Tag: Memphis City Council

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How “Crazy” Ideas (sometimes) Become Real Deals

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Ten years ago, not many people would have foreseen Memphis in the grip of NBA Playoffs fever. Nor would they have guessed that the city and county school systems would be forcibly merged. Or that suburban homebuilders would scale back or go broke. Or that suburbs would be seriously talking about starting their own school systems (well, maybe that one was predictable).

So how does the unthinkable become thinkable? I’ve been thinking about that in light of a new book by a 93-year-old Memphian, a 36-year-old issue of our company’s monthly magazine, and the upcoming debate over the City of Memphis budget and various proposals to avoid a property tax increase. Sometimes the unthinkable is doable, sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it just take a lot of patience. Here are three examples.

NO WAY: STATE INCOME TAX

Tennessee is one of a handful of states that does not tax earned income. Every once in a while, a maverick comes along and points out the inequity of the state tax structure that relies on the highest sales tax (even on groceries) in the country. I have been reading “Lewie,” an autobiography by the esteemed lawyer and Republican blueblood Lewis Donelson.

In the early 1960s, Donelson was named to a “Committee of 100” to plan the future of Tennessee.

“I had gotten interested in Tennessee’s financial structures, especially the pernicious aspects of the state’s heavy general sales tax,” he wrote. “This resulted in lower-income citizens being taxed a much higher percentage of income than upper-income individuals.” Then as now, the state tax structure did not grow as rapidly as inflation, and there were frequent increases in the sales tax. Donelson argued for a state income tax.

“I made a motion and the committee adopted a resolution recommending an income tax. The only result of this resolution: the death of the Committee of 100.”

Donelson was anything but a screaming radical, but he was an excellent lawyer and a good enough politician to serve a term on the Memphis City Council and stints as an aide to two Tennessee governors, neither of whom was crazy enough to propose a state income tax while in office. That kamikaze mission was undertaken by another Republican governor, Don Sundquist. His eternal reward was to be shunned by his party and shouted at by crowds of angry protesters at the Capitol for supporting an income tax that, once again, went nowhere.

MAYBE A WAY: TAX ALTERNATIVES

Some members of the Memphis City Council suggested bringing the income tax up again if for no other reason than to stir things up in Nashville. Other members suggested a payroll tax to get revenue from people who work in Memphis or its suburbs but live outside of Shelby County. That idea isn’t going anywhere either as long as the city’s biggest employer — FedEx — opposes it. FedEx CEO Fred Smith has said publicly many times, “if you want less of something, tax it.” End of story.

A more promising longshot was proposed by Council member Janis Fullilove. She said nonprofits and companies that have received PILOTs or payment-in-lieu-of-taxes tax breaks should pay more because they own so much property. It’s not like nobody else at City Hall knows the score. On the contrary, everyone knows the score. At a retreat for the council and administration earlier this year, Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb handed out charts showing how little taxable property there is in Memphis relative to the full size of the city.

To take one example, the nonprofit hospital giants have big salaries and lots of free cash. Here’s a column from a couple of years ago. Blogger Tom Jones has been a bulldog on the issue of PILOTs for several years. Here is one particularly informative post on how PILOTs became contagious in Memphis and Shelby County. But voices in the wind are easily ignored or dismissed. The same goes for another study of PILOTs or a blue-ribbon committee, a typical Mayor A C Wharton “solution.” What is needed is more spark and some fire.

At least three things would have to happen for Fullilove’s proposal to get anywhere. One, Wharton would have to embrace it, as the mayor of Boston did last year. Two, some key nonprofits would have to break ranks and agree to voluntarily increase their payments to local government, putting pressure on others to follow suit. And, three, The Commercial Appeal would have to use some of its reporting clout to investigate nonprofits (as the Boston Globe did), and influential organizations such as Memphis Tomorrow and the Chamber of Commerce would have to lend support.

YES WAY: BIKE LANES AND THE HARAHAN BRIDGE

In 1976, “city of memphis” magazine, the forerunner of Memphis magazine, ran an article by Max Heine entitled “Bicycling Memphis.” It is uncanny how it foreshadows developments 35 years later.

The author argued that there were 283,000 (!!!) “admitted pedallers” in Shelby County and that bike lanes should be installed on streets “separated from traffic by a stripe or curb, with signs designating the route.” A planner with the Memphis and Shelby County Planning Commission mapped out 25 routes, including one from Overton Park and Overton Square to downtown and and another connecting the fairgrounds and the the city’s three colleges. The cost of the three main routes was estimated at $25,000-$30,000. The chairman of the City Council “was not familiar with the proposed routes but pointed out that the city had replaced many of the curbside sewer covers” that could obstruct riders.

Then there was this bit of blue-sky thinking:

“One exciting proposal calls for a pedestrian/bike crossing on one of the abandoned car lanes of the Harahan railroad bridge . . . About $6 million in federal funds is available through the Urban Bikeway Demonstration Act.”

The article said “bikommuting” was an emerging issue, and noted that the second annual Bicycle Commuter Day was scheduled for May 28, 1976.

Fast forward to 2012. The Harahan Project is alive and well, and May 18th is officially Bike to Work day.

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Opinion

Wharton Proposes Tax Increase but Council has other Ideas

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Every year is next year for the mayor and Memphis City Council when it comes to the budget.

Calling it a “gap” budget, Mayor A C Wharton proposed a $628.3 million 2013 budget with a one-time 47-cent property tax increase to fund Memphis City Schools for the last year of the city’s obligation before unification with the county school system. The current rate of $3.19 would rise to $3.66. After this fiscal year, Wharton said the city would transition into a five-year strategic planning process that would supposedly avoid annual budget battles.

That increase would translate to about $120 per $100,000 of property appraisal. But it might not be the last word on city school taxes because a 2009 payment to MCS is still at issue in the courts.

Wharton said city property tax revenue has decreased by $17 million annually since 2009 because of declining appraisals. His proposed budget cuts $24 million from day-to-day operating expenses. But none of the cuts are in the police or fire departments which account for 4,519 of the 5,834 general fund employees. There are no layoffs of police officers or fire fighters in the proposed budget.

Council members had other ideas.

Janis Fullilove suggested getting more money out of nonprofits such as hospitals and universities and from businesses that make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs). As she noted, this idea has gotten mainstream support in other cities including Boston, with this nod from the Boston Globe.

Jim Strickland said Memphis is losing population, a statement supported by the last Census. Councilman Joe Brown said property taxes are lower in neighboring counties because there are fewer services and amenities, and disputed Strickland’s claim.

“Nobody’s leaving Memphis, that’s just a myth,” Brown said.

Shea Flinn said property taxes are probably going to go up by some amount and that members must compromise. Kemp Conrad said the council should avoid a repeat of last year’s budget sessions when “at the last meeting in June we cobble something together.” Ed Ford Jr. suggested taxing the (his estimate) 90,000 people who work in Memphis but don’t live here.

After listening to the suggestions, Wharton said Memphis is not alone in struggling to balance its budget, which he called a nationwide problem. He noted the city has added 10,000 jobs and $1 billion in investment and was favorably mentioned in a recent Gallup Poll of cities and hiring.

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City Council Chooses Reserve Funds Over Tax Increase

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Memphis property owners won’t be getting that “one time” 18-cent property tax increase after all, at least not for a few months.

The Memphis City Council voted Tuesday to use a combination of $10 million in reserve funds and $3 million in spending cuts to offset a $13 million deficit in the fiscal year 2012 budget. The 10-1 vote came on a resolution by Councilman Kemp Conrad which substituted for a property tax rate increase of 18 cents to replace general fund dollars already spent for Memphis City Schools.

The council is not as unified as the vote makes it seem. There is disgruntlement over Mayor A C Wharton and his administration for giving city employees $6 million in bonuses last December after saying the city had no extra money in its budget last summer. And there is unity in calling the now-rejected 18 cent tax increase “the mayor’s tax increase” as opposed to something the council came up with. But there are differences on the council that are likely to surface when the fiscal year 2013 budget is taken up in two months.

Budget Committee chairman Jim Strickland, for example, wants to see spending cuts and implementation of efficiency study recommendations. “Frankly, there’s been little action on saving money,” he said. Councilman Joe Brown wants the council to revisit the buyout for AFSCME workers.

Council chairman Bill Morrison said the measure adopted Tuesday “is just for the next three months.”

In June, the council could reconsider a tax increase as well as back payments to Memphis City Schools, spending cuts, and cuts in city employees and/or benefits to overcome a projected $47 million deficit in the next budget.

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Liberty Bowl Tenants Ready to Pay “Substantial” Sum

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Worlds are about to collide as the financially-strapped city of Memphis decides how much money to put into Liberty Bowl Stadium improvements along with tenants from the success-at-all-costs parallel universe of college football.

City Councilman Reid Hedgepeth told his colleagues the tenants — the University of Memphis, the Southern Heritage Classic, and the AutoZone Liberty Bowl — are prepared to pay a “substantial” amount of the unspecified cost of a new scoreboard, Jumbotron, field surface, lights, elevator, and press box. He brought the resolution for “appropriate funding” to the Parks Committee Tuesday to get it on the agenda for March 20th, when he said specifics would be provided.

Pressed by colleagues, Hedgepeth said the tenants would pay “at least half” of the cost, but that might not satisfy council members who have already spent $16 million on Tiger Lane two years ago and are looking at a $17 million deficit in this year’s budget.

The University of Memphis starts play in the Big East Conference in 2013, and backers want the stadium upgraded before that. It takes five or six months to get a new Jumbotron, Hedgepeth said, adding that Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam got stuck in the elevator last year and the current Jumbotron is so outdated that it is difficult to get parts for it from Chicago. He said he and the tenants would lay out funding sources and dollar amounts in two weeks.

“They are very aware that if they don’t come up with significant funding we will never hear them” he said.

The city has lost money on the stadium the last two years. Cindy Buchanan, director of the Parks Division, said the shortfall was about $200,000 in the $1.5 million budget for the fairgrounds, which consists of the stadium and the vacant coliseum and lots of parking and grass. The city gets parking and concessions revenue but does not get advertising revenue from the Jumbotron under the present contract. That is why it is so important to increase actual attendance, as opposed to “tickets sold” attendance at the eight or nine games a year.

Actual attendance for University of Memphis football games was below 5000 for some games under former Coach Larry Porter. The figures were not immediately available. Porter was paid $750,000 a year, most of it by private donors to the athletic department. The mayor of Memphis makes about $172,000. Executive directors of college bowl games make as much as $600,000 or more. And new head football coach Justin Fuente is making $900,000. Former Memphis basketball coach John Calipari made much more than that, but he turned the program around, packed the house, and his teams won most of their games.

City Council members, on the other hand, live in a world where city employees took a 4.6 percent pay cut last year, where a tax hike of 18 cents is a very big deal, and where they are routinely pilloried for spending other people’s money. They are well aware of the city’s philanthropic community and football boosters. I have a feeling that “half” might not be enough.

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Attention Passengers on The Good Ship Memphis: Icebergs Ahead

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Mayor A C Wharton and the Memphis City Council held a retreat Saturday morning to step back and take a look at the big picture of city finances.

The good news: Memphis has a AA bond rating and some untapped or lightly tapped financing sources I’ll get to in a minute. The bad news: Population and property tax assessments are both going in the wrong direction at the same time Memphis is growing in land area, which stretches the cost of providing services.

In what was either the most apt or alarming symbolic moment of the three-hour session at the FedEx Family House across from Methodist LeBonheur Hospital, city development czar Robert Lipscomb displayed a slide with a graphic of the Titanic going down amidst a field of icebergs. It was meant as a metaphor for various financial perils on the horizon or not yet seen. While the order to abandon ship has not been given, lifeboats have been sighted in Germantown, Collierville, and DeSoto County and other safe harbors.

Because of its declining tax base, “Memphis has no margin for error,” Lipscomb said. “I would suggest that you have a business model which is not sustainable.”

Wharton decried the need to provide city services to untaxed nonprofits and businesses within Memphis and citizens of Shelby County outside of Memphis. Because of tax breaks, about 30 percent of the property in Memphis is exempt from standard city property taxes. Left unsaid was the fact that those tax breaks were given and are still being given with the approval of the people at the retreat or by agencies such as the Industrial Development Board of Center City Commission. On top of that, Tourism Development Zones and Tax Increment Financing districts have dedicated revenue streams that keep money out of the general fund. How to put all that together in one picture?

“That is the crux,” said Wharton.

City finance officials are forecasting a deficit of about $17 million this year. Sharp-eyed observers, however, will see different figures depending on which year or city fund is under discussion. The general trend is this: Local property tax revenues continue to decline, sales tax revenues is recovering slowly, and fines and fees have fallen short of expectations. A property tax increase of 18 cents that was approved but not imposed last year is one possibility.

Council members had a few gripes.

“Where was the big picture” last year when the city supposedly had a $6 million surplus, wondered Myron Lowery.

“There are people in this room who were here five years ago,” said Wanda Halbert, adding “I’m seeing some of my colleagues get major money and my district is not getting anything.”

Janis Fullilove inquired about a payroll tax on non-residents who work in Memphis or a state income tax. Those prospects, history has shown, are unlikely. She noted that while the players on the Memphis Grizzlies and the Nashville Predators hockey team pay a privilege tax, the Tennessee Titans do not. In the current shortened NBA season, the Grizz tax only nets a bit less than $1 million, finance officials said.

Finance director Roland McElrath said bond debt payments will get priority over other expenses, and the administration will present the council with a balanced budget in April. Wharton said “there will be some pressure regardless of what we do” on the city’s bond rating because of the ripple effect from a big bond default in Jefferson County (Birmingham) Alabama.

Retreats are a near-annual event, and this one was more focused — and shorter — than several I have witnessed. A low point came one year in the Herenton administration when the gang traveled all the way to Jackson, Tennessee for such a session. Finishing the job in under three hours is progress of a sort. And so was the setting, on a stretch of Poplar Avenue between Midtown and downtown that used to be lined with public housing projects and now has a hospital tower and attractive housing.

To belabor the metaphor one more time, it takes time to turn around a big ship in the water, especially in a field of icebergs.

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Mayor Mixes Show Biz and 100-Days-Plan in State of City

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With shout-outs from special guests representing “Memphis The Musical,” St. Jude’s, the Memphis Grizzlies, and celebrity chefs Patrick and Gina Neely, Mayor A C Wharton delivered a 40-minute State of the City speech Monday that sounded like it had been assembled by a committee.

Wharton said he had spoken to every member of the Memphis City Council and it showed. There were nods to such pet projects and issues as Elvis Presley Boulevard (Harold Collins), gun violence (Myron Lowery), flood control (Jim Strickland), minority contracting (Janis Fullilove), and pension reform and managed competition (Kemp Conrad) as well old stand-bys such as crime and early childhood education.

On the sober side, there was the announcement that with the next property reappraisal, Memphis’ total assessments will decline for the first time in modern history at the same time the city faces a major increase in bond payments. The mayor did not go into detail about foreclosures, the schools merger, or the tax rate.

Wharton is creating a three-person leadership team of CAO George Little, housing and development specialist Robert Lipscomb, and an as yet unnamed chief finance officer “to analyze, plan, and implement the strategies for these priorities that propel us forward.”

“I acknowledge that our agenda will not be completed in 100 days or in 1,000 days or perhaps not even during this term,” Wharton said. “Memphis’ structural challenges are long-standing and will not be solved without sustained work.”

The four priorities are safe and vibrant neighborhoods, prosperity and opportunity for all, invest in young people, and advance a culture of excellence in city government.

The next 100 days will include announcements of new investments in neighborhoods, an inventory of every park in Memphis, bringing competitive baseball back to neighborhoods, a seven-acre park at the site of the Lonestar concrete plant downtown near the interstate ramps, a new task force on early childhood development, a system called “3.1.1.” to centralize non-emergency calls to city government, and a “Blueprint For Prosperity Plan.”

Wharton said he was motivated to accelerate his plans by events during a 48-hour period last week that included the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy at a basketball game, disclosure of corruption by “just a tiny group of those who work for us” in city government, and the chamber of commerce announcement of more than $1 billion in investment in Memphis last year.

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City Council/Mayor: Haves, Have-nots

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(Note to readers. An earlier version of this post contained incomplete or inaccurate information from the Shelby County Election Commission stating that Reid Hedgepeth had not filed his second-quarter financial report. At the request of the Flyer, Election Commission administrator Richard Holden is investigating. This post will be updated.)

The 12 members of the Memphis City Council seeking reelection on October 6th list cash balances of zero to $90,119 and loans up to $170,000.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, an odds-on favorite for reelection, has $274,954.

The forms were due July 12th. Council chairman Myron Lowery filed Friday morning, four days late. He said he files two forms, one as council member and another from his previous mayoral campaign, and the online information led him to believe that both were due July 15th. A stickler for detail, Lowery said it was a simple misunderstanding.

A clerk at the Shelby County Election Commission said the state can assess penalties but there is a seven-day grace period. In reality, nobody on the council has ever received so much as a slap on the wrist for failing to file on time or for failing to file complete information, and the mainstream media is oblivious.

But money matters, and voters and, especially, challengers should pay attention. It buys advertising, fundraisers, research, campaign workers, and yard signs. With turnouts generally dismal, a well-funded candidate and a candidate with name recognition has an advantage. A healthy war chest can deter challengers. By the same token, an incumbent with no serious challengers doesn’t have to raise much money.

Bottom line: If you don’t pay attention then don’t bitch.

All council incumbents are running for reelection except for Barbara Swearengen Ware, who resigned. The city election will also include the mayoral race and some judicial races.

This is a squirrely election year in some ways.

The deadline for candidates to file is July 21st. Early voting starts a few weeks before the election, which is going to make it especially hard for challengers because this is a redistricting year, and the district boundaries won’t be finalized until the council meets on July 19th. Some potential candidates don’t know which district they will wind up in. In the proposed redistricting, downtown, for example, is split but there is some pressure being exerted to put it back together.

That is also the day on which candidates to replace Ware will make their pitches to the council, which will appoint an interim replacement who will serve through December. The appointee will have a leg up in October should he or she decide to seek a full term. The appointee (like every member, for that matter) will be a potential swing vote on a council currently consisting of six white and six blacks.

Here is a list of council incumbents and their reported cash balance and loans, if any.

Bill Boyd: $1,428.
Joe Brown: $4,163.
Kemp Conrad: $71,260, $38,633 in loans.
Harold Collins: $25,421.
Shea Flinn: $164, $170,000 in loans.
Janice Fullilove: $603, $5,854 in loans and obligations.
Ed Ford Jr.: $11,320, $9,074 in loans.
Wanda Halbert: $0.
Reid Hedgepeth: $54,560, $22,459 in loans.
Myron Lowery: $2,804.
Bill Morrison: $22,257.
Jim Strickland, $90,119, $40,747 in loans.

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Redistricting Memphis in Black and White

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Memphis City Council districts are being redrawn. This happens every ten years. It is vitally interesting to current council members, pretty interesting to potential challengers and people who keep up with local politics, and a bore to those who have no idea who their council representatives are.

But like soccer and the NBA draft, redistricting has its moment in the media spotlight every now and then, and the process says something about how Memphis is changing and where black and white people are moving to and from. This is where things get interesting.

Memphis has a population of 646,889. There are 13 members of the City Council. Seven of them come from district seats, and six of them come from “super districts” which are combinations of three or more smaller districts. Over time, some districts gain population while others lose. In the proposed redistricting, which the council will take up on July 19th, each regular district has about 92,000 people, plus or minus 5 percent. Each super district has about 323,000 people.

There are 409,818 black people, 190,141 white people, and 42,020 Hispanics, 10,193 Asians, and 26,178 “other” in Memphis. Since 2000, the population of Memphis remained fairly steady but the white population decreased from 34 percent to 29 percent and the black population increased from 61 percent to 63 percent.

The present council has 12 members because the 13th member, Barbara Swearengen Ware, resigned. Six members are black and six are white.

City Council attorney Allan Wade was in charge of redistricting. Wade got raw data from the Office of Planning and Development and input from all seven district council members and most of the super-district members. Is redistricting, then, a rigged game to preserve the status quo?

“Politics was not involved at all,” said Wade, although that could change once the proposal is taken up by the council. Wade was guided by the principle of one man, one vote to make districts roughly the same size and by the dictates of the 1995 Voting Rights Decree to reflect racial factors. Four of the seven districts are at least 75 percent black, as is one of the super districts. Hence there are likely to be at least seven black council members, as there would be at present if Ware had not quit.

The district that gained the most population between 2000 and 2010 was District 2, represented by Bill Boyd. It includes most of East Memphis and Cordova and is 52 percent white and 39 percent black in the proposal. The other district that gained population was District 1, represented by Bill Morrison. It includes Raleigh, Frayser, and other areas and is 36 percent white and 54 percent black in the proposal.

The districts that lost the most people were District 6, represented by Ed Ford, and District 4, represented by Wanda Halbert. In the proposed redistricting, District 6 is 89 percent black and District 4 is 78 percent black.

The whitest district is District 5, represented by Jim Strickland. It includes a lot of Midtown and is 67 percent white in the proposal. The blackest district is District 6. It includes a lot of South Memphis.

The super districts — protests and disclaimers notwithstanding — are rigged to elect black or white candidates. Super District 8, represented by Joe Brown, Janice Fullilove, and Myron Lowery, is 85 percent black in the proposal. Super District 9, represented by Reid Hedgepeth, Shea Flinn, and Kemp Conrad, is 48 percent white and 41 percent black in the proposal.

This is not to say that a white candidate cannot win in a majority-black district or vice versa. There is no runoff in Super District races, but there is a runoff in district races between the top two candidates if no candidate gets a majority of the vote. That is how Morrison won his seat in 2007. It is highly unlikely that a white candidate could win in Super District 8, but it is not unlikely that a black candidate could win in Super District 9. Candidates in Super District races must declare which “position” they are seeking, which amounts to choosing their opponent.

The best way to get on the council, should that be your goal, is to run for an open seat. Incumbents are tough to beat unless they get in legal trouble, as we have seen. Nine of the current council members were elected for their first terms in 2007. So far, nobody on the council except for Ware has said they do not plan to seek reelection.

I asked a few present and former council members for some how-to suggestions. This what they said.

District campaigns are different from super-district campaigns. You can go door-to-door in the former, not the latter.

TV advertising is helpful if not mandatory in super districts.

The voting population is not the same as the general population. If you don’t “get” that then you probably should not consider running.

Social media can get you some initial buzz and boost your confidence, but it’s hard to run on it because the virtual community may not live in Memphis.

Try try again. Many a council member has won second time around.

The filing deadline is July 21st. The election for council and mayor is October 6th, with early voting starting before that.

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Schools Merger Up to Judge Mays Now

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No guns, no sex, no stolen cash, no cops. Just a stack of holiday homework for U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays that may be the most important federal court case in Memphis in decades.

All of the parties in the schools merger case filed their final briefs on Thursday, setting the stage for Mays to decide when and how the Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools will be consolidated. The question of “if” seems moot since everyone agrees it’s going to happen sooner or later.

There are seven players in the game. Their briefs total 180 pages, plus a few hundred pages of supporting exhibits. Not exactly a full-employment act for lawyers, but a pretty good lick. Judge Mays says he will make a ruling with dispatch.

Here is a summary of the final positions. At stake: the future of two school systems with roughly 150,000 students, one (Memphis City Schools) overwhelmingly poor and black, average ACT score 16.6, and one (Shelby County Schools) majority middle-class and affluent and racially mixed, average ACT score 21.

The legalistic blah-blah about special school districts is not mere semantics. The underlying issue is who gets the bill for paying for MCS, which has a 2011 budget of $1,196,364,127. Presently, 6% comes from the city of Memphis, 30% from Shelby County, 38% from the state, 21% from federal government, and 5% from other local sources. The city council wants to get out from under the financial obligation but has booked a 18-cent property tax hike just in case. When the systems are consolidated it is possible that there will be one countywide tax for schools, not a separate tax in Memphis in addition to the county tax.

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Kicking Cans and Cliches at City Hall

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“Kick the can” is the early leader for Cliche of the Year, edging out “tough choices” and running ahead of last year’s winner, “the new normal.”

When you hear those phrases you know it is budget-making time in Memphis, Nashville, and Washington. In Memphis, the process takes about a month and a half from starter’s gun to finish line. It’s still early, but not too early to handicap the field.

“Kick the can,” (KTK) and its cousin “kick the can down the road,” means that politicians make the same old arguments, cobble together a little of this and a little of that, and wind up putting off the “tough choices” until next year. Few will admit to being a can kicker. A can kicker is sort of a wimp. Kicking the can means refusing to make the tough choices (TC) or “bold strokes” (BS) that will make the future better for our children, who are “our most precious asset” (OMPA).

The opposite of KTK is “game changer.” Here are some game changers and the TCs that go along with them. Think of this early stage of the budget process as the bidding round in bridge or poker, before the ins are in and the outs are out and the cards are played. I bid this, you bid that, I counter, you counter, and so on.

Raise property taxes, either permanently or “one time” via a “special assessment.” The city of Memphis can raise a lot of money this way but would risk driving residents to less-taxing parts of Shelby County and the world. Councilman Shea Flinn and Mayor A C Wharton support a one-time assessment to pay off the city school system for an old debt. Flinn says it has little if any chance, even with the mayor’s support.

A payroll tax is an old saw that someone brings up every year. It was proposed by former councilman Janet Hooks several years ago and taken seriously enough to get bashed by the chamber of commerce and business leaders and trounced in a referendum. Council member Wanda Halbert brought it up this week.

Close cousins of the payroll tax, sometimes called a privilege tax, are toll roads and bridges. The idea is to tax somebody else, particularly people who work in Memphis but live somewhere else. You can bet trucking and logistics firms would love this.

Efficiency studies are popular with non-can-kickers who want to be seen as more practical than payroll taxers or toll roaders. There is usually an efficiency study handy on the shelf somewhere. Councilman Bill Boyd mentioned the most current one this week. The problem, as Wharton noted, is that there is no slap-your-forehead, why-didn’t-we-think-of-this-before idea in it. And Wharton, remember, has been a mayor for ten years.

The efficiency study’s cousin is innovation. Innovation is golden. You can’t be against innovation. You sound innovative just by saying the word. And it is a perfect opportunity to say “think outside the box,” (TOTB), winner of the 1999 Cliche of the Year Award. It is also a copout (1969 winner) and a crock of crap (COC) unless the person saying it has an actual innovative idea that can get seven votes on the council.

The all-time efficiency study is the consolidation campaign. We have been there and done that.

Reducing executive salaries, either in the police department (council member Janice Fullilove) or across the board, is a politically safe option. But it is neither brave nor a game changer. Anyone who bothers to read publicly available tax forms and proxy statements knows that local nonprofits, hospitals, and corporations pay ten times higher executive salaries than the city or county or the school boards.

Privatizing government functions is a conservative favorite, right up with there with “deep cuts” in pension benefits and number of employees. The jail used to be a privatization target but not any more, for some reason. The latest small-bore targets are downtown street parking and delinquent tax collections. What is not said is that strictly enforcing parking fines and adding meters everywhere would probably piss people off and make them less likely to come downtown as opposed to the ‘burbs, where parking is free. And both of these measures are borderline KTKs because they would give the city a one-time payment, ala a pawn shop transaction.

Privatizing the city sanitation department is flying just below the radar (1989 Winner) at the moment. Joe Brown detected it and called out Flinn yesterday, vowing to oppose it in the name of sanitation workers and women, whom he said would be disproportionately harmed. Sanitation workers calls up visions of Martin Luther King, I Am a Man signs, and 1968 and hectoring visits from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Privatization is even less likely than a tax increase.

Almost as sacred as sanitation workers are firemen. Firemen and policemen have a habit of showing up in large numbers at council meetings when they smell a rat. Both divisions are off the chopping table at the moment even though they account for well over half of the operating budget.

This is why KTK is always the fallback option. And as Wharton said, it is neither popular nor painless to cut 125 jobs, $23 million here and $10 million there, and everyone’s paid vacation days from 14 to 12. Plus, as an attorney he is constitutionally and philosophically opposed to defying three courts that have said the city must pay the school system. He has a possible deal with MCS to settle for $40 million because MCS doesn’t want to disable the engine that makes it go.

A one-time property tax assessment of 39 cents on the tax rate would put the past debt behind us but not relieve Memphians of their double taxation for schools. That issue is pending in the federal court, and Memphis is likely to be on the hook for $80 million a year for another two years at least.

Wharton can kick the can as well as any politician, but he’s not doing it this time. A one-time tax assessment and a menu of “shared sacrifice” like the one he proposed Tuesday are sensible and doable. We’ll see what cards the city council has left to play, and who does what, who bluffs and folds, and who kicks the can in the next six weeks.