Author: Lindsay Jones

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Opportunity Challenge Unearths Problems, Seeks Solutions for Memphis

Your average video gamer spends about 80 percent of his time failing to reach the all-important next level.

But no matter how many aliens annihilate him, how many racecars run him off the road, or how many enemy soldiers spray his avatar with bullets, that gamer keeps coming back for more.

Katherine von Jan, co-founder and chief creative of Derring-do Design, says tapping in to this deeply ingrained desire to triumph over adversity could help Memphis improve its economic outlook.

von Jan’s presentation was part of an Opportunity Challenge conference today at the Memphis Bioworks foundation that’s being spearheaded by the nonprofit CEOs for Cities and Mayor A C Wharton’s office. The three-day think-a-thon aspires to help Memphis enable and retain young talent instead of losing it to other cities. The conference continues through Friday.

The key to improving Memphis’ economic destiny — where only 24 percent of people have a college education — is to create a system, akin to a game, that encourages even the most disenfranchised citizens to advance through the levels of success, von Jan said. “In gaming, you start from zero and build up.”

Beneath the day’s rhetoric, education surfaced again and again.

Economist Joe Cortwright, president of Impresa Inc. and a senior policy adviser for CEOs for Cities, said college-educated people have higher incomes and spend less time being unemployed during their lifetimes than those with a lower educational level, period. And “what is true for individuals is also true for places,” he said.

While Memphis has lots of things going for it, the city also has disparate pockets of hope and hopelessness that don’t tend to mix. Not only has it been stigmatized in the media, but the city’s own citizenry tends to cast it in an unflattering light, said Andre Fowlkes of the business incubator LaunchMemphis.

“We present Memphis on a garbage can lid,” he said.

Another pressing issue underlying the Opportunity Challenge is the shift to a talent-based economy, or an economy built on new and changing markets or ideas. He who produces the most widgets isn’t necessarily the most successful nowadays. A tanking economy has borne that out.

“That was the sledgehammer to really bring it home,” Fowlkes said.

Since about 20 percent of Memphis’ population lives below the poverty line, with 30 percent younger than 18, and with unemployment in Shelby County at almost 10 percent, it’s time to re-evaluate, or at least understand some things about how poverty affects education.

Laurel Dukehart, president of Gateway to College National Network, said working with poor people who want to succeed has taught her a lot. Most kids drop out of high school or college not because they’re shiftless or stupid, but because of things beyond their control. Try carrying a full course load when you’re broke and your car engine fries or you have to help a bedridden relative who has no access to health care.

“It’s about poverty,” she said. “It’s about a lack of role models.”

While things like access to technology are talent accelerators, things like persistent poverty are talent killers. And the surest way out of poverty is education.

Possible solutions to overcoming local poverty and education issues will be offered Friday morning at Bioworks.

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$1.5M Budget Allocation Approved for Fire Department

For the first time in more than a month, Memphis Fire Services was able to cruise through a budget request without a single hint of opposition. Fire department director Alvin Benson was all smiles as a result.

This morning, he and his staff requested using $1.5 million from their capital improvement budget to buy land for a new fire station in the Winchester/Hacks Cross area. Members of the city council’s Public Safety & Homeland Security Comittee approved the request unanimously.

Once built, the station will be along Centennial Drive in the Southwind area. It will be financed with general obligation bonds.

In the meantime, Fire Services and its union members are scheduled to appear before the full council later today to resolve, once and for all, their disagreement over buying eight new alternative response vehicles. That conflict began in early January, when the department requested using about $500,000 to buy the vehicles, which officials insist are less expensive to maintain, and more maneuverable, than large fire trucks.

However, members of International Association of Firefighters Local 1784 have objected, saying they would prefer having fully staffed vehicles that can respond to many different kinds of emergencies. The ARVs are only equipped for emergency medical calls, which make up the majority of the fire department’s runs. Underlying the disagreement is a fear by union members that trucks will be put out of service, possibly affecting jobs.

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Memphis Animal Shelter Director Gets Caged

You’ve gotta a love a guy who’s willing to don a fuzzy brown dog costume and spend most of the day in a kennel to drum up community interest in adopting pets.

“At 9:30, we had a line at the front door and a line almost down the street,” said Matthew Pepper, director of Memphis Animal Services.

His idea to wear the dog getup came from a volunteer group and was helped by local media coverage.
By about 3 p.m. today, more than 40 dogs and cats had found homes. All 31 of the dogs specially prepped for adoption today were gone, replaced by a whole new batch of hopefuls not even halfway through the day. Pepper said he was optimistic that more than 50 animals would find forever homes by 5.

He also said he’s tired of the shelter’s former reputation; it’s now a “fun” place. The shelter was raided in the early morning hours of October 2009 — the first day of A C Wharton’s term as Memphis mayor — because of suspected abuse and neglect that led to three dogs being starved to death. A short time later, Wharton fired the previous director.

At least 15,000 animals cycle through the shelter a year, Pepper said. He has no illusions that there will ever be a shortage of animals in need of homes, but if spending a day in a cage helps put a dent in the endless parade, he’s more than willing to step up.

“It’s made a huge difference since Mr. Pepper took over,” said shelter volunteer Ariel Dagastino.

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App for That

Babies’ mamas (or daddies) in Tennessee can now determine how much child support they’re owed without meeting an attorney.

If all goes as planned, Memphis attorney William Jones IV’s child support calculator app for iPhones, Android phones, and iPads will be available starting today.

Jones, also known as “Lawyer Bill” to listeners of 98.1 The Max’s morning radio program, recently hired an information technology firm to create the child support calculator he says is much easier to use than the state’s version. App users can determine how much child support they’re owed by entering income information.

“This is the first I’ve heard of anyone doing that,” said Ann Fritz, executive director of the Memphis Bar Association.

Although the state of Tennessee offers a free child support calculator, it’s Microsoft compatible and doesn’t translate to popular mobile devices such as iPhones and Androids, Jones said.

With the popularity of iPads, apps are becoming even more pervasive, intuitive, and easy to use — an environment that, to Jones, is rife with possibilities in Tennessee and elsewhere.

“If you’re a working mom or dad, you don’t want to wait two weeks and pay $300 to see an attorney to find out if your child support is going down,” Jones said.

That’s why Jones started a second business about three months ago called iLawyer Apps to inform people in the legal field about the latest technological innovations. It’s also where Jones can customize and personalize apps for other attorneys.

Kevin Sherwood, principal of Memphis-based Helix Business Solutions, led the team that made Jones’ app idea into a digital reality. In Sherwood’s opinion, mobile devices are becoming a “game changer,” and the possibilities for Jones’ ideas are nothing short of tremendous.

“I think we’re on the front edge of just a major explosion in those kinds of applications,” Sherwood said.

Jones is getting ready to release a higher-end version of the child support app for attorneys. The pro version, to be released next week if approved by Apple, would cost $14.99. It allows lawyers not only to calculate child support payments to the penny, but to generate the official worksheets that must be filled out by divorcing moms and dads. Lawyers can even print the documents during court proceedings and then hand them to the judge once completed.

“It’s not just bad news for deadbeat dads,” Jones said. “It’s good news for folks who have taken a hit in this economy and aren’t working as much.”

Jones is a self-avowed techno geek. He says he was one of the first in line for the iPad when it was released in April because of how it would be able to help streamline his practice.

He used to trudge through the courthouse lugging a laptop and thick paper files inside a wheeled suitcase. All of that has changed for the attorney who began practicing in 2001.

“Now I’ve got a thin little satchel,” Jones said, gesturing to his trusty iPad. “This thing holds my entire [client] database.”

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Earning Green

When it comes to green jobs in the Bluff City, the Greater Memphis Black Chamber of Commerce is betting that another kind of green is waiting to be generated under eaves and between crawl spaces.

“Weatherization alone in Memphis represents a $2.2 billion market opportunity,” said Aquila Scott, the chamber’s founder and CEO.

The chamber is working to turn the need for weatherizing homes and commercial buildings into jobs or independent business ventures for building contractors and others hit hard by the recession.

The chamber has teamed with the city of Memphis, Lab Four, and the Workforce Investment Network (WIN) to offer training to the unemployed. The idea is to show people how to get in on the ground floor of a green movement that’s been slow to take hold in Memphis but is expected to swell with the help of federal funding.

“Memphis historically has been behind in clean energy initiatives, and we’re trying to come in and develop a work force so that we never miss an opportunity like that again,” said Doug Watson, a business development manager for local technology training center Lab Four, which has been instrumental in this joint green-jobs initiative.

“On a smaller scale, it’s sort of like Microsoft or Apple being at the forefront of the computer revolution,” Watson said.

About 100 people already have signed up for Lab Four’s 12-week Building Performance Institute (BPI) certification classes this month. Dislocated workers who meet WIN guidelines will be able to take the courses at no cost — a $3,000 value, Scott said.

“If we get 100 people back to work or even 50 people back to work in a relatively short period of time, that will mean our [green-jobs initiative] is successful,” Scott said.

If the initial experiment bears fruit, more training will be offered this year. Certifications last for three years.

Tony Okhiria, a senior adviser for Lab Four who led a presentation there last week, said the Home Star Act of 2010, if passed by the U.S. Senate, will create about 168,000 weatherization jobs nationwide. The two-year federal Home Star Program is designed to provide incentives for people to retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient.

“[The certification class] shows you how to understand all the metrics and the science needed to retrofit the building,” Okhiria said.

Lab Four, the only BPI certification training facility in town, places graduates on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s list of certified auditors. Also, Memphis so far is the only city in the state that has energy-efficiency audits, mainly because of a 2009 ordinance that requires energy efficiency in rental properties.

Homeowners who feel their utility bills are too high can contact the Shelby County Weatherization Program — another potential hotbed of local weatherization business.

As for the city, it currently is attempting to weatherize 200 homes a month with only six or seven active contractors countywide.

Said Okhiria: “The more you can do, obviously the more money you can make.”

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Q&A with Scott Morris

Flyer: What’s your take on health care reform?

Scott Morris, founder and executive director of the Church Health Center, refers to his new book — Heath Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness in Body and Spirit — as a “manifesto” with potential to help reshape health-care reform. The book also addresses issues on which science often falls short.

“If I MRI your chest and look at your heart, I will not be able to know what love looks like,” Morris said. “That is something more powerful than our imaging techniques will ever reveal to us.”

The book examines the once-powerful role of the church in healing, and emphasizes what Morris, an ordained minister, insists is the inseparable relationship between the physical and spiritual. — Lindsay Jones

Morris: We have created a health-care system in America that defines health as the absence of disease. That’s not what health means. Nobody dies and on his or her tombstone it [reads], “I wish I’d gone to the doctor one more time.” People die and [say], “I wish I’d spent more time with my grandkids. I wish I’d spent more time with my family or doing the things that made me happy.” That’s really what being healthy is — having a life that’s in balance.

What do you hope to accomplish with the book?

We want to redefine how health-care in America works. We want it to be about prevention and living a healthy life as much as it is about technology and treating disease.

With all the powerful interests that won’t cooperate, how can reform succeed?

The only way we can get to what real improved health looks like is at a local level. Washington does not have the power to do this. Every community has to approach this for themselves to figure out: How do we make a healthier Memphis?

Should we go back to the days when doctors made house calls and an insurance card wasn’t necessary?

Part of why it’s hard to go back to that model is because during the last hundred years, there was an explosion of medical technology that led to improved health outcomes. What I say in the book is that we have an unholy love affair with technology. We have come to believe that you could live your life any way you want to. It doesn’t matter, because once I’m broken, there will be some technological advance that will put me back together and the doctor will be able to correct it. Well, the technology is not that good, and the doctor is not that smart.

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Debate Over Fire Department Vehicles Continues at City Council

The Memphis Fire Department’s alternative response vehicle saga continues.

After about two hours of debate at a Memphis City Council committee meeting on Tuesday, the fire department director and union members still couldn’t see eye to eye on buying eight alternative response vehicles (ARVs) for the department’s fleet.

Council Public Safety and Homeland Security committee chairman Jim Strickland sent the issue to be considered before the full city council on February 15th.

The disagreement over the ARVs first began January 4th, when the department requested to amend its budget to buy the smaller, lighter, less expensive vehicles. Union members objected because of concerns about response times during emergencies, saying much larger fire trucks are equipped to handle a variety of calls, not just medical ones.

Alvin Benson, director of Memphis Fire Services, said Tuesday that the main challenges are “cost versus benefit and risk versus reward.”

On one side, Benson says using the ARVs will save on fuel, maintenance and other costs. On the other side, members of International Firefighters Local 1784 wonder if cost savings are worth potential dangers or delays. Right now, about 79 percent of the fire department’s calls are medical emergencies. That’s why Benson would prefer first responders to be in ARVs instead of fire trucks.

“Fire calls are going down,” Benson said. “EMS calls are going in the other direction.”

However, a presentation during Tuesday’s committee session showed cost savings from the ARVs could be more negligible than previously thought. At earlier meetings, Benson said each ARV could save about $17,000 a year per vehicle in maintenance and other costs. But, according to Strickland’s math, savings might only come out to $4,200 a year per vehicle.

Robert Kramer, the union’s spokesperson, also said vehicle age, and not the number of runs, probably is the key to keeping costs down. However, Kramer said he still hasn’t received amended numbers from the city’s General Services Division that would allow him to back to his point.

The union initially had requested such records using the Freedom of Information Act. During the first meeting about ARVs, Martha Lott, the new division director, said the numbers were incorrect.

Whether savings are substantial or negligible, Kramer still worries about risk.
“In a nutshell, that’s what all of this is about,” he said.

Councilman Bill Boyd suggested that a four-month PILOT study of smaller vehicles by the fire department should have lasted a full year. That suggestion is likely to be considered at the February 15th council meeting.

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On the Move

The future for Visible School Music & Worship Arts College is becoming a little more, well, visible.

It’s been over a year since Visible School officials began raising money to move into the modern wedge-shaped C&I Bank Building at 200 Madison Avenue. On February 1st, Visible School will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at the iconic downtown building, which it bought from the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce in 2009.

The ceremony will celebrate the renovation portion of the college’s “Into the City” capital campaign. Now that the second phase of fund-raising is drawing to a close, the school’s president says a move into the downtown building could happen by August.

“We’re just taking it by stages and still looking for some support from everybody,” said Visible School president Ken Steorts.

For now, the college is housed in the Galloway United Methodist Church building in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, along with Lifelink Church. Before that, Visible School shared space with Lifelink in a warehouse in Lakeland.

Ultimately, the capital campaign’s goal is to raise $6 million to renovate the glass-fronted structure on Madison into a state-of-the-art campus for the 10-year-old music and worship arts college.

At one time, the former C&I Bank building was scheduled to be razed for a surface parking lot. The Greater Memphis Chamber had originally planned to move their operations there in 2007, but executives determined the move would be too costly.

Visible School officials began raising money to buy the endangered structure from the Chamber Foundation for $1 million. Since then, they have continued fund-raising for renovations.

The first floor will have a 200-seat auditorium for concert training and public events. The second floor will have music teaching studios and band rehearsal rooms, while the third floor will be equipped with keyboard labs and classrooms. Administrative offices and student services are planned for the fourth floor.

Once the first four floors are completed, recording studios will be installed in the basement. The fifth floor is slated to become a library with bookshelves, café-style seating, and personal practice space for student musicians.

Also under the $6 million fund-raising umbrella is student housing. Right now, 72 of the college’s 110 students live four blocks east of the new building at 670 Madison, a condominium development the school leased two years ago.

In the meantime, a study of how much the college will contribute to the downtown economy is in the works. Once the study is complete, the numbers will help gauge the value of everything from renovation activity to how student spending will affect the downtown area.

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The Young Ones

Local real estate has suffered during the worst recession in decades, but not everyone has abandoned the industry for greener pastures.

A group of young affiliate brokers not only has decided to continue the hard sell, they’ve formed a Memphis chapter of the national Young Professionals Network to help create a lasting support system in a field where they’re outnumbered two-to-one by people 40 and older. Many of the more seasoned professionals transition to real estate after retiring from other careers.

“Normally, it would be younger people coming in to take over the positions of the people going out, but we’re the one profession where it’s completely the opposite,” said Stephanie Steele of Keller Williams Realty and sponsorship chair for the new group.

That’s why it’s always good to have a phone full of contacts or a wallet packed with business cards. It also doesn’t hurt to have a family member to lean on for advice.

Steele’s mother, Jo Shaner, has been in the real estate business for years, and after college Steele, now 26, began to realize that working 9 to 5 isn’t always the way to make a living.

“With real estate I could move up as fast as I wanted,” Steele said. “Although the market has certain limitations, no one is telling you you can only make so much.”

The key to being successful in a business with flexible hours and irregular paychecks, declining values and tighter lending standards, is who you know and how you can help each other, said Amanda Lott of Prudential Collins-Maury. She is the Young Professionals Network membership chair.

“As much as your clients — your buyers and sellers — are important to you, it’s also important to have relationships with the people you will be working with,” Lott said.

Those people include closing attorneys, loan officers, seasoned realtors or brokers who don’t mind sharing tips, and a host of others who can smooth the path to a more prosperous deal or identify emerging trends.

“That can be the difference between a client and someone who’s going to call somebody else,” Steele said.

It’s something Lott, too, has learned from her mother, Carol Lott, the Memphis Area Association of Realtors’ president-elect for 2012. Carol has worked in real estate for 25 years.

“She’s got people she’s been working with for 20-plus years, and they’re fabulous,” the younger Lott said.

The Young Professionals Network kickoff party starts at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 20th, at Bosco’s Squared. To register, check out the Memphis Young Professionals Network’s Facebook page or visit maar.org/mypn.

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Fire Department and Labor Union Continue Debate Over Alternative Response Vehicles

The Memphis Fire Department’s impasse with its union over buying eight alternative response vehicles (ARVs) isn’t over yet.

Both sides had their say at Tuesday’s latest Memphis City Council Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee meeting, but committee chairman and city councilman Jim Strickland tabled the fire department’s request once more for further consideration.

The disagreement over buying the ARVs began at a council meeting on January 4th, at which fire officials proposed buying the utility vehicles to save money on maintenance, fuel, and other costs. Union officers expressed concerns about longer response times during emergencies.

Tuesday’s discussion appeared to have lost its edge, except that each side still clung to its main arguments.

Alvin Benson, director of Memphis Fire Services, maintained that buying the ARVs would save money on maintenance and other costs. He also pointed out that the department’s response times to various emergencies comply with national standards more than 90 percent of the time.

“The standard is to respond in five minutes or less,” Benson said. “The standard is actually five minutes and 20 seconds.”

Strickland asked Benson if it matters what kind of vehicle responds first to an emergency, and Benson responded that it doesn’t.

However, union members maintained that sending ARVs to emergency calls could present a danger in more complicated cases. The ARVs are only able to respond to medical calls, whereas much larger fire trucks are equipped to handle all kinds of emergencies.

“It’s our goal to send the closest resource to every emergency, not just medical,” said Robert Kramer, a representative of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1784. “That’s what we feel is wrong with this total concept.”

For the time being, Strickland moved to approve the fire department’s request to buy other kinds of vehicles while saving the ARV discussion for one more airing. The issue will be taken up again at the council’s February 1st meeting.