Tag: Memphis City Council

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Council Committee Agrees On Relocating Forrest Statue and Remains

The Memphis City Council Parks Committee on Tuesday approved an ordinance allowing the city to move the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue out of Health Sciences Park, and they also approved a resolution to move the remains of Forrest and his wife, which are buried at the park.

The ordinance and resolution came on the heels of a national movement to remove symbols of the Confederacy after a reported white supremacist, Dylann Roof, allegedly murdered nine church members at the historically black Emanuel AME Church in June.

The ordinance to transfer ownership of the statue and to remove and relocate it will be required to pass three readings of the full council before it would go into effect. The resolution to remove the Confederate general’s remains only requires one reading, and the council agreed this morning to move it to tonight’s full council agenda.

But even if that resolution passes, state law would require that the city bring a lawsuit in Shelby County Chancery Court to have the remains removed and relocated. State law requires a Chancery Court decision for the removal and reburial of remains, and any remaining relatives of the deceased must be made a party in the lawsuit.

City Councilmember Janis Fullilove questioned whether the decision to move the statue and remains were related to recent news of the University of Tennessee’s planned expansion. Fullilove said, if UT wanted to purchase the Health Sciences Park land, there could be an ulterior motive for moving the statue. But Myron Lowery, who said he proposed the move before Mayor A C Wharton held a press conference about it two weeks ago, said the move was discussed before he learned of UT’s expansion plans. 

“And there is no proposal to the city from UT to deal with that land,” Lowery said.

Edmund Ford Jr. said he’d talked to a man who was interested in having the statue moved to Shiloh Military Park in Tennessee. And Lowery said he’d heard from others with interest in the statue. An opinion on the matter written by council attorney Allan Wade said Elmwood Cemetery also had room for the statue. But there’s been no decision yet on where the statue would go.

As for the remains, Wade’s opinion highlights the fact that Forrest’s will, which was probated in Shelby County on December 17, 1877, mentions his request to be buried at Elmwood “among the Confederate dead.” Forrest and his wife were originally buried at Elmwood, but their remains were moved to Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) on November 11, 1904.

The statue was dedicated there on May 18, 1905 by the Forrest Monument Association. The association paid for the statue with private donations, including the donated salaries of the Memphis City Councilmembers who held office in 1903. On March 25, 1903, the association had petitioned the council to authorize a special tax levy for the statue. The council objected because of the need for funding for streets, sewers, and bridges, but the since the members supported the idea for the statue, they agreed to donate that day’s salaries to the cause.

At today’s council committee meeting, Lee Millar of the Sons of Confederate Veterans expressed disapproval of the proposed move of the statue and the remains.

“We are steadfastly opposed to moving the statue of one of our American heroes,” Millar said. “And it would be an abhorrent thing to dig up the graves in Forrest Park.”

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Memphis City Council Approves Budget, Raises for City Employees

After two days and nearly 10 hours of debate in the chamber, the Memphis City Council passed a budget for the next fiscal year Tuesday morning.

When debate opened Tuesday morning, the budget stood at $656 million. The council added 2 percent raises for police officers and fire fighters and 1 percent raises for all other city employees. The raises added $3.1 million to the budget for a total of $656 million.

The raises were the first order of business Tuesday. They were proposed by council member Reid Hedgepeth during last week’s regular meeting. Though raises represent less than 1 percent of the overall budget, they consumed most of the debate on the entire $661 million budget.

Reid’s proposal gave raises of 2 percent to police and fire only. It was amended by a proposal from council member Edmund Ford Jr. to include a 1 percent raise to the rest of the city’s employees.

The money to pay for the raises will come from cutting some funded but unfilled positions in the Memphis Police Department.

The council approved the raises but completely circumvented the impasse process. That process, set up after labor struggles of 1978, give city employee unions a vote by three-member council committees if unions can’t get a deal worked out with the city’s mayor and administration.

Impasse committees approved several raises this year and rejected others. However, those decisions weren’t considered by the council Tuesday. On advice from the city council’s attorney Allan Wade, the group ignored the impasse decisions, allowing the budget vote to supersede them.

This drew the ire of many council members, including Harold Collins and Janis Fullilove.

“I’m not sure what we went through the impasse process when it means absolutely nothing, just to make some time during the day to say we’re doing something?” Fullilove asked. “We are making a joke of our political process. I never thought I’d say this in my life but I am so sorry to be on this council with many of you.”

Collins said the council could vote the impasse decision up or down but they should not circumvent the process.

“We are setting the wrong precedent by what we’re doing here today,” Collins said. “Hedgepeth offered what I considered a worthy alternative (to the impasse decisions). But it is not right. We have to do what the ordinance tells us and the law tells us first, then we have to proceed.”

Many proposals for raises were raised, defeated, and even turned down by labor unions in the chaotic budget season that began in April. In the end, it was the chaos that had many council members “baffled.”

“I am shocked today,” said council member Wanda Halbert. “I’m like some of you (in the audience), I’m baffled by all of this. … This budget seasons had been very different form the rest in the last seven years.”

Halbert then, called for the question, meaning she wished to stop all debate on the budget and take a final vote.

Council members Berlin Boyd, Alan Crone, Kemp Conrad, Ford, Halbert, Hedgepeth, Myron Lowery, Bill Morrison, and Jim Strickland voted for the budget.

Council members Bill Boyd, Joe Brown, Collins, and Fullilove voted against it. 

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News The Fly-By

Music Commission Again Targeted for Possible Budget Cut

Each budget season at Memphis City Hall brings a new bullseye for the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission.

The group is an annual target for Memphis City Councilmembers Shea Flinn and Jim Strickland. Each has called for the commission to be completely cut from the city’s budget each year for the past few years. Flinn’s voice on the matter has been dampened as he resigned his council seat last week. But Strickland’s voice has been amplified in his roles as chairman of the council’s budget committee and as a front-runner candidate for the Memphis mayor’s seat.

Strickland called the music commission an example of non-essential spending during a mayoral candidate forum last week hosted by The Commercial Appeal. He’s been calling for the cut of the commission from the city’s budget at least since 2012 when he told The Memphis Flyer that a private group would better serve the commission’s mission.

Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has funded the group with $250,000 for the past few years and has the same amount included in his proposed 2016 budget that totals more than $656 million.

“The Memphis Music Commission serves an important role in supporting and furthering the city’s world-renowned music heritage,” Wharton said in a statement. “Through programs like the Musician Healthcare Plan, Memphis Music Monday, and Music Business forum, the commission is making it possible for musicians to develop their careers and showcase their music and learn about the business side of the music industry.”

Tracking the music commission’s funding is tough. In the 2015 budget, the commission is listed under “special services” in the city’s Parks and Neighborhoods budget, not in the expected “grants and agencies” section alongside budgets for the Memphis Film & Television Commission, Urban Art, the Black Business Association, and more. Budgets for the commission, Second Chance, and Community Affairs are lumped together, making it hard to determine exactly which group gets and spends what.

According to the city’s human resources department, the commission’s executive director Johnnie Walker’s salary was a little more than $92,000 in the 2015 budget. Her office assistant’s salary was nearly $37,000. The rest, it is believed, is spent on running the office, buying supplies, and making grants.

The commission is comprised of 22 commissioners appointed by the mayors of Memphis and Shelby County. It “preserves, fosters, and promotes” Memphis music “through education, networking, advocacy, and professional and industry development.” The 2015 budget claims the commission operates 15 programs, though its website lists only nine. One of them — the Memphis Trolley Unplugged series — is on hold until trolley service resumes.

Walker said music is essential to Memphis tourism, and funding the commission puts the city’s money where its mouth is.

“A city that markets itself as ‘Home of the Blues, the Birthplace of Rock-and-Roll,’ that alone says that the city should be involved in the protection of that legacy and providing resources so that legacy can continue,” Walker said.

Walker said the commission does that with legal clinics, a health-care plan for musicians without insurance, weekly radio and television broadcasts of Memphis music, a weekly Memphis music showcase at Hard Rock Cafe, and more.

Strickland said the music industry is “huge” to Memphis but the music commission does not operate efficiently or effectively. He has said the group does not quantify “what it’s doing,” and groups like The Consortium MMT [Memphis Music Town] could do better.

“Their purpose is to develop a viable music industry in Memphis and from all indications they’re doing a very good job,” Strickland said. “Who knows Memphis music more than David Porter and Al Bell [of Consortium MMT]? No one. We ought to get behind their effort, which is privately funded.”

Budget hearings began Tuesday and are scheduled to wrap up on Tuesday, May 26th.

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News The Fly-By

Big Moves Ahead for Memphis Police Department Facilities

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Some big moves are planned for the Memphis Police Department (MPD) headquarters at 201 Poplar and for the department’s South Main precinct.

The MPD wants to move its headquarters from the Shelby County Criminal Justice Complex to the former Donnelly J. Hill State Office Building on Civic Center Plaza. The state vacated the building last year, and its offices are now housed down Main Street at One Commerce Square.

Toby Sells

Donnelly J. Hill State Office Building

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development (HCD), wants the city to buy the building from the state for $1.5 million. The goal is to relocate MPD headquarters and a few other city offices from spaces leased around the city into the 12-story office building.

“If we’re going to fight crime, we need to show the public that we’re serious about fighting crime,” Lipscomb said. “We want to give the police department a visible presence, and I think this building does that.”

The MPD’s rent at 201 Poplar is $85,000 per month, according to MPD Director Toney Armstrong. All told, rent and other expenses there cost the city about $1.4 million per year. Vacating 201 Poplar would save the MPD about 75 percent of that rent cost.

Some city council members were skeptical of the deal and not in favor of raising the city’s debt in the current budget year.

Lipscomb said HCD would also move into the former state office building as well as the Memphis Housing Authority, human resources, legal, and a few other departments. Lipscomb discussed his plans with the Memphis City Council last week, but the project is not yet ready for a formal council vote, he said.

But Lipscomb said a more pressing matter was the move of the MPD’s South Main precinct from Central Station to the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s North End Terminal at 444 North Main.

The move was precipitated by the planned, $55 million redevelopment of Central Station into a hotel, restaurant, and apartments. The council approved the $1.3 million reallocation of funds in this year’s budget to begin the planning and design phase, which is expected to be completed by September.

The price tag drew fire from councilmember Berlin Boyd. After being told that the move was necessary, Boyd chided administration officials for asking for the emergency funds.

“No offense, but with everything [from the administration], there’s a sense of urgency,” Boyd said. “We can find money to do certain things, but when it comes to helping people, we can’t do that.”

Armstrong explained that the move would allow him to have the entirety of his downtown precinct “under one roof” and that the department didn’t ask to move.

“One of the things we have to understand here is we’ve been asked to relocate; we’ve been asked to vacate the premises,” Armstrong said. “So, it’s more than necessary that we move.”

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City Council Discusses Adding Cateria Stokes to Homicide Reward List

Cateria Stokes, the 15-year-old girl who was killed during a drive-by shooting at her house on April 10th, may be the next name added to the city’s reward list for information on homicide suspects.

Cateria Stokes

The Memphis City Council’s Public Safety Committee discussed adding Stokes’ name to the list in their meeting Tuesday morning, and the resolution will be voted on in the full council meeting Tuesday night. If passed, tipsters with information on Stokes’ killer, who remains unknown at this time, could be given a $100,000 reward.

Other names on the city’s homicide reward list include former Memphis Grizzly Lorenzen Wright, Larry Joseph Larkin, Joey Lacy, Cora Gatewood, Calvin Riley, Napoleon Yates, Marco Antonio Calero, Jack Lassiter, and Deryck DeShaun Davenport.

The Public Safety Committee also heard the monthly rape kit update. A member of the rape kit task force told council members that the construction storage room for DNA evidence was moving along and “seeing lots of progress.” As of March, there were 5,246 rape kits that remained untested. That’s down from 5,246 untested in February.

Council members also discussed an ordinance to give the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) more teeth, including the power to subpoena officers and information. The CLERB, which is currently inactive, is designed to provide oversight for citizen complaints against police wrongdoing. Both Director Toney Armstrong and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams took issue with the idea giving the board subpoena power, claiming that it could impact the officers’ Fifth Amendment rights.

But City Council member Shea Flinn, who once served on an earlier incarnation of the CLERB, urged the council to take action soon and give the CLERB more power.

“All politics aside, this board is about when things don’t go right. And the reason this board wasn’t taken seriously by the city council [in its past incarnation] is because the board wasn’t serious. It had no power,” Flinn said. “And in these economic times, when we’re paying staff [to serve on the board], we cannot do nothing.”

Flinn said a CLERB with more power could help build trust between citizens and law enforcement. The CLERB amendment will be heard in its first reading at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

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New Handheld Speed Guns for MPD Proposed to City Council

In the midst of Tennessee legislators’ attempt to ban red-light and speeding cameras, a company wants to provide Memphis Police officers with handheld speed guns to help suppress accidents and fatalities.

Last Tuesday, St. Louis-based firm Automated Transportation Enforcement Solutions (ATES): Traffic Solutions presented a proposal to city council’s Public Safety Committee regarding its LIDAR speed guns.

The devices would allow Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers to use a speed detector boasting a laser, camera, and automated ticketing device. Officers would be able to shoot the license plates of speeding drivers — even in areas with heavily congested traffic — and store their information. This would lower the amount of drivers that officers have to pursue and manually issue a citation.

“I don’t see this as anything other than a public safety enhancement of the MPD,” said John Baine, vice president of marketing for ATES: Traffic Solutions. “It’s not impersonal, like a pole in the ground that says a metal mass is speeding. It gives the officers discretion and opportunity.”

If approved, the LIDAR guns would possibly be targeted for use in areas with high pedestrian activity, such as school zones, construction zones, and parks.

Before moving forward on the proposal, the city council plans on getting feedback from the MPD, specifically, whether they think the devices could help their public safety efforts.

Baine said the city would not be charged for the speed guns. Around 60 percent of proceeds from the speeding tickets would go to the city. The exact amount is uncertain.

The indeterminate split is something that didn’t sit well with Councilman Berlin Boyd.

“[We would be] depending on this company to pay the city a certain dollar amount that’s unknown,” Boyd said. “In business, there are certain things that you should come prepared for. If you’re making a presentation, people want to know cost, if there will be any ultimate gains or benefits, and how much money we will receive from the actual ticket.”

According to City Court Clerk Thomas Long’s office, since November 2009, red-light camera citations have produced more than $10.8 million in revenue. Of that amount, the city of Memphis received 40 percent.

Tennessee is one of several states where legislators have proposed bills to outlaw traffic cameras. A compromise version of the Tennessee Freedom From Traffic Cameras Act passed out of the Senate Transportation Committee last Wednesday. It’s tentatively slated for vote by the full Senate Thursday.

The bill would extend yellow signal times to six seconds at intersections with cameras. Speeding tickets would only be issued for driving 15 miles or more over the posted speed limit.

Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris, who is a co-sponsor of the bill, said red-light cameras cause more safety problems than they reduce.

Harris said he’s not opposed to city law enforcement receiving new handheld speed guns but thinks deploying more officers in the community is a better way to deal with public safety issues.

“If you want to promote more public safety on your street, hire more police officers,” Harris said. “I don’t have any problem with making sure our officers have all the tools available, including cameras, to do their job. The point is, let’s put it in the hands of police officers and not an out-of-state company whose legal duty is to make as much money as possible.”

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Memphis Officials Make Plans For Fixing Sidewalks

Ten years. $200 million. That’s what city officials say it will take to fix the city’s sidewalks.

That’s not even the city’s entire stock of 3,429 miles of sidewalks, which if lined end to end would stretch from Texas to Hawaii. The program proposed last week to the Memphis City Council would only fix about 18 percent of sidewalks, though about 33 percent require immediate repair, officials said. 

Star Ritchey, the owner of Midtown running group Star Runners, said Memphis sidewalks are “absolutely dangerous.”

“Motorists often get annoyed that runners are in the road, but what they don’t realize is that many of our sidewalks are in such bad shape, you couldn’t use them if you wanted to,” Ritchey said. “The majority of the sidewalks in Midtown are a mess, either broken up due to tree roots, or construction or whatever.” 

The city’s engineering department began work on a plan last year to fix sidewalks, with priorities placed on sidewalks near schools. The School Safety Action Plan, which was unveiled last week, would benefit students walking to and from school as well as to parks, community centers, and libraries.

“As the public infrastructure in the city, including sidewalks, continues to grow older, the need to be proactive in maintaining this vital transportation network remains high,” said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

If Memphis sidewalks last 60 years, the city should be spending $19 million each year to maintain them, according to city engineers. City leaders typically budget $100,000 each year for sidewalk maintenance and have spent $334,000 over the past 10 years for their repair. That amount would allow a stretch of Memphis sidewalk to be replaced every 11,000 years, engineers said. 

But in Memphis, sidewalk repair is the responsibility of property owners. That fact is thanks to a city law passed in 1967 that says owners of properties abutting any public street are “required to provide and maintain adjacent to his or her property a sidewalk.” It’s the same in New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville, though all of those cities easily outspend Memphis on sidewalk repair.

Sidewalks came to the fore last year when city officials began aggressively enforcing the sidewalk repair ordinance. A complaint would be registered (typically through the city’s 311 system) and then code enforcement officials would inspect the sidewalk and issue a citation to the homeowner, who had to fix the sidewalk or be ordered to court.

Hundreds of citations were ordered in a few months until the council halted sidewalk citations altogether. Council members said the financial burden of fixing sidewalks was too great on many low-income residents. 

City Engineer John Cameron unveiled a plan to help those homeowners last week. It would offer financial assistance to homeowners (not renters or owners of multiple properties) who make less than $25,000 per year, are 65 or older, or are 100-percent disabled. It would also be offered to households that fall below the federal poverty line. 

Cameron said the program would cost $200,000 this fiscal year to help address the sidewalks of the 400 properties that now have outstanding citations. Next year, he projected the program would cost between $200,000 and $500,000. The total project could cost between $6 million and $9 million.

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No Time for Politics

Revisiting history does not mean that we have the right to rewrite it.

I mention this in light of a recent meeting of the Memphis City Council in which members of my administration and I were criticized about the city’s debt even as our finance director presented a debt-restructuring plan. 

Rather than focusing on the merits of the plan, the discussion descended into a debate on how we somehow misled the council with respect to our 2010 debt plan and our overall finances. In this meeting, one council member went so far as to misrepresent my comments on this matter by selectively editing an audio version of my past remarks.

Given this rather selective amnesia of certain council members and the concern of many citizens in how we got here financially, I am compelled to set the record straight.

There is no way to truly understand our current financial circumstances without speaking to the Memphis City Council’s 2008 vote to cut funding to Memphis City Schools (MCS) and the successful lawsuit against the city to restore this funding. The following points are matters of record:

In July 2008, over the objection of Mayor W. W. Herenton, the Memphis City Council voted to take $65 million per year from the Memphis City Schools. Two months after my election in October 2009, my request to the council to restore the school funding tax rate was refused.         

In August 2010, the Tennessee State Supreme Court affirmed the $57 million lower court ruling in favor of MCS. 

Based on the decisions of the courts in favor of Memphis City Schools, the city restored its annual school funding in 2010. What remained was the amount taken from schools in the 2008-2009 school year that needed to be paid back. The council’s options were rather straightforward: Restore the tax rate that had been dedicated for schools, cut other operating expenses to free up funds for the schools, or some combination of these two items. 

In this context, it is important to underscore that while the mayor has to propose a budget, it is the council that has authority to raise taxes and to set the budget.  

On the matter of raising taxes and making budget cuts to pay Memphis City Schools, the council was hopelessly deadlocked. But, something had to be done.

Against this backdrop, we presented the 2010 Debt Restructuring Plan as a compromise solution for council members to avoid the immediate need to raise taxes and make drastic budget cuts. It was a commonly used “scoop and toss” arrangement that allowed the city to push payments on this financial obligation out into the future.

To be clear, the 2010 Debt Restructuring Plan was essentially done to allow us to comply with the court order to pay the schools. The 2015 Debt Restructuring Plan is largely being proposed for the same lingering issue.  

Those who see the debt plan and those who submitted this plan as the source of our financial challenges are confusing bad-tasting medicine and the administering physician with the issue being treated. This is not meant to place the funding of children’s education in a bad light, but only to highlight the confusion of some on this issue.

The current debt-restructure plan was developed with a team of nationally recognized financial advisors and later vetted and approved by the state comptroller. As a local newspaper article recently outlined, what we are doing is standard for many other major cities faced with varying financial challenges. With the annual pension obligation increasing, the looming debt services bubble, and interest rates that will soon rise, we can no longer afford inaction or delay.

What we need now is action to approve the proposed debt-restructuring plan. Financial realities and past missteps should remind us that we don’t have time for politics on this matter.

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City Delivers Check for $8 Million to Shelby County Schools

The city has made good on part of its agreement to pay Shelby County Schools (SCS) $41.8 million. On Friday, the city delivered its first check for $8 million to SCS. Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery forwarded this image to the media Friday afternoon.

The payment stems from a 2008 dispute in which the school system alleged that the Memphis City Council trimmed its funding below what the state required.

The city will pay SCS $20 million more in $1.3 million payments over the next 15 years. The rest will be paid back through services. Memphis police services will be provided at schools until the end of the 2016 school year, which city officials value at $2 million.

Also, the city will spend no more than $3.8 million on educational facilities for the school system.

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News The Fly-By

Council Gets First Look at MATA Trolley Plan

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Changes may be ahead for the Memphis trolley system as city leaders weigh in next week on the plan to bring the trolleys back.

The trolley system was shut down last June after two trolley cars caught fire on the Madison Line in separate events only seven months apart. Trolley 452 caught fire in November 2013. Trolley 553 caught fire on April 7th of last year. Both trolleys were burned beyond repair.

After the shutdown, the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) brought in a team of rail and transportation safety experts to review the system and help get it back on track. MATA leaders have said they would reveal the trolley plan to the public once the consultants finished their work. But the plan hasn’t surfaced yet.

Even though trolleys haven’t rumbled past Memphis City Hall in nearly eight months, they were on the minds of Memphis City Council members last week. 

Justin Fox Burks

MATA President Ron Garrison

MATA President Ron Garrison asked council members to approve the use of $1.1 million in pre-approved capital funds last week for rail facility improvements. But council members asked Garrison to bring his request back to city hall next week, along with his plan for the trolley system.

Councilmembers Harold Collins and Shea Flinn expressed concerns about the system, especially the Madison Line. Flinn said he and Collins were “far from alone” about questions of trolleys on Madison and called the route a “difficult situation.”

Flinn said there have long been problems with trolley utilization overall but especially on the Madison Line. 

“While we’re in repair and rebuild mode, we should be in rethink mode,” Flinn said. “The city has exhausted a lot of resources on this amenity, and I’m not sure we’re getting the bang for the buck from it that we could be. As we have this forced stoppage, we need to try and think of how we can make this a more-utilized asset.”

Collins said he’s seen and heard about problems of dependability on the trolley system. Any continuing trolley service needs to simply work for the citizens of Memphis, tourists, and business owners, he said.

“If we’re thinking about investing an enormous, no … if we’re going to reinvest potentially an enormous amount of money on this project [we should see a plan],” Collins said. “But nobody seems to agree on or like what they’re doing now.”

When asked what potential changes he’d like to see in the trolley system, Collins said he wanted better connectivity across the city. He recalled a former plan to take a trolley or even a bus from the end of the Madison Line all the way to the corner of Madison and Cooper. The move would help better connect downtown and Midtown.

MATA’s work is focused now on the repair and recertification of five trolley cars, all of them the larger cars. MATA says those are in the best condition and can also carry the most people. 

When they are ready for service, the trolleys will bring service first to the Main Street Line. As more trolleys are repaired, they will be launched on the Riverfront Line and the Madison Line. 

Garrison is scheduled to bring MATA’s trolley plan to city hall next Tuesday, February 3rd for a review by the council’s Public Works and Transportation Committee at 8:45 a.m.