Tag: Memphis City Council

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Council Committee Approves ‘Black Lives Matter’ Renaming

Memphis City Hall

The Memphis City Council’s planning and zoning committee passed an amended form of a resolution that called for the renaming of a stretch of Poplar Avenue to Black Lives Matter Avenue.

The committee voted eight to four in favor of the amended form of the resolution with councilwoman Rhonda Logan abstaining. Though the committee unanimously agreed in the sentiment behind the resolution, conflict arose after, as an amendment called for a change in the location of the stretch of road and a street to also be named in honor of the late John Lewis. 

Through the resolution, the location and name of the stretch of road will be reviewed by an advisory committee established earlier in the day to assist the council regarding city of Memphis street, park, and place names. The resolution was initially proposed by council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas in a press conference Monday morning.

The council plans to use the Land Use Control Board to rename the stretch of Poplar between Front Street and Danny Thomas Boulevard.

“This particular stretch was chosen because it highlights where … we spend most of our budget and our citizen’s tax dollars and the target institutions in which we have the current capacity to change for the present and for future generations,” said Easter-Thomas.

Council member JB Smiley was critical of the committee’s decision, citing that they had the power to make a decision today.

“For far too long we have been pushing and kicking the can down for Black people to get what they deserve,” said Smiley. “What we are proposing today is simply telling Black folks your time for justice should be delayed. I cannot fathom why people, particularly in the city of Memphis, would want to delay what’s due.”

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News News Blog

Black Leaders Express Concern on Police Referendum Ahead of Council Vote


The Memphis City Council will reconsider a referendum on police and fire residency requirements set to be on the November ballot at its meeting Tuesday.

The council voted in February not to rescind an ordinance passed by the previous council to allow voters to decide if public safety officials should live within 50 miles of the city. Now, the council will return to that ordinance, deciding whether or not to keep it on the November ballot.

Ahead of the council’s vote, a coalition of Black clergy members gathered virtually to express concerns about the referendum and relaxing the residency requirements for police officers.

Rev. Earle Fisher of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church said the city’s premise behind relaxing residency requirements is that “violent crime is best managed by an increase in police officers, thus we must relax requirements because we can’t recruit enough personnel.”

But, Fisher says the group disagrees with that premise: “We do not need more officers to solve the problem. It’s a matter of quality, not quantity.”

“We decrease crime by decreasing poverty, by investing more in public education than we invest in incarceration, by making it easier to get a job paying a livable wage than it is to get access to guns and drugs,” Fisher says. “To this end, we implore every city council member to do the right things and vote to remove this referendum.”

The vote signifies “our broader long-term commitment to change,” Fisher said.

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Rev. Roz Nichols of Freedom Chapel Christian Church said the group “expects and demands for us to have safety officers that will serve and live as residents in our community. We do believe that residency matters.”

“Substantial transformation,” Nichols said, will come in the form of funding for agencies to “appropriately” respond to mental health crises, at-risk youth, homelessness, and domestic violence.

“These are not new issues, but we are at a critical moment when we are looking for transformational change,” Nichols said. “How can the $9.8 million from the justice department be appropriated to fund those things that help support community safety?”

Nichols said she and the other clergy members “expect the city council to move in the direction of systemic change and not perpetuate the status quo” by removing the referendum from the November ballot.

“More officers, regardless of their residency, will not be the solution to the real crises we face,” she said.

The city council will take the first of three votes on the ordinance to remove the residency requirement question from the November ballot Tuesday (today) during its 3:30 meeting. Tune in here.

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City Council Votes to Require Masks in Public


With the number of COVID-19 cases continuing to rise here, the Memphis City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday, June 16th, requiring masks be worn in public spaces within the city.

The council voted 9-4 in favor of the ordinance, with council members Ford Canale, Frank Colvett Jr., Chase Carlise, and Worth Morgan voting no.

The ordinance applies to public spaces including all essential and non-essential businesses, government buildings, public and private elevators, healthcare facilities, public transit, and ride sharing vehicles.

According to the ordinance, masks don’t have to be worn when one is in a private office or car, when eating or drinking at a restaurant, and during outdoor recreation.

Children under 12 and adults who have been advised not to wear a face covering for medical reasons are exempt.

Violations of the ordinance would result in a warning on the first offense and community service on the second offense.

Police Reform

In other business, the council passed three resolutions related to police reform and accountability Tuesday.

A resolution asking the city to adopt the “8 Can’t Wait” police policies, as well as one requesting that the Memphis Police Department (MPD) report all complaints of excessive force and misuse of body cameras on the city’s data portal passed unanimously.

The council also voted 12-0, with Morgan abstaining, to request Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland to appoint a task force to search for and select the next MPD chief.


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Council Committee OKs Resolutions on Police Transparency, ‘8 Can’t Wait,’ Rallings’ Successor

Memphis City Hall

Despite technical issues and frequent streaming lapses, a Memphis City Council committee advanced three items that focus on police reform at its online meeting Tuesday.

The first is a resolution sponsored by Councilman JB Smiley Jr. that aims to increase the transparency of the complaint process for the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

The executive committee voted unanimously in favor of the resolution, which specifically calls for the public safety section of the city’s data portal to be expanded to include all complaints of excessive force and misuse of body cameras, including a timeline of the investigation into the complaint.

The resolution also calls for the administration to access the feasibility of expanding the portal to include these complaints.

Smiley said the city has the “information and infrastructure” to include this information free of charge.

“Making this information available is about transparency and access,” Smiley said. “It’s about a fundamental change to reduce violence between citizens and law enforcement.”

MPD director Michael Rallings said the department might not currently have the technology to fulfill this request and that there might need to be an investment in new technology before it can.

“We want to do whatever you want,” Rallings said. “We just want to make sure we know exactly what you want.”

Councilman Worth Morgan said he is “all for” the resolution: “I love me some good transparency.”

However, Morgan said the details of the resolution need to be hashed out so the council can “hone in on exactly what we are asking for.”

Councilwoman Cheyenne Johnson, moved to amend the resolution to include the fire department as well.

The committee recommended the amended resolution for approval.

The council also advanced a joint resolution between the council and the Shelby County Commission requesting that MPD and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department adopt the “8 Can’t Wait” use-of-force reduction policy.

The policy was created by Campaign Zero, an anti-police-brutality advocacy group, to be implemented by law enforcement agencies in order to reduce and prevent violent encounters.

The eight principles of the policy include: banning chokeholds and strangleholds, requiring de-escalation, requiring a warning before shooting, exhausting all alternatives before shooting, intervening and stopping excessive force by other officers, banning shooting at moving vehicles, requiring use-of-force continuum, and requiring comprehensive reporting each time an officer uses force or threatens to do so.

According to the Campaign Zero website, MPD already practices three of the eight principles, but according to Rallings, four of the policies are currently in place.

Those include the ban of the chokehold, as well as requiring de-escalation, warning before shooting, and use-of-force continuum.

Rallings added that MPD just issued a new policy Tuesday on officers’ duty to intervene.

Morgan told the council that “on the face of it, some of these seem good,” but that he has questions about some of the policies, naming the ban of shooting from vehicles as an example.

“I can think of a lot of circumstances where it would be appropriate and help safeguard lives more than anything,” Morgan said. “A classic example would be Charlottesville, where at a peaceful protest a white supremacist decided to weaponize his vehicle and drove it through the crowd.”

Rallings is expected to return to the council on Tuesday, June 16th, to present the departments existing adherence to the “8 Can’t Wait” policies.

Martavious Jones withdrew a resolution that would ban the use of chokeholds by public safety officers after Rallings explained that chokeholds, except when an officer is fighting for their life, are already prohibited under MPD policy and state law.

The last resolution recommended for approval, sponsored by Michalyn Easter-Thomas, calls for Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland to form a community task force to assist in the selection of a new MPD director. Rallings announced last year that he plans to retire in April 2021.

All the resolutions, with the exception of Jones’ chokehold item, will be voted on at the full council meeting on Tuesday, June 16th.

Read the resolutions below.

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City Council Looks to Expand Police Transparency, Plan for MPD Director Rallings’ Succession

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Brandon Dill

Michael Rallings with crowd during protest

Joining the national conversation about police reform, the Memphis City Council is set to hear four items related to police transparency, use of force, and de-escalation this afternoon (Tuesday).

The first is a resolution sponsored by Councilman JB Smiley Jr. that would increase the transparency of the complaint process for the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

The resolution specifically calls for the public safety section of the city’s data portal to be expanded to include all complaints of excessive force and misuse of body cameras, including a timeline of the investigation into the complaint.

The second resolution sponsored by council members Smiley, Michalyn Easter-Thomas, and Martavious Jones, is a joint resolution between the council and the Shelby County Commission, requesting that MPD and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department adopt the “8 Can’t Wait” use-of-force reduction policy.

The policy was created by Campaign Zero, an anti-police brutality advocacy group, to be implemented by law enforcement agencies in order to reduce and prevent violent encounters.

Campaign Zero

The eight principles of the policy include: banning chokeholds and strangleholds, requiring de-escalation, requiring a warning before shooting, exhausting all alternatives before shooting, intervening and stopping excessive force by other officers, banning shooting from vehicles, requiring use-of-force continuum, and requiring comprehensive reporting each time an officer uses force or threatens to do so.

Jones is also introducing a resolution that would ban the use of chokeholds by public safety officers and create a system for reporting when they are used.

The last resolution, sponsored by Thomas, calls for Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland to form a community task force to assist in the selection of a new MPD director.

The council will discuss these items in its executive session today (Tuesday) at 1 p.m. See the full text of the resolutions below.

[pdf-1]

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City Council Ordinance Could Require Wearing Face Mask in Public

CREDIT: CDC

CDC

Updated Post: The Memphis City Council approved the first reading of an ordinance that will require residents to wear face masks in public.

The ordinance is sponsored by Councilman Jeff Warren, along with Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas, who told the council “taking precautions are better than leaving it to ‘could have, would have, should have.” Easter Thomas added that the city does not have hard data showing that the number of positive cases will begin to increase.

Eleven of the 13 council members voted in favor of the ordinance, while council members Frank Colvett Jr. and Worth Morgan abstained.

The council will return to the ordinance on May 19th for the second of three votes.


Original Post: The Memphis City Council is looking to require residents to wear face masks in public places, as the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise here.

Councilman Jeff Warren presented the ordinance to the council Tuesday afternoon, saying that as the city begins to reopen, there needs to be an effort to curb the number of cases here.

Council members JB Smiley Jr. and J. Ford Canale were hesitant to support the measure, saying it could place an extra burden on residents if they are fined for not wearing a mask. Canale also expressed concern about the availability of masks.

The council gave the ordinance a negative recommendation, but will vote on the first of three readings of the measure at its full meeting beginning at 3:30 p.m. today (Tuesday). The ordinance would have to be passed on three readings to become law.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended since early April that all individuals wear masks in public places. Other cities across the country, such as Denver, San Antonio, and Birmingham have already instituted some form of face mask requirements.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Nuttery From Nashville

If it’s February, I’m probably going to be writing at least one column about the Tennessee General Assembly, which gets rolling in late January each year. That column usually includes a rundown of the latest goofy bills brought up for consideration by our reliably loony GOP legislators. This year is, unfortunately, no exception. So here goes …

Last week, Representative James Van Huss (who prefers to go by his “prophet name,” Micah) proposed the following bill, which … Well, just read it:

“Resolves to recognize CNN and The Washington Post as fake news and part of the media wing of the Democratic Party, and further resolves to condemn such media outlets for denigrating our citizens and implying that they are weak-minded followers instead of people exercising their rights that our veterans paid for with their blood.”

The impetus for this stellar bit of law-making was apparently the fact that Van Huss learned that a CNN pundit and a WAPO columnist had dared to suggest that some Trump supporters may not be, er, very bright or sophisticated.

By putting this bill up for consideration in the state House, Trumpster Van Huss pretty much proves the pundits’ point. In fact, Van Huss is the same Einstein who, during last year’s session, read aloud an article from The Onion as the basis for taking a position on another bill, not realizing it was satire. Oops.

But it’s not like Van Huss is breaking new ground here. The stupid has been burning in Nashville for some time now. In recent years, the General Assembly has considered: a bill that mandated abstinence-only sex education; a “gateway body parts” bill that prohibited teachers from using words such as “gay”; a bill to allow teachers to abstain from teaching evolution or climate change; a bill cracking down on “saggy pants”; a bill that addressed the possibility of a mop sink in the capitol building being a possible “foot-washing” sink for Muslims. And on it goes.

In this year’s session, Governor Bill Lee has already signed a bill that would allow some adoption agencies to deny LGBTQ couples the right to adopt, despite enormous pushback from the state’s largest corporations and business interests, who fear that such backward legislation will make it more difficult for them to lure employees to Tennessee, and that it will chase off major conventions and events, such as, say, the NHL or NBA All-Star game.

The legislators are also debating whether to leave a bust of KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest in the capitol building or perhaps replace it with one of Dolly Parton. You can’t make this stuff up.

But it’s not all fun and games and bigotry and racism. There are also the usual attempts to screw over Memphis. And this one is a doozy. Consider, if you will, this bill, which came to light on Monday: “Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 69-10-112, is amended by adding the following as a new subsection: In granting a certificate of exemption under this section, no home rule municipality or county operating under a county charter form of government may exercise authority or power over landowner riparian water rights and reasonable use for water to which a landowner has a riparian water right.”

In plain English, this means that in Tennessee a county or city would no longer have control over local water rights. It means, for example, the recent successful efforts by activists such as Save Our Aquifer and the Sierra Club to convince local authorities to prohibit the TVA from drilling into the Memphis Sand Aquifer would no longer be possible. The state would make the call on Shelby County water rights, instead of having it under local control. I have no doubt that the TVA would have won that battle if it had been decided at the state level — and we’d already have five wells dug into our aquifer next to a toxic wastewater site.

The Sierra Club’s Scott Banbury agrees: “If this were in effect when we fought the TVA, the Shelby County Health Department would not have been able to take their groundwater wells away from them,” he said. “This bill would take away Shelby County’s authority to deny well permits or institute any ‘conservation fees’ on private wells. It would undo all the work of the Shelby County Groundwater Board, Shelby County Health Department, and Protect Our Aquifer.”

Enough, already. There needs to be an all-hands-on-deck resistance mounted to stop this bill in its tracks. The mayors, city council, county commission, and all local House and Senate legislators should have their hair on fire about this. This is beyond party. Memphis’ unique and bountiful aquifer is one of its greatest assets. Do we really want to have it controlled by the likes of James Van Huss?

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Opinion The Last Word

Trash Matters: About Those Proposed Changes to Garbage and Recycling Schedules

With the holiday season in full swing and spontaneous weather that turns autumn foliage into cold mildewy blankets, one cannot be blamed for letting the lawn debris pile up. At least that’s what I tell myself most years, when the neighbors are taking their Christmas lights down and I’m trudging through a six-inch wall of decomposing leaves to get to my car in the morning.

This year’s different, though. When we cranked up our backpack blower last weekend, we were among the first on our street. For someone who usually ends up overpaying someone to vacuum our front lawn into a truck in, like, February, it was a major feat. Most years I’m shamed into action by my fear of judgment, or worse, of a letter from code enforcement. I’m on the ball this year, motivated by a message from the mayor, whose blight reduction strategy has taken a bizarre detour.

What a damn mess

Last week’s weekly email from Mayor Strickland’s office started on a hopeful note. Great news! We fixed our garbage collection issues! Everything’s been running like clockwork. Well, of course it has. The bar was low. When you reward contracts to the lowest bidder, you get what you pay for. Garbage collection is thankless work: If you don’t pay well, there’s no reason to care. Hire the people, give them the tools they need, and compensate them appropriately. Do this in literally any situation and there’s a decent chance you’ll succeed. The bad news is: Now that we know how much it costs, we have to stop doing all the stuff that was working. Makes perfect sense.

There are two possible scenarios here. One, the mayor’s people miscalculated the long-term cost of bringing the job in-house, hiring the people and purchasing the equipment necessary to do the work properly. Or, they overestimated the community’s enthusiasm for paying more for a basic public service. So they requested a more than $7 per-month rate hike that Memphis City Council, unsurprisingly, did not approve. I’m neither a politician nor an economist, but increasing the cost of something by more than 30 percent at once seems like a tough sell. Yes, Strickland said they “may well have to” propose a rate increase, but that’s about the equivalent of your dad saying “we’ll see” when you ask to borrow the car.

So they’re going to lay off 275 sanitation workers. They’re going to cut back services to what appears to be an even lower level than before solid waste collection was “fixed” in Memphis. Happy holidays to everyone who wished for a return to the good old days of spotty pickup and broken bins! Starting January 6th, there will be no more outside-the-cart pickup. Recycling will get picked up once a month, so pounds and pounds of recyclable materials will end up in a landfill. Sorry, it’s the only way, says the mayor. Better get those leaf bags to the curb by the end of the month or else they’ll be there forever.

This is a bluff, right? It has to be because I am struggling to reconcile “Memphis has momentum” and “brilliant at the basics” with “we cannot afford to pick up your trash.”

“I’m never a fan of raising rates, but this is our only option” might sound more sincere if I hadn’t just read about yet another developer getting tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives. None of those guys can chip in, so we’ll just wait around and let the trash pile up for a few weeks or months or years until city council comes around on the rate increase. Sounds like a plan. Maybe one hard rain will be enough to remind them streets flood when storm drains are full of leaves that didn’t get bagged because nobody is coming to pick them up. Here’s hoping the pothole budget is as flush as it was last year.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing strategist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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News News Blog

Memphis 3.0 Gets OK From City Council

The Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive plan was approved by the Memphis City Council Tuesday, after months of delay.

After much debate, the council passed the 3.0 ordinance 7-6 on the third and final reading at the body’s next-to-last meeting of 2019.

Council members Joe Brown, Cheyenne Johnson, Jamita Swearengen, Worth Morgan, Martavious Jones, and Berlin Boyd voted against the plan.

Voting in favor were J. Ford Canale, Frank Colvett Jr., Gerre Currie, Kemp Conrad, Reid Hedgepeth, Patrice Robinson, and Sherman Greer.

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Before the vote, Boyd moved to delay the issue for two weeks, but that motion failed. Boyd called for the delay to seek legal counsel from council attorney Allan Wade, who was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.

Boyd said based on the Tennessee Code Annotated, the council is not required to adopt the plan in order for it to move forward since the Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board has already approved it.

Doug McGowen, chief operating officer for the city, confirmed that the council isn’t statutorily required to approve the plan.

Boyd, along with Jones, who also wanted to delay the vote, wanted clarity about the measure from Wade. Jones raised concerns about the way the Memphis 3.0 plan was presented to the council: “The way it [Memphis 3.0] has been presented to us, I felt — and I don’t know how many of my colleagues share this — that we had to approve this.” Before last week, Jones said the council was under the impression that “we had to vote it up or down.”

McGowen responded, saying “there was no intent to make anybody believe they had to do anything.”

“The administration has presented this plan in full transparency that we would like the council to approve it,” McGowen said. “We have never said you were under statutory obligation to do so.”

Greer, who leaves his District 1 post at the end of the year, urged the council to move forward with the vote, opposing any more delays.

“We can ask questions for the next 30 years,” Greer said. “It’s time to vote. This doesn’t have one dollar that’s tied to it that has to be spent in one area or another. It’s a plan. Plans change. We’ve said many times that seven votes can move anything.”

The council first delayed the plan in March after a group of residents from the New Chicago area voiced opposition.

In May, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland signed an executive order implementing Memphis 3.0 on the administrative side.


The council has delayed the vote on Memphis 3.0 several times since March. The council first delayed the vote on the city’s comprehensive plan after a group of residents from the New Chicago area voiced opposition to the plan, citing a lack of inclusion.

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Since then, delays have been attributed to the council needing more information about the plan and its implications. The council took the first of three votes on the ordinance at its July 2nd meeting.

The plan drew little opposition on Tuesday from members of the public. Lynette Williams, president of the Aklena Lakeview Garden Community Development Corporation, was the sole voice of opposition. Williams said that she and other residents in the Lakeview Garden community, located in the southeastern corner of the city, do not support the plan because “it doesn’t include us or District 6.”

“We want the residents to be respected and represented in the outer parts of Memphis, Tennessee, where you have a lot of homeowners and taxpayers,” Williams said. “We want unique improvements in our neighborhoods, we want community investments.”

Councilwoman Patrice Robinson, who voted in favor of Memphis 3.0, said even if amended down the road, the plan gives the city a “road map and a start” to move forward. Robinson also said that once in place, the plan can be further developed to include specific communities.

“We do a disservice to our city as a body if we don’t have a road map to where we’re going,” Robinson said. “Now a plan is not going to include everybody’s street, every community, and this particular plan only talked about the anchors in our community. We can expand upon that. Plans can be changed. Budgets can be created. We control the process right here”

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Boyd said he agrees “a plan is definitely needed,” but certain core issues in communities, such as blight, should also be addressed.

“When you look at certain streets in North Memphis where there are about 15 blighted properties on one street and we can’t even demo those houses, but yet we’re going through and trying to develop a plan for the community,” Boyd said. “We have to figure out how to get back to the basics in figuring out how to stabilize some communities.”


Councilman Worth Morgan wanted to know what would actually change if the plan is approved. In short, John Zennah, director of the city’s division of planning and development said moving forward all land-use decisions made by the city council would have to be consistent with the criteria of the 3.0 plan and that that finding should be reflected in land-use resolutions that the council approves.

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Proposed Change in Fire, Police Residency Requirements Amended

The Memphis City Council continued its discussion Tuesday about lifting the residency requirements for the city’s police and fire personnel, but with a few changes.

The original ordinance, sponsored by council members J. Ford Canale and Gerre Currie, would allow voters to choose whether or not Memphis Police Department (MPD) and Memphis Fire Department (MFD) personnel should have to reside in the city or county, or if they should be allowed to live up to two hours away.

Tuesday Canale proposed four amendments to that ordinance. The first is developing a point system that would create preferential hiring for officers living within the city. The second is implementing a take-home car program for officers living in the city.

The third amendment would change the language of the ordinance, allowing officers to live in bordering counties or within a 50 mile radius instead of the originally proposed two-hour radius.

Finally, Canale recommended that the department only hire outside of the county when the department dips below a full complement of about 2,500 officers.

“We have one goal and only one goal in mind here — to get more men and women to serve the citizens of Memphis,” Canale said. “We’re not on a mission to hire people who don’t live in Memphis. We’re on a mission to put men and women on the street to protect Memphis.”

Councilwoman Cheyenne Johnson questioned why MPD is not able to find enough applicants within the city to fill its roles.

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MPD Director Michael Rallings said police departments across the country are experiencing a recruiting crisis and are challenged to find qualified applicants.

MPD Major Sharon Cunningham told the council that of the 13,000 MPD applicants since 2016, only 470 completed the entire application and training process to become officers.

More than half of those who show interest in becoming an officer either never turn in a completed application with the required documents or never show up for the next step in the hiring process.

Of those that do follow through, “Cunningham said 56 percent don’t make it through the physical ability test. Additional applicants are lost after a background check, psychological evaluation, and medical exam.”


After making it through each of these tests, applicants still must graduate from the Police Training Academy. Cunningham said potential officers are often lost here due to injuries.

Rallings added that retention is also an issue, as MPD officers are “highly skilled” and often recruited to work in other departments across the country or here at the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO).

“What does the Sheriff’s office have that we don’t?” Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen responded.

Working for the SCSO is “very different,” Rallings said, noting the county’s lighter workload and lower call volume. “You can’t even compare the level of work. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

Shifting the focus away from recruiting efforts, Councilman Berlin Boyd told his colleagues that recruiting more officers won’t change the crime demographic in the city, unless the root cause of poverty is addressed.

No votes have been taken on the ordnance yet. If approved by the council after three votes, voters will make the ultimate decision on the ballot next fall.