Tag: A C Wharton

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News The Fly-By

Forum Explores Youth Violence Prevention Methods

CREDIT: Louis Goggans

The brutal beating of three people by a mob of teens in the Poplar Plaza Kroger parking lot Saturday night happened just days after a forum was held on ways to prevent youth violence.

Although no one was killed in the Kroger incident, situations involving youth violence don’t always have such endings — 58 of the 119 lives that fell victim to homicide in Memphis this year were between the ages of 18 and 34.

Memphis Police Department (MPD) Director Toney Armstrong announced these statistics during the “Youth Violence Prevention Forum” last Thursday evening.

“I’m using every resource [and] all the manpower that I have, but I can’t do everything,” Armstrong stated during the meeting.

Along with Mayor A C Wharton, Armstrong said he thought it would be helpful for local agencies and organizations that contribute resources toward combating youth violence to congregate. More than 100 representatives of city government, Shelby County Schools, and nonprofit agencies, as well as concerned locals gathered at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Attendees selected one of four breakout sessions including one on literacy and education. The session was intended as a gathering to generate ideas to help increase literacy among young minorities, but it also served as an outlet for participants to vent about the city’s crime, gang, and parenting issues.

One woman was almost in tears while reminiscing about her son, who was among the city’s homicide victims.

“I’m tired of seeing our black youth die in the street like it’s something calm,” she said. “Those are my young men out there in the street, and I feel responsible. We have to start with our children. I don’t care how many programs you produce, you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Until we take the time to teach our children as parents and neighborhood people what’s right and what’s wrong, and teach them the truth, it’s not going to work.”

Other sessions focused on employment opportunities and job readiness, parenting and mentoring, and after-school and athletic activities. At each session, strategies were established to better utilize current resources, and ideas were presented to create new efforts to decrease youth violence.

“The group felt that the community’s disconnect from support for families and communities was a root cause [of youth violence],” said Lisa Moore, facilitator for the parenting and mentoring session. “If there was community support for families and youth, then there would be adequate jobs, better education, and more activities.”

Ron Redwing of the Redwing Foundation and 100 Black Men of Memphis facilitated the employment opportunities and job readiness session. During the gathering, the group discussed creating a centralized database to share information on services offered to help young people find jobs. The group also thought it was important to motivate Memphis-based corporations to hire and retain local talent.

“We looked for specific opportunities to help increase young people’s employment, so that they were either well-trained or had better opportunities for jobs they could seek and become employed with,” Redwing said.

Although the Youth Violence Prevention Forum was arranged to produce new violence intervention strategies, some worry that it will simply be another event involving a multitude of locals who talk about making a change but fall short when it comes to implementing action behind their suggestions.

“I think it was well-intentioned, but I’m not sure that anything occurred that will move the needle,” said a city government official, who asked not to be identified. “It was a lot of preaching to the choir.”

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1330

Key Party!

Controversial rape rapper/tasty wing provocateur Rick Ross was in Memphis last week expanding his Wing Stop franchise. To acknowledge the wingman’s success, Mayor A C Wharton presented him with a key to the city. Not to be outdone by a living person, deceased comedian Phyllis Diller (by way of her estate) put several city keys up for auction on eBay. Among them was this slickly designed key to the City of Memphis presented to Diller by former Mayor W. W. Herenton. It may or may not fit most ’90s-era Buicks. Diller’s key to Memphis sold for $250, more than three times the amount her keys to Chesaning, MI, and Havre De Grace, MD went for.

It’s a Sign

Did you hear about the night the lights went out on Beale? And manhole covers blew up? And men experienced explosions in their “manties”? The Green Beetle documented it in this sign.

The other side of the Beetle’s board announced a truly special promotion.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Settling Up With Chips: American Sound Studio Marker

[slideshow-1]
Friends of American Sound Studios and the Shelby County Historical Commission unveiled a Shelby County Historic Marker on Wednesday at the former location of American Sound Studios. Studio founder Chips Moman attended the ceremonies where Mayor A C Wharton declared August 13th to be “American Sound Studios Day.” The band that Moman led through over 100 hit records sat beside him in the parking lot of the Family Dollar store that occupies the site today. Reggie Young, Gene Chrisman, Bobby Woods, and Bobby Emmons listened to wrestling eminence Dave Brown read the text. Moman and band, along with bassists Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leech, played on hits for Elvis, Dusty Springfield, and Neil Diamond, among others. It’s hard to believe the same room of folks made “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “Midnight Mover.” It was way too late to save what was by all accounts not a nice building. But it’s gratifying to know that Moman and the Memphis Boys saw the city give them proper thanks and recognition. We should all be grateful to Eddie Hankins of Friends of American and Jimmy Ogle of the historical commission. 

Hear Dave Brown read the marker text here:

[audio-1]

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News The Fly-By

New Program Aims to Inspire Young Black Men

Across the nation, young men of color tend to be adversely impacted by lack of resources, education, and guidance, opening the door to crime and incarceration.

But Mayor A C Wharton is hoping to offer another path for at-risk, young black men. Last week, Wharton held a press conference to announce the launch of his “Inspiring Young Men of Color” initiative.

It aims to bridge the gap of disparities in education, employment, health, and justice.

“You do not have to be a sociologist or an expert to know that we have a real challenge in our community,” Wharton said.

An executive committee composed of numerous business and community leaders will spearhead the effort. The committee will develop long-term strategies for kindergarten readiness, third grade reading, eighth grade math, and college readiness.

The program is aligned with President Barack Obama’s recently launched “My Brother’s Keeper,” a $200 million dollar national effort to improve outcomes of young black men in health, education, employment, and criminal justice by directing them to beneficial resources and mentorship.

Wharton said improving the literacy rates of young black males in Memphis is one of the initiative’s most important objectives. According to a 2011 study released by the American Educational Research Association, a student who can’t read at grade-level by third grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19.

“Many of our young men of color are not reading proficiently, and the lack of this fundamental skill prevents them from reaching their full potential,” Wharton said. “I know from my background as a defense lawyer representing juveniles, many of the young men who ended up in trouble were basically acting out, trying to masquerade and put up a façade because of the mere fact that they could not read on a basic fifth or sixth grade level. Once [youth] figure out that they can get some positive attention by reading and expressing themselves, it has the potential to change their entire life trajectory.”

By operating year-round, Inspiring Young Men of Color is intended to touch youth in ways that the school system is not able to. Young men will be paired with mentors, books, and literacy programs at community centers in predominantly black neighborhoods.

Youth will also be educated on the importance of safe sex (Memphis has the nation’s fifth-highest proportion of residents newly infected with HIV).

“We’re crossing all boundaries,” Wharton said. “We will go to them wherever they are. It may be at a basketball game or a community center. This is why this umbrella is so big, because we are not institution-specific or site-specific. Once we get them in, we will diagnose and find out what a particular young man needs. One size does not fit all.”

Booker T. Washington senior Patrick Payne receives mentorship and is preparing to attend college. He said the Mayor’s initiative will contribute to increasing the graduation and success rates of young black men if it provides assistance earlier in their education and tracks their progress.

“They’ve got mentors, and I think that’s very helpful to carrying [young men] through high school,” Payne said. “They’re trying their best to help black, young males be successful who are trying to be successful.”

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Police Department Hit with “Blue Flu” Protest

CREDIT: MPA Facebook Page

The “blue flu” protest by Memphis police officers is rooted in changes to their health-care benefits and proposed changes to their retirement benefits. Some have called the benefits “generous,” but others contend they match the tough and sometimes gruesome work of being a cop in Memphis.

The changes prompted hundreds of Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers to call in sick before, during, and after the Independence Day holiday weekend. The protest was not sanctioned by the Memphis Police Association (MPA), according to the police union’s president Michael Williams.  

Last month, the Memphis City Council approved a

24 percent increase to the premiums city employees and some retirees pay for their city-sponsored health insurance. The increase was a compromise down from the 57 percent rate hike proposed by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. 

The council also cut from the city’s health plan the spouses of city employees if they can get insurance from their employer. Also, a fee on tobacco users was raised from $50 to $120 per pay period.

These health-care changes are on the books but won’t take effect until later this year or the beginning of next year. But what about those benefits? 

The city’s five-year plan from the PFM Group, expert consultants hired by the city, was delivered in January and said that some of the city’s employee health-care benefits are actually better than those of other cities comparable to Memphis. 

• Health insurance premiums —The original 70 percent/30 percent split between the city and employee has shifted over the years to a 75.7 percent/23.1 percent split in 2012, the plan says. The shift raised the cost to the city by

$3.8 million from 2010 to 2012. 

Expenses to cover those costs rose 36.6 percent from 2008 to 2012, the study says. The same costs rose only 22.8 percent in the same time for similar public and private employers. 

• Health insurance deductibles – Memphis city employees pay $100 per person up to $300. Metro Nashville employees pay $2,000, the study says. Atlanta employees pay $900. Boston employees pay $400. “This constitutes a generous benefit to [Memphis] city employees compared to other public and private employers,” the study says.

George Little, the city’s chief administrative officer, said Wharton administration officials have used the five-year plan in making policy decisions. But changing employee health-care options to curtail city spending has been suggested by similar studies going back to Willie Herenton’s administration, Little said.  

 “[The benefits are] higher than the peer cities and better than — I mean way, way better — than most folks in the private sector are getting right now,” Little said.

But Williams said officers here deserve better benefits packages because they don’t get Social Security benefits like those in the private sector, and they have hazardous jobs that take a toll on their bodies and that “no one else wants to do.”

“We arrive on a crime scene with carnage and dead babies and bodies that have been decomposing for days or children that have been molested,” Williams said. “So, to say our packages are better; they may not be better.”

The city council is still debating changes to employee pension benefits, which the five-year plan contends has some components “richer than comparable jurisdictions.” 

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News The Fly-By

Fly On The Wall: Awkward Superheroes and Candy

Super Awkward

I really can’t show you the entire photo that a WREG reporter tweeted last week from a charity 5K. As they say on the internet, it’s just NSFW. I can, however, show you the top half of the photo and tell you just enough about what you’re not seeing to make squeamish readers really wish I hadn’t.

As you can see, Melissa Moon had her photo taken with Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman impersonators. Who wouldn’t, right? Well, judging by the uncropped R-rated version of the photo, which is floating around the internet, if you really need to see it, Spidey and Bats both seem to have forgotten their underoos and are going “commando.” Insert your own Peter Parker joke here.

Sweet Adventures

A recent Commercial Appeal feature spotlighting Mayor A C Wharton’s “Blueprint for Prosperity” yielded this charming anecdote from the Whitehaven Christmas parade. Once upon a time Wharton was riding in a convertible through the streets of Whitehaven tossing individually wrapped pieces of candy.

“I don’t want no damn candy. I want a job,” one woman called out, causing the mayor to think. “We’ve been throwing them candy,” he was quoted as saying. “What they want to do is to be able to buy their own candy.”

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News News Blog

City Launches 30-Day Car-Free Challenge

Mayor A C Wharton’s office is urging residents to give up their cars in favor of buses, bicycles, and other forms of alternative transportation for the month of April.

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The 30-Day Car-Free Challenge begins today, and residents can pledge to take the challenge on CarFreeMemphis.wordpress.com. Although the challenge lasts all month, those who sign up can aim for just one day or the full 30 days. Weekly prize drawings will be made for those who have signed up. The site contains tips and resources to help residents go car-free.

Additionally, the mayor’s office has asked 18 Memphians to act as ambassadors for the Car-Free Challenge. They were given “car-free survival kits” with bus passes, bicycles, and other items, and they have been asked to blog about their experiences — good and bad — living without a car. Flyer associate editor Bianca Phillips and editorial intern Alexandra Pusateri are among those 18 Memphians. You can follow our stories and others here throughout the month.

“We know that an increasing number of residents are choosing to live in Memphis and get to the store, to work, to school, and to other places without a car.” said Wharton. “We also know that reduced automobile use leads to improved air quality, reduced traffic congestion, and a reduction in the public costs of road infrastructure, parking, and health care. This challenge will helps us to showcase these possibilities in a fun and safe way.”

Memphis was named “Most Improved City for Cycling” in 2012 by Bicycling magazine. In 2013, Memphis became the 500th city to pass a Complete Streets policy, which means future street projects must be designed with alternative transit in mind. Memphis bike and pedestrian coordinator Kyle Wagenschutz, who organized the Car-Free Challenge, has pledged that the city will focus more on protected bike lanes, or “green lanes,” for future projects.

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News The Fly-By

Homeless Count Down

Kenzie Cleaves shares her story of homelessness.

Homelessness in Memphis and Shelby County has fallen 21 percent since 2012, according to the annual census taken here by the Community Alliance for the Homeless, and it marked the second double-digit decline in two years.

The latest census was taken in the cold, gusty hours from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on January 21st and 22nd. It was the third such count taken since the Memphis and Shelby County mayors established the Mayors’ Action Plan to End Homelessness in 2012. That plan began with a baseline census of homeless people throughout Shelby County in 2012.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development asks communities to conduct these counts. The federal agency defines “homeless” as people living in a place not meant for human habitation, emergency shelters, transitional housing, or other temporary residences. The census in 2012 found 2,076 homeless people in Shelby County. This past January’s count had only 1,636 people.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said the reduction is impressive but that his office and the 41 members of the Shelby County Homeless Consortium won’t stop working until homelessness is completely stamped out here.

“It may seem aspirational, but I think our people will keep working on this as long as we know the real size of the problem and don’t discount [the number of homeless people here], and we’ll keep plugging away as a community and as a united government,” Wharton said. “Birds have their nests. Foxes have their dens. Is it asking too much for our fellow human beings [to have a place to call home]?”

More than 150 volunteers conducted surveys with the homeless in Shelby County in January. Those interviews showed that chronic homelessness, veteran homelessness, and the number of homeless people without children were all down last year. Most of these were male (84 percent), some were female (14 percent), and some were transgender (2 percent). Nearly 70 percent of individual homeless people reported their race as black or African-American.

Family homelessness was down from 214 individual families in 2013 to 149 this past January. The census said none of those families were unsheltered last year, meaning they weren’t living on the street, and the majority of them (93 percent) reported their race as black or African-American.

The results of January’s census were announced in a news conference last week. Memphian Kenzie Cleaves was there, and she shared her story of having no place for her or her children to live when she got out of jail four months ago. The Department of Children’s Services connected Cleaves with Estival Place, which was established in 1991 by the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association and later donated to the Promise Development Corporation. The space and the programs it offers have helped Cleaves become a better mother, she said.

 “I was in the fast life and didn’t have time for [my children],” she said. “I wanted to rip and run the streets and all of that. We were living here and there, and it was like God sent an angel over my head, and now I feel stress-free and peaceful. Now I have a place I can call home.”

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News The Fly-By

Life in the Green Lane

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Memphis is rolling forward with its bike-focused efforts as green lane projects have been announced throughout the city and two new cycling campaigns are underway.

Green lanes, named for their green paint rather than environmental impact, is the term for the types of protected bicycle lanes where there is a buffer between moving bikes and moving cars.

“That buffer area can take different forms,” said Kyle Wagenschutz, the bicycle/pedestrian coordinator for the city. “It could be that you paint the buffer area in the roadway. It could be that you use parked cars as the buffer area, so instead of having the parked cars against the curb, they would be a little off the curb, and the [bike lanes] would be against the curb. That wall of parked cars creates the buffer.”

The city’s first green lane was striped last year on Overton Park Avenue between Cleveland and Bellevue, the same year Mayor A C Wharton committed to building 15 additional miles of bike lanes. The city is in the process of exceeding that goal — 22 miles of lanes have been identified and funded. Eighty percent of the total project costs will be funded through federal grants, with the city having to match the remaining 20 percent.

Bianca Phillips

Since 2010, the city has already constructed 71 miles of bike lanes and paths, but most of the lanes on city streets are not buffered from traffic.

Perception of safety is important to get more people riding bikes, Wagenschutz said, and green lanes help soothe concerns. According to the city, the number of people cycling has doubled over the past three years, and the number of accidents has decreased 32 percent. With those statistics, the highest-used bicycling facilities in the city are ones that are separated from moving cars like the Shelby Farms Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway.

“The Wolf River Greenway, on a weekend, will see 2,000 people a day. On that same gorgeous, beautiful day, we’re unlikely to see that same usage on Madison Avenue,” Wagenschutz said. “It’s because the Wolf River Greenway, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing, provides a level of comfort.”

Ideas for the green lanes and bicycle-centric designs come from countries in Northern and Western Europe such as Denmark and the Netherlands — both of which have large cycling populations.

“We’re taking inspiration from how they designed their roadways in those countries and importing it back to America, adapting it for the culture and the design that’s prevalent here in the U.S.,” Wagenschutz said. “They have mastered the art of design for roadways in such a way that it’s created these kinds of spaces for bicyclists and cars to operate independently of one another.”

The city has also launched the “Get There Together” campaign to put the focus on people, rather than choice of transit, to try and change the mindsets of how people travel within Memphis.

“This new way of thinking embraces the mutual obligation we each have to each other to make sure we’re attentive, conscientious, and respectful to one another, regardless of how we have chosen to get around,” reads the Get There Together blog.

Wagenschutz has also been working on a month-long project for the city called the 30-Day Car-Free Challenge, where for the month of April, Memphians can commit to change their mode of transportation, even for a day, and be entered into contests for prizes. More information about both campaigns is available at

http://bikepedmemphis.com.

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News The Fly-By

A Little Table Talk

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Though it somehow seems longer, it has only been five years — actually a little less — since I sat down for an interview with Willie Herenton, who was about to take voluntary leave of the job of mayor of Memphis after holding it for more than 17 years.

Herenton had requested the interview and clearly had some things to get off his chest. It was the Flyer issue of July 2, 2009, and we called the result, appropriately enough, “The Exit Interview.”

One of the several hot-button things the outgoing mayor wanted to talk about was his relationship with the man considered by Herenton and most other political observers — correctly, as it turned out — to be the likely winner of the right to succeed him in the special mayoral election that would follow that year. This was A C Wharton, the amiable former public defender who was in the latter half of his second four-year term as Shelby County mayor.

Only two years before, in the run-up to the regular 2007 city election, Wharton had been actively recruited by an ad hoc citizens’ group to run against Herenton, who was about to seek a fifth consecutive term, further expanding on what was already a record length of mayoral tenure.

Wharton was clearly tempted, and in the midst of rampant public speculation as to his intentions, the two chief executives met for a well-publicized but confidential conversation at Overton Square’s Le Chardonnay restaurant, after which the county mayor announced he would not be seeking the city job. Not just yet.

Only in the Flyer’s “Exit Interview” was the substance of that conversation finally revealed. From the interview:

“‘We didn’t have dinner.’ That was the first revelation about what the mayor described as a ‘cleansing conversation between A C Wharton and Willie Herenton.’ But more were to come. ‘A C and I did not make a deal,’ Herenton insisted. ‘People who know me know I’m not a dealmaker. … We were both honest and candid with each other about some issues surrounding his flirtation with running for city mayor.

“‘I gave him my straight, pretty hard feelings about that. I had deep resentment for that. I felt he should not have flirted with that. It was a character flaw. I resented it. I felt he should not have entertained it for a moment.’ Herenton said he thought Wharton, by considering the issue of running, had yielded to ‘divide-and-conquer’ forces in the community.

“The county mayor, too, had vented some complaints at Le Chardonnay, Herenton said: ‘He felt my style was divisive, while his was unifying. He thought I should tone down my leadership role. He felt I should avoid a lot of the skirmishes I got involved in and stick to issues. He did not care for my temperament in the office and my style.’ Herenton smiled thinly as he recalled what his response to his mayoral counterpart had been. ‘My style is me.'”

And if Wharton had entered the mayor’s race against Herenton in 2007? The article continued:

“Another thin smile. ‘We would have beat him. It would not have been nice. We would have won, but it would have been ugly. It would have been real ugly.’ Why? ‘Because I would have described him. I don’t have to describe him now.'”