About Tim Sampson’s column, “Thanks, Mayor Wharton” …
As a loyal supporter of Mayor A C Wharton, I concur with Tim Sampson’s thoughts. Opponents blamed the Inquisition on him, the race riots in Watts, the overthrow of the Roman Empire, you name it, but not one time did you hear the man complain.
Time and history will record his name, not only as a footnote as mayor, but as a kind-hearted man who loved his adopted city more than some of us who were born at John Gaston Hospital. Take your rest, Mr. Mayor. You are mighty deserving.
DeeCee
About Toby Sells’ story, “Memphis Wins $30M for Foote Homes” …
Glossing over what is ostensibly the end of traditional public housing in Memphis with an article that trumpets it as a victory over blight renders a historically significant moment in providing affordable housing as merely an afterthought in our march toward “progress.”
The slow and inexorable movement away from affordable housing provided by public entities in favor of a model that puts it primarily in the hands of the private market is a decades-long shift in public policy that has much to do with the burdensome cost of maintaining such facilities as federal support has declined. However, it is also an ideological choice to “de-concentrate” poverty through a mixed-income approach to developing communities that has very uncertain outcomes for the residents who are displaced by this process.
Past resident opposition to demolition efforts at Foote and Cleaborne homes goes unmentioned in the article, reinforcing the notion that this solution was the only viable alternative for the neighborhood. Until we fix the systemic issues that cause the benefits of society to be distributed unequally among our community, affordable housing will continue to be a pressing need.
The fact that the removal of public housing complexes has opened up valuable downtown real estate to more speculative uses should not go unnoticed. The impending demolition of Foote Homes is a much more complex issue than simply a straightforward decision to combat blight.
Travis Allen
Some say there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That may have been true at one time, but not today. The recent debates make it clear that the two major parties occupy different planets.
Republicans are locked into guns, anti-government and anti-abortion rhetoric, rehashing Benghazi, and trashing the president and Hillary Clinton. They show no respect for each other.
The Democratic debate, on the other hand, offered a civilized discussion of real issues. It was very clear which party appeals to grown-ups.
Lou Ronson
About Jackson Baker’s story, “What Strickland Will Do” …
When it came down to it, white folks voted for the white candidate. I absolutely deplore this idea of trying to make this a “colorless” election when white folks win. White folks vote based on color, more than not, just like black folks. Heck, the Republicans “recommended” Strickland, a supposed Democrat in the election. How many times have they recommended an African-American Democrat that was running for mayor, or any position for that matter? We don’t have media outlets that make that clear because the major ones are run by white folks.
Sure, I can handle the truth if 20 percent of African Americans crossed over to the white candidate. I have voted for white candidates, even white Republicans. I wouldn’t agree with their reasoning in this case, but I sure could respect it. I just can’t trust the truth from the bumbling idiots at the Shelby County Election Commission.
That being said, I didn’t think when African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Herenton in 1991 that the city was going to fall off into the Mississippi, and I don’t think it will in this case, either.
1Memphomaniac
Mempho, it is very likely many of the votes cast by “white folks” were based on the issues, including the pension issue, the MPD, Save the Coliseum, Memphis Animal Services, and those advocating for a comprehensive plan and for economic development reform, etc.
Time to take the “everybody-is-racist-but-me” glasses off.
Though Mayor A C Wharton insists that a whole matrix of development projects midwifed by the now former city Housing & Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb will go forward without “missing a beat,” the likelihood is that several of them, notably the controversial proposed Fairgrounds TDZ, could be in serious jeopardy.
And that may be just the beginning of the complications resulting from the surprise announcement by Wharton on Monday that Lipscomb had been relieved of his city duties. The mayor’s action came as a result of accusations by a Seattle man of as yet undisclosed sexual offenses committed against him by Lipscomb years ago, at a time when the accuser was a minor.
Technically, that was a suspension. Lipscomb has subsequently resigned from his city position, effective immediately, however, and termination of his parallel job as executive director of the Memphis Housing Authority seemed inevitable.
What gave the accusations unusual weight was the fact that Wharton had acted after dispatching a sizeable blue-ribbon delegation, headed by Police Director Toney Armstrong, to investigate the Seattle complaint.
Although rumors about Lipscomb’s sexual orientation had been rife in City Hall circles for years, the de facto city planning czar had benefited from today’s relaxed social climate about such matters and had hardly been so much as inconvenienced. Nor had his unmatched power to influence members of the Memphis City Council, stemming from his ability to swing city, state, and federal funding toward this or that district project.
All that is now presumably over with, as is Lipscomb’s concurrent clout in Nashville, where the state Building Commission has yet to rule on the Fairgrounds project, already under attack at home by advocates of preserving the Mid-South Coliseum and by others concerned about the project’s expense.
Ironically, given the astonishing rapidity of Lipscomb’s fall, no criminal action has yet been taken against Lipscomb, in Seattle or elsewhere; much less has he been found guilty of misdeeds, illegal or otherwise. Lipscomb has called the accusations against him false, though he acknowledges having sent the Seattle man “blackmail” money over the years.
Ominously for Lipscomb, however, a follow-up statement by Mayor Wharton referred to the receipt by his office of additional accusations of “inappropriate sexual advances” on Lipscomb’s part by “numerous individuals” — a reminder of the echo effect seen in the case of multiplying rape accusations against entertainer Bill Cosby.
Just as Lipscomb has yet to be judged, it is much too early to appraise the mayor’s precipitate action in relieving Lipscomb. Clearly, Wharton had to be mindful of the impact of a brewing scandal on his current reelection effort. But at this point only he, Armstrong, and a few others are in full possession of the facts of the Lipscomb case, and the mayor’s actions have to be taken at face value.
Difficult as it is to suspend judgment in the matters at hand, we the public have no reasonable alternative. It is not too early, however, to see that, wholly independent of what may or may not happen in the current election, an existing component of the order of things at City Hall has been shattered beyond recall.
The ongoing crisis involving former, now defrocked, city planning czar Robert Lipscomb seemed to come out of nowhere just as Mayor A C Wharton had entered the stretch drive of his current reelection campaign and on the brink, too, of action — locally, statewide, and elsewhere — affecting the future of the Fairgrounds TDZ project and other ongoing development projects.
In an effort to assess some of the fallout of the Lipscomb matter and to piece together just how this bombshell came to explode when it did, I talked to the Mayor in the aftermath of a breakfast reception for him at the Crescent Club on Wednesday morning
The following is a transcript of his answers to several questions I put to him and which he answered with an air of forthcomingness.
I asked what the.effect of Lipscomb’s abrupt fall from grace — a suspension followed by a firing — would be on the ongoing city projects:
Mayor: “Listen, it would be probably the height of arrogance to say ‘Aw, this won’t affect anything,’ Any time you change characters, the chemistry changes, but in terms of whether we get it done or not, I’m not concerned about that. As a matter of fact, we spent most of the day yesterday talking to experts. We just had a parade of people. You’d be surprised at the individuals from finance and real estate saying. “Hey, We’re going to pitch in. We’ll be there. Let’s get on the team. All this means too much to the city. Folks just coming out of the woodwork without having to call them, saying, we’re here for you. These are not people saying, ‘if you hire me, if you retain me, I’ll come in.’ So we’ll have the Whitehaven meeting as scheduled. We’ll have the conference on poverty tomorrow. So the world goes on. Indeed, it’s a loss. and I mean both on the personal side and the professional side.”
I asked if the new people freshly appointed to fill Lipscomb’s day-to-day jobs were temporary or permanent replacements.
Mayor: “That is yet to be answered. Right now we’re going day to day. We’re working on two tracks. The day-to-day business has to go on. We can’t miss a beat there. We can’t miss a contract. We can’t miss a bid date We have to do that. At the time same time we’re operating on another track, of 30 days to 60 days to 90 days. We’re operating on both tracks.”
The Mayor was asked to explain what appeared to be an unusual suddenness to his actions involving Lipscomb.
Mayor: “I had no allegation at any time prior to that. I guess knowing what I know as an attorney, having handled employment cases, having taught employment law for 25 years at Ole Miss, it never occurred to me, not even in the slightest, to pursue any other course. We had an allegation, and the allegation came directly to me. It hit me right in the face. I couldn’t say, ‘What did you say?’ It hit me. I mean, a lot of the time a president of a company will say, ‘Well, there was something I heard,’ but it hadn’t got to me yet. It hit me right between the eyes like a two-by-four.”
But, in the absence of investigation or legal action, given that the man was a stranger calling from Seattle with an allegation, why act at all, the Mayor was asked. Would he, for example, have acted similarly if somebody telephoned an accusation from, say, Boston, about so-and-so (an employee with a pure-as-rain reputation)?
Mayor: “Uh, I failed to include a critical detail. The report came in, it got to me on Thursday. I had talked to Director Armstrong. I didn’t want to communicate over the telephone, so we have a way of communicating by saying, ‘I need some face time.’ And he said, ‘Well, Mayor, we’re at the radio station, Clear Channel, tomorrow morning. Let’s find a place where we can talk.’ So we found a secure place, sat down. I said, ‘Now, Toney, this is a police matter. This man is alleging a crime. How do we handle it?’ I said, ‘Do I call him back?’ He said, ‘Mayor, you’ve got to call him back.’ And I said, ‘Good,’ and he said, ‘But you can’t do it by yourself. I’ll come by your office and we’ll call him together.’
“We picked up the phone and called him. I turned to someone who’s a professional. He said, ‘Mayor, we gotta go;. We’ve got to check this out.’ So it wasn’t A C wanting…here’s a man who’s a top law enforcement officer who says, ‘This is about a crime that occurred in Memphis, Tennessee.’ I had reached the same conclusion, but, again, I’m not a trained investigator, and when he listened to it, and it was a lengthy conversation…. and actually, while we were talking, I think Toney was checking out some things. And, uh, he said, ‘Mayor, we’ve got to go.’ So, anyhow, this was not A C Wharton Expert,’ but when you’re talking to a law enforcement official…”
A meaningful pause here, which was filled by my question as to what the individual in Seattle was threatening to do.
Mayor: “Keep in mind the report reached me by telephone Thursday evening [August 21]. I then talked to Director Armstrong that Friday….The report that went to the telephone desk did contain some fairly specific information. I will not get into what he wanted. That’s part of the investigation. But, even had he not wanted anything done, I had a legal responsibility to check him out. Now, I will talk as a lawyer. The liability that the city could have been exposed to, if, after I had received that information, something else happened, even if it was two days later, imagine the consequences of that! And you don’t have to be a lawyer: If you look at Penn State, everybody to this day is probably saying, ‘Why didn’t we check that out? Why didn’t we check that out?’
“And the Catholic Church, their dioceses all around had this huge judgments, and I’m sure people are saying, you know, it seems kind of weird that we didn’t check that out. I’m not going to be in that situation. And that’s where we were.”
Wharton would not comment on persistent rumors over the years, familiar to media people and City Hall employees alike, that Lipscomb pursued a gay lifestyle, but he was firm that, prior to the fateful conversation of Thursday, August 21, he had no information regarding any improper behavior on Lipscomb’s part.
“Absolutely not,” the Mayor said. And no knowledge of what has since surfaced as a complaint filed against Lipscomb in 2010 by the individual now living in Seattle?
Robert Lipscomb, the director of Housing and Community Development, has been relieved of duties following a criminal complaint “of a sexual nature,” according to a statement issued from Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s office at about 11 p.m. Sunday.
Here’s Wharton’s statement in full:
On Friday, August 21, 2015, Mayor A C Wharton, Jr. and [MemphisPolice Department] Director Toney Armstrong spoke by phone to an adult male who made a criminal complaint of a sexual nature against City of Memphis Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb. This complaint was criminal in nature based on the fact that the individual in question claimed to have been a minor at the time of his alleged sexual encounters with Dir. Lipscomb.
Mayor Wharton immediately ordered Director Armstrong and a team of his top investigators to travel to Seattle, Washington to meet and interview the complainant; this interview took place within days of this individual’s conversation with the mayor and the police director.
Based on this criminal complaint, Mayor Wharton has relieved director Lipscomb of duty pending the results of a full investigation.
“These allegations are extremely disturbing.” Wharton said, “To ensure that we leave no stone unturned, in addition to referring this matter to the District Attorney General’s Office, we will also seek legal counsel as to if any other state or federal agencies should be involved in this investigation.”
This story will be updated as more details become available.
Before Wednesday night’s debate l to r): Mayor A C Wharton, Mike Williams, Harold Collins, Jim Strickland
JB
Debate moderator Kyle Veazey
Memphis is not about to rival Nashville in the number of mayoral debates, forums, and other ensemble events — 40-odd and counting — held in the state’s capital city this year, but we’re getting there. Several such events have been held by now in our town’s mayoral race, and they seem to be drawing lose attention.
One more is in the can after Wednesday night, a debate co-sponsored by The Commercial Appeal and the University of Memphis at the University’s Rose theatre, and another one is scheduled on Thursday night at Central High School under the auspices of the Evergreen Historic Association.
And people, even in these dog days of summer, seem to be paying attention.
So who’s winning?
One way of answering that is to fall back on the tried and true all-have-won-and-all-must-have-prizes approach. That’s usually an evasion, but so far this year it seems to describe what’s happening in these mayoral-candidate get-togethers.
By common consent, it would seem, the field has settled on four candidates regarded as “viable” — incumbent Mayor A C Wharton, City Councilman Jim Strickland and Harold Collins, and Memphis Police Association Mike Williams.
Former School Board member Sharon Webb was involved in a couple of the early ones, including a widely watched one televised last week on WMC-TV, Action News 5. But there is general agreement that her performance in those encounters was not up to the standard of the others, and she is unlikely to figure in many more debates as such.
As for the other four? Well, yes, they all have “won,” in the sense of staking a legitimate claim to leadership in the city.
THE CASE FOR MIKE WILLIAMS:
Gotta have one winner? Okay, it’s Mike Williams, who, ironically, is not considered to have much of a chance to actually win the Mayor’s race and was not included in one or two early get-togethers. Williams’ fund-raising is miniscule compared to the other three and his support network, while enthusiastic, is — how to say it? — compact.
Moreover, he was long regarded as being a one-trick pony, in the race solely to dramatize the case for restoring lost benefits to city employees — especially first responders and even more especially the dwindling ranks of the city’s police force.
But Williams proved himself a strong, articulate performer in last week’s debate and on the stage of the Rose Theater Wednesday night. And he did so without forsaking his main cause or artificially broadening it but by relating the case for public employees to the core issues of public safety and the economic health of the community and by relating it, too, to other grass-roots concerns, like the ongoing movement to save the Coliseum.
Regarding this or that intractable crisis or malaise that afflicts the city, Williams points out that Mayor Wharton has been in office for six years, and Strickland and Collins for eight years and have been unable to deal with the problem. He suggests with an air of reasonability that maybe he could.
In two short weeks, Williams has transcended a lot of people’s low expectations for his candidacy and demonstrated that he belongs on the debate stage. That’s a win.
THE CASE FOR HAROLD COLLINS:
Similarly, Councilman Collins has been able to enunciate a vision for the city by extrapolating from his achievements within his own Whitehaven-based district — including a massive ongoing redevelopment project on Elvis Presley Boulevard, which, as he demonstrated Wednesday night, began from the level of repairing sewers on up to some wholesale renovation.
Collins has also looked into the nether parts of some of the bright and shiny projects now on display as civic successes for the current regime and seen and described some overlooked tarnish — like the $9 -and $10-an-hour jobs and the filling of positions with temps at Electrolux instead of the high-paying positions the public had been led to expect.
Decrying conditions that lead the city’s youth to seek post-graduate employment elsewhere, Collins, something of an Horatio Alger up-from-nothing case himself, is an apostle for “engineering, finance, and technology” jobs. He has eloquently called the Wharton administration to account for what he calls breaches of faith with city employees and for other alleged inconsistencies affecting the public at large.
nd, like his Council colleague Strickland, Collins emphasizes public safety, calling for swift and punitive reaction to outbreaks of violence.
All in all, the gentleman from Whitehaven has made a good case that his record on the Council merits a promotion.
THE CASE FOR JIM STRICKLAND:
At times, the District 5 Councilman and budget maven, whose district encompasses Midtown, power sectors of the Poplar Corridor, and relatively humble middle- and working-class residents as well, seems to get snagged on rote repetitions of his bullet-point issues, which can be summed up by the words Safety, Blight, and Accountability.
But Strickland can expand on these basic positions (which, let it be said, are all perfectly sound present-tense concerns) with some interesting improvisations — like his call for a “residential pilot program” of tax abatements for urban residents who would improve their homesteads and his sponsorship of a grant program for those who recover tax-dead properties.
As impediments to crime, Strickland couples his emphasis on stepped-up “Blue Crush” police activity with proposals for reviving community centers and using Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs as outreach to troubled youth. A mite idealistic-sounding, perhaps, but worth a try.
Strickland should be thankful to Mayor Wharton, who, mindful of the general sense that he is the Mayor’s chief rival, has launched head-on attacks on him in the last two debates. These have allowed Strickland to respond in ways that demonstrate he is something other than the “generic white man” that one wag has called him and can Do the Dozens with the best of them.
A rock star might have envied the audience squeals Strickland got from his animated thrust at Wharton during a back-and-forth Wednesday night on civic economy. “He increased the debt to 47 million dollars, He did it! Do not believe the slick maneuvers and the corny stories!”
In sum, a worthy challenger.
THE CASE FOR A C WHARTON:
Perhaps the most admirable thing about the current Mayor, who knows from polls and other sources that he’s got a real race on his hands, is that he is unabashed about putting forth policy rationales that may have questionable payoff value with the electorate at large but seem to him worth stating.
One case in point is his running against the tide on the issue of public safety. Wharton defends his record on the issue, contending that, high-profile incidents to the contrary notwithstanding, the rate of violent crime is down. But, even conceding there is a problem, the Mayor insists that “locking ‘em up” is not the solution. As he said Wednesday night, he’s for “keeping the children out” rather than “taking more and more of them in.”
And, to calls from opponents Collins and Strickland to strengthen the hand of Juvenile Court, Wharton assumes an air of injured patience and suggests they are not aware of Department of Justice mandates that would decree otherwise.
Similarly, the Mayor’s attitude toward the city’s straitened budget is that, as he repeated Wednesday night, “we can’t cut our way out of this, nor tax our way out.” He maintains that “growth, growth, growth” is the only solution and touts his success in bringing in money from outside granting sources and his administration’s zealous recruitment of new industry via PILOTs (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) and other inducements.
The policy, scoffed at by some of his opponents, of catering to the needs of “millennials” via bike lanes and other innovations is justifiable because it will attract young trained professionals to the city, says Wharton, who insists that statistics show the policy is working.
Wharton can be brazenly realistic in defending his administration’s cuts in employee benefits (“There are substitutes for health care, but there’s no substitute for the pension plan”), and he responds to charges from Collins and Strickland regarding everything from the slow restoration of money owed the school system to the winnowing down of police ranks to the holding back of tax levies already authorized by turning the argument around and blaming the Council.
At bottom, the Mayor’s case for reelection is that he’s succeeding more than people realize on jobs and other issues and certainly more that his critics acknowledge.
Beyond the cases made in public exchanges and elsewhere by the various contenders for the office of Mayor (and expect further details here and in subsequent articles), there are demographic and pre-existing political facts of life that will go toward determining an ultimate winner. But be assured: This race is truly competitive, and all members of the current Front Four are credible candidates. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, to get a sense of some of the sass and vinegar of the Wednesday night debate, look at these two video examples. In the first, Mayor Wharton takes off rhetorically against opponent Jim Strickland. In the second, Councilman Collins returns the favor to the Mayor: (Mike Williams bides his rime as a spectator in both frames.)
Mayor A C Wharton’s opening of a campaign headquarters in Whitehaven last week was a presentable enough affair, and a necessary one, given that one of his two major opponents, Councilman Harold Collins, has an unmistakable presence there.
Btut the Mayor’s opening on Saturday of another headquarters on Poplar Avenue a week later was both quantitatively and qualitatively more ambitious and was beyond doubt a more resounding affair for the Mayor. For one thing, he was more forceful than he had been a week earlier, exuding a great deal of apparently unfeigned confidence.
Buoyed by crowd
This was important, given that the Mayor’s race might well be decided right there, in the Poplar Corridor, where Wharton’s other major opponent, well-funded Councilman Jim Strickland, has already demonstrated real strength.
Buoyed by a big, responsive crowd containing no few influential members, Wharton eschewed the kind of defensiveness that led him, at Whitehaven, to volunteer an unforced denial that his campaign was “ toxic’ to office-holders (thereby putting the idea in heads that may not have previously harbored it).
Too, the logistics on Saturday were far more favorable. As at Whitehaven, the Mayor’s rally was arranged outside, with rows of seating under a tent-roof for some, while others had to stand. But on Poplar there were more chairs, while spreading trees provided ample shade for those standing, and large fans on either side of the assembly kept a strong but gentle breeze circulating.
The rally area on Poplar, moreover, was reachable by just a step or two out the back door of an interior headquarters space that was multi-roomed and cavernous. So the large crowd had no trouble shifting back and forth, more or less compactly, and without discomfort.
How large was the crowd? In the hundreds, easily. The rally group outside numbered at least 200, pushing higher, and extrapolating from the fact that there had to be significant numbers who remained inside, a claim of between 300 and 400 could at least be entertained.
And Saturday’s crowd could fairly be described as racially diverse, much more so than the predominantly African-American one at Whitehaven had been (though Wharton described them both as if they had been veritable UN assemblies).
Different logistics
An article in this space regarding the Whitehaven rally originally estimated the crowd at that rally in and around the tent
[italics mine] to be between 50 and 75. To put it mildly, that figure was objected to, both immediately thereafter and on Saturday at the Poplar headquarters rally, where this reporter encountered an organized tag-team volley of complainants.
(High-ranking ones, too, including, on Saturday, the city’s First Lady, Ruby Wharton, from whom, however, I was actually able to extract a generous-sized smile. Fair trade, that.)
And, though I had indulged the good folks at Whartonville South by amending my account to include their own (carefully attributed) claim of 150-200, I continue to believe my original estimate was correct. (Look again at those italics overhead.)
There may have been a lot of coming and going at Whitehaven that was hard to encompass visually and difficult to enumerate, but the interior headquarters space there appeared to be about the size of a small studio apartment, and at no point did it contain what could be described as a throng.
And the distance from the front door of that modest office space in Whitehaven to the tented area where the rally itself was held was a bare asphalt area that, on HQ day, with temperatures approaching 100, came off as about as vast and unsheltered as Death Valley, California
It was hot on Saturday on Poplar Avenue, too, but not only were the logistics more inviting, so was the format of the rally. There was no elongated waiting-around period, as there had been at Whitehaven, and instead of the ten or so speakers preceding the Mayor’s advent at last week’s opening, there were only three or four on Saturday, most of them concise and well-spoken. (Among them was the ever-gracious co-chair Lois Stockton, inadvertently overlooked at a previous year’s Wharton opening, but a solid plus on Saturday.)
The number of elected officials lending support for the Mayor on Saturday was somewhat larger than it had been a week earlier, and as easy to list, inasmuch as, at one point or another, they were all acknowledged by emcee Bobby White (or “Roberto Blanco,” as he was re-dubbed for the occasion by Councilman Edmund Ford Jr, one of Saturday’s speakers.)
Hot rhetoric
Things got started on Saturday with something of a stem-winder by Mike Carpenter; County Commissioner Reginald Milton had a passably good speech, too, concluding, “We don’t need a new mayor. We got a mayor!”.
On hand were: Municipal Judge Tarik Sugarmon, Council members Wanda Halbert and Ford, state Representatives Barbara Cooper and G.A. Hardaway; County Commissioners Milton, Van Turner, and Willie Brooks; and Probate Judge Kathleen Gomes.
Especially considering that Mayor Wharton had just been through a somewhat devastating week, the key point of which was having to deal with the shooting death and funeral of MPD officer Sean Bolton, he summoned up a collection of exhortations that were no less spirited for being disjointed.
A sampling:
“I know it’s hot out there…[but]we are going to turn op the A C!,,,,[With] people just melting in the sweltering heat of joblessness and hopelessness, why would you turn off the A C?….I think that’s the time your turn it up, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do on October 8!”
The Mayor distinguished between his opponents as “thermomerter people, who tell you what the temperature is” and himself, a “thermostat” who knew how to calibrate things back into balance. The choice, he said, was between “those who crow about problems and talk about a future of doom” and a Mayor who had brought 10,000 new jobs and could “get off his butt” and go get seed money for the city without raising taxes.
“What’s wrong with going to Bloomberg and getting $5 million? What’s wrong with getting on a plane and bringing the money back here?…What’s wrong with saying, ‘Governor, you’ve got $6 million that you cannot spend’” and talking
Bill Haslam into funneling that much to Memphis?
Wharton boasted of recent pieces in The Huffington Post and the Chicago Tribune that called Memphis a “city of promise,” and he concluded with his patented rainbow note: “We can’t work as black folks, we can’t work as white folks, we can’t work as brown folks, we’ve got to work together” toward “the Destiny of One Memphis!”
To repeat: Disjointed but spirited. Somehow, it came off as a tour de force.
And more important than the words was the image of a man of passion and personality (which is what A C Wharton, at his best, is on the stump), determined to see both his campaign and his mayoralty through and, crowd-wise, able to match, if not beat, opponent Jim Strickland, who had pulled a large but more homogeneous crowd of his own at a headquarters opening on Poplar three weeks ago.
“You tell me somebody else who could turn out a crowd like this on a day like this!” Wharton had said in his remarks. And it was no idle boast.
The message on Saturday was clear: Whoever turns this man out will have to go some.
Monday night debate
• Meanwhile, push will come to shove for five mayoral candidates — Wharton, Strickland, Collins, Mike Williams, and Sharon Webb — on Monday night at 7 p,m. at the National Civil Rights Museum for the next in what will be a spate of mayoral debates between now and October 8.
This one is sponsored by WMC-TV, Action News 5; the NCRM; the League of Women Voters; and the Memphis association of Black Journalists..
Young, aspiring entertainers, business moguls, and video gamedesigners may benefit from a forthcoming 8,300-square-foot teen learning lab at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
The state-of-the-art lab will offer teens everything from video production equipment and video game creation software to a performance space and an art studio.
The construction phase for the facility, which is coined Cloud901, broke ground last Wednesday. A room on the library’s first floor, which will be used for a portion of the learning lab, was packed with city and county officials, library representatives, and local youth.
Stephanie White
Mayor A C Wharton and a teen at the learning lab announcement
Thea Wilkens-Reed, a home-schooled 11th grader, was there. An aspiring lawyer, educator, and news anchor, Wilkens-Reed said she thinks Cloud901 will be a valuable asset to youth in the community.
“It provides an outlet for us to explore our dreams and passions,” said Wilkens-Reed, president of the library’s Teen Advisory Council. “This lab is extremely important to the youth because it will be a safe environment where local teens can have free access to the latest top-of-the-line technology in one location, here in the heart of Memphis.”
Projected to cost around $2 million, more than $1.5 million has already been raised through private donations.
The first portion of the center will be located in a designated area on the library’s ground floor. One corner of the room will feature a video production lab, where teens can shoot and/or edit commercials, interviews, films, and music videos.There will be a sound mixing lab and sound isolation booths in another corner, where aspiring artists and audio engineers can record and mix music.
A technology gallery, projection screen, and brainstorming center are some of the other resources that will be offered on the learning lab’s first floor. A staircase in the middle of the ground floor will lead teens to the lab’s second floor, where additional amenities will be available.
“We are looking forward to creating a community of innovators who are on the cutting edge of technology,” said Janae Pitts-Murdock, teen services coordinator for the Memphis Public Library. “We believe that through this learning center, we’re able to develop the types of skills that teens will need to be successful in their future. We want them to have a learning space where they’re able to pursue their passions, explore their interests, [and] career paths. We want to make a substantive and visible impact on the future prosperity and productivity of youth in Memphis.”
One area of the lab’s second floor will offer an art studio where teens can draw, color, and paint. And “creation stations” will allow for clothing design and creating layouts for publications.
There will also be a gaming zone for aspiring video game designers. They’ll be able to learn game coding and technology, utilize game-creation software, and, of course, play video games.
And a performance stage will be used to help teens develop oratorical skills, perform music they recorded in the lab’s sound booths, and recite poems or speeches in front of an audience. The area in front of the stage will hold an audience of about 100 people.
“This is the beginning of something wonderful,” said Keenon McCloy, executive director of the Memphis Public Library. “We hear so much about teens in the community. The library is really one of the places that levels the playing field and reduces or eliminates barriers to access.”
City Council chairman Jim Strickland’s widely circulated blast on Wednesday at Mayor A C Wharton’s crime-control policy is in tandem not only with a challenge to the mayor embedded in a Council resolution slated for next Tuesday’s Council meeting but with a telephone poll being carried out this week on Strickland’s behalf.
The Councilman confirmed the existence of the poll but said the results of it were unknown as of Thursday morning. He also declined to discuss specific questions on the poll or other matters of its format. “It obviously has to do with city business,” he said.
The poll, the public attack on Wharton, and the planned resolution — which replicates some of the critical language of Strickland’s press release and calls for redirecting an additional $1 million from the City’s operating funds toward police recruitment — occur at a time of stepped-up fundraising for Strickland, the beneficiary of a big-ticket event last week, with more likely forthcoming.
For the record, Strickland has only committed so far to a reelection race for his Council seat, but his ambitions to run for mayor are of long standing, and he has often in the past acknowledged an interest in the job.
The period from now to the end of the year would be the appropriate time for any serious candidate to make an announcement for mayor, Strickland said, and presumably that time frame applies to his own plans.
Strickland’s public statement of Wednesday, in the form of a letter to”fellow Memphians,” accused Wharton of a “defeatist attitude” toward crime reduction and said the Mayor had in the recent past “secretly” cut back on funds for Blue Crush police activity, resulting in a rise in crime levels. His comments on Wharton’s conduct of public safety matters were similar to criticism of the Mayor last month by Council colleague Harold Collins, another potential mayoral candidate who has formed an exploratory committee regarding a possible race.
Responding to a statement by City CAO George Little that the Strickland resolution’s proposed re-allocation of funds to enable a new police recruit class is unnecessary inasmuch as the City has already freed up money for the purpose, the Council chairman said, “That’s fine, and we can discuss it on Tuesday, but what was it Reagan said of Gorbachev? ‘Trust but Verify.’”
Strickland said the Administration had often juggled financial numbers in the past and its statements had frequently needed to be altered upon public scrutiny.
Strickland’s letter of Wednesday reads as follows:
November 12, 2014
Dear Fellow Memphians:
Many of you have contacted me about recent events for my thoughts.
In order to reduce crime, we need (1) aggressive policing, including full implementation of Blue Crush; (2) stronger state laws, which require violent criminals to serve their entire sentences and hold parents more responsible for their minor children’s violent acts; and (3) to create an environment where children choose the right path instead of the wrong one. This situation requires strong and effective action.
Instead, Mayor AC Wharton, in one week, argued for more midnight basketball for young people and, in the next week, asked the public schools to stop playing football Friday nights at 7:00 pm. We cannot allow this defeatist attitude to push Memphis to be known nationwide as the city who cannot keep citizens safe after dark.
1.Policing Strategies
From July 2011 through December 2012, Mayor Wharton secretly cut Blue Crush details, which are the extra police sent to crime “hot spots.” As a result, violent crime increased. When some of us discovered the decrease in Blue Crush details, they were reinstituted in January 2013, and crime began to fall again. See the summary I wrote about this reduction with supporting documentation at http://www.cityofmemphis.org/Portals/0/pdf_forms/bluecrushanalysis1.pdf.
In addition to Blue Crush, there are other actions that need to be taken. There is a curfew law, but it is never enforced. Five months ago, the Council approved, and added to, the Mayor’s proposed police budget. Now, we need to make cuts in other departments to hire more police officers, and I will make such a proposal at our next Council meeting next week.
The City needs to arrest all persons, including juveniles, who commit acts of violence on others. According to a news report (see http://wreg.com/2014/10/01/are-federal-mandates-limiting-local-crime-fighting/) and actions reflected in police reports (see the police reports), the Mayor believes that a Department of Justice mandate prohibits taking juvenile delinquents into custody and instead requires the issuance of a ticket or summons. This is not true. The DOJ report places no such limits. (See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-enters-agreement-reform-juvenile-court-memphis-and-shelby-county-tennessee.)
2. Mayor Wharton’s Delayed Action<
Almost three years ago, on January 23, 2012, Mayor Wharton gave his State of the City Address. (See the speech at http://www.cityofmemphis.org/Portals/0/pdf_forms/STATEOFCITY_012312.pdf.) He stated his vision was to “create safe and vibrant places for people to live, learn, work, and play.” This included the pledge “to punish swiftly those who bring violence to our streets.”
He said he “launched an ambitious, aggressive 100 Days agenda that will set in motion crucial work on these priorities.” He promised to review the police department and “this review will guarantee that the police department is operating at peak performance.” (Emphasis added.)
It is now 1024 days after he promised to aggressively take action within 100 days. There still is no plan to create a “safe and vibrant” Memphis with a police department operating at “peak performance.” Violent crime is now up 9%.
Public safety is the number one responsibility of City government. We do not need more press conferences and town hall meetings; we need action.
Sincerely,
Jim
The Council chairman’s proposed resolution can be seen here:
Participants will hit the ground running at Highpoint Church and travel through the East Memphis Ridgeway Loop and Shady Grove community.
In addition to the race, the event will feature a one-mile “Family Fun Run,” live music, food, yoga and Zumba demonstrations, blood pressure screenings, and a post-race awards ceremony.
“Memphis and Shelby County continue to be challenged by social and economic factors that drive many regional health indicators to the bottom third of most national and state health rankings, and our childhood obesity rates are some of the highest in the country, a key indicator of early diagnosis of juvenile diabetes,” said Renée Frazier, CEO of Common Table Health Alliance, in a statement. “While these statistics are startling, adopting a healthy, active lifestyle is a simple solution to this growing problem.”
According to the Tennessee County Health Rankings, adult obesity in Shelby County is 35 percent — the highest it’s been in the last four years.
Obesity rates in Shelby County Schools, however, appear to be declining. According to data from the Tennessee Department of Education, 35.7 percent of Shelby County public school students were considered overweight or obese, during the 2012-13 school year. The average for all Tennessee public school students that year was 38.5 percent.
Obesity isn’t an issue that only impacts Memphis but Tennessee as a whole. In 2013, the state was ranked as the 10th most obese place — tying with Michigan — in the nation, according to the health report “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future.” Furthermore, Tennessee is one of 13 states that have an adult obesity rate above 30 percent.
Wharton and the Common Table Health Alliance hope the Million Calorie Burn 5K helps bring more awareness to the city and state’s obesity epidemic, and also encourages people to live healthier by eating better and being more active.
The first 200 participants who register for the race will receive a free Nike goody bag. All participants will receive a Million Calorie Burn 5K t-shirt.
To register or learn more about the Million Calorie Burn 5K, contact Common Table Health Alliance at (901) 684-6011 or click here.
So far, seven Memphis police officers and zero Memphis firefighters have been reprimanded for missing work during the Blue Flu and Red Rash protests last month.
Hundreds of public safety officers with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and Memphis Fire Services Department (MFSD) called in sick during a two-week span that included the Independence Day holiday. The absences were part of an apparent protest over cuts to health-care benefits for current and retired city employees. At the heights of the separate protests, more than 550 officers and 80 firefighters called in sick.
Toby Sells
Blue Flu at a news conference last month.
When the protest began, MPD Director Toney Armstrong said a process was in place to review those officers who called out during the work action. Corrective actions against any non-compliant officers absent during the time of the protest could range from an oral reprimand to termination, he said.
Seven police officers have been reprimanded for absences during the Blue Flu time frame, according to MPD public information officer Sgt. Karen Rudolph. Statements of charges against the officers are pending approval, she said, and range from abusing the sick leave policy and missing court dates to not being at the location where they stated they’d spend their sick day.
“It is important that you understand that these officers are being presented with a statement of charges for these violations only; they should in no way be mentioned as ‘officers involved with the Blue Flu,'” Rudolph said in a statement. “These officers were off sick during this time period; however, it was not determined that these officers were off in order to participate with a work action such as the ‘Blue Flu.'”
Memphis Police Association President Michael Williams said he was not aware of a single reprimand to any Memphis police officer related to the Blue Flu protest.
“I know that all of those guys had to have the right documentation to be able to come back to work,” Williams said.
Alvin Benson, director of Memphis Fire Services Division, said he did not see a “noticeable spike” in sick days among Memphis firefighters as Blue Flu began. But as it waned, a similar action, the so-called Red Rash, began in his shop. At its height, though, only about 80 MFSD employees had called out sick.
MFSD spokesperson Lt. Wayne Cooke said no reprimands related to the Red Rash have been served on MFSD employees. He said when employees call in sick, each instance is evaluated separately. If the absence doesn’t adhere to the city’s leave policy, action is taken.
“In the case of the recent spike in illnesses, at this point, no disciplinary action has been warranted,” Cooke said. “All absences, though some suspicious, were within existing policy and supported by required documentation.”
The cuts that spurred the work action and other protests were part of Mayor A C Wharton’s budget for the year and were passed by the Memphis City Council. Savings from those cuts are to help patch the massive hole in the city pension fund.
Since the budget was passed, alternatives to the health-care cuts have come forward. Actuaries are now checking the figures in a new, high-deductible health-care plan brought to the council from the Memphis Fire Fighters Association.
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Toby Sells