Tag: City Council

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Council Reallocates Funds For Downtown Command Center

Downtown Command Center (Photo credit: City of Memphis)

A request for additional financing for the Memphis Police Department’s Downtown Command Center raised concerns from several city council members during Tuesday’s budget and audit committee meeting.

The committee heard a resolution to adjust the Fiscal Year 2025 Capital Improvement Program Operating Budget for the development of the center.  Police Services asked the council to move funds from completed projects to fund it.

Officials said not only will this proposal “enhance the visitor and tourist experience” Downtown, but will also use “multi-functional cameras with fiber connection.”

“The new project is designed to support the operations and coordinate response activities with other city divisions with law or code-enforcement targeted areas,” the resolution added.

The command center will be a 2,500-square-foot buildout at 250 Peabody Place and will have four monitoring stations along with a restroom, conference room, and other amenities. City officials said there will be 63 cameras for surveillance with 24 hour shifts. The city’s timeline started on October 31, 2024 and is scheduled to end in April 2025.

Deputy Chief Financial Officer Walter Person said in looking for funding, they found some available through the Leftwich Tennis Center — a project to convert a tennis center in East Memphis, where the city donated $3 million in cash and $1.3 million in donations for the demolition. Person added the University of Memphis paid $5 million to the facility and contributed $2.5 million towards construction.  The state allocated $2.5 million to the project.

Person went on to say there were several design enhancements for the facility where the city loaned $10 million — which was funded by commercial paper. This was to be paid off and funded by pledges, private donors, and private payment. The building was completed, where the city also sold naming rights in the facility. He said $4.6 million was generated to defray the commercial paper — which could only be used for capital projects and suggested that $2.5 be allocated towards the Downtown Command Center.

“I know there’s been a lot of questions with the ability to reuse the funds, but the funds were not restricted in its reuse — it’s to pay the city back,” Antonio Adams, chief operating officer, said. “The city has the authority or autonomy to then redirect as it so desires. This is an important project that will enhance public safety in the area but also help trigger [the economy] and growth in the Downtown area which is one of the centers of Memphis.”

Councilman and committee chairman Chase Carlisle said he had many questions, noting that he has been an avid supporter of tackling crime Downtown. But he questioned the commercial paper, cash, uses, pledges, and total sources. He asked for documentation, specifically asking how much money was pledged by private donors, including naming rights.

“I know this thing sped up rapidly for you — very rapidly like a lot of downward pressure,” Carlisle said. “You just can’t ask us to move that kind of money without understanding that kind of setup.”

Person said the city is getting about $1.4 million back from the University of Memphis and there’s additional inventory of naming rights available such as hallways, courts, and quarters for the tennis center. He said there’s about $4.5 million to $4.6 million in-house.

He also clarified that people who purchase naming rights will be helping the city pay the loan off.

Councilman Philip Spinosa also said that he supports the command center, but thinks there should be a pause on the conversation until they receive more answers.

“I don’t think there’s foul play,” Spinosa said. “I think everybody’s just trying to understand the flow and the process and we’ll do that.”

During the regular council meeting, Adams said they will continue to provide documentation as requested — however at the time of voting those documents had not been prepared for amendment and was added to the add-on agenda.

The resolution was passed unanimously with an amendment that the council would loan $2.5 million to the project.

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TDOT Provides Updates on Cleanup Efforts To City Council

Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

City Council members are concerned about routine maintenance schedules, trash collection, road repairs, and landscaping in Memphis. They asked the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) about establishing a timeline for cleanup efforts as well as employment outreach during today’s transportation committee meeting. 

They mentioned that points of concern were Madison Avenue, I-40, and South Parkway, due to the “significant amounts of trash that accumulates in these areas. Councilwoman Jana Swearengen-Washington also asked about additional resources and partnerships that the city can implement to help in cleanup efforts.

Swearengen-Washington commended the work that had been done around the airport, saying that it’s looking better, but they need “long-term planning to maintain these areas consistently.”

Katie McGinnis, TDOT District 49 Manager, said since they last met with the council they have set up initiatives to clear out vegetation so that trash and debris doesn’t get trapped.  McGinnis added that most of their efforts are geared towards asphalt and potholes. TDOT’s railroad permitting has not gone through for a resurfacing plan for I-240.

“We’re constantly having to send out  forces to patch those repeatedly over and over again in lieu of having that resurfacing project,” McGinnis said. “That’s why you’re seeing a lot of the larger debris. We don’t have that time, so we handle the safety sensitive objects first which would be the paved surfaces — anything that could cause an accident. That’s where the lack is.” 

Officials said they are tackling sections of pavement and working to restore them, but noted they are still prepping for winter weather so they can meet onligations. They said last year’s winter storm “killed” their TDOT maintenance budget resulting in a “reduction in what they were capable of doing.”

Councilwoman Rhonda Logan inquired about graffiti and how they’re monitoring it.

McGinnis mentioned they were able to capture a 15-year-old who was known for spray painting “spicy” on the I-240 corridor with the help of the Memphis Police Department. They said they had noticed a significant decrease in graffiti, but they themselves  do not look into catching graffiti artists.

Council members also offered solutions for the department’s staffing issues, asking if their  outreach could extend to juveniles to help clean the city.

“Is there a program where they can get out here and clean this mess up and give them some accountability and responsibility? They’re terrorizing the city,” councilwoman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton remarked.

TDOT said they haven’t opened their hiring process for transportation workers as they are still filling in positions from reorganizing the agency. While they recognized the highway adoption program, they said they also work with the Department of Corrections to occasionally get crews to help with litter and light landscaping. 

Cody Joyner, TDOT’s team lead for Shelby County, explained that the department of corrections had experienced staffing issues, meaning they didn’t have enough officers to send over with inmates. Joyner said when they do have enough, they are typically staging them in places with “a lot of litter” such as Elvis Presley Boulevard and Lamar Avenue.

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City Council Replaces Entire MATA Board

Photo: Justin Fox Burks

All members of the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s(MATA) board of commissioners have been replaced following the recommendation of a consulting firm.

Mayor Paul Young announced Friday he was starting a “clean slate” on MATA’s leadership after a draft report from the consulting agency TransPro was released. TransPro said the previous board failed to “provide reasonable oversight.”

The previous board consisted of Michael Fulton, Angus Blair, Sara Burnett, Janice Holder, Anton Mack, Ed Stephens III, Shelia Williams, Martin Lipinski, and Courtney McNeal. It will be replaced with Brandon Arrindale, Cynthia Bailey, Emily Greer, Sandi Klink, Brian Marflak, Jackson McNeil, Anna McQuiston, Dana Pointer, and Maya Siggers.

Young told the council that replacing the board is an “aggressive action” and showed that this is not indicative of one person. His replacements include bus advocates, logistic, financial and legal experts, and more.

“[The MATA Board] has served nobly over the years and this is not an indication of them or their integrity,” Young said. “This is a hard reset.”

TransPro reviewed MATA from August 19 to October 11. During that time the board had passed a budget that not only included service cuts, but prompted the layoff of more than 200 employees. Board members said these cuts were made to ensure the viability of the agency, as officials had announced a $60 million deficit this summer.

During Tuesday’s council meeting, Young said they wanted an external analysis on how they were doing on an operational level, which is why they turned to TransPro.

“[The] existing MATA board fails to provide reasonable oversight,” the report said. “Just a month ago the MATA board unanimously adopted a budget with no questions…for a fiscal year that started more than 100 days prior.”

Councilwoman Jerri Green called the report “nothing short of scathing.”

“It talked specifically about how the board failed over and over again in finances,” Green said. 

John Lewis, principal at TransPro, said public transportation’s purpose is to give the community reliable service, and MATA has failed to do so. Lewis said the company has worked with the agency previously, however MATA failed to address their recommendations. As a result, TransPro “severed their agreement.”

“We find ourselves not surprised [by] the situation the agency finds itself in at this moment,” Lewis said.

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City Council Questions MATA’s Transparency During Presentation

Photo: Justin Fox Burks

Memphis City Councilwoman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton said that the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s (MATA) interim CEO Bacarra Mauldin had been “gifted an issue” and criticized the agency for not asking for help in their budget crisis. 

These comments came after officials noted that the agency had been operating in an unrestricted budget deficit for the last 10 years.

“To hear that this is a 10-year-long thing that you all have known about — that you didn’t have enough money and never said anything to anyone is very disturbing,” Cooper-Sutton said. “I don’t think you would run your household for 10 years and no one would say anything.”

Cooper-Sutton went on to call out the organization’s Board of Commissioners for not speaking up as well, and that they should share in accountability for the agency’s financial burdens.

“No one knew there was a deficiency coming down the pipeline? No one?” Cooper-Sutton said. “I’m going to tell you what my spirit is discerning — someone is lying and not telling the truth. You’re not going to tell me that the educated board with all those alphabets behind their name that no one knew and saw this coming for 10 years? It’s unbelievable.”

Mauldin responded saying she remembers being two doors down from her predecessor and had no idea that the agency was facing financial hardship.

“The board didn’t know,” Mauldin said. “From the moment that we gave full visibility over what was happening with the finances, I shared that information with the board and we have as governance partners to try to right this ship. I know that it’s unbelievable, I know that it’s unacceptable but we have done everything in our power to bring this in-line so that we could provide the service this city needs and deserves.”

Today’s meeting follows the passage of the transit authority’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025 which resulted in more than 200 layoffs and the suspension of routes. Riders and community members have openly called on the council to intervene in the agency’s problems. The council had also requested that MATA appear before them every two weeks to provide updates in hopes of increasing transparency. 

Mauldin said that her team was “beaten down” and that all they want is to make things right.

“Our goal is to develop a robust transit system that positions Memphis to compete nationally,” Mauldin said. “The city deserves that and we want to give it to the city. We’re committed to providing insights and context necessary to be a part of the solution and help drive the city towards a successful future.”

MATA’s presentation covered their financials, staff optimization, and the steps they plan to take moving forward. Mauldin was joined by external chief financial officer Hamish Davidson, chief of strategic partnerships and programs Erik Stevenson, and chief development officer John Lancaster.

Davidson highlighted that MATAs debt has grown over time due to increased costs and a decrease in ridership and flat funding. He added that the budget affects on-time performance and they are currently operating at a $85 million budget, with a proposed balanced budget of $67.8 million.

“This is not something that occurred in one year,” Davidson said. “This is something that has been continuing for many years.”

According to Davidson, this is something that the media and others had been “lambasting” the agency about, and wanted to note that their deficit wasn’t an annual loss.

The approved budget shows that a majority of MATA’s funding comes through grant revenue ($64 million) with the City of Memphis being its primary funding source at $30 million. The rest of their budget is supplemented by their operating revenue of $3.7 million from passenger fares, advertising, and charters.

Councilwoman Pearl Eva Walker noted that the council’s assessment of MATA’s  troubles stemmed from lack of on-going information and updates, as opposed to understanding of finances.

In hopes of adding context to the operational side, Lancaster explained that their problems also stem from their density and size of their service area. MATA covers nearly 300 square miles with a fleet of less than 100 buses. For comparison, Lancaster said they operated more than 300 buses in a little over 100 square miles in the 1970s.

Stevenson said they had to reduce their workforce in order to stay in line with their budget. As a result 18 trolley workers, 29 administrative personnel, and 52 unionized personnel were laid off with 75 eliminated positions.

While the agency presented a PowerPoint in hopes of providing answers, the council was still not pleased with their presentation, prompting several questions and comments from council members. Walker noted that the presentation was very “general.”

Councilwoman Rhonda Logan questioned if employee perks such as employee vehicles had been reduced as the company works to cut down on spending. Mauldin said she would provide the council with a detailed list of these things, including the context in which they exist.  

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Showdown!

JB Smiley (Photo: City of Memphis)

It is no accident that many savants in the legal/political universe regard the 1962 Baker v. Carr decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to be second to none among landmark judicial decisions.

This decision was brought on by a suit from Charles Baker, chairman of what was then the Shelby County Court, precursor of the present Shelby County Commission. On behalf of Shelby County, rapidly urbanizing at the time, as was the nation as a whole, Baker sought relief from un-democratic districting guidelines imposed by the state of Tennessee that unduly favored the state’s rural population.

The court held in essence that the Fourteenth Amendment required that the principle of one person-one vote be applied in the determination of legislative district lines.

While the decision had immediate and lasting repercussions on determining matters of voter eligibility, both in Tennessee and elsewhere in the nation, it has by no means eliminated gerrymandering based on partisan politics (e.g. witness the Republican legislative supermajority’s strip-mining away of Democratic Party rights in Nashville’s Fifth Congressional District), nor has it much diminished the edgy relationship between urban and rural interests in policy-making.

The latter issue has flared up again in the quarrel over whether Memphis voters should be allowed to vote their preference on several gun-control measures embedded in a referendum proposed by the city council but now endangered by the action of the county Election Commission in removing it from the November ballot.

In so acting, the Election Commission — dominated 3-2 by GOP members according to state mandate — has clearly responded to overt threats from the state’s Republican leadership to withhold from the city some $78 million in state revenues, if the referendum should go through as scheduled.

This was some of the “stiff resistance” promised by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who articulated things this way: “Local governments who want to be progressive and evade state laws will lose shared sales tax funding.” The speaker likened the city’s referendum plans to “subversive attempts to adopt sanctuary cities [and] allow boys in girls’ sports.” 

Some Memphians were expressing concern that the state’s retribution could also be visited on various large local projects dependent on previously pledged state subsidies, like those involving the zoo, FedExForum, and Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

It is worth recalling the actual import of the endangered referendum, authorized earlier by the council’s unanimous vote. In the words of its chief sponsor Councilman Jeff Warren, “Memphis voters will be asked whether they approve amending the city’s charter to require a handgun permit, restrict the storage of guns in vehicles in many cases, ban assault weapons sales after January 1, 2025, and enact extreme risk protection orders, sometimes called Red Flag Laws.”

All the referendum would do is solicit voter opinion, it would seem. Sexton chooses to see it otherwise, as a direct challenge to state authority.

Whichever interpretation is correct, the ongoing confrontation between city and state over a host of policy matters, of which gun safety is only one, is rising to fever pitch, as evidenced the rhetoric employed last week by Council Chair JB Smiley and various supportive council members, who announced their intent to sue the Election Commission to reinstate the ballot measure.

“Memphis has been shot and is bleeding out,” said Councilwoman Jerri Green. “We won’t back down, and we damn sure won’t be bullied,” proclaimed Smiley.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young meanwhile seemed to be trying to position himself at the nonexistent calm center, saying he understood the council’s “frustration” but expressing the view that the referendum ultimately would be “futile.” 

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‘One Memphis’ Redux

The original “One Memphis” logo on a vintage souvenir umbrella from an A C Wharton mayoral campaign. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Talk about déjà vu!

When Memphis Mayor Paul Young — still, some 50-odd days into his new administration, working on organizational matters — brought forth his latest innovation, involving the slogan “One Memphis” to denote a series of community meetings to come, echoes were generated in the minds and memories of numerous Memphians.

After all, it was only 15 years ago that A C Wharton used the identical phrase “One Memphis” as a campaign slogan in the 2009 special election that first landed Wharton in the mayor’s office to succeed the retiring Willie Herenton.

“There is absolutely nothing we cannot overcome if we work toward that goal as One Memphis,” Wharton would intone in his speeches, reinforcing the idea in an ad campaign that would sign off with the initials “A C” (familiar to his audiences then and later as the preferred shorthand for his uniquely accessible persona), followed by the words “One Memphis.”

It was Wharton’s way of distinguishing himself from the more volatile and divisive 16-year tenure of his predecessor.

No doubt Paul Young means something similarly comforting, coupling the two-word slogan with the phrase “Empowering Voices/Building Bridges” in a published logo announcing his forthcoming “One Memphis Tour,” which was to have its inaugural session at Whitehaven High School this week.

Another new venture by Young was embodied in his recent announcement of his intent to appoint someone to a newly created office, that of public safety director, which would have hierarchical dibs over that of police chief.

Overall, the idea was greeted with a positive public reaction, particularly in those circles where there is a desire to locate the duties of law enforcement within a larger, more holistic context of social reform.

That would seem to be Young’s purpose, though this is one of those cases where the devil (the angel, rather?) will be in the details.

Young, who has experienced some difficulty in getting off the mark, might have fared even better, reception-wise, had he been able to make the announcement of the new office in January, when his cabinet was first being assembled, and better still if he could have had the appointment in hand of some credibly credentialed appointee.

That might well have obviated the awkwardness and still unresolved discord which arose from his reappointment of C.J. Davis as police chief (as of now an interim position). Her continuation in office as a clear subordinate would have raised fewer hackles, if any at all, with the city council and with the general public.

Better late than never, even if the sequence seems a bit backwards.

• Gale Jones Carson, a longtime presence in the community as spokesperson for MLGW, was named last week as interim CEO of the local chapter of Urban League.

Carson’s successor as MLGW’S vice president of corporate communications, Ursula Madden Lund, meanwhile is having to wait for a reluctant city council to approve her $200,000 salary. The matter is up for discussion again next week.

• A proposed measure to provide lifetime healthcare benefits to veterans of at least two city council terms took an abrupt nosedive last week, being rejected on third reading virtually unanimously by the new city council after the previous council had approved it without a dissenting vote.

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Young, Sullivan in Talks?

Maura Black Sullivan (Photo: Courtesy Maura Black Sullivan)

The Memphis Flyer has confirmed that Mayor Paul Young and a veteran public official now serving in Nashville are in continuing conversations about her possible employment here. This would be Maura Black Sullivan, a native Memphian who now holds the position of chief operating officer of Nashville Public Schools.

Sullivan, who previously served as COO for former Memphis Mayor AC Wharton and later for former Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, confirmed that conversations with Young are ongoing for the position of his chief administrative officer.

On Tuesday of this week, the city council was prepared to deal with some unfinished business — including a controversial healthcare allowance for council members of two terms’ service or more, and a decision on yet another mayoral appointment — this one of public works director Robert Knecht.

A vote on Knecht, whom Mayor Paul Young submitted for renomination week before last, was deferred after council chairman JB Smiley publicly criticized Knecht for “attitude” issues and asked for the deferral.

Several of Young’s cabinet choices were viewed negatively by Smiley and other council members — notably Police Chief CJ Davis, whose reappointment the council narrowly rejected via a 7-6 vote. (She was later given an interim appointment by Young, pending a later reexamination by the council.)

Another issue with several council members has been unease at the mayor’s inability so far to complete his team with credentialed new appointees in other positions. He has not yet named permanent appointees for the key positions of chief operating officer and chief financial officer, for example.

That circumstance could change soon. Sullivan is frank to say that she has not been in a job search, enjoys her present circumstances in Nashville, and has made no decision to leave them, but acknowledges that a possible return to Memphis would be attractive as well.

Sullivan is the daughter of the late Dave Black, a featured radio broadcaster of many years in Memphis, and the late Kay Pittman Black, who was a well-known journalist and government employee here.

• With Governor Bill Lee’s appointment this week of Mary L. Wagner to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the state’s high court continues with an unmistakably red hue politically.

As a judicial candidate in her two elections as a Circuit Court judge in Shelby County, Wagner campaigned without ideological inflection and enjoyed relatively diverse support, and there was no hint of political bias in her judgments. But her background was that of a Republican activist, and she both was a member of the right-leaning Federalist Society and served a term as chair of the Shelby County Republican Party.

In appointing Wagner, Lee said, “Her understanding and respect for the rule of law and commitment to the conservative principles of judicial restraint make her well-suited for the state’s highest court, and I am proud to appoint her to this position.”

Technically, Wagner is a justice-designate. The justice she was named to succeed, Roger Page,will keep his position for some months.

• District Attorney Steve Mulroy was in a celebratory mood last Monday evening after the Shelby County Commission voted unanimously — except for three abstentions — to pass an ordinance imposing guidelines ensuring that all members of his office, whether their technical employment is by the county or by the state, are paid according to the same pay scale.

As a county official, Mulroy had recently trimmed his own pay according to the lower county rate. He has now restored the voluntary pay cut.

Update: After our print deadline, Mayor Young clarified to the Flyer: “I can confirm that we had early talks with Maura Sullivan about a different position with the Young administration, not the COO/CAO position. We have a strong leader currently acting in the COO role who has my full faith and confidence.”

The mayor’s spokesperson/CCO, Penelope Huston, added: “The role we initially discussed was a high level position on the Mayor’s cabinet. And while talks about that position haven’t continued, we do have an ongoing dialogue with her and many others who we consider allies in the work of creating a stronger Memphis.”

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Purgatory

When Judge Jayne Chandler (r) swore in Councilman Jeff Warren in early January, host and witness for the special ceremony was the iconic late former school board member Sara Lewis. It was her final official act. (Photo: Courtesy Jeff Warren)

The forced reaction of Mayor Paul Young in his interim appointment of Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis, coupled with the city council’s action this past Tuesday to defer action on reappointing Public Works Director Robert Knecht, suggests an emergent balkanization of power in the affairs of the newly installed city government.

Council chair JB Smiley has made it clear that he intends to position the council — and himself — as a counterbalance to mayoral authority. Smiley, who had taken the lead in the first deferral of action on Davis three weeks ago, reinforced his assertiveness last Tuesday in dressing down Knecht for “attitude” and alleged insularity and leading the council to postpone a vote on Knecht’s reappointment for two more weeks.

“Make sure you respond when we come calling on you,” was the thrust of Smiley’s message to Knecht. The contrast between Smiley’s firmness and Knecht’s docility was instructive.

And individual council members have their own axes to grind.

Councilman Jeff Warren, sponsor of the imminent council resolution that Young had to preempt and emulate in his interim appointment of Davis, has affirmed his position at the nexus of authority. Newcomer Jerri Green’s strong questioning of Davis underscored her determination to be a voice to reckon with.

Another new council member, previously seen as an unknown quantity, is Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, who has made a point of her intention to base her votes on her own independent researches. Yet another first-termed, Pearl Eva Walker, has to be regarded as a potential exponent of an abundant number of activist causes, including a reexamination of Memphis’ issues with TVA.

And so forth and so on. As the old saw goes: All have won, and all must have prizes. Young, who has yet to get his legs fully down, will be hard put to maintain the strong-mayor authority the city charter entitles him to — especially given a belated air of pushback against the relatively free hand enjoyed by former mayor Jim Strickland.

Not to be ignored, either, is the likely enhancement of self-interested power groups in the community. A key moment in the (temporary) resolution of the Davis matter was a come-to-Jesus meeting between Mayor Young and members of the Memphis Police Association on the Monday before the last council session.

The gathered police folk made it clear that they wanted more attention to their concerns that they had been used to in law-enforcement matters.

The bottom line is that rosy rhetoric does not apply to Davis’ case. Nor to her boss’. One noted pundit has hailed the interim appointment as a salvific opportunity for all the sides to get together in constructive kumbaya. The fact is, to employ the right existential terminology, Davis is in a form of purgatory and has, at best, an opportunity to expurgate herself. Meanwhile, she has to bear the ill-defined stigmata of public doubt. And so, sadly, must the mayor, as he still struggles to launch his mayoralty.

Some are already suggesting that Chief Davis might make her best contribution to the city’s welfare — and to her boss’ and to her own — by arranging for a graceful, voluntary withdrawal.

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Early Stumble

Paul Young (Photo: Paul Young for Memphis)

It isn’t necessarily momentous that Mayor Paul Young will face a delay in having his newly announced appointments approved by the city council. But it isn’t incidental or meaningless, either.

As the week began, it had become common knowledge that, upon their formal presentation to the council last Tuesday, the courtesy of “same-night minutes” was likely to be denied to some — if not all — of the appointees.

“Same-night minutes” is the shorthand for a parliamentary process whereby actions taken by the council in a given session are approved by an immediate second vote by the council to become instantly effective and to avoid follow-up action at the group’s next regular meeting, when the minutes of the preceding meeting would normally get formal approval. It’s a “hurry-up” process, as a means of hastening the effective date of a council action, making it, in effect, instantaneous. It is employed when the avoidance of any delay is considered a paramount factor.

The process is also invoked, as previously suggested, as a courtesy of sorts — as in the case of most mayoral appointments.

CJ Davis (Photo: City of Memphis)

As it happens, the Young appointees were to be presented to the council almost a year to the day from that awful moment in January 2023 when Tyre Nichols was beaten to death by an out-of-control unit of the SCORPION task force, which had been created by Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis as a would-be elite enforcement element of the Memphis Police Department.

That fact, along with the well-known circumstance of an increased rate of violent crime in Memphis during the last year and the MPD’s status under a Department of Justice investigation, is enough to have flagged Davis’ reappointment for special attention.

It was clear when Davis spoke to the Rotary Club in November that she — and her mayoral sponsor — wanted to regard her appointment as a certainty. She prescribed a year’s worth of policy points with the air of one who could speak to their achievement. Yet there was something vague, tentative, and not quite jelled about her presentation — as there was when she recapped her intentions again last week at a crime summit called by Young.

Meanwhile, there was head-scratching at City Hall as to Young’s inability — or indecision — regarding his naming of a COO and a CFO, though he had reportedly scoured the city governments of Nashville and Chattanooga for prospects.

The resultant highlighting of Davis’ appointment against a backdrop of Strickland-era retainees left his cabinet-level choices looking somehow incomplete and provisional.

JB Smiley (Photo: City of Memphis)

Pointedly, council chairman JB Smiley, determined, it would seem, to assert council prerogatives, began running a poll on X to gauge public acceptability of Davis’ appointment, and no council members have seemed anything but resolute when sounding out on the issue.

None of this augurs well for a new administration which is still seen — at best — as enveloped with an aura of the unknown and untested.

It remains to be seen whether the situation reflects more of a sense of unreadiness on the part of the new regime or an aroused determination on the council’s part to assert its own authority.

Either way, it certainly amounts to a rough start.

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In Their Own Words

Scott McCormick and Jerri Green (Photos: Courtesy Scott McCormick/Jerri Green)

In the emailed responses below, the District 2 council candidates outline their plans and priorities.

Scott McCormick: As a district representative on the Memphis City Council, my main priority is to advocate for the district I am elected to represent, District 2.

Germantown Parkway is a bit like the Wild West. Just last week two banks were robbed. Car break-ins occur in the various parking lots along the parkway and some businesses have been forced to close due to criminal activity. People want to feel safe. Wives, mothers, and daughters all want to get their gas without looking over their shoulders. I want to sit down with the police director and discuss how law enforcement resources are allocated to District 2.

“Out-of-town landlords’’ neglect their properties when vacant. Weeds are allowed to take over yards and visible disrepair is noticeable with many of these houses. One example is a house I pass almost every day. The windows are boarded up and the garage door is barely hanging [by] its rails. It is an eyesore and a nuisance. Another example was a new[s] story about a Cordova woman who moved in only to find the house was infested with rats. The landlord ignored her until the news station became involved. The council needs to address this issue, as it not only affects District 2 but all the districts. These real estate companies, which own 400-plus homes, need to be held accountable to maintain their properties.

Cordova is a part of the city that contracts its garbage service through a private company. The service is unreliable. I personally experience missed trash or recycle pick-up at least once a month. Yard waste will sit on the curb for months at a time before being picked up. Yard waste is supposed to be picked up every other week. This is another issue that is a nuisance for the citizens of District 2.

Jerri Green: I have been out knocking on doors and talking to my neighbors in District 2. From the grandmother concerned about the skyrocketing MLGW bills and frequent power outages to the funeral director concerned about the gun deaths he sees each week to the parent wondering about opportunities for their children in a city that is in a crime crisis, each voter is looking for leadership to take action.

The theme running through it all, District 2 is ready for change. And they want someone who not only has a record of success, but has proven they are tough enough to lean in on these hard issues and make a real difference. On the city council, I plan to focus on innovative strategies to tackle crime, improve infrastructure, and support youth.

As senior policy advisor for Mayor Lee Harris, I have started the nation’s first free gun lock by mail program by a local government to keep guns out of the wrong hands. I’ve supported our law enforcement officers with increased benefits and in-precinct youth counselors. I also started a jobs site for ex-offenders because if you’re too busy working, you’re too busy to go back to a life of crime. These are solutions with proven results.

All my plans start with data. I will use data to make sure MLGW has a robust tree trimming program that targets the areas most susceptible to power outages. I will also make sure proposed improvements align with the costs being charged to customers. It is time to hold the leadership accountable.

I would also be the first woman — and mother — to hold this seat. That means I will not just bring change, but also common sense and compassion to my work, especially as it relates to the next generation. You can count on me to always show up for my children and yours.