Tag: Cheyenne Johnson

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City Council Could Spend $15K on Memphis 3.0 Consultant


The Memphis City Council could pay a consultant $15,000 to assess the financial impact of the Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive plan.

A council committee voted 4-1 on Tuesday morning in favor of the move, recommending its approval to the full council.

Councilwoman Cheyenne Johnson, who is proposing the study, said she believes Memphis 3.0 is a good plan, but that residents don’t fully understand it. Johnson said she’s received a number of phone calls from constituents who want to know exactly how Memphis 3.0 would affect their neighborhood, as well as what the financial impact will be on underserved communities, especially ones of color.

The $15,000 would come from the city’s legislative division budget.

Councilwoman Patrice Robinson said she supports the study: “It wouldn’t do any hurt or harm for council to have another eye, another look, and a further explanation.”

Robinson said the consultant will review the strengths and weaknesses of the plan, and determine any opportunities or threats that could arise because of it.

Councilman Worth Morgan abstained from voting, saying that the financial impact of the plan will likely be hard to determine. He also added that he doesn’t want to support hiring a consultant until the council knows exactly what additional information the consultant will produce.

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Morgan said $15,000 isn’t a “great amount for a study,” but he is unsure if “the value of the information will match the $15,000 price tag.”

Councilman Sherman Greer cast the only no vote, saying that Memphis 3.0 “isn’t the Bible,” and that it can be amended even after the council approves it. He also questioned what information the consultant would reveal that the council doesn’t already know.

The full council is scheduled to vote on the resolution at its meeting Tuesday (today) at 3:30 p.m. If approved, the selected consultant will have until September 17th to present its findings. That would mean the third and final vote on the ordinance that would implement the plan would be pushed back until mid-September as well.

Maya Smith

Carnita Atwater protests the Memphis 3.0 plan

The council was slated to take the second vote on the ordinance Tuesday, but that vote could be delayed as well.

In May, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland signed an executive order to ensure Memphis 3.0 would guide all city decisions on the administrative side excluding land use. The council still has to approve the plan before it can impact land use.

The council has delayed the vote on Memphis 3.0 several times since March. The council first delayed the vote on the city’s comprehensive plan after a group of residents from the New Chicago area voiced opposition to the plan, citing a lack of inclusion.

Since then, delays have been attributed to the council needing more information about the plan and its implications. The council took the first of three votes on the ordinance at its July 2nd meeting.

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News News Blog

Council Recap: Memphis 3.0, Pre-K, & Cannabis

Some Memphis City Council members raised questions Tuesday about the Memphis 3.0 plan, a comprehensive plan that will guide the city’s investments and developments for the next 20 years.

City officials presented the plan to a council committee Tuesday ahead of the first of three votes on an ordinance approving the plan in two weeks.

Councilwoman Cheyenne Johnson said she was “impressed” with the plan, but still had several lingering questions.

“What’s in here that might not be fully disclosed because of how people might interpret what’s actually written?” Johnson asked.

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Johnson also inquired about the 15,000 Memphis residents said to have participated in creating the 3.0 plan.

“Who were those 15,000 individuals?” she said. “How many of those were developers or builders? What are the classifications of the 15,000 which still represents less than 3 percent of the population?

”Do you think this is an adequate number to set out a plan that will be in place for the next 20 years?”

Ashley Cash, Memphis’ comprehensive planning administrator, said the city “made every effort” to have broad participation from the public, which meant developers, stakeholders, and residents were involved.

Johnson also wanted to know if the plan will guide equitable investments in the city and if the efforts will be balanced across all Memphis neighborhoods.

John Zeenah, who heads the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development said the anchors, or places identified in the plan for further development, are “evenly distributed” around the city.

Councilman Reid Hedgepeth expressed concerns about the unintentional consequences the plan could have.

“There’s a lot of things that I have heard from developers, from builders, and from people saying, ‘Wait, I’ve got to do what?’” Hedgepeth said. “These are things that I didn’t know. How can you assure us when we approve these 400 pages it’s not going to be similar to the UDC (Unified Development Code) and we had unintended consequences when we approved it.”

Josh Whitehead with the city/county Office of Planning and Development told Hedgepeth that the plan will be updated and amended frequently to keep it “relevant.”

Council members also asked for the “big bullet points” from the 400-page document, highlighting how things will change once the plan takes effect.

The council will take its first of three votes on an ordinance to adopt the plan in two weeks.

Memphis 3.0 planning meeting


The council also passed an ordinance that enables the city and county to appoint a fiscal agent to manage its pre-K fund.

This move comes as an $8 million grant that funds 1,000 pre-K seats in the county is set to run out in June. Now, the city and county are on track to fund those 1,000 seats plus an additional 1,000 beginning this fall.

The city/county joint ordinance paves the way for a fiscal agent to be appointed. The agent would be responsible for managing the fund, bringing in private dollars, and creating a high-quality pre-K program.

The Shelby County Commission will vote on a similar ordinance at its March 25th meeting.


The council also approved a resolution supporting three cannabis-related bills introduced by Tennessee lawmakers. The bills deal with decriminalization of certain amounts, medical marijuana, and taxation of cannabis.

The resolution, sponsored by council members Berlin Boyd and Martavius Jones, passed with a 5-4 vote.

Councilman J. Ford Canale, one of the members voting no, said he supports legalizing medical marijuana, but not decriminalization of the drug for other uses.

Boyd said that decriminalizing small amounts of cannabis would help the number of Memphians who have felony charges because of marijuana possession.


A vote to impose a plastic bag surcharge at certain retail stores was delayed until May, as state legislators are working on a bill to prohibit local governments from putting those types of fees in place.

The fee is meant to curb plastic bag usage to reduce litter, especially in the city’s waterways, Boyd, who is sponsoring the resolution, has said.

Tuesday Boyd said the fee would be 4 cents, instead of the 7 cents he first proposed last year. If approved, it would take effect January 2020.

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News News Blog

Council Makes History, Three Appointees’ Priorities Vary

Back at full strength with 13 members, the Memphis City Council saw many historical firsts Tuesday night with the appointments of Gerre Currie, Sherman Greer, and Cheyenne Johnson.

This is the first time in council history:

•Eight African-American members make up the majority of the body.

•Four African-American women will serve together on the council.

•Three appointed members will serve at the same time.

•A member of the Ford family has not held the District 6 seat (since 1972).

City Council chair Kemp Conrad anticipates working with the group, collaborating, executing, and “getting stuff done.”

“I was thrilled and privileged to lead the meeting last night,” Conrad said. “I think we have a great group down there. It’s amazing what can happen when you bring people together with different backgrounds and experience for a common purpose. It’s powerful.”

The three newly-appointed members will serve through 2019, with the option of running in October for a full four-year term.

In the meantime, some of the priorities of the trio include economic development, housing, and retiree benefits.

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Sherman Greer of District 1

Representing District 1, Greer is the executive director of government relations at Southwest Tennessee Community College. In the past, Greer has worked with U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen and Harold Ford Jr.

Greer said he wants to focus on engaging youth through programs in his district.

“I was one of those kids with a single parent, at home with nothing to do at times,” Greer said. “I don’t think one council member can change that, but we have to find some way to get young males engaged and employed.”

Greer also said he’d like to see Frayser, which sits in his district, to “flourish more.”

“Frayser is one of the best communities in the whole city,” Greer said. “I lived in Frayser and grew up in Frayser. It’s situated in a perfect spot for growth.”

Additionally, Greer said he plans to address city retiree benefits down the road.

Shelby County

Cheyenne Johnson of Super District 8-2

“I’ll probably take a hit for this, but it’s something we have to go back to and address down the road,” Greer said. “I think that’s something we have to look at and really come to a consensus.

“Like I said, it’s all about compromising and doing what’s right by people who have served.”

Johnson, who now represents Super District 8-2, is a former Shelby County Assessor of Property. She said her main goal is to promote economic growth in the district and throughout the city.

“What can we actually do to bring resources to the city?” Johnson said. “How can we encourage people to understand what economics is all about?”

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Gerre Currie of District 6

Gerre Currie, representing District 6, is a community development officer at Financial Federal Bank. During her time on the council, she said her main priority will be improving Memphis’ housing stock, as well as commercial development.

“Housing is always needed,” Currie said. “It’s important and it’s critical. My focus will not only be on housing, but the development that the city is experiencing now.”

Currie said she’s also looking to make sure minority businesses get their “fair share of the pie in anything that goes on in this city.”

“I’m interested in fairness across the board,” Currie said.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will not be running for reelection and instead will be supporting the candidacy of Shawn Lynch, a legal adviser in her office and the son of well-known local businessman and civic figure Terry Lynch.

Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, now in her second term, has not been bashful about proclaiming a desire to serve in the state legislature.

​During last year’s Republican primary for the then-open 8th District congressional seat, ultimately won by current Congressman David Kustoff, Shafer loyally and fully supported her employer, George Flinn, in whose medical office she serves. But, if state Senator Brian Kelsey had won instead and made it all the way to Washington, there was little doubt among those who know her that she would have been a definite contender to succeed him in the state Senate.

And there is little doubt, either, that the surprise victory last year of Democrat Dwayne Thompson over GOP incumbent Steve McManus in state House District 96 gives her a target to go after as soon as next year, when Thompson has to run for reelection.

​All Shafer will say for the record regarding such a contest is, “I’m looking at it.” But Thompson indicated Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism political picnic on Horn Lake Road that he is expecting a challenge from Shafer and is girding for it.

As has long been known, Chism himself will be back on the ballot in 2018, running for Shelby County mayor. The former Teamster leader and longtime Democratic political broker served an interim term in the state Senate and two full terms on the commission, chairing that body for two years running, until he was term-limited off.

​But he may have serious opposition in the Democratic primary for county mayor. Word going around the picnic grounds at his event on Saturday was that state Senator Lee Harris is getting strong encouragement to seek the office, which incumbent Republican Mark Luttrell, now in his second term, will have to vacate because of term-limit provisions in the county charter.

​Among those reportedly urging Harris to run for county mayor is University of Memphis associate law dean and former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a former mayoral candidate who is himself considered a theoretical possibility to seek the office again.

​Harris, who serves as the leader of the five-member Senate Democratic Caucus, has meanwhile embarked on a series of “Senator Lee Harris on Your Street” events at which he promises “updates on the latest legislative bills and issues we tackled in Nashville this year.”   

The Republican side of next year’s mayoral race will feature a showdown between Commissioner Terry Roland, who has been openly running, in effect, for well more than a year, and County Trustee David Lenoir, whose intentions to be a candidate are equally well known.       

It will be interesting to see how Lenoir responds to a gauntlet thrown down by Roland at Monday’s regular meeting of the commission, a four-hour affair that was nearing its end when Roland made a point of notifying Luttrell and County CAO Harvey Kennedy that he intended to seek an amendment to the pending county budget to provide funding for an add-on position sought by Judge Tim Dwyer for the Shelby County General Sessions Drug Court.

To pay for the position, Roland announced that he would offer a resolution at the next commission meeting to strip $50,000 from the amount already allocated to the Trustee’s office. Roland says he can demonstrate that an equivalent sum is currently being paid to an employee of Lenoir’s office who isn’t “showing up for work” — a contention almost certain to bring a hot protest from Lenoir at next week’s committee sessions, where the resolution will get a preliminary vetting.

Roland will also seek to re-allocate $100,000 currently slated to the Juvenile Court Clerk’s office to provide funding for the Shelby County law library, which, he said, faces the threat of closure for financial reasons. He accused state Senator Kelsey of letting a funding bill for the library “sit on his desk” during the legislative session just concluded.

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Editorial Opinion

Two Political Milestones in Shelby County

So it’s come to this: There is, as pointed out this week by state Young Democrat president London Lamar, only one “chartered Democratic organization in this county,” and it isn’t the Shelby County Democratic Party, a body which was officially “decertified” last Friday by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini. It is, in fact, the Shelby County Young Democrats, led by Lamar’s colleague Alvin Crook.

Surprisingly, given the fact that the SCDP was a hotbed of internal dispute, there was very little remorse at its passing. It would seem that Mancini’s action was widely regarded by all sides as something of a mercy killing.

Meanwhile, Lamar and Crook promise that the Shelby County YDs will  pursue “initiatives” and, in effect, act in the stead of the now defunct “state SCDP,” pending its reconstitution.

That reconstitution will take some doing, in that the party organization, as such, has been so locked into pointless disputation for some time as to have been of little consequence in influencing political results in Shelby County — at least to any positive end. 

In elections for local countywide office, only two Democrats — Assessor Cheyenne Johnson and General Sessions Clerk Ed Stanton Jr. — have been able to gain office and be re-elected in recent years. To rescue an often-abused phrase, their cases are the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. Both Johnson and Stanton are county-government veterans with demonstrable records of competence and with support across partisan lines. Their success at the polls would seem to clearly debunk the claim made by losing Democratic nominees in every county election in this century that the defeats of party candidates must be due to some infamy or illegality perpetrated by the county’s Republican Party or by the admittedly error-prone Election Commission, with its current preponderance of three Republican members to two Democratic ones.

For whatever reason, in a county which, by the usual demographic and economic measures, should possess an overwhelming majority prone to voting Democratic, Republicans rule the roost instead. It is high time that local Democrats cease looking for the blame elsewhere and begin a long overdue reexamination of their own premises.

Under the circumstances, the plucky resolve of the county’s Young Democrats is a welcome first step.

Ann Morris

Speaking of pluck, the huge turnout this week at the visitation and funeral rites for Ann Ward Norton Morris, across various kinds of lines, political and otherwise, was in large part a testament to that quality in her life — as well as to the virtues of courage and perseverance, which Morris continued to demonstrate, even after a severely disabling stroke suffered in 1997 deprived her of most of the faculties which the rest of us take for granted. Remarkable also was the heroic care-giving service rendered unstintingly over that nearly 20-year period by her husband, former Sheriff and County Mayor Bill Morris, who regards that service, and not any office he gained, as the summit of his own life’s work. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Chism Backs Strickland for Mayor

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Adherents of City Councilman Jim Strickland‘s campaign for mayor are certainly pleased with their guy’s ability to go fund-raising dollar-for-dollar against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton (both candidates having reported $300,000-plus in their first-quarter disclosures). And they’re counting on a good showing for Strickland in both the Poplar Corridor and Cordova, where his message of public safety and budgetary austerity resonate.

But those predominantly white areas of Memphis (to call them by their right name) are probably not enough, all by themselves, to get Strickland over, especially since Wharton has his own residual strength in the corridor and with the city’s business community, where the mayor can hope to at least break even.

There is also the mayor’s advantage in being able to command free media on a plethora of governmental and ceremonial occasions.

Yes, it’s probably true that A C’s support in predominantly African-American precincts ain’t what it used to be, and it never was what you would call dominating, not this year with all the well-publicized cuts in city services. And not with Mike Williams working the African-American community, along with Whitehaven Councilman Harold Collins and Justin Ford, and with the Rev. Kenneth Whalum ready to grab off a huge chunk of that vote, should he make what is at this point an expected entry into the mayoral field.

Still, Strickland needs to grab a share of the black vote to have a chance to get elected. Where does he get it? Well, he’s attending African-American churches on Sunday, one of the well-worn pathways in local politics. So that will help. But probably not as much as the endorsement he got last Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism Community Picnic on Horn Lake Road from the impresario of that event. Longtime political broker Chism early on announced his support of Strickland from the stage of the sprawling picnic grounds.

Time may have tarnished Chism’s reputation a bit, as it did his longtime ally, former Mayor Willie Herenton (an attendee at the picnic), but the former Teamster leader, Democratic Party chairman, state senator, and county commissioner still has enough influence to have basically put Randa Spears over as Shelby County Democratic chair earlier this year. And he may have enough to give Strickland that extra boost he needs to be fully competitive. We’ll see.

Chism, as it happens, is mired in a couple of controversies at the moment. His employment as a “media specialist” by Sheriff Bill Oldham is regarded with suspicion as a political quid pro quo and pension-inflater by several Republican members of the Shelby County Commission, who at budget-crunch time are making an issue of it, along with an Oldham-provided job for former Shelby County Preparedness director Bob Nations.

And Chism may have reignited another long-smoldering situation when he used the bully pulpit of his picnic to attack an intramural Democratic Party foe, Del Gill, who was runner-up to Spears in the party chairmanship contest. Chism did so at first indirectly, on the front end of the event, while he was acknowledging from the stage the presence in the crowd of party chair Spears.

“She’s been catching a whole lot of flak from one crazy person, but I hope y’all put him out of this city, and he’ll be all right.” Chism chose to be more explicit when he returned to the stage after a series of candidates in the city election had made their public remarks.

“I said something earlier,” Chism said. “I said there was somebody who needed running out of town, and that person, I didn’t call his name, but that person is Del Gill. … He ain’t worth two cents. … He’s been lyin’ on me for 10 years He won’t show up and do it to my face, but he lies all the time.”

In a widely circulated email response, Gill returned fire, reminding his readers that he had taken the lead in having Chism censured by the local Democratic Party executive committee in 2014 for allegedly attempting to subvert the sheriff’s campaign of Democratic nominee Bennie Cobb in favor of Republican Oldham.

Chism used his attack on Gill as a platform from which to launch his recipe for Democratic success at the polls: “We’re not going to win any elections in Shelby County until we get into the mindset that we’ve got to get in the middle. If we get in the middle, we can elect Democrats, qualified Democrats.

“I didn’t say you’ve got to be a super-intelligent magna cum laude educated person. I’m saying you ought to be smart enough to know that the people in this country are in the middle.” He urged his listeners to “vote for the right person, and he ain’t got to look like me; just act like me.”

Actually, the two Chism battlefronts — his employment battle with GOP county commissioners and the Democratic Party fireworks — are connected. Such commission critics of Chism as Heidi Shafer and David Reaves, both Republicans, have made pointed remarks in private about what they claim was Chism’s disservice to fellow Commissioner Reginald Milton, a Democrat, in intervening against Milton’s own bid for party chairmanship. And Milton, perhaps unsurprisingly, has expressed his own skepticism about the sheriff’s budget requests.

Shafer and Reaves, along with GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, are also suspicious that Oldham’s wish to have Chism (and other Chism associates) aboard is related to a potential 2018 campaign by Oldham for county mayor, an office for which Roland, for one, has essentially already announced.

Oldham has been mum on the subject of his future political intentions, if any, but it is a fact that the progression from sheriff to county mayor has been made already by several predecessors — Roy “Skip” Nixon, Bill Morris, and current County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Random notes: The newly elected president of the Shelby County Young Democrats is Alvin Crook, who made something of a stir last year when, in the course of a public debate, he formally endorsed Van Turner, his Democratic primary opponent for a county commission seat.

Crook, who is employed as a courtroom bailiff, says his group will be making endorsements in the city election this year.

Other new Young Democrat officers: Regina Beale, first vice president; Jim Kyle Jr., 2nd vice president; Matt Pitts, treasurer; Rebekah Hart, secretary; and Justin Askew, parliamentarian.

• Two Shelby Countians, state Senator Mark Norris and attorney Al Harvey, were among three Tennesseans who were invited guests of British royalty at Monday’s ceremony in Runnymede, England, commemorating the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta there.

Norris was invited in his capacity as immediate past chairman of the Council of State Governments; Harvey, along with General Sessions Judge Lee Bussart Bowles of Marshall County, represented the American Bar Association.

A sure sign that the city election season is heating up: On Thursday, June 18th, from 5 to 7 p.m., Patrice Robinson, a candidate for city council, District 3, and Mary Wilder, candidate for the council’s District 5, will be holding simultaneous fund-raisers in different parts of town.

Overlapping events of this sort, still uncommon, will at a certain point in the election cycle, become routine.

• In its latest issue, the Tennessee Journal of Nashville takes note of the Tennessee Republican Party’s concerted “Red to the Roots” campaign directed at capturing as many of the state’s county assessor positions as possible next year.

The newsletter also notes that Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will be exempt from the purge attempt, having already won reelection to a four-year term in 2014. Johnson’s being on a different cycle from other state assessors is a consequence of the county commission’s consolidating all county offices into a common election cycle via 2008 revisions to the county charter.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Beyond Binary Thinking

There have been numerous analyses and breakdowns of the results of last week’s election in Shelby County. The bottom line is that Republicans once again waxed the Democrats in the contests for most local offices, from county mayor on down to lesser functionary titles such as assessor, trustee, and recorder of deeds.

The thing that seems puzzling on the surface is that Shelby County is majority African-American, and Democrats outnumber Republicans by a substantial margin. The Republicans ran no black candidates. So why did the GOP dominate the local ballot?

Some black Democrats blamed white members of their party for “crossing over” and voting for Republicans. They were castigated because they weren’t loyal to the party. The local Democratic party chairman said in a post-election interview that crossover voters should just go ahead and “join the Republicans.” He later apologized for that short-sighted sentiment.

This muddle-headedness is a result of old-school, binary thinking: dividing the electorate into arbitrary categories of black or white, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. The problem with that is that fewer and fewer of us are binary creatures. The same electorate that reelected a white Republican, Mark Luttrell, as county mayor, twice elected a black Democrat, A C Wharton, to that same office just a few years back. Steve Cohen got 66 percent of the vote in a majority black district.

Binary thinking doesn’t take into account that we’re no longer divisible into two neat, predictable packages, one black, one white. Voters are getting smarter. Ophelia Ford got trounced; Henri Brooks and Judge Joe Brown got stomped. They were rejected by thousands of Democrats and Republicans, black and white. And there’s a Hispanic vote now, which seems totally overlooked by both parties.

Sure, there are those who’d vote for a “yellow dog” if the party label is right. But the era of party loyalty trumping all else is in rapid decline. Most of us are independents with a small “i.” We don’t care what party holds the office of recorder of deeds, we just want the job done right. To turn that office over, you need a compelling candidate with a compelling message. (Suggestion: “Lemme record your deeds!”) But the fact is, if the guy in office hasn’t screwed up, he’ll likely get reelected.

In local politics, the only people still keeping that binary score of party winners and losers are those running the political parties and those who report on the process. If the Democrats want to win more elections, they need to start respecting the electorate’s intelligence. They need to find more candidates like Lee Harris and Cheyenne Johnson and Steve Cohen — and they need to stop thinking in black and white.