Month: June 2017

Brandon Dill

The Overton Park Conservancy (OPC) has until Sunday to meet its $1 million fundraising goal set by the Memphis City Council for the construction of the Memphis Zoo’s new parking lot and while the group still needs $150,000, a conservancy official feels confident the goal will be met.

Last year, the council approved a plan that would end parking on the Overton Park Greensward. That plan would reconfigure the zoo’s main parking lot to yield hundreds of new parking spaces. The zoo and OPC were to split the costs of the project.

Earlier this year, zoo officials threatened to pull out the project because they said that while they had the funds in hand to pay for it, OPC did not. OPC did have $250,000 in hand to pay for its share of the design costs but it didn’t have $1 million to cover construction costs.

Memphis City Council members gave the OPC two months to raise $1 million. That two-month period is over Sunday and, so far, the group said it has raised $850,000 from 700 donors in 30 states and 28 Memphis-area ZIP codes.

“It’s time to sprint to the finish line, and the Hyde Family Foundations (HFF) are helping us do just that,” reads a recent email alert from OPC.

The Hyde Foundation is tripling all donations for the project, OPC said, until the $1 million goal is met.

Melissa McMasters

Melissa McMaster, OPC’s director of communications, said the support they’ve gotten shows that people are ready to have the issue resolved. Also, McMasters said her group has “no doubt” that they will meet their goal.

Memphis Flyer: How has the effort gone so far?

Melissa McMasters: We’ve had great support from the moment we announced the campaign. I think people are ready to see this issue resolved and to get their park back.

It was a long road to get to a solution that would add permanent zoo parking and end encroachment onto the Greensward, and the people donating to this campaign traveled that road with us.

We’ll probably wind up with about 800 individual donors to this campaign, which is remarkable for a nonprofit of our small size and young age.

MF: Have you been constantly busy going to fundraisers and meeting with potential donors?

MM: We’ve attended some terrific events put on by community members, including the Park Friends cookout that raised over $12,000 in two hours. It’s been a lot of fun connecting with our neighbors. (OPC executive director Tina Sullivan) and our board members have been spending a lot of time securing larger gifts as well.

MF: Did you think you’d get such wide-ranging support from across the country? Also, has anything surprised you during this effort?

I’m going to answer these two in tandem, because the thing that has surprised me the most is the nationwide support. The demand for removing cars from the Greensward has been getting stronger in Memphis over the last few years, but I never expected it would resonate so widely.

We’ve had gifts from 35 states so far, and the motivation has been wide-ranging: Memphians who have moved away, friends and relatives who have invested in this issue through Memphians talking about it, and people who have seen articles in national conservation publications and websites.

MF: Will you meet your goal?

MM: We have no doubt at this point that we’re going to get there. Hyde Family Foundations is tripling all gifts until we reach the $1 million goal. We’ve raised about $13,000 since last night (which nets us an additional $26,000 from Hyde), so we just need $37,000 more from the public to hit that goal by Sunday.

MF: What is the next step after the fundraising deadline?

MM: We’ll be ready to present city council with the results of the campaign at the July 20 meeting. Our understanding is that by showing we’ve secured $1 million toward the project, we’ll then be able to present city council with $250,000 right away so that the Powers Hill team can get started with design and public engagement.

MF: Will you and the OPC be able to breather a little more freely after the deadline?

MM: There’s no rest for the weary! Because we’ve poured everything we have into this campaign over the past two months, we’re 50% behind where we need to be in raising money for park operations.

We just had tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of storm damage last weekend, so we’ve got a lot of ground to make up. It’s not as exciting as a two-month deadline, but those are the dollars that impact people’s experiences every single day!

The Memphis Medical District Collaborative (MMDC) has launched its own public art fund, which will be granted to artists to create “unconventional and impactful” public art projects in the Medical District.

Types of projects that are eligible to be funded include temporary or permanent art, site specific installations, as well as multimedia and performing art projects.

Professional artists, along with general members of the community can submit an application and project proposal here until the end of November.

Once every two months through December 1, grantees will be selected and awarded up to $2,500 to complete their artwork.

Preference will be given to artists that live or work within the Medical District.

Property owners in the district can also sign up to be paired with artists, for on site projects such as murals or sculptures.

Next year’s city budget lowers taxes, gives raises to all city employees, hires more cops, paves more streets, strips funds from the Urban Arts Commission, and more; it was also passed at a break-neck speed (as far as budgets go).

The Memphis City Council passed its lightly amended version of Mayor Jim Strickland’s 2017-2018 budget for the city Tuesday, the very first night it could do so. City budgets are due on July 1 and past councils have pushed final votes close to that date in hours-long sessions at Memphis City Hall.

The current council passed its first budget last year in (maybe a record) seven minutes. This year, that same council passed the budget in 28 minutes, according to council chairman Berlin Boyd (or 46 minutes by Strickland’s watch).

“This year’s budget process was another example of this council’s hard work and professional cooperation in good faith between us and the administration,” Boyd said. “And to be clear, even though today’s budget passed in 28 minutes downstairs, today was the culmination of five weeks of hard work with additional all-day hearings and countless hours of meetings, research, and discussion on top of that to see this budget through.”

Strickland said the quick passage is a result of the cooperation between the council and the mayor’s office.

“To me, this is a testament that when we work together and are open to compromise, we can move Memphis forward in a way that fosters faith in government — as opposed to the fierce battles of years past that only serve to drive wedges between us,” Strickland said. “This is the government you deserve.”

The council’s version of the operating budget, which is used for day-to-day operations of the city, was about $668 million. The capital budget, used to buy large, one-time items, was about $81 million. Both figures were higher than Strickland’s original proposal.

Thanks to the recent re-appraisal of properties, council members were able to lower the city tax rate from $3.40 per $100 of assessed value to $3.27. The lower tax rate yields the same revenue for the city as the $3.40 rate.

Strickland lauded the budget, calling it “responsive to the taxpayer,” as it will eventually put more cops on the street, allow for more streets to be paved, keep libraries open for longer hours, and more.

But not everyone was a winner in this year’s budget debate. The Downtown Memphis Commission’s budget was held as some council members plan to further investigate the agency’s finances, especially its salaries. The Urban Arts Commission’s budget was stripped altogether “due to concerns about local and minority spending percentages,” Boyd said.

Look for a follow-up story later that will go more in-depth on the council’s budget.

Tuition, housing rates, and fees at the University of Memphis will see a slight increase next year, as the university’s Board of Trustees voted to raise those costs today.

A 2.6 percent tuition increase for the undergraduate, graduate, and law schools was approved by the board today, which will result in a near $4 million in additional revenue for the university per year.

The board’s Governance and Finance Committee reports that these additional funds will be invested partially in scholarships and “strategic initiatives,” but will be used largely to fund salary increases for the university’s faculty and staff.

The board voted today for tenured and tenured-track faculty to receive a 2 percent increase in salary, with a 1 percent merit pool, while staff, non-tenured and adjunct faculty’s salaries will all increase by 3 percent.

Majority of funding for salary increase pool comes from State-appropriated funds, meant for readjusting salaries at the discretion of the receiving higher education institution.

The board also voted in favor of a 5 percent increase in student housing rates, in which all revenue would be used for housing operating costs, like maintenance and repairs.

Additionally, the board moved to raise the university’s housing contract cancellation fee from $450 to $750, in an effort to improve retention in on-campus residences.

Alaina Getzenberg

Beale and Third

The task force reviewing the controversial Beale Street Bucks program is slated to have recommendations for the Memphis City Council in September.

Last year, the Downtown Memphis Commission started a $10 fee to enter Beale Street on certain Saturdays during certain times. It was a move to curb overcrowding on the street, which was blamed for two stampedes that caused injuries and property damage.

However, some said the program was racist, that it unfairly targeted Africans Americans. Last month, the council voted to suspend the program and instead institute a $5 flat fee to enter the street during those times. The council also established a task force to review the program.

Council chairman Berlin Boyd said the he’l be a member of the task force along with members of the Memphis Police Department, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Beale Street Merchants Association, Memphis in May, and the Metropolitan Memphis Hotel and Motel Lodging Association. It’s goal, Boyd said, is to increase security on Beale Street and reduce the “exclusionary fee.”

He said the group will discuss security issues with officials in other cities. Already, Boyd said he’d talked with security officials in New Orleans about how they provide security on Bourbon Street. Crime in the French Quarter, Boyd said, was down 50 percent and that cops there use a lot of “probable-cause-type stops” for visitors smoking marijuana, for example, and the city also uses mounted patrol in the area, too.

Council member Joe Brown decried sending the issue to a task force, saying the decision ultimately rests with the council (which it does, as Boyd explained to him). However, Boyd repeated an earlier solution to the problem — “personnel.” He said he simply putting more officers on the street will improve security there.

Tennessee AG Herbert Slatery

Attorneys general from 16 states (including Tennessee) asked President Donald Trump to help end federal overreach “rules, regulations, and other administrative actions, which, in our view, lack a legal basis.”

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery signed onto a letter Tuesday already signed by 16 attorneys general. That letter, dated May 17, says “for too long, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the rules, interpretations, circulars, bulletins, guidance documents, even blog posts, of federal agencies have been treated as law.” But they aren’t law, the attorneys argue.

As a result, business owners and citizens “live in a state of constant uncertainty” not knowing when a new rule may change “their legal and financial obligations.” This also concentrates power at the federal level, the letter says.

“Federal agencies were created to administer the law,” Slatery said in a statement Tuesday. “In too many instances they have tried to make law, to legislate, through guidance letters and the like.

“When steps like these are taken, the voice of the people, through their elected representatives, is not heard. And that is a problem, a constitutional problem, which we want the administration and Congress to address.”

The attorneys general want a new framework and have asked Trump to lead a regulatory reform effort that will, for one, restore the lawmaking role of Congress and the power of the federal courts.

Specifically, the letter asks Trump to disallow federal agencies to enforce “rules interpretations, guidance documents, bulletins, circulars, or any other administrative statement or action of any type or form in federal court.”

Also under the proposed guidelines, federal courts would judge the meaning of federal law, “rather than deferring to the agency’s reading of the law.

“In this way, the lawmaking power would return to where it belongs—Congress—and the judiciary would reemerge as an independent adjudicator of lawsuits between the federal government and the people,” the letter reads.

The group also wants to force federal agencies to bring enforcement actions into Article III courts, which include the U.S. Supreme Court, the 13 U.S. courts of appeal, and others. Current law, the letter says, allows federal agencies to bring enforcement actions against private individuals in front of in-house, administrative law judges.

“The vast bulk of administrative law judges are involved in the distribution of privileges or benefits,” the letter says. “Only a small portion of the total number of (administrative law judges) actually adjudicate legal obligations.”

The letter says that regulatory overreach is “the root cause of virtually all of their past and ongoing litigation against the federal government.

Slatery’s signed onto the letter with attorneys general from Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.”

The “Tom Lee Storm” is the name Memphis, Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) officials use when talking about last week’s storm that caused about $15.1 million in damage and left more than 188,000 in the dark.

MLGW officials gave their first public report on the storm and its aftermath to the Memphis City Council Tuesday. Revelations during the MLGW committee meeting were short but interesting details were many.

The storm, which rolled in Saturday, June 27, brought rain, lightning, hail, and microburst winds that exceeded 100 miles per hour, according to Alonzo Weaver, MLGW’s vice president of engineering & operations.

It wreaked havoc – knocking down trees and electrical poles – all over Memphis but especially in Midtown, the Brooks Road area, Whitehaven, and the Getwell Road area, Weaver said. The storm also knocked over the stone obelisk in Tom Lee Park, drawing the “Tom Lee Storm” moniker.

Tuesday marked the 10th day of restoration work by the Memphis utility. As of Tuesday morning, MLGW said only about 1,800 customers remained without power. MLGW used its own crews, of course, but also brought in 101 outside contract crews to repair electrical systems and 78 tree-trimming crews, Weaver said.

Weaver said in the 10-day stretch of power restoration, he’s heard many ask why Memphis can’t bury its power lines to avoid major outages. He said the cost to do so would be about $3.6 billion, a figure he said delivers a “negative payback.”

Weaver explained that storm restoration efforts here since 1994 have cost $94 million. Of that figure, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has reimbursed $44 million.

So, instead of the long process to bury the city’s lines, he said, MLGW is now working on a five-year, $18 million plan to improve the city’s overhead lines.

“Undergrounding (power lines) is not cost effective,” Weaver said. “But making our current system smarter and making it tougher is and that’s our plan going forward.”