As this issue goes to press, we don’t know who the next mayor of
Memphis will be. The polls indicate A C Wharton is still the
front-runner, but nothing is over until it’s over. By the time you read
this, Prince Mongo may be seated on a purple bat-throne at City Hall,
though we truly hope not.

But no matter who wins, he or she will face a plethora of problems
and issues. Too many Memphians are impoverished, undereducated, and
overweight. There are too many vacant buildings, trashy streets, and
empty lots. There is too much crime, not enough efficient mass transit,
too much sprawl. Race polarization is still too much with us.

No mayor can fix all these woes, nor should we ask him to. Making
our city a better place to live is a job for all of us. That said, here
are some of our ideas for moving us out of the doldrums of the latter
Herenton years.

You might be fulfilling the rest of Herenton’s term, but forget
Herenton’s lead. Follow Lowery’s.

In the short time since Lowery became mayor pro tem — and,
granted, a deadline and a mayoral election can be powerful motivators
— he swooped in, cleaned house, opened public records, almost
finalized the Bass Pro/Pyramid project, got fairgrounds revitalization
moving again, and sent out his own press releases. And, yeah, there was
that little thing with the fist bump, but in the end, there’s no such
thing as bad publicity.

The lesson? Lead like you only have 90 days to prove yourself. You
might just leave a legacy. And, Myron, if you’re reading this as the
newly elected mayor, keep it up. — Mary Cashiola

Lots of attention is given to putting a spit-shine on our city’s
“front door” to the outside world, and rightly so. But let’s no longer
neglect one of our most frequented hallways: Union Avenue between
downtown and Sun Studio. In-season, every day, flocks of tourists march
from downtown proper to visit the music mecca where Elvis, Johnny,
Carl, Jerry Lee, B.B., Howlin’ Wolf, Ike, Rufus, and many more put
their stamp on history.

And what those tourists walk past to get there is a dump
(particularly on the north side of Union). Cracked and uneven
sidewalks, overgrown weedy patches of grass, sickly trees, boarded-up,
abandoned buildings tagged with graffiti. What impression is Memphis
making on visitors by the time they make it to Sun Studio? It’s a
Mystery Train.

It wouldn’t take much to turn squalor into an actual amenity.
Repair/replace sidewalks. Plant grass. Plant nice trees. Involve the
businesses along the corridor — they have a lot to gain by a
beautification project. Involve a local arts organization or maybe even
art students from Memphis City Schools — get the kids invested in
their city. Have them paint murals or line the route with a cohesive
element that celebrates our music heritage. Give tourists something to
do while they’re trekking other than wondering, “Are we there yet?”

Heck, get bold and link Sun Studio all the way back to Beale Street.
Chicago has the Miracle Mile, so why shouldn’t Memphis have the Musical
Mile? Put up historical markers and call them Musical Milestones.
Businesses might be attracted to the area to refill those empty
storefronts. It would more directly link the Medical Center to downtown
and would certainly make Memphis a more walkable destination for
visitors. — Greg Akers

Long a bastion of nepotism and half-baked, too-expensive projects,
the city’s transportation department needs a total makeover. Take a
long hard look at current routes, equipment, staffing, and budget. Then
start fresh, with the goal of creating a transit system that fits the
current needs of our populace — and our tourists. Do we need a
simple, direct tourist-centric bus to Graceland from downtown? Are
there quick commuter routes that might be appealing to people in
Collierville or Horn Lake or Bartlett? Can we get by with smaller
buses? Are there areas where a late-night route makes sense?

No more trolleys to nowhere. No more bus routes that look like silly
string. Directions, routes, and schedules need to be clearly posted and
user-friendly. When riding a bus is easy and makes sense, people will
hop on board. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Unlike many large cities (including Nashville), Memphis has no free
shelters for homeless men. Yet men make up about 80 percent of the
city’s homeless population, according to statistics from local
nonprofit Partners for the Homeless.

The Union Mission, the city’s largest men’s shelter with 120 beds
and 100 floor mats, does offer four free nights of lodging each month,
but men must pay $6 per night for the remainder of the month. There are
a handful of small shelters offering free beds to women and children,
but those tend to fill up quickly.

In their Issues First campaign for mayoral candidates, the Mid-South
Peace & Justice Center pushed the need for a free shelter, as well
as a safe parking lot for people who sleep in their cars, greater
access to application assistance for Social Security benefits, and
augmented health services. Only candidates Charles Carpenter, Carol
Chumney, Jerry Lawler, Kenneth Whalum, and Myron Lowery signed off on a
pledge supporting such services. A better quality of life for the
city’s homeless can help them get off the streets and make life better
for all of us. — Bianca Phillips

sun studio courtesy of Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Sun Studio

As Richard Ransom used to say when reporting a restaurant that
failed a health inspection: Clean up! Trash and litter are everywhere.
Let’s incentivize people and groups to clean up. Offer a “buck a bag”
for each garbage sack of litter turned in to the city dump. And pay
them the going rate for recycled materials. This, in conjunction with
the proposed “50 cents a tire” program, will help get trash off the
streets and offer low-income people and nonprofit organizations sweat
equity in the city — and a little cash for their efforts. —
BV

Don’t give out your cell phone number. This town is full of people
you don’t want calling you.

Take vacations. We’ll manage. If the president can do it, the mayor
can do it. Enough of this cashing in your unpaid vacation crap.

Keep Veronica Coleman Davis as city attorney, because she is
experienced (former United States attorney and corporate attorney) and
her own woman and has a mean look that works.

Appoint some naysayers — that is, people who will speak truth
to power, including you.

Get younger. Appoint some bright young directors and assistant
directors who don’t remember the Sixties.

If you keep him around, clarify the role of Robert Lipscomb. Is he
the director of Housing and Community Development or the de facto mayor
in charge of big deals?

Do whatever it takes to turn the southeast corner of Riverside Drive
and Beale Street into a pocket park instead of the field of weeds and
broken concrete that every downtown tourist has seen for six years.
That fancy hotel/condo ain’t coming for a while, if ever.

Chicago mayor Richard Daley

In 30 words or less, explain what a TIF is (tax-increment financing)
and why it is or is not a good thing and is or is not free money for
every big project on the boards.

Answer yes or no: “Barring serious illness, I plan to run for this
office in the 2011 mayoral election and will not seek any other office
until such time as my term in office is over, whenever.” —
John Branston

Contrary to some opinion, you aren’t the only city mayor in Shelby
County. Those other municipalities might not have as many people or as
much clout, but that doesn’t make them any less valid. And frankly,
when it comes to sustainability and smart growth, you can’t make
changes without them. Even if Memphis and Shelby County never
consolidate, it’s time to work together, and the only way that’s going
to happen is with some old-fashioned bridge building. —
MC

Speaking of construction projects, sometimes Memphis likes to brag
that it built one of the country’s first sanitary sewer systems in the
1880s (following the yellow-fever epidemics).

Judging by the recent monsoon-like weather and the resulting street
flooding, someone needs to be thinking about a solution to storm-water
runoff. The system currently is at capacity in Midtown. Either we need
to add capacity to the system or we need to mandate a variety of
alternative solutions, such as permeable concrete in alleys, parking
lots, and driveways. — MC

Memphis is one of the most overweight cities in America. Lead the
way by showing your own physical fitness. Encourage local businesses to
offer fitness incentives to their employees. Use the bully pulpit to
lead us out of obesity. It will save all of us money in the long
run.

Urge the local superintendents to make good, old-fashioned PE
classes a requirement for every city and county student, starting in
kindergarten. Twenty minutes of calisthenics every day would go a long
way toward shaping up our kids. Also, no junk food or sodas allowed at
school. Give students or, better, entire schools that improve their
physical fitness or lose a certain amount of weight free movie passes,
athletic shoe store coupons, etc. Partner with Nike or another local
corporation to get our kids moving.

Create more bike lanes. Put exercise trails and equipment like those
in Audubon Park in neighborhoods all over the city. —
BV

There’s a huge gap between the ironic desolation described in
Shelley’s sonnet about a presumptuous long-ago pharaoh and the
keep-busy activism evinced by either one of the last half-century’s
Chicago mayors named Richard Daley. The son has followed in the
footsteps of the father, whose ongoing reconstructions of the Windy
City’s landscape were always flaunted on massive billboards
proclaiming, in large letters, the authorship of “Richard J. Daley,
Mayor.”

Egotistical? Self-serving? Yes, indeedy. But these gigantic
advertisements for oneself were also a form of transparency —
simultaneously a reality test and an open and aboveboard statement:
This is what I am doing for the city.

A desirable extension of that model would require that the
responsible chief executive make public a full accounting of any
conceivable connection between the project in question — be it
brick-and-mortar or merely a process — and their own potential
private gain. Such obligatory candor might preclude future repetitions
of the Ozymandias-like fate now befalling the good name of our recently
resigned longtime mayor, Willie Herenton.

When he became mayor pro tem, then council chairman Myron Lowery
continued his habit of issuing regular report cards, providing for the
public in great detail a line-item record of his recent activity on the
job. Lowery also began the process of prying off the lids on documents
and financial records and opening to public access the premises of City
Hall, including the formerly off-limits mayoral penthouse.

This sort of openness should continue, for both symbolic and
practical reasons, regardless of who gets to tenant the space for the
next four years. Give Herenton his due, by the way; mayoral press
conferences, however erratically scheduled, were a welcome feature of
his administration. Under the new mayor, these should be regular
— ideally on a weekly basis, with no holds barred. —
Jackson Baker

Local entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and film producer Bob
Compton has made two documentaries about education and has traveled
around the country proselytizing on the issue. The latest, 2 Million
Minutes: The 21st Century Solution, profiles a high-performing
public school in Tucson, Arizona, that Compton has called “the world’s
best high school.”

There is obviously a lot that needs to be done with Memphis public
education at all levels, but more and better high-level,
college-prep-oriented high schools should be a big part of the
equation. When I graduated from White Station High School 15 years ago,
the student body was roughly 1,600. Now it’s more like 2,300.

It’s not hard to see why: When I was there, White Station drew
students from all over the city — smart kids from out of district
who couldn’t afford private schools or didn’t want to attend them. Now,
with the economy making private-school tuition prohibitive for more
families, the desire for a public option that can equal or better the
best private schools is in even more demand.

More schools on the order of White Station (and several others, like
Ridgeway, Central, and Whitehaven seem part-way there) would decrease
the overcrowding that risks pulling the best schools down and get more
middle- and upper-middle-class families reinvested in public schools.
All of this can and should have a positive impact throughout the public
schools.

— Chris Herrington

This past summer, Shelby County joined approximately 200 other local
governments around the country when the commission approved a
nondiscrimination ordinance protecting county workers on the basis of
sexual orientation and gender identity. Now it’s time for the city to
follow suit.

The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), the gay rights group behind
the county ordinance, has been working with the Memphis City Council on
developing a similar ordinance for years. In fact, the county
leap-frogged ahead of the city when Commissioner Steve Mulroy got wind
of TEP’s efforts on the city side.

The council was expected to discuss such a city ordinance protecting
gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers a few months ago. But
TEP urged the council to postpone discussion until after the special
mayoral election.

The issue should go before the council again in early November.
— BP

Once upon a time, Memphis was the cleanest city in the country.
We’ve long since fallen from that designation, however, and now have
more of a reputation for trash, blight, and overgrown vacant lots.

What the city could use is a little flower power, à la
guerrilla gardening’s seed bombs. Traditionally, guerrilla gardening
has been a way of cleaning up abandoned areas and stimulating further
urban renewal, but even just a few flowers would be an improvement.

Using grant and private funding, establish a small beautification
initiative. Create a partnership with the Memphis City Schools in which
elementary art students make thousands of seed bombs — a simple
combination of clay, water, compost, and native wild flower seeds. Once
done, have Memphis City Beautiful and Code Enforcement coordinate a
city-wide “bombing” campaign in the areas with the most vacant lots.
Nature will do the rest. — MC

Be the first color-blind mayor in Memphis history. When someone asks
you what you’re going to do for their “race,” tell them you’re a mayor
for all Memphians. Hire the best and brightest, regardless of skin
pigmentation, ethnic background, or gender. There’s a guy in the White
House who’s offering a pretty good example of how it’s done.

Don’t tolerate the race card, no matter who deals it. Bring us
together. Don’t look for ways to divide us. Inspire us. Don’t be afraid
to offer hope. Lead by example. Make us proud. This city is hungry for
it. — BV