia Williams), is negotiating his part in the sequel.

Meanwhile, Benjie’s dad, Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), a celebrity masseuse/therapist/guru, is treating Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), a wildly insecure actress who believes the only way to save her career is to get a part in a remake of a movie that her abusive late mother starred in. It turns out that Agatha did, in fact, know Carrie Fisher, and when Havana runs into the actress (who plays herself) outside a swanky shop on Rodeo Drive, Agatha gets a job as Havana’s personal assistant.

Everyone in Maps to the Stars has a secret or two. In the case of the Weiss family, they have several, each more bizarre and shocking than the next. Agatha, a paranoid schizophrenic who carries visible scars on her face and arms from a fire she may have set when she was a kid, is the most sympathetic character in the film. Wasikowska plays her with mix of trembling vulnerability and wonder. Everyone else is a complete, self-absorbed creep. As you might expect from someone who just won the Oscar for Best Actress, Moore is the best of the bunch, nailing scenes where she shows barely disguised glee when a horrible accident befalls a professional rival. Cusack is also well-cast as the charlatan Dr. Phil figure.

The problem with Maps to the Stars is not in its stars, but in its script. Penned by screenwriter and novelist Bruce Wagner, it’s morbid and muddled. As with all Cronenberg movies, there are striking moments, but taken as a whole, Maps to the Stars seems to have lost its way.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Whither the Shelby County Democratic Party?

The Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP), on whose executive committee (EC) I serve, has experienced a bad run over the past couple of years, culminating in the resignation of Chair Bryan Carson on Saturday, February 21st. This was due to problems with the party’s financial reports and undocumented deposits, and more importantly, undocumented withdrawals.

Beginning on March 14th with ward and precinct caucuses, to be followed on March 28th with the SCDP convention, the party will be reorganized, as this happens every two years. There will be new leadership, and a newer, smaller executive committee of 29 people from 14 State House Districts.

While I, a veteran of two different stints on the EC, will be leaving, we need new people from every area of Shelby County to get involved. If you lean Democrat, please show up. We need you.

People look at the demographics of Shelby County and mistakenly assume that it should be overwhelmingly Democratic. They would be wrong. Due to the hollowing out of Democratic strongholds like South Memphis, North Memphis, Frayser, and Hickory Hill by departed middle-class African Americans (who are far more likely to vote than their working and poverty-class brethren), the idea that Whitehaven can ensure Democratic victory after victory has been proven wrong.

The Democratic Party must, without leaving its ideals of equality behind, attract people of all races, creeds, and colors from every area of this county. That really hasn’t happened in a long time, except for Congressman Steve Cohen, and Mayor A C Wharton, during his time as Shelby County mayor. We have not developed a bench of strong candidates, as seen in our clobbering by the GOP in every county election in recent memory. We have to be as competitive in Cordova as North Memphis; in Collierville as South Memphis. We need to be strong enough to compete anywhere in Shelby County.

As for the incoming chair (and we won’t know who that is until they are elected by the new executive committee after the March 28th convention), this person needs to be a lot of things. In order to regain the trust of Shelby County Democrats and independent voters, the new chair will need to be able to raise money, a more daunting task since the older generation of well-to-do Democratic businessmen have died off. 

The chair will need to be able to put together a great team, and then delegate and empower them to do those things that need to be done, like organizing, registering voters, and preparing a plan to ensure all voters have legal IDs. We are stuck with the voter photo-ID law for the immediate future, and we need to have a plan in place to accommodate it.

The chair will need to be a good speaker, one who is not afraid of speaking in one-on-one situations or with medium-to-large groups. The new chair needs to have a plan to train campaign workers and candidates and to weed out those who are only running because they need a job — the type of candidate that gets Democrats beat every four years.

The new chair needs to see that people who want to associate with the party for the sole purpose of making money off of it and its candidates are kept far away; they are cancers on our party, and that includes sample-ballot makers.

The chair also needs to get good people on the standing committees of the party, especially including non-executive-committee members of those committees. The chair needs to find people who will volunteer their time to learn about the party and work to make it more effective. If you’re looking to get paid, go join the Republicans; the Koch brothers have plenty of money.

The biggest task for the new chair and executive committee, after cleaning up, will be to recruit candidates who understand and know the positions that they seek. We need people who have experience in the offices for which they run and can evoke confidence in their competence. “Vote for Me Because I am the Democrat” is more done than a two-hour steak. It has not worked.

The new chair and committee will have their work cut out for them. If you lean Democrat, please come out on March 14th at 9 a.m. to First Baptist Church-Broad and get involved. We need you, and want you to help this party to be what it can be.