Tag: City Council

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News The Fly-By

Paid Protection

CREDIT: Saniphoto | dreamstime.com

The town of Tunica doesn’t have much turnover on its tiny police force. Of its 10 officers, half of them have been on the job for more than a decade.

But that wasn’t always the case. Before the growth of the area’s gambling industry, the police department would hire someone; they’d stay a year, then leave.

“We were a training ground,” says Chief Richard Veazey. “We couldn’t compete with the larger towns and counties.”

Better salaries solved Tunica’s retension rate, but things in Memphis are a bit more complicated. Since the beginning of the year, City Council members have investigated ways to increase the number of police officers in Memphis.

Last year, the department relaxed the education requirements for applicants. Council members have discussed signing bonuses, a better pension plan, doing away with the residency requirement — approved by public referendum — and allowing officers to live 20 miles from the county line.

Now Councilman Harold Collins has proposed a resolution that would allow officers to live outside the city limits but charges them a $1,200 fee for the privilege.

“If the powers that be really want [more officers] that badly and [the officers] want these jobs, they can provide something in return for their employment,” Collins says. “I think it’s only fair.”

Collins’ resistance to the initial residency proposal centered on the tax burden Memphis residents shoulder, especially when compared to residents of unincorporated Shelby County. The fee associated with his proposal is derived from the city’s average property tax bill.

“How hard is it to move to Memphis?” Collins asks. “The best idea is for everybody who wants to work for the city to move into the city and then we could be happily ever after. We’re a long way from Camelot. This is the next best thing.”

If Memphis pays its officers substantially better than those in the surrounding jurisdictions, Collins argues officers can afford the fee. “Let’s assume it’s a $10,000 difference,” Collins says. “Would you pay $1,200?”

Memphis police officers are paid $41,766 during their first year. Their salary increases annually to roughly $49,000 for their third year and beyond.

Officers who work for the DeSoto County sheriff’s office begin at $34,157. In the city of Tunica, the base salary for a new officer is about $23,500, but it’s been so long since they’ve hired a new officer that their lowest salary now is about $32,000.

Not that money is everything.

Memphis Police Association president James Sewell says the group is not in favor of Collins’ proposal.

“We don’t think there should be any restrictions,” he says. “We think that officers — and all employees — should be able to live where they want to live.”

Though some people wonder if living in the community they police makes for better officers, Sewell doesn’t think that matters.

“I live in Memphis. If I call the fire department, I don’t care where they live,” he says. “I just want them to come quickly and put out the fire.”

Memphis has long struggled with a deteriorating urban core: as people move out of the city, the tax base declines, there’s less money for basic services, and the quality of those services tends to decline. Sewell suggests that officers don’t want to live in the city for the same reason other people don’t want to: the crime.

“We think crime is the number-one issue in Memphis. If you reduce crime, people will start moving back to Memphis,” he says. “Gas is too expensive to live far away.”

With an argument that circular, maybe Collins’ compromise is as good as it’s going to get. The City Council is certainly no Round Table, but this way they’ll get their knights, er, officers and at least a small amount of city money will make it back to the city coffers.

The City Council is scheduled to talk about Collins’ idea June 3rd, and public safety and homeland security committee head Reid Hedgepeth is open to the idea:

“If we are truly worried about the economic impact, I do not believe that $1,200 is going to stop an officer from coming to work,” he said. “We owe it to our citizens to provide officers to protect them.”

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News

Jury Begins Deliberations in Edmund Ford Trial

“The tapes are not married to anybody. The tapes do not
have a plea agreement.”

With those words, federal prosecutor Larry Laurenzi wrapped
up the government’s case Tuesday against former City Councilman Edmund Ford,
whose fate is now in the hands of the seven women and five men on the jury.

During six days of testimony, prosecutors presented
videotapes of four payments from undercover informant Joe Cooper to Ford.
Laurenzi said Cooper was merely “a tape recorder” and his criminal record and
desire to cut a deal with prosecutors should not distract jurors.

“Joe Cooper is not the proof,” he said.

Laurenzi pointed out that Ford and Cooper get right down to
business with a minimum of small talk – and without the profane language of many
of the Tennessee Waltz tapes featuring Ford’s brother, former state senator John
Ford.

“He (Edmund Ford) had to accept the money knowing that it
was given to him for his political influence,” Laurenzi said. “It wasn’t the FBI
or (FBI Agent) Dan Netemeyer, it was greed. It was just greed.”

Michael Scholl, Ford’s attorney, said “this whole case is
about manipulation” and jurors were shown only “snippets” of tapes cast in the
most incriminating light.

“It should be shocking to watch how you can take little
pieces of a conversation and set up anybody,” Scholl said.

However, he also argued that Ford was the victim of
entrapment, which seemed to concede that he had taken the money as the tapes
show.

Scholl reminded jurors that Ford and his wife Myrna, who
testified in the trial, are a “mom and pop operation” in the family funeral
home.

“Not only do you have to believe that Mr. Ford is lying,
you’ve got to believe that his wife got up here and lied, too,” he said.

In his instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Samuel
H. Mays told jurors they must not be influenced by sympathy.

Jurors were given detailed instructions about entrapment.
Federal courts have ruled that a bribe need not be explicitly stated as a “quid
pro quo.” The defendant must know that the payment is made in return for
official acts, but a certain amount of subtlety is acceptable. The Ford
videotapes show him taking $100 bills as Cooper and Ford discuss pending
decisions of the City Council or other official actions.

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News News Feature

Ford Completes Testimony; Case to Jury Tuesday

A subdued Edmund Ford left the witness stand Monday afternoon after prosecutors replayed their payoff tapes and drove home their contention that the payments were bribes for Ford’s influence over the Memphis City Council.

By testifying, Ford got to tell jurors his interpretation of the $8,900 in payments he took from lobbyist Joe Cooper in his own words. But he left himself open to a methodical cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Laurenzi that could have a devastating effect on jurors.

Jurors heard Ford, on tape, utter such memorable lines as “You know I can carry seven votes, can’t I?” and “We got all the votes” and “I’ll drum up seven or I’ll make somebody walk out” and “Really, I didn’t have too much of a problem” at the very moment he was taking wads of $100 bills from Cooper and sliding them inside his coat pocket.

Ford and his attorney Michael Scholl continued to put Cooper “on trial” as Ford called him a liar who “ran off at the mouth” and had as many as three personalities. But the government and Cooper have readily acknowledged his 1977 federal conviction and his more recent conviction on money-laundering charges.

As one payoff tape was played, Ford explained that he was “very busy” that day and things were “going in one ear and out the other.”

Laurenzi replied, “Why didn’t you give it back?” as the tape was stopped so jurors could see the money on the screen in the courtroom.

Ford said he kept it to pay down a loan on the funeral home from developer Jackie Welch.

“It was for your benefit, right?” Laurenzi countered.

The day ended with Scholl calling eight character witnesses for Ford. With the jury out of the courtroom, Scholl told U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays he will use an entrapment defense.

That defense did not work in Tennessee Waltz cases and is considered something of a long shot.

Mays told jurors they can expect to begin deliberations Tuesday afternoon.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cooper Sentencing Postponed Again, Until May 1st

CREDIT: jb

Sentencing for Joe Cooper, who pleaded guilty almost a year ago to federal charges of money laundering, has been rescheduled for May 1st. This follows a previous postponement of Cooper’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for last summer.

Former county squire Cooper is expected to be a key government witness in pending bribery and extortion cases involving outgoing city councilman Edmund Ford Sr., who, along with former councilman Rickey Peete, was targeted in a sting in which Cooper, who was cooperating with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office, wore a wire. (Peete pleaded guilty and received a sentence of four years and three months.)

Ford and Peete were indicted in November. Cooper had been arrested earlier in the year on a tip from drug dealer Korreco Green, who was in federal custody at the time. Green, who had been purchasing a car from Cooper at Bud David Cadillac, decided to work with the FBI and tipped agents to the elaborate and irregular means by which Cooper, who had a previous felony conviction, had arranged financing for Green’s automobile purchase.

Ironically, Green’s arrest had come after he missed several payments and Cooper had sworn out a warrant for his arrest as a car thief.

–Jackson Baker

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Opinion Viewpoint

Rethinking Power

On January 1st, nine rookies (including me) and four veterans will be sworn in as Memphis City Council members. It is the largest number of first-termers since the original council in 1968.

Since the November election, the nine of us have been undergoing an extensive educational process on the substance of city government and the procedure of the council. Fulfilling our campaign promises will be more difficult than making them. How well we do depends on our relationships with other council members and the administration and the merits of our positions.

The most interesting area of my education has been the opportunity to review the city charter. Among the things we have learned: The 1966 Home Rule Amendment (HRA) changed much of the 1930s-era charter, but many of the articles of the older charter are still in effect because the newer charter did not revoke them.

Enter Stephen Wirls, a Rhodes College professor who has studied the charters exhaustively and led our review of them. Wirls disputed the widespread public understanding that the charters provide for a “strong mayor” form of government. On the contrary, he opined that, in some ways, the HRA gives more power to the council than the U.S. Constitution gives to Congress.

The HRA provides that the mayor “shall be responsible to the council for the administration of all units of the city government under his jurisdiction and for carrying out policies adopted by the council.” The council “shall have full power [my italics], as now provided, to pass, for the government of the city, any ordinance not in conflict with the Constitution or laws of the United States, or the State of Tennessee, within the specific limitations set forth herein below.”

Further, the council has approval power of the appointment and removal of division directors, the president of MLGW, and members of all boards and commissions. The council has the right “to approve and adopt all budgets.”

Of special interest: “[T]he council shall be vested with all other powers of the city not specifically vested in some other officer or officers of the city.” This catch-all provision appears to give the council a great deal of unexpected authority. (One problem: No one on hand for the orientation could identify any “powers of the city not specifically vested” in some other office.)

Just think of the implications of the first proviso quoted above: “The mayor shall be responsible for carrying out policies adopted by the council.” On the face of things, it would appear that the council could adopt “policies,” and the mayor would have to follow them.

Ay, but there’s a rub. “The council shall not, however, exercise executive or administrative powers nor interfere in the operation of the administrative divisions.” On one hand, the HRA gives the City Council the power to set “policies,” but on the other hand, the charter prohibits intrusion into “executive or administrative powers.”

The HRA also gives the mayor the power to contract and prohibits council members from “suggesting or promoting the making of particular … contracts with any specific organization.”

It is not hard to imagine a council’s definition of a “policy” interfering with a mayor’s definition of an “administrative power.” At the orientation, we discussed a scenario whereby the council might pass an ordinance mandating that every public school have a police officer assigned to it full-time. Wirls said he thought that the council had such power but warned that a mayor could dispute it as an intrusion on administrative decision-making.

Many issues may fit into this gray area, and both sides would appear to have a good faith basis for their respective positions. As one of our facilitators suggested, conflict is not so bad if it involves a serious and respectful disagreement as to public policy.

However, such conflict, and the resulting court battle, should be avoided if possible, with the council and the administration working together. The mayor and each member of his administration with whom I have met has expressed the desire to work with the new council.

At this early stage, I do not have an opinion as to the correct interpretation of the charter, but I am optimistic that we can avoid the conflict and come together for the betterment of our city.

Jim Strickland, a lawyer and former Democratic chairman, will represent the city’s 5th District.

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News The Fly-By

With Baited Breath

“Bass Pro has had enough time,” said Commissioner Joyce Avery. “Either they make their decision or let’s go with something else.”

“Something else” could be the Ericson Group’s proposal for a $250 million indoor amusement park. The plan includes a “Disney-esque” theme park, a shopping mall at the foot of The Pyramid, improvements to Mud Island, and a 300- to 400-room hotel. Under the proposal, which would rival the Graceland expansion, Ericson would buy the property, pay off The Pyramid’s existing debt, and do so without public tax dollars.

“I’d like to see it judged on its own merits,” said Memphian Greg Ericson, “but I think it’s a superior project to what’s out there.”

In its ongoing flirtation with Memphis, Bass Pro has signed three letters of intent with city and county government, the latest of which expires January 31st. This week, the commission asked Mayor A C Wharton not to sign any additional letters of intent with Bass Pro.

“We’ve been told repeatedly that a deal was just around the corner with Bass Pro,” said Commissioner Steve Mulroy. “I think an amusement park is a better use for the public than a glorified bait shop.”

Though the letters of intent were both non-exclusive and non-binding, some commissioners felt the conversation with Ericson was a bit premature or that they were somehow cheating on Bass Pro. But after three years, it’s hard to imagine when the right time for this conversation might be.

Ericson not only went through the initial Pyramid re-use committee process several years ago; the committee recommended his proposal in its final report.

After a meeting with Willie Herenton, in which the mayor suggested Ericson buy the land, he included that in his proposal. The last time Ericson met with the County Commission, they wanted to know if he could actually get financing for an indoor theme park, even though he didn’t have a letter of intent. When he came back last week, he had a team of moneymen with him.

“We don’t need three-and-a-half years to go through the letter of intent phase,” Ericson said. “If we started today, we could have everything funded and signed one month from today.”

The administration said it would study Ericson’s financing and present a report to the commission before the end of January.

On the face of its proposal, I’m not for or against Bass Pro. But I get the sense that the company is just — if you’ll excuse the paraphrase — not that into us. And when you compare that to the boy next door who has been persistently pursuing The Pyramid, it’s all the more apparent.

Besides Ericson’s financial proposal, which greatly outscopes Bass Pro, and all the pretty pictures of roller coasters, a few things turned my head.

Outside of the initial $250 million investment, the Ericson group would spend $5 million a year on marketing the amusement park to the 85 million people within a day’s drive of Memphis. That’s New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, and even Chicago.

By comparison, there are already Bass Pro stores in Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago and one planned for Denham Springs, Louisiana, outside of Baton Rouge. Heck, there’s already a Bass Pro located here.

As part of the retail-space component in its plan, Ericson could also easily incorporate Bass Pro. “The beauty of our proposal is that there is plenty of room for both of us,” Ericson said.

I think the community at large has been more than patient and fair to Bass Pro. At the commission’s committee meeting, there was some discussion about whether the county would need to issue a request for proposals (RFP). Ultimately, it was decided it would not, but not before Ericson reminded commissioners his company already did that.

“We already went through an RFP process,” Ericson said. “Bass Pro never did.”

Just having another suitor for The Pyramid is good news. In July, Memphis chief financial officer Robert Lipscomb said the city didn’t have any leverage because no one else was interested. If this gets a proposal out of Bass Pro — and it’s the best proposal for The Pyramid — then I say, Cheers, here’s to a long and happy life together.

Perhaps Mulroy put it best: “We have another option,” he said. “It would be foolish of us if we didn’t consider it.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Talking Turkey

Newly elected members of the Memphis City Council, fresh from a recent get-acquainted luncheon with Mayor Willie Herenton, followed by an informational session with MLGW officials, continued their orientation with an all-day retreat Monday at the Lichterman Nature Center.

There, among other things, they heard from several council veterans as to what to expect. Typical of the good advice they got was the retiring Dedrick Brittenum‘s counsel that they never meet with constituents petitioning their support for a measure without having a council staffer on hand.

Barbara Swearengen Ware, a returning member, pointedly told the novices that the key to their success would be “relationships, relationships, relationships” — a reminder of the snags encountered in the not-so-distant past by one or two famously go-it-alone members.

Council vet Myron Lowery had a similar message, warning the council newbies not to get involved in “stupid stuff” that feeds the media without yielding positive results. “Three members of the council always had a rebuttal,” he said, without naming names. He cited the evolution in style of one departing colleague. When he was brand-new, Brent Taylor would comment on “everything in sight,” Lowery said, but Taylor finally progressed to the point that he “just voted.”

A surprisingly animated and light-hearted presentation came from the outgoing Henry Hooper, who had often seemed stiff and uncomfortable in his losing reelection race this fall. The visibly relaxed Hooper got a laugh Monday when he expressed satisfaction that he would no longer “have to worry about Janis Fullilove,” his victorious opponent, who smiled amiably as Hooper ventured, “If I run for something else, maybe try to go across the street [County Commission?], she’s not going to quit and run against me.”

E.C. Jones tossed off some one-liners, too — as well as one ultra-serious point: “Remember. You work with the mayor. You don’t work for the mayor.”

The logical follow-up to that was delivered in the form of an address by Stephen Wirls, a professor at Rhodes College. His message? The council has more power, potentially, vis-à-vis the mayor than anyone had previously realized. Hmmmmm.

• Richard Florida, whose Rise of the Creative Class is one of the basic texts of urban planning these days, was the featured speaker at last week’s Chairman’s Luncheon of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce at The Peabody, and his appearance was not without irony.

A superb salesman and, some would say, a gifted theorist as well, consultant Florida advocates diversity and tolerance as essential tools for civic progress, and, as he told his overflow blue-chip audience in The Peabody’s Grand Ballroom, a distinct no-no is for a city’s leadership to address a dissident part of its population with the attitude, “If you don’t like it, you can get out.”

Er … Someone forgot to remind Florida that one of his hosts, Mayor Herenton (whom the speaker, who tailors his remarks to his locale, made sure to praise lavishly), is locally famous for occasionally expressing just such sentiments toward critics of his administration.

• Time, as they say, heals wounds. A case in point is the enhanced status among local Republicans of Shelby County commissioner George Flinn, who hosted this year’s annual Christmas gathering of the Shelby County Republican Women Monday at his expansive East Memphis residence.

Flinn presided over the affair with avuncular grace, and, by way of concluding some welcoming remarks, struck a note that clearly resonated with the sizable throng. “And notice that I didn’t say ‘Happy Holidays,’ I said ‘Merry Christmas,'” offered Flinn, who is fluent these days in the lingo and nuances of his party-mates, most of whom no doubt deplore the erosion of the season’s once-traditional greeting.

Five years ago, Flinn, a well-known radiologist and broadcast magnate, had just conducted his maiden political effort, a run for county mayor which involved both a bruising primary win over the popular Larry Scroggs and a difficult general election race in which he was swamped by the even more popular A C Wharton.

Some ill feeling lingered from both efforts, most of it stemming from the combative campaign tactics urged upon Flinn by some out-of-state consultants.

Flinn would have been an unlikely host for a holiday season GOP event back then, but the increasingly sure-of-himself commissioner is now regarded as one of his party’s least contentious presences and a likely candidate for another try at the mayoralty in 2010.

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News The Fly-By

In the Dog House

In two years, the Memphis animal shelter will be just as convenient — and probably more so — than Wolfchase Galleria.

Plans for the new Memphis Animal Services facility, to be located at Appling and I-240, were unveiled at a City Council committee meeting last week. The current shelter, located on Tchulahoma Road near the Memphis airport, has long been criticized for being isolated and inaccessible.

“Increased visibility and a larger site will hopefully lead to more adoptions,” said city architect Mel Scheuerman. “We’ll be right there by the interstate, near the Bellevue Baptist complex.”

The 40-year-old shelter on Tchulahoma is 15,000 square feet, but the new $11.1 million shelter will be more than double that size and have 30 percent more dog kennels. Scheuerman estimates it will be complete in about two years. The new shelter is expected to meet the city’s animal-control needs for the next 40 years.

In addition to more space for dogs, the design incorporates a larger feline adoption area. Outside the shelter, dog runs will allow the public to get acquainted with adoptable dogs. Sound-proof walls will separate rows of cages to prevent multiple dogs from barking at the same time, and a “real life” display near the public entrance will simulate an actual living room with a couch and play area for dogs.

“It’s a warm, fuzzy room that, when people come in the door, they see a nice, clean shelter. And they see a very adoptable dog,” Scheuerman said.

The new facility will also contain multiple ventilation systems to help prevent the spread of airborne illnesses, such as distemper.

“That’s one reason the cost of animal shelters across the country is so much higher than building a library or community center. You’re basically building a mini-hospital,” Scheuerman said.

Artist rendering of the new 32,000-square-foot shelter, which will be located off Appling Road.

The new shelter will have space for exotic animals, such as birds, ferrets, and snakes. A barn and pasture behind the facility will house large animals.

“If a truck overturns and six cows get out, we’ll have somewhere to put them,” said Keenon McCloy, director of public services and neighborhoods.

The area where animal-control officers unload captured animals will be covered to prevent dogs from escaping.

“There is no cover over the area where officers unload animals now, and dogs can escape,” McCloy said.

In recent months, Change Our Shelter, a grassroots group of animal advocates, has been speaking out about the high rate of euthanasia at Memphis Animal Services. In 2006, 81 percent of the animals taken in by the city were euthanized.

Though Change Our Shelter member Sylvia Cox is pleased with the new design, she thinks it is a smokescreen for current problems.

“Keenon McCloy is announcing plans for a new shelter, which is still years away from being a reality, to try and deflect attention away from the current, acute shelter problems that need to be addressed now,” Cox said.

As a long-term solution, McCloy hopes that the addition of a low-cost spay and neuter program at the future facility will address the euthanasia problem. Currently, the shelter does not provide this service to the public.

“We need the expansion, and we need the additional level of service,” McCloy said. “It’s going to be a much healthier, more sanitary, friendlier environment. Hopefully, that will attract new adopters and encourage folks to come in for vaccinations and spay and neuter services.”

The City Council approved the proposed design, and construction firms will soon begin bidding on the project.

Categories
Book Features Books

Brent Taylor Donates Papers to Library for “Future Generations”

Outgoing City Council member Brent Taylor will donate documents he’s accumulated while serving on the council over the past 12 years to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Taylor retires from the council at the end of his term on January 1st. Elected at 27 years old in 1995, Taylor was the youngest member ever elected to the Memphis City Council.

Taylor’s papers will be stored on the library’s fourth floor, along with document collections from Mayor E.H. Crump, school board member Maxine Smith, and state representative A.W. Willis.

“It is my hope that future generations of library visitors will view my documents and benefit from inspecting the body of work that I contributed to and compiled while serving on the legislative body,” said Taylor.

Dang. We were kind of hoping for a Brent Taylor Presidential Library kind of thing. Oh well.

In other news, retiring councilman Edmund Ford announced that he is leaving his extensive watch and automobile collection to the federal government.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Thin Gray Line

Though the grins were plentiful as Mayor Willie Herenton and members of his council-to-be in 2008 got together for lunch at the Rendezvous last Wednesday, the smiles may have tightened up a little when His Honor climaxed the get-acquainted event with a speech that warned of a “gray line” and of “certain areas where either branch decided to get into the other branch’s domain.”

A shot across the bow it seemed, a recap of sorts of the mayor’s troubles with past councils — most recently on council staff appointments — on matters where, as Herenton indicated, the legislative and executive branches of city government may have had conflicting ambitions.

But that was as contentious as things got Wednesday as former councilman and Rendezvous owner John Vergos, along with another former council member, the Rev. James Netters, co-hosted the luncheon in which nine newly elected members came together for the first time with the four holdover council members.

Oh, Joe Brown made special mention of “divisiveness,” and Netters referred to even worse times of the past, like the late 1960s, when he and other members of the city’s first elected council had to deal with “riots, violence, and murder” in the context of a prolonged sanitation strike and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

But mostly talk was of the upbeat sort, beginning with Vergos’ mention of a Rhodes College brochure touting Memphis’ virtues and continuing with mutual pledges all around of cooperation in the new year.

Afterward, the mayor, who announced he would not hold the annual New Year’s Day prayer breakfast on which, customarily in recent years, he would issue policy thunderbolts, gave reporters a list of objectives which included such familiar (but unachieved) standbys as metro government and bringing the city school system into municipal government as such.

Herenton also pledged to resolve financial and jurisdictional disputes in the operation of the Beale Street tourist quarter. He deferred to the council on the matter of whether it should pass its own version of a County Commission ordinance on topless clubs, but it is taken for granted he wants a more lenient ordinance than the county version, which bans beer sales in such establishments and requires pasties on dancers.

Ironically enough, a wall of the basement room in which council members, staffers, and the mayor met contained a rendering of a reclining nude, sans pasties.

The entire complement of the 2008 council membership was on hand, with the exception of new member Reid Hedgepeth. Mayoral and council aides also attended.

Continuing in its get-ready mode, members of the council will be holding an all-day retreat next week.

• Local Republican chairman Bill Giannini became the first candidate to throw his hat in the ring for the 2006 county election by filing last week for the office of Shelby County assessor. Other potential GOP primary candidates are John Bogan, Betty Boyette, and Randy Lawson. Cheyenne Johnson intends to run as a Democrat, as might Jimmy White.

• One of the bona fide movers and shakers in the local political world (and the civic and financial worlds) is Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd, who reports that he expects to make a “full recovery” from a recent operation for colon cancer.

Byrd, a former state legislator and candidate for Congress and county mayor, has legions of friends from all points on the political spectrum and has been well-wished by most of them of late.

Just now, Byrd is trying to organize a charter flight for the University of Memphis Tigers’ appearance at the New Orleans Bowl on December 21st. Given that the basketball Tigers are playing a big game against Georgetown at the FedExForum on the 22nd, that’s no cinch, but, as Byrd points out, taking the flight, which goes and returns on the same day, is a surefire way of taking in both events.

• From a Standing Start, former Republican governor Winfield Dunn‘s political memoir, drew a good crowd for a recent book-signing at Bookstar on Poplar.

Among other things, the book contains some amusing anecdotes at the expense of Dunn’s vanquished Democratic foe in 1970, John Jay Hooker.

But there is an aura of good will in the book, as there was at the signing. When someone mentioned the Hooker reference to Harry Wellford, who managed Dunn’s 1970 efforts, the former judge nodded and said, “But they’re good friends now,” then smiled and added: “And that’s as it should be.”