[As stated yesterday, the Flyer’s cover story this week takes an early look at the consolidation process and players. To read it, click here.]
For the last 25 years, Marlin Mosby has been trying to hire Ivy League graduates to come to Memphis to work with his company, Public Financial Management (PFM). And in that 25 years, he’s been able to convince only a few who didn’t already have ties to the area.
“We hired two who came here and they left within a couple of years,” he says. “Most I wasn’t able to get here. … People who want to compete against the best and want to be at the highest level of their career, they don’t see Memphis as a place where they are going to be successful.”
He staffs his office here with Rhodes graduates.
(I know, I know. You’re thinking: What does this have to do with consolidation?)
PFM is the financial adviser for Shelby County, Germantown, Collierville, and Bartlett, and was a consultant for the city of Memphis for 20-plus years until a few years ago. As he sees it, Memphis doesn’t have high taxes because of government inefficiency or corruption:
“It appears on the surface that we’re paying a significantly higher tax rate than Nashville/Davidson County. To make it comparable, you have to figure out what the tax rate would be if you levelized it across the whole community,” Mosby says. “It brings it much closer.”
But the most important factor for him is the relatively large number of children in the area. In the Memphis region, school-aged children account for almost a quarter of the population. In almost every other city, school-aged children are about a fifth of the population.
