RITES OF PASSAGE
The dog days of summer, they used to be called, before the events of last September 11th created an aura of menace which is likely to endure for a while whenever the anniversary of that occasion comes around.
The current season, however, is still more suggestive of easeful transitions than of horrific stresses, and Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission — the last one ever for five of the 13 commissioners — was as mellow as the autumnal shades that will shortly be upon us.
Presiding over a brief ceremony in the Commission’s 6th floor quarters in the county administrative building, outgoing chairman Morris Fair presented framed composite photographs of the current commission to all of his colleagues and plaques to those who were leaving.
There was lawyer Buck Wellford, for example, a poster boy for the proberbial “sadder and wiser” look after two terms during which he rarely shied away from battle — losing one early on when he challenged the findings of a disparity study in county contracting and winning a major one late in the game when he took the lead in passing a tree ordinance which imposed new restrictions on developers (but which, he lamented Monday, could not have prevented the recent landslide on Mud Island). Wellford opted not to run this year; as he cracked Monday, “I always wanted to be a public official — but I’ve got my fill of it!”
There was first-termer Bridget Chisholm, a late 2000 appointee who was much-heralded as a woman of achievement in the financial sector but who seemed unhappy with the demands — always political and often highly partisan — of the disputatious public sector and decided to bow out gracefully.
Another voluntary exile was Tommy Hart, the Collierville businessman who was a solid anchor for conservative and Republican causes but who found himself an active agent of compromise more than once and said Monday that he prided himself on never having succumbed to a sense of power during his two terms (including an eventful year as chairman) and opined, “The important thing is not to change from who you are.”
Developer Clair VanderSchaaf, badly defeated in the May Republican primary by newcomer Joyce Avery for his unrepentant support of public funding for the new downtown arena and, he acknowledged, “a few other reasons” (presumably including notoriety from a much-publicized DUI arrest) was low-profile on Monday, his still-youthful appearance belying his 60-odd years and a generation of service on the commission.
Erstwhile man-about-town VanderSchaaf kept smiling as he heard himself described fondly by colleagues, as, for example, the commissioner who “could always identify the female members of the media in the audience.” (That one came from fellow developer Tom Moss.)Fair made a point of chatting up the incoming commissioner who ousted him in a sometimes bitter primary — conservative GOP populist John Willingham, who looked unusually natty Monday in a new suit.
In the spirit of conciliaton which predominated, budget committee chairman Cleo Kirk said he hoped restaurateur Willingham would rise to the level of expertise on funding matters as had former banker and bond broker Fair, who enjoyed an unusual last hurrah Monday by shepherding through the commission several major retractions in the benefits package enjoyed by county employees.
Economic factors being what they are, downsizing initiatives of that sort will, almost certainly , be one of the hallmarks of the commission when it meets again on September 9th with five new members — Avery, Willingham, lawyer David Lillard, financial planner Bruce Thompson, and publicist Deidre Malone (the sole Democrat among the new commissioners).
Democrat Julian Bolton went against expectations Monday by predicting that the new commission, despite the more conservative cast of the new members, would be “more progressive” than the current body. “That’s because the Republican majority has been joined at the hip with the administration of Mayor [Jim] Rout,” he explained, suggesting that “things will be different” when newly elected Democrat A C Wharton takes office as county mayor next week.
