Month: April 2018

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1522

H8RS

It’s not hard to troll the mighty-white Tennessee legislature.

It can’t quite bring itself to denounce white supremacy but can always rise to the occasion of punishing a majority African-American city for removing the public statue of a slave trader, Grand Wizard, and Confederate general.

How can it still be so richly satisfying?

Hats off to the author of this Wikipedia edit for Tennessee’s legislature stating, “We got tricked by a city we hate and now we’re mad.” While Wikipedia has removed your fine work, let it always be remembered.

Dammit, Gannett

An article last week announced the sale of The Commercial Appeal’s Beale Street parking lot and plans to move business operations to a new location.

But it also described Memphis’ traditional newspaper of record as something other than a newspaper. According to the article, The Commercial Appeal is “an online news organization that continues to publish a daily, morning newspaper.”

TV Typos

WREG reported that “High Schools Ran By Willie Herenton Will Close June 30th.” Here’s hoping the cutline wasn’t written by a student.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Jack Alberson Makes the Grade on Trials

Jack Alberson, the Memphis songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has released a series of tight singles and EPs over recent years, now offers up a full-length, Trials. The record release show on April 14 was at Move the Air Audio, and the cozy studio made the perfect home for a night of synthesizers, stacked loops, and guitar wizardry — just a few of the flavors on display on Trials.

The album’s arrangements are lush, with layers of beats and drum loops, synthesizers, guitars, and drums. The guitars alternately crunch and drone, and the synths and drum loops provide a recurring aural motif that ties the whole production together. Each song assembles itself measure by measure, a fully realized little micro-verse that becomes clearer with each listen. The warmth of the arrangements — and Alberson’s sense of humor and straightforward delivery — lends an air of whimsy to the recordings. It keeps the songs from sinking into melancholy, even as Alberson sings, with an air of resignation, of “life in his leaky lifeboat.” His lyrics offer comfort and encouragement but no easy answers or sugarcoating, accepting that life’s trials give its triumphs definition and contrast.

Such paradoxes color much of Trials, which seemingly crafts a harmonious whole by combining tropes from various genres (think world music, French pop, post-rock, new wave, and the kind of ’60s balladry reminiscent of Van Morrison’s Them). Alberson’s honest lyrics are done justice by his strong vocals, and he is backed up to good effect by the talented Kathryn Brawley Suda and Cat Hall on tracks “And Rainy Days” and “Television Quicksand,” respectively. 

Jack Alberson

Alberson’s bell-like vocals recall Ben Folds crooning over a particularly rich arrangement by The Cure. Talking Heads and Pixies seem to make their (welcome) influence felt at times as well. It’s difficult to pin down any sound for too long, as the atmosphere shifts and morphs throughout each listen. As a result, Trials‘ most human quality is its ability to try on different moods. This is an album with a lot of personality. The end result is layered and catchy with a hint of darkness. And the lyrics are easy to pick out as Alberson throws out lines like “television quicksand swallows you whole.”

Must-listen tracks include album opener “Motivational,” “Let Me Be Right,” and “Television Quicksand.” The album was produced and recorded by Alberson and J.D. Reager, with additional recording by Josh Stevens and Eric Wilson at “various homes using a Tascam 24-track digital recorder.” The last words on the back cover of Trials are advice to be heeded: “No peak limiting — play it loud.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Early Voting: Low Turnout; Democrats Out-voting Republicans

With early voting destined to end Thursday of this week [today], Election Commission figures show that, through Wednesday, 32,524 people — or 5.85 percent of registered voters — had cast their ballot. Democrats cast 19,126 of this total, while Republicans checked in at 13, 368.

In sum, the turnout has been low (as usual), but Democrats have participated in early voting at a greater rate than Republicans, a trend which, if continued through election day on May 1st and especially through August 2nd — the finale for county general election voting — would indicate that, after several consecutive GOP sweeps in county voting, Democrats may finally have attained the political edge to which their greater numbers in Shelby County should entitle them.

The Election Commision’s figures also seem to be telling a story about the possible fate of the much-watched Shelby County mayor’s race — or at least the Republican-primary side of it.

Though Commission District 1 (Millington, North Shelby County), dominated by the GOP, began early voting with a significant turnout, the number of voters there ultimately sank to a level beneath several other predominantly Republican districts.

The figures through Wednesday, April 25, show 1,853 Republican votes in District 1, which is the North Shelby hinterland presumably dominated by GOP mayoral candidate Terry Roland. Of the major Republican districts, District 1 is, turnout-wise, fifth in numbers. Exceeding it in turnout of Republicans, from the top down, are District 3 (Bartlett), with 2,497 Republican votes; District 4 (Germantown) with 2,224 votes; District 13 (East Memphis), with 2,074 votes; and District 2 (Collierville), with 1,957 GOP votes.

The areas of Republican concentration, where a proportionately greater GOP vote has occurred in recent days, have been those of the south and east — in areas where the Republican establishment, which has been expected to favor Trustee David Lenoir, looms heavy.

Roland, of course, would be expected to get a share of these voes as well — perhaps enough to complement his votes in North Shelby and put him ahead. But it’s a chancey situation for the commissioner, and a somewhat more reassuring one for Lenoir, who is counting on a big vote in East Shelby to bring him in.

It’s a hard race to predict from such data alone, and perhaps a close one, overall.

The following graph indicates both the relative turnout of Republicans and Democrats and of the various Commission districts to each other.

Categories
News News Blog

Mississippi River Park Could Get New Look

CREDIT: Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development

Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development

The Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) wants to use shipping containers to build a tree house and a pavilion in a re-imagined Mississippi River Park.

The group, which is a recent re-boot of the Riverfront Development Corp., filed for a variance to use the containers to build an elevated tree house with lookouts, bridges, and play places. The plan also uses containers to build a sheltered pavilion with tables.

The plan was proposed in documents to the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development Tuesday.

“The designs maintain open green space, highlights river views, and embellishes the rolling topography near Riverside Drive,” reads a letter in the application from project representative Brenda Solomito, of Solomito Land Planning. “The park is a keystone piece in connecting the city’s riverfront network by tying into the greater circulation system.
[pullquote-1] “The structures located at the northern end of the park are open-air pavilions with flexible furnishings and constructed of shipping containers. Additionally, the playful tree house is elevated over a play area to the northwest.”

Mississippi River Park would also get a bike share station, bike racks, new furnishings, new landscaping, and a new concrete sidewalk that would encircle most of the park.

Shipping containers are not allowed for use, however. But Solomito argued in the application that they were chosen for their ability “to withstand the harsh elements along the Mississippi River and the number of visitors.”

Using them won’t save money, the application says. Instead, “the applicants are building for the future generations and the public good.”

MRPP wasted no time, it seems, to begin re-shaping the city’s riverfront. Carol Coletta, a Kresge Foundation fellow, was named the organization’s new president in late March. The organization’s new name and vision were announced Monday.
[slideshow-1]

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Meet Bluefin chef Ja Min Lee

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Ja Min Lee is executive chef at Bluefin restaurant.

Ja Min Lee doesn’t smoke, drink alcohol or coffee. She looks decades younger than her 54 years.

“Food is very important for your physical body,” she says.

Lee is practicing what she preaches at Bluefin, where she has been executive chef for three months.

Lee, who owned three restaurants in Savannah, Ga., brought her healthy American menu to Memphis after she moved here three months ago to work with her brother, Bluefin owner Suk Woo.

Lee began cooking Korean food at age 6 at her home in Seoul, Korea. She later moved to the United States to study interior design in Atlanta.

While in the States, Lee learned how to cook American food, but decided to make it healthier by eliminating oil and by using fresh vegetables.

After moving to Memphis, she spent two months researching Memphis restaurants.

Woo said Lee told him she had to have fresh vegetables every day and no canned goods. “She doesn’t like canned food,” Woo says.

Bluefin kept its regular menu and added Lee’s American and other items, which included four piece chicken tenders (the chicken is not frozen, she says), gyros (red onions which Lee believes are the “most nutritious”) and Phillysteak (no salt, she says).

She also added a couple of bowls or Balls as it’s written on the menu, including the chicken or beef K-Pop Ball, which has tofu and egg; and the Memphis Ball, which has lettuce, tomato, pickle, and corn. The customer can choose between white rice or “purple rice,” which she makes by boiling purple cabbage in the water with the rice.

Her menu, which is available at lunch and dinner, also includes burgers, wraps, shrimp, subs, and a club sandwich.

All items are available at Bluefin and next door at Bluefin Deli.

Bluefin is located at 135 South Main; (901-528-1010).



Categories
News News Blog

Uptown Neighbors at the Table to Help Invest ‘Real Money’

CREDIT: Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency

Andrew Murray/Twitter

Neighbors, stakeholders, and developers met last week to re-imagine Uptown.

What could you and your neighbors do with $95 million over 14 years?

Figuring that out is precisely the task now before neighbors in Uptown. Thanks to a tax increment financing (TIF) deal started in 2001, the neighborhood has $95 million to invest until 2032.

Now neighbors, developers, and other stakeholders are working to form a neighborhood plan. It’s a new model with few like it across the country. In Memphis, redevelopment has never been done like this before.

Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency

The boundaries of Uptown, where $95 million will be invested over 14 years.

The process is supported by the Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The agency was created in 2001 but over the last year, it has become more independent with its own staff and resources.

“What’s exciting about this type of TIF is that — versus the developer-driven type of TIF — this is really driven by the community,” said Tanja Mitchell, who long served as the Uptown Neighborhood Coordinator and is now part of the CRA.
Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency

The boundaries of the Uptown TIF.

Neighborhood meetings commenced last week to begin piecing the plan together. While details are finalized, pop-ups will populate the neighborhoods of Uptown, which include Smokey City, Greenlaw, Klondike, and more. Vacant buildings, alleys, and more will be re-imagined as retail spaces or restaurants.

Andrew Murray, the CRA’s director of planning and community development, said he’s been through plenty of planning processes. But this one is different, he said, not to mention the fact that “it’s real money!”

“We have 14 years and a set amount of money, and a set amount of ways we can use that money, and we have a community advisory committee that will be driving the planning process,” Murray said. ”They’ll be around to implement the process. They’ll be the keepers of the plan.”

Categories
News News Blog

Council Recap: Pre-K, Historic Districts, and Grocery Stores

Pre-k

The Memphis City Council approved a special fund Tuesday that will go toward the $16 million that the city needs to fund universal prekindergarten. The goal is to contribute $6 million to the fund every year beginning in fiscal year 2021 in order to expand from 7,000 pre-K seats in the county to 8,500.

The plan to expand pre-K has long been a goal of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, and was first introduced in March.

Historic Overlay Districts

Tuesday the council also began a discussion of an ordinance that will address some of the issues in Cooper-Young’s historic overlay district guidelines.

This comes two weeks after the council approved the long-sought landmark status of the neighborhood, conditional on the council returning to the issue to address the “major inconsistencies” in the guidelines.

Councilman Kemp Conrad who is drafting the ordinance said Tuesday it will address the “black holes” in the guidelines like what structures can and cannot be demolished. The ordinance could also allow homeowners and developers to go before the Memphis Landmarks Commission on the front end of projects, rather than seek approval after the plans are drafted.

Additionally, the ordinance will address whether or not homeowners will have to appear in Shelby County Chancery Court to appeal a decision by the Landmarks Commission.

Conrad said he’s been meeting with community stakeholders and will continue to collaborate with them throughout the process of passing the ordinance, which will be heard on the first of three readings in two weeks.

Grocery stores

A comprehensive plan could be implemented to develop grocery stores in Memphis’ food-insecure neighborhoods. Consulting firm Socially Twisted, that recently completed a grocery store feasibility study for two former Kroger locations here, is looking to enter a $174,000 agreement with the city to address the issue of food deserts.

Rhonnie Brewer of Socially Twisted said she’s come across a handful of grocery store studies done in other neighborhoods across the city and they all show the desire and need for grocery stores, she said, but each is missing the next steps.

For example, Brewer said the a study was done in the Medical District which showed the need for a grocery store, but a grocer couldn’t be secured. Brewer suggests creating a prototype of a grocery store that would work in Memphis’ low-income areas, and eventually recreating that prototype across the city.

Categories
News News Blog

Strickland Presents Public Safety-Focused 2019 Budget

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said “strengthening public safety is a common thread throughout” the 2019 fiscal budget that he presented Tuesday to the Memphis City Council.

Crime has been down the first quarter of 2018, Strickland said, but “no one is celebrating this.” Still, he said it’s “undeniably encouraging news; now let’s keep our foot on the pedal.”

The budget technically lowers the current tax rate, but that may be an oversimplification. Here’s how Strickland explained it:

“I’m also proposing a tax rate of $3.19 per $100 in assessed value — one that’s technically lower than our current $3.27, and the $3.40 that we started with back in 2016.

There’s a reason for that. As you remember, we set the rate at $3.27 last year because it was calculated to be equivalent to or break even with our old rate once property values went up.

We expected a normal number of appeals of those valuations. But now that those numbers have come in, we’ve learned that the appeals were way
below normal.

So, to be equal to our current rate or to break even, our proposed new rate would be $3.19. Anything above that is a tax increase.”

However, even with the lower rate, Strickland said revenues would grow by $10.1 million in the coming year.

Of the $10.1 million, $2 million is proposed to go toward solidifying a pension plan for city employees, while $1.8 will fund police and fire promotional testing — an important part of the city’s public safety retention plan, Strickland said.

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“Adequate funding” or about $1.5 million will be used to rebuild the Memphis Police Department, which Strickland said means hiring more officers. The budget allows for two large or three mid-size police recruit classes.

However, Strickland said the budget is not solely focused on public safety. He said it also looks to provide youth with opportunities, reinvest in the city, and “bring new life to places that have been dormant for too long.”

Other highlights of the budget, he said, include the $19 million allocated to street pavings, which will be the third consecutive increase in funds for street pavings.

The budget also funds an initial step toward a new minority business incubator that would spur growth in minority business and create jobs.

[pullquote-2]

“We all know that poverty is a community-wide challenge,” Strickland said. “These initiatives show that we are continuing to do our part to combat our unacceptable rate of poverty.”

One item that is not in the budget, Strickland said, is an across-the-board raises for city employees because the city can’t afford it. Even a 1 percent across-the-board pay raise would costs $4.4 million, he said.

“We’re becoming more efficient every year,” Strickland said. “We’re investing more and more in things that really matter.”


Strickland’s presentation kicks off budget seasons at Memphis City Hall. The council will now begin its work to review and amend the budget, a months-long process of hearings, debate, and decision-making.

A final budget must be approved no later than the end of June.

Categories
News News Blog

Lawmakers Want Another Reference to ‘Almighty God’ in Constitution

Bowling

Tennessee rights come from “Almighty God,” not from the government.

State lawmakers want you to put that in the state Constitution and pay more than $9,000 to do it.

A resolution is working its way through the legislative process to add a phrase to Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution. If approved that new section would read like this (the new section is in bold):

“That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind, and that liberties do not come from government, but from Almighty God.”
[pdf-1]
Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) is the bill’s Senate sponsor. She said in a recent committee hearing that the language is “already implicit” throughout the Constitution and that “many things” in the document already get the message across.

Still, the new language is necessary, says Bowling and the nearly 30 House sponsors of the bill.

In pitching the bill earlier this month to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bowling says mentions of god-given rights appear in speeches and letters from Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, and more.

“President [Donald] Tump said, ‘rights are not a gift from the government but from God’,” Bowling says. “(Trump) said, ‘some say the government gives you nothing but troubles.’”

Lee Harris (D-Memphis) says he did “not know if he had a huge problem” with the bill. But he says he wanted to study it to ensure that it didn’t create “excessive entanglement with the work of the government and faith and religion.”

Bowling counters that the Tennessee state government’s core mission is for transportation, education, and public safety.

“But in order to say we are a government of law and under the law is to recognize that law was inside man first,” she says.

She then points to Section 3 of the Constitution that proclaims ”that all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience.”

For the non-believers out there, Bowling points to Article 9, Section 2 which reads, “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.”

Should the Senate pass the bill, it would appear as a referendum question across Tennessee polls in the gubernatorial election in 2022. Putting the question on the ballot would cost $9,100 for the Secretary of State to publish the amendment.
[pdf-2]

Categories
News News Blog

City Councilman: City is Losing Economic Development Game

Councilman Philip Spinosa Jr.

The Memphis City Council was scheduled Tuesday to discuss a resolution shifting the structure of the city and county Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), but Councilman Philip Spinosa Jr., who recently referred to EDGE as “broken” said he was too “emotional” to present the resolution during a committee meeting on Tuesday.

The councilman said two weeks ago that the council should look to amend the city ordinance that originally created EDGE, so that the president of EDGE, Reid Dulberger reports to the board and not to the mayor, to whom he currently reports.

Tuesday Spinosa said he’s “still real upset” with where the council and the Shelby County Commission are in changing the structure of EDGE and its leadership.

“We’re losing the economic development game,” he said. “We’re certainly not winning. I’m tired of that. It’s not about destroying EDGE, but about putting the right people in the right place.”

Spinosa had four recommendations prepared for the committee, but chose not to share because he said that would be “me and my emotions getting in the way of the progress we’ve made.”

Referring to an email he sent to EDGE leadership in March, asking for a copy of their policies, procedures, and performance reviews, Spinosa said he is frustrated that he still has not gotten a response 47 days later.

Headed by Dulberger, EDGE was established in 2011 through a joint ordinance of the city council and county commission. It was created with the mission of “providing and coordinating public resources to drive economic development.” EDGE provides various types of economic assistance like pay-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) incentives, which offers tax abatements — with some conditions — to companies and developers.

EDGE’s first Community Builder PILOT, which are reserved for “nonprofit and for-profit entities investing in urban revitalization,” was awarded to Binghampton Development Corporation in 2015 for the $7 million grocery-store-anchored retail center, Binghampton Gateway Center to be constructed.

Other projects benefiting from EDGE’s incentives include ServiceMaster headquarters Downtown and IKEA, which received EDGE’s first PILOT incentive awarded to a retail store.

To date, EDGE has awarded about 75 PILOT incentives, investing a total of just under $3 billion, and providing about 16,000 local jobs. EDGE also requires that award recipients spend a set number of dollars contracting minority- or women-owned business enterprises (MWBE) or locally-owned small businesses (LOSB). As a result, the 75 projects spent about $4 million contracting either MWBEs and LOSBs.