Tag: City Council

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Case for Single-Member Council Districts

Quick quiz for Memphians, as elections approach: Who’s your city councilman?

It’s a trick question. You have four city councilpersons representing you: one in your local single-member district, and three more from an overlapping large, multimember “Super District” covering half the city.

Overall there are seven single-member districts covering all of Memphis, with two Super Districts overlaid on top, each electing three councilpersons.

Some of you may know that, but I bet many of you didn’t or forgot. And even fewer know exactly how the Super District candidates run. Do they all run against each other? Are there “sub districts” within the Super District?

Actually, neither. Candidates must choose to run for one of three “numbered positions” within each Super District, and then compete only with those candidates who have chosen to run for that numbered position.

Confusing? Yes, and needlessly so. This patchwork quilt could be made simpler and better by switching to 13 single-member districts, as some activists and city council members have urged, and as the county commission did a few years ago.

Under this proposal, each voter would have one city councilman in a small, neighborhood-based district.

In addition to being less confusing, there are other advantages. Each single-member district would have about 50,000 people, compared to the 326,000 people in each Super District. This would make it easier for a voter to get his representative’s attention and to affect the outcome of the election. It would also make it easier for an official to communicate with constituents.

Additionally, it would reduce the unfair advantage that incumbents have in elections, making elections more competitive. A dedicated candidate can knock on the doors of likely voters in a district that small and doesn’t need a huge campaign war chest to send advertising to hundreds of thousands of people. A less well-funded, less well-known challenger can have a fighting chance. This increased competition would be good for everybody and might even increase turnout.

The resulting redistricting plan would be more representative of the popular will. Any time you carve a city up into districts, there is an imperfect correlation between 1) the city-wide percentage of Republicans versus Democrats, liberals versus conservatives, blacks versus whites, etc., and 2) the number of districts with a majority of Republican/liberal/black voters.

When you have smaller districts and more fine-tuned districting, that correspondence improves. That’s why federal courts in civil-rights suits have for decades favored single-member districts and disapproved of multi-member districts, because of their inherent tendency to dilute the minority vote.

Advocates of the current system say that single-member district representatives tend to have a parochial focus on the narrow concerns of their small area, and that you need the counterbalance of Super-District representatives to take the larger, city-wide view.

This is a valid point, but I’m unsure how much it works in practice. I served on a county commission with one single-member district and four multi-member districts. I did not see this feared dynamic of geographic parochialism at work.

Also, the new county commission has now converted from a mixed single- and multi-member district approach to 13 single-member districts. (Full disclosure: They did this at my urging.) I have seen no rise in parochialism.

Anyway, Memphis doesn’t use city-wide, at-large districts; we have one Super District for (whiter, richer) eastern Memphis, and one for (blacker, poorer) western Memphis. So, rather than a Memphis-wide view, those representatives are encouraged to take an East Memphis-versus western-Memphis view.

Another argument for the current system is that voters get to vote for four councilpersons rather than one. Converting to single-member districts would, in effect, be taking away three of your votes.

This, too, is a valid concern. But with the state of voter confusion about the city council system and the 326,000-person size of our Super Districts, I wonder just how empowering those three extra votes are. Does their theoretical value outweigh the new proposal’s advantages in curbing voter confusion, increasing electoral competitiveness, facilitating constituent-representative communication, and making the overall redistricting plan more representative?

On balance, I lean toward neighborhood-based representation. It’s a change that the city council could make with a charter amendment to be presented to the voters in a future election. As you prepare for next month’s city council elections, ask your city council candidates what they think, and think about it yourself as you work your way through that ballot. Steven Mulroy is Associate Dean at the University of Memphis’ law school.

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Editorial Opinion

A Mixed Bag in 2014

If you’re standing up, sit down; if you’re sitting down, stand up — whatever you need to do to take stock of the year that just passed or get ready for the new one. Frankly, we don’t know whether to be shocked, bemused, or encouraged.

There was a rush of things at year’s end regarding which we’re just going to have to wait and see.

To start with, it was one of the most satisfying: Yes, considering how often we’ve been on the short end of the stick in matters having to do with our relations with our sister city of Nashville, it does feel good to have something to gloat about. Folks up that way may not have noticed how well our NBA Grizzlies did in 2014 compared to their NFL Titans, but they dang sure noticed when the Swedish furniture giant IKEA chose to locate its newest mega-store not in the Middle Tennessee environs of the state’s capital city but on a generous stretch of land along Highway 64 in our own Shelby County bailiwick — within the city limits of Memphis, in fact. We know from things we read or saw on TV or picked up online that Nashville had been competing pretty hard for that honor. 

The folks there had let it be known that they were tired of having to truck the 250 miles or so to Atlanta to shop for the nifty, lightweight, modernist stuff that IKEA makes. Well, the good news for Nashvillians is, they won’t have to drive quite so far to get to the IKEA store in Memphis. And, in season, they’ll be able to take in a Grizzlies game while they’re here, and, you know, get that sense of what it’s like to be a winner.

Along with the news that Target intends to locate a fulfillment center here, the news about IKEA would seem to provide some justification for the high hopes that had been invested in the joint city/county EDGE (Economic Development Growth Engine) board, as well as to allay some of the doubts about that board’s incentives policy.

We still think, though, that the policy of attracting new business and industry through the liberal use of PILOTS (payments-in-lieu-of-taxes) needs careful oversight, lest it be abused. We don’t have much of a tax base for public purposes to start with, and to squeeze it much further could be counter-productive — and regressive. Surely nobody needs to be reminded that the city’s first responders are aggrieved by changes wreaked in their health-care and pension options as a result of austerity measures in local government. Nor has memory faded about the recent outbursts in public violence that caused such concern about our ability to counter or contain them. 

We are ending the 2014 year with a nice seasonal glow, thanks to some successes like those mentioned above, and we’re grateful. But we’re well aware from the all too obvious disturbances and discontent that have also manifested themselves that we have continuing and grave problems that have not gone away. It’s a mixed bag, but Happy Holidays is still the right thing to say. So we do.

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News News Blog

Demonstrators Gather to Protest City Council Vote

CREDIT: Alexandra Pusateri

Protesters in front of City Hall say theyre angry about the city councils recent cuts to employee benefits.

  • Alexandra Pusateri
  • Protesters in front of City Hall say they’re angry about the city council’s recent cuts to employee benefits.

Honks rang out every few minutes Tuesday afternoon in support as drivers along Front Street read the signs protesting the city council’s recent decision to cut benefits for city employees.

The protesters are angry about a recent vote taken by city council members to cut major health care subsidies for retirees and spouses of city employees, which was previously reported in the Flyer.

Crowds of firefighters, police officers, retirees, and supporters stood in front and behind the building holding signs, some asking Memphians to wake up and others calling out Mayor A C Wharton and city council members.

Joe Norman, the vice president of the Memphis Firefighters Association, said the protest was about hope and educating city council members about what those cuts actually meant.

“We have folks who have given their bodies protecting the citizens of Memphis who are no longer able to do the job and didn’t want to retire but are forced to,” he said. “They have these injuries that have disabled them, and now the insurance that they have to use to treat their line-of-duty injuries is being priced out of their [income] range.”

And that’s not even including the spouses and families of those affected, Norman said.

“A secondary impact is what’s going to happen to the employees that are now on the job. The message has been sent to them that your public safety officers, your police officers, your firefighters are going to be forced into working until they’re senior citizens. You’re going to have an aging force.”

According to Norman, the cut to benefits has “crippled” those who have been employed in public safety for many years, and for those who are still on the job, it might lead to those working until retirement age.

Protesters also gathered behind City Hall facing Front Street.

“The message that we’re getting from the council and the mayor is that their biggest priority is capital improvement projects,” Norman said. “I can’t think of one capital improvement project that they haven’t liked. The kick in the teeth was they cut all the retirees’ health care benefits Tuesday night and the next morning, they’re giving $66 million to the Raleigh Springs Mall.”

The Greater Memphis Chamber has also taken a stand for the mayor’s plan, according to the union.

“[The chamber] keeps telling us the benefits are unsustainable,” he said. “They can’t tell us why. They have no math to back it up. They’re just like a broken record. It’s one of these issues where if you tell a lie enough times, everyone starts to believe it. You can tell from the crowd today that we’re not falling for it and the citizens don’t fall for it either. These benefits are not unsustainable. The pension’s been in effect since 1948. It’s got more money in it today than it did in 2008, prior to the recession.”

Norman says the city also refuses to compromise.

“If you spend any time in front of the city administration, it’s easier to nail a piece of Jell-O to the wall than get an answer that you understand,” he said.

Lydia Verret is the wife of a firefighter who has been working with the department for 22 years. To her, the city council vote felt “like a slap in the face,” she said.

“He’s supposed to retire in three years, and our health insurance is going to go up to $1,800. So we’re going to have to pay either our house note or our health insurance,” Verret said. “It’s unacceptable. He’s not a regular guy. He doesn’t have a ‘regular-guy job.’ That’s the least they could do. That’s what they promised. We planned our entire life on this and now they’ve lied.”

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News News Blog

Recently Passed UDC Amendments Bring Hope to Tattoo Artist

On Tuesday, July 17th, the Memphis City Council voted unanimously in favor of amending the city’s Unified Development Code (UDC). The new amendments will bring forth various changes to the code’s stance on development and zoning in the city. But the changes must be approved by the Shelby County Commission before the revised development code can take effect.

One such change affects aspiring tattoo shop owners, palm readers, psychics, fortune tellers, and massage parlors who desire to open businesses in the Commercial Mixed Use (CMU-1) zoning areas. While those businesses are currently forbidden from opening in CMU-1 zoning areas, the amended code will allow them to apply for a conditional use permit to do so.

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Tattoo artist Babak Tabatabai is breathing a large sigh of relief after the council’s decision. In November, Tabatabai signed a lease to open a tattoo shop and art gallery on Broad Avenue. After investing nearly $30,000 in the building and its remodeling, he received a rude awakening from the Historic Broad Business Association that the district was not zoned to allow tattoo shops.

He applied for a zoning variance to open the shop, but it was denied during a public hearing held at City Hall in March. Since then, his business has been at a standstill, but the new UDC amendments passed Tuesday could help change that.

“It’s hard to describe my reaction when I heard the results,” Tabatabai said, who attended the council meeting. “I wasn’t expecting it to go through. I was mostly relieved that I didn’t have to move all my stuff somewhere else. No matter what would have happened at this location, I think [the $30,000] would have never been lost anyway. They say it’s no lesson lost. It would have been a really expensive lesson, but it still would have been one that I could have learned something from. Now it has become even better.”

The next step is a second reading and public hearing on the changes at the Shelby County Commission on July 30th. The commission’s third reading is scheduled for August 13th.

If everything goes well, Tabatabai plans to apply for the Conditional Use Permit in August. He hopes to have his shop open by September. Named Ronin Design & Manufacturing, it will be a tattoo shop, art gallery, and design firm.

“Everybody on the street has a different opinion about tattoo shops, but the official position from the Broad Avenue Business Association is that we support what the process says,” said Pat Brown, vice president of the Historic Broad Business Association in regard to the recent UDC changes. “We never stated that we were against tattoos. That was never the case. Now that the entire UDC has been changed, we’ll support whatever that process is.”

Chooch Pickard, executive director for the Memphis Regional Design Center, was a part of the UDC stakeholders. The group worked with Josh Whitehead, planning director for the Memphis & Shelby County Office of Planning and Development, to come up with compromises on the amendments.

Pickard said he’s “90 percent happy with how things turned out,” regarding the code’s amendments.

“We weren’t wholesale against [the amendments] by any means,” Pickard said. “We actually were in favor of the majority of them, but we had a number of items that we took issue with. I think the Conditional Use Permit is a better option than just allowing tattoo shops outright, because that gives the neighborhood an opportunity to give their voice and perhaps put some limitations on hours of operation and things like that.”

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News

Council to Look at Cuts on the 12th

When the Memphis City Council comes back its first meeting on the 12th, it will be looking to make at least $10 million in mid-year budget cuts in order to fund a payment to the Memphis City Schools.

Memphis mayor A C Wharton will be bringing proposed cuts to the council, including consolidating services within city government and with county government, but he could not say how many jobs he thought might be effected or cut.

The council hasn’t voted on terms of the payment, but a proposal on the table includes taking $30 million from the city’s reserve fund, cutting $10 million, and giving the school system $10 million in debt forgiveness (for money the city says it’s owed by the schools).

It’s been said that this is a rainy day for local government, but it’s not a storm that couldn’t have been predicted.

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News

Council Delays Consolidation Vote

The City Council delayed voting for at least two weeks on a resolution to set a new Charter Commission for the purpose of creating a metro government.

“I’m in favor of consolidation,” said councilman Jim Strickland, “but I’m not convinced that next year is the right time to move forward.”

Mayor Pro Tem Myron Lowery gave a presentation to the council’s executive committee that cited population loss, brain drain, economic development, and duplication in services as reasons why the two governments should merge.

“Dual-headed government is a broken business model,” he said.

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News

City School Funding Moves Forward

The City Council’s education committee approved the Memphis City Schools’ $879 million budget this afternoon.

The city’s contribution to that figure is $78 million.

Members of the city school board also told the committee they were for the concept of single-source funding, but need more details before they can back a specific plan.

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News

Fine for a Fee

The Council’s public safety and homeland security committee took a turn this morning as a budget committee.

The committee considered two proposals — a traffic court docket for unpaid court costs and an additional fines for home alarms — that would bolster the city’s coffers.

“[Citizens] are given time to pay court costs and fines and for some reason they don’t do this,” said council chair Harold Collins. “We have millions of dollars in outstanding court costs.”

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News

New Officers: Geography v. Competency?

Sure, the mayor’s Clash-like dilemma, and the resulting on-again, off-again mayor’s race, has dominated the news, but other things are still happening.

For instance … the City Council continued its more than year-long struggle Tuesday to employ a full complement of police officers.

Earlier this year, the job of hiring police officers was transferred from the Memphis Police Department to the city’s Human Resources division. The City Council also voted in a resolution that would allow officers to live 20 miles outside the Shelby County line but those officers would have to pay a $1,400 fee.

The Council then said that officers who live inside the city limits should get preference for the positions, which brings it to its current dilemma.

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News

Council Hears New Memphis City Pool Regulations

In response to the two drowning deaths that occurred the first day the city pools were open, City Council members heard about new pool regulations during Tuesday’s parks committee meeting.

The new regulations include a way for lifeguards to easily identify which swimmers are allowed to be in the deep end and mandate that someone over 18 years old accompanies children 12 and under and shorter than 4 feet tall to the pool.

“They aren’t required to have a parent with them. It’s an adult, 18 and older,” said parks director Cindy Buchanan. “It doesn’t have to be their parent or guardian, but it needs to be someone responsible.”

Several council members worried that requiring children to be accompanied by an adult would effectively discourage people from using city pools.

Council member Barbara Swearengen Ware wanted to know if the adult had to accompany the child to the pool or in the water.

“You ask me to take my child, that’s one thing. You ask me to take them to the pool, get undressed, and get in the water with them, that’s another thing,” Ware said.

She added, “I understand you’re trying to avoid disaster, but some of this I think was done to discourage people from either going to or sending their children to the pool.”

Buchanan said those with younger children should consider being in the water with their kids.

“If they’re three-, four- or five-years-old, and they’re in the pool and you’re on the deck, you’re not really supervising,” she said. “Our lifeguards are trained in life saving; they’re not trained in babysitting.”

Under the new regulations, swimmers will also have to pass a test before they can go into the deep end.

— Mary Cashiola