Tag: Myron Lowery

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Politics Politics Feature

Lowery’s Breakfast Boner

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Regardless of how some current situations come out — Mayor A C Wharton‘s public endorsement of higher salaries for city employees or his “settlement” of the city’s debt to Shelby County Schools (SCS) or, for that matter, his early-bird announcement of IKEA’s coming to Memphis — Wharton’s credibility and his standing with his city council are at serious risk.

Beyond that, while all of the foregoing matters may have constituted an immediate political plus for the mayor as the 2015 city election season gets under way, his political situation could be gravely threatened if any or all of them go south.

The IKEA outcome, for better or for worse, would be shared with other public officials and with the city/county Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board. And the chief impediments to what would appear to be a done deal are the valid questions of whether a) EDGE decides to engage in its first-ever payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangement with a purely retail enterprise; and b) whether state guidelines permit as much. The odds are that “yes” is the answer to both questions.

Score one for the mayor, especially if the whole IKEA/H&M/Trader Joe’s new-business package pans out.

The other two circumstances are different: While there is at least a theoretical prospect of concurrence on the pay-raise matter by some council members, the majority are surely inclined to say no, especially in light of the well-known budget dilemma that caused such agonizing cuts in employee benefits in recent months. Not only does the mayor’s suggestion, made during his remarks at Councilman Myron Lowery‘s New Year’s Day prayer breakfast, not bear logical muster, it also seems to put the council, already bruised and tattered, on the spot one more time.

So, for that matter, has Wharton’s announcement last month of an agreement with SCS Superintendent Dorsey Hopson (and an eagerly compliant SCS board) of a $43 million payout in settlement of the city’s court-ordered liability of $57 million in maintenance-of-effort funding, owed from 2008. But sentiment is building on the council that Wharton did indeed undermine ongoing mediation efforts with SCS, as charged by Councilman Shea Flinn, who was involved in the mediation process.

Flinn and others promptly complained that Wharton’s arbitrary effort sacrificed what many on the council believe is a substantial financial counter-claim. And they pointedly reminded the mayor that, while he had authority over lawsuits involving the city, he would have to come to the council for approval of the financial package.

Even as this state of affairs was settling into focus, an unexpected disruption further jostled the equilibrium of the mayoral race. This one, like the mayor’s pay-raise suggestion, took place at Lowery’s New Year’s Day event at the Airport Hotel.

This was the 24th and latest version of the annual New Year’s Prayer Breakfasts, which Lowery began on January 1, 1992 (coincident with the inauguration of former Mayor Willie Herenton as the first elected black chief executive in Memphis history).

As is his annual wont, Lowery, this year’s council chairman-designate, was closing out the breakfast with some parting words, in the wake of speeches by other political figures — Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Wharton, and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen — interspersed with songs, sermonettes, and prayers by various lay and clerical folks.

Lowery’s prayer breakfasts have often been occasions for collectively thinking out loud and taking stock regarding political directions, and even for the launching of useful initiatives by one or more of those taking part. The breakfasts are, in that sense, traditional events for the larger community, though let us be clear: They are fund-raising events, and there is definitely a self-serving side to them. 

Lowery told his council colleague and chairmanship predecessor Jim Strickland, who was getting ready to take his leave well before the end of the breakfast, not to go, that if he did he would miss some “nice things” Lowery had to say about him.

When the time came for Lowery to conclude the event, he did indeed have some compliments for Strickland, who had dutifully stayed around. In fact, Lowery made a point of asking his colleague, a persistent critic of Wharton whose hopes of running for the city’s premier office himself have been well known (and well underway) for years, to stand. 

“He’s done a great job as chairman during a very difficult year,” said Lowery, amid other words of praise. “I like him. He’s got the potential to be a future mayor of Memphis.” Hmmm, the crowd had to be wondering, what was coming? An endorsement? Even Strickland, who was reasonably sure that Lowery, himself a 2009 loser to Wharton, was committed to supporting the mayor’s reelection, found himself wondering.

After all: He’s got the potential to be a future mayor of Memphis. “But not just yet,” Lowery said, suddenly undercutting the premise he himself had raised. There is no way to describe what came next as anything other than setting his council colleague up for a fall. The mortified Strickland, still standing and the focus of everyone’s gaze, would surely see it that way.

“I have to be honest,” Lowery was saying. “I’m with the mayor. … He’s controversial. He may not do everything right all the time. But his heart’s in the right place, and he’s done a good job.”

Lowery then began, with Strickland still standing there, a full-fledged endorsement of Wharton: “I know a lot of people,” Lowery kept saying, and what else was this meant to be but the boast of a kingmaker?

Strickland, meanwhile, had had enough. Lowery was still going strong when his understandably offended colleague pointedly began to walk. Intercepted midway by a reporter on his passage out, Strickland shook his head and said, in amazement as much as in anger, “He asked me to stick around to hear that!”

Lowery now has an ambivalent status with his fellow council members. A highly chameleon-like figure, emotionally and issue-wise, he is politically ambidextrous enough to have positioned himself on the council as a conciliatory figure, a maker of compromises between factions and, for that matter, across the occasional racial divide. For that, and for his experience, gained from nearly six full council terms, he has been able to maintain a fair degree of confidence from his peers — enough to have earned repeated elections as council chair, most recently for the year to come.

But there is such a thing as, metaphorically, throwing your weight around, and Lowery’s New Year’s Day gaffe seemed to numerous colleagues and other onlookers to be just that. That was especially so at a time when Lowery has made known his hopes of promoting his son, Mickell Lowery, to succeed him on the council, perhaps as early as this year. For the record, the younger Lowery, a management consultant, shared moderating duties with his father at this year’s prayer breakfast and was arguably the abler and certainly the more discreet of the two.

That Lowery, at a time when at least two of his council colleagues, Strickland and Harold Collins, have openly nursed serious ambitions for mayor, publicly proclaimed his endorsement of Wharton’s reelection — at a putatively neutral “prayer breakfast” — was bizarre enough. That he did so while having contender Strickland stand at full attention was widely regarded as outrageous — no matter the praise he had heaped on his colleague (which seemed patronizing in the after-taste) and no matter the sorry-if-I-offended-you non-apology apology he reportedly made to Strickland later.

Though no one on the council has said much publicly, there is definite sentiment among Lowery’s colleagues to call him to account on his fidelity to a mayor who is increasingly in disfavor with the council (and whom, ironically, Lowery himself, then serving as interim mayor, opposed in the 2009 special election that followed Mayor Herenton’s retirement). There has even been an exploratory balloon or two regarding the prospect of reconsidering the chairmanship.

And, whatever his intent, the one definite result of Lowery’s New Year’s Day gaffe has been to make the prospects for contesting Wharton’s reelection more likely.

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Politics Politics Feature

It Was What It Was

The year 2014 began with a call for unity from several of the political principals of Memphis and Shelby County — remarkable circumstances given that just ahead was another one of those knock-down, drawn-out election brawls that characterize a big-ballot election year.

Speaking at an annual prayer breakfast on January 1st, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen called for an end to bipartisan bickering in Congress and touted the achievements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (aka Obamacare). Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell asked for civility in county government, and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, amid a good deal of wrangling over city pension reform, among other matters, said something similar and declared, “I’m through with whose fault it is!”

Surely no one is surprised that few of these hopes were fully realized in the course of 2014.

Not that some concrete things didn’t get done. The nervy national website Wonkette crowned Tennessee state Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) “S***muffin of the Year,” and, lo and behold, the voters of Knox County would come to a similar conclusion down the line, voting out the incumbent madcap whose most famous bills had come to be known, fairly or otherwise, as “Don’t Say Gay” and “Starve the Children.”

State Senator Brian Kelsey had mixed results, losing again on a renewed effort to force Governor Bill Haslam into a big-time school voucher program and in a quixotic attempt to strip Shelby County of two of its elected judges but getting his props from those — including a majority of Tennessee voters — who supported his constitutional amendment to abolish an income tax in Tennessee for all time.

All four constitutional amendments on the state ballot would pass — including one to strip away what had been some fairly ironclad protections of a woman’s right to an abortion and another to transform the selection and tenure procedures for state appellate judges. Another little-noticed amendment guaranteeing veterans the right to hold charity raffles also passed.

The battle over the key three amendments all reflected a growing concern that Republican-dominated state authority had begun to enlarge its control over local governments and individual citizens alike, not only in the nature of the constitutional amendments but in the legislature’s effort to override local authority in matters including firearms management, public school oversight, public wage policy, and the ability of localities to establish their own ethical mandates.

Shelby County Democrats, who had been swept by the GOP in 2010, had a spirited primary election, with most attention focusing on the mayor’s race between former County Commissioner Deidre Malone, incumbent Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and former school board member and New Olivet Baptist Church pastor Kenneth Whalum Jr.

When votes were counted on May 6th, Malone emerged to become the head of a Democratic ticket that would challenge several well-established Republican incumbents. Democrats’ hopes were high at first, but two of their expected election-day stalwarts began to suffer self-destructive moments at an alarming rate.

The two were lawyer Joe Brown — the “Judge Joe Brown” of nationally syndicated TV fame; and County Commissioner Henri Brooks, a former legislator who had an abrasive way about her but who had recently won laurels as the watchdog on Juvenile Court who had forced the Department of Justice (DOJ) to mandate a series of reforms.

Both District Attorney General candidate Brown, through his celebrity and what was thought to be his ability to bankroll much of the Democratic ticket’s activity, and Juvenile court Clerk candidate Brooks, riding high on her DOJ desserts, were thought to be boons, but they rapidly became busts.

Brown, it turned out, had virtually no money to pass around, even for his own campaign efforts, and he got himself arrested for contempt in Juvenile Court. When, late in the campaign, he launched a series of lurid and seemingly unfounded attacks upon the private life of his opponent, Republican D.A. Amy Weirich, he was dead in the water.

Brooks engaged in successive misfires — browbeating a Hispanic witness before the commission; assaulting a woman she was competing with for a parking spot; and, finally, turning out not to have a legal residence within the commission district she represented.

The bottom line: Shelby County Democrats — underfunded, under-organized, and riven by internal rivalries — were overwhelmed once again on August 7th, with county Mayor Mark Luttrell, Weirich, and Sheriff Bill Oldham leading a Republican ticket that won everything except the office of county assessor, where conscientious Democratic incumbent Cheyenne Johnson held on against a little-known GOP challenger.

All things considered, the judicial races on August 7th went to the known and familiar, with almost all incumbents winning reelection on a lengthy ballot in which virtually every position in every court —General Sessions, Circuit, Criminal, Chancery, and Probate — was under challenge.

Meanwhile, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who had dispatched a series of Democratic Primary and general election challengers since his first election to Congress in 2006, faced what appeared in advance to be his most formidable primary foe yet in lawyer Ricky Wilkins. Cohen won again — though only by a 2-to-1 ratio, unlike the 4-to-1 victories he was used to.

The final elections of the year, including the referenda for the aforementioned package of constitutional amendments, would take place on November 4th.

But for the amendments, there was no suspense to speak of. Two Democrats running for the U.S. Senate — Gordon Ball and Terry Adams, both Knoxville lawyers — had run a spirited and close race in the primary, but winner Ball ran way behind Republican incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander, despite Alexander’s having barely eked out a primary win over unsung Tea Party favorite Joe Carr.

Haslam, the Republican gubernatorial incumbent, easily put away Charlie Brown, an unknown quantity from East Tennessee who had won the Democratic primary mainly on the strength of his comic-strip name.

Throughout the year, there had been persistent wrangles in City Hall between Wharton and members of the city council over dozens of matters — including pension and health-care changes, development proposals, and failures to communicate — with the result that influential councilmen like 2014 council Chairman Jim Stickland and Harold Collins were possible rivals to Wharton in a 2015 mayoral race that might draw in a generous handful of other serious candidates.

Toward year’s end, though, Wharton pulled off a series of coups — announcing new Target and IKEA facilities and appearing to finesse the pension and school-debt matters — that underscored his status as the candidate to beat.

In Nashville, Haslam seemed to have achieved the high ground, finally, with his espousal of a bona fide Medicaid-expansion plan, “Insure Tennessee,” and a determination to defend the Hall income tax and at least some version of educational standards. But battles over these matters and new attacks on legal abortion loomed.

We shall see what we shall see.

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News The Fly-By

The Council and the Mayor

When I heard it, I thought, “This is the quote of the year.”

Thomas Malone, the ever outspoken president of the Memphis Firefighters Association, railed in frustration, “The city administration is like an addict on crack. They will buy, steal, and do anything they can from anybody, to get what they want!” So, Tommy, tell us how you really feel, huh?

Based on the events of 2014, there are a lot of Memphians bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the actions of the administration of Mayor A C Wharton and the Memphis City Council. Malone’s bitter assessment came just days after the council rammed through a surprising vote on the long-debated city employees’ pension plan.

After nearly a year of discussion, with the Wharton administration at first presenting a proposal with Draconian cuts to appease a warning from the state comptroller on addressing a more than $500 million pension deficit, the council decided on a 9-to-4 vote to go with Councilwoman Wanda Halbert’s plan to only apply the benefit cuts to city employees with seven-and-a-half or fewer years of service. It also happens to neatly include council members, as elected officials. Halbert’s plan was a complete reversal of her previously staunch support of city employees seeking no cuts to benefits. Her apparent flip-flop will be the fodder for much discussion as she reportedly will seek to unseat incumbent Thomas Long for the city clerk’s office in 2015.

But, after nearly a year of debate, why was Halbert’s proposal fast-tracked for a vote? As Malone told me, he asked for time for actuaries to run the numbers again on all the plans presented. His request was rejected. It certainly makes you wonder.

Certainly the communication gap between the mayor’s office and the council has never been more obvious than with the proposed settlement agreement Wharton and Shelby County School (SCS) Superintendent Dorsey Hopson privately reached. The facts are that two courts have ruled against the city’s counterclaim that they are owed the interest on $100 million given to legacy Memphis City Schools for buildings. They alleged their claim trumps the $57 million both courts ruled the city owes the school system, dating back to 2008. Councilman Myron Lowery told me last week the majority of his colleagues feel their counterclaim will win out as both sides continue mediation efforts. Two glaring discrepancies come to mind as the battle lines are drawn for the upcoming showdown over whether the council will approve funding for the school settlement in early January.

It doesn’t surprise me that Wharton, Hopson, and the SCS board members are happy with this deal that essentially amounts to $43 million in cash and other amenities, such as $2.6 million in police protection for schools and a balloon payment of $6 million in February. What bothers me is how Wharton decided to communicate this agreement to the council in a terse, written memorandum delivered just as the pension vote was about to be made. He apparently hadn’t even told those council members on the mediation team he’d reached a deal. It’s an example of Wharton’s confounding “lawyers know best” mentality. He comes from the world of plea bargains and deals in criminal justice. But, as the city’s chief executive, he has to be more open and candid about his dealings, especially when the final approval for funding lies with the council.

And speaking of the council: Back in 2008, tired of the “maintenance of effort” in voluntarily funding city schools for years, they went rogue. That proved to be a costly mistake for all concerned. It can be reasonably argued that their failure to pay the $57 million led to the collapse of the legacy Memphis City Schools two years later. Their decision to divest themselves of that obligation led to millions of taxpayer dollars being wasted on the protracted litigation between the city and the county that followed.

Now the ball is in their court again. A second chance to begin to right the foolish mistake the city council committed six years ago. If council-members decide to reject this settlement because of bruised egos or personal agendas, then they should be made to pay the price at the ballot box in 2015. It will be a fitting answer for those we elect who once in office suffer from the “addiction” of power. If we as voters don’t respond? Maybe we’re on crack.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Year 2015 is Upon Us

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as time was running out on the elections of 2014, with early voting ending this week in the election process that ends Tuesday, November 4th, the stirrings of Election Year 2015 were at hand. 

Among those in attendance at a Monday morning rally for Democratic candidates at the IBEW building on Madison were Kenneth Whalum and his wife Sheila. And while neither was quite ready to commit to a candidacy for Memphis mayor by the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, both seemed to relish the thought of a follow-up race to the Rev. Whalum’s surprisingly close second-place finish to Deidre Malone in last May’s Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor.

“Maybe it’s time for another tour of India,” joked the reverend, who had been absent on that East Asian sub-continent for a prolonged period just before election day but who finished strong, a fact indicating either that 1) absence made the hearts of voters grow fonder; or that 2) a more vigorous late effort on Shelby County soil might have put him over.

Either scenario, coupled with the fact that his appeal of a 2012 school board race narrowly lost to Kevin Woods had been finally disallowed by the courts, clearly left the irrepressible Whalum available for combat.

Who else is thinking about it? The proper question might be: Who isn’t?

Also present at the IBEW rally was former Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey, who is already committed to a race for Memphis mayor to the point of passing out calling cards advertising the fact.

“Changing parties again?” a passer-by jested to Harvey, a nominal Democrat who, in the past year or so on the commission, often made common cause with the body’s Republicans.

“I need ’em now!” responded Harvey, good-naturedly, about his attendance with other Democrats at the IBEW rally, which featured Gordon Ball, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, at the climax of his statewide “No Show Lamar” bus tour; District 30 state Senate candidate Sara Kyle; and District 96 state House of Representatives candidate Dwayne Thompson.

Not so sunny was another attendee, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, who, when asked if he was considering another mayoral race (he ran unsuccessfully in the special election of 2009 while serving as interim city mayor) answered calmly, “No,” but became non-committal, to the point of truculence, at the follow-up question, “So, are you closing the door?”

Lowery has confided to acquaintances, however, that he is indeed once again measuring the prospect of a mayoral race, while simultaneously contemplating a race by his son, management consultant Mickell Lowery, for his council seat should he choose to vacate it.

Another council member, Harold Collins, has formed an exploratory committee and is contemplating a mayoral race based largely on the theme that the current administration of Mayor A C Wharton is acting insufficiently in a number of spheres, including those of dealing with employee benefits and coping with recent outbreaks of mob violence.

Another councilman considered likely to make a bid for mayor is current council Chairman Jim Strickland, who has built up a decently sized following over the years by dint of his highly public crusades for budgetary reform. He, too, has often been critical of the incumbent mayor.

In accordance with assurances, public and private, he has made over the past year, Wharton himself is still considered to be a candidate for reelection, though there are those who speculate he may have second thoughts, given his advancing years and the increasing gravity of fiscal and social problems confronting the city.

The mayor’s supporters tend to pooh-pooh such speculation and suggest that only Wharton is capable of achieving across-the-boards support from the city’s various demographic components.

Others known or thought to be considering a mayoral race are former state legislator and ex-councilmember Carol Chumney (who has run twice previously); current county Commissioner Steve Basar; and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams.

The list of potential mayoral candidates is a roster that may grow larger quickly.

• In introducing Ball at the IBEW rally, state Democratic Chairman Roy Herron contended that incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander‘s poll numbers were “going down and down and down and Gordon Ball’s are going up and up and up, and those lines are going to intersect.”

In his own remarks, Ball charged that “my opponent has spent millions of dollars trying to smear and discredit us” and cited that as evidence of how seriously Alexander was taking the threat to his reelection.

The Democratic nominee spent considerable time addressing the recent publicity about a suit brought against him by one Barry Kraselsky, an Alabama resident who recently purchased a Florida condo from Ball and is accusing Ball and his wife, Happy, of having “duped” him by removing items from the property.

Ball said he was being sued for $5,300, even though he had posted an escrow account of $5,000, which was available to Kraselsky, whom he said was a “charlatan” and a major Republican donor. “We’re going to take care of him after November 4th.”

In remarks to reporters after his formal speech, Ball, who opposes the proposed Common Core educational standards, contended that Alexander, who has mainly been opaque on the subject, was a supporter of Common Core, which is opposed by many classroom teachers. Ball noted that Alexander had bragged on well-known teachers’ advocate Diane Ravitch, who is now a Common Core opponent, in Lamar Alexander’s Little Plaid Book, which the senator published years ago.

“He doesn’t mention her anymore,” said Ball. “He and [state Education Commissioner] Kevin Huffman and [educational reformer and Common Core supporter] Michelle Rhee are in this together.”

Also taking part in the IBEW rally were Whalum and Ashley Coffield, CEO of Memphis Planned Parenthood, who passed out to all the candidates T-shirts opposing Constitutional Amendment 1 on the November 4th ballot. Amendment 1 would in effect nullify a 2000 decision by the state Supreme Court that granted more protection to abortion rights than have the federal courts, as well as empower the General Assembly to legislate on a variety of potential new restrictions to abortion.

• The Shelby County Commission, which was unable on Monday to come to a decision on proposed changes in County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s amended health-care plan for county employees (see this week’s Editorial) also was somewhat riven on another – more explicitly political – issue.

This was a suit filed by seven commissioners in Chancery Court against current Chairman Justin Ford challenging his right to arbitrarily keep items off the body’s agenda.

The plaintiffs are the commission’s six Democrats and one Republican, former vice Chairman Steve Basar, who previously voted with the Democrats to stall the committee appointments by Ford, who was elected in this fall’s first organizational session by a combination of his own vote with that of the commission’s five Republicans. As the GOP’s Heidi Shafer explained at the time, the outnumbered Republicans had a choice between Ford, who has fairly consistently voted their way in previous years, and Bailey, who rarely has.

Basar was aggrieved by having been denied votes for the chairmanship, which he believed himself to be in line for, by most of his Republican colleagues.

Subsequent attempts to place items on the commission agenda proposing rules changes that would threaten Ford’s authority have been arbitrarily removed by the chairman.

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News News Blog

Memphis City Council Passes Water Meter Ordinance

After months of debate and amendments, the Memphis City Council finally passed an ordinance that would require individual water meters to be installed at all newly constructed condominiums.

MLGW Master Water Meter

  • MLGW Master Water Meter

On Tuesday, April 1st, the Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) Committee held its third and final reading of an ordinance proposed by Councilman Myron Lowery earlier this year that would require all condos or apartment complexes converted into condos to have individual water meters installed. The committee passed the ordinance, and it was subsequently heard by the full council. It was passed unanimously and will take effect July 1st.

The ordinance that passed is an amended version of Lowery’s original proposal, which requested that both all newly constructed condos and apartments have individual meters installed.

“We’re continuing to allow master water meters on apartments, but the minute an apartment complex is late paying their water bill, and I’m talking about one month late, it will automatically trigger action from Code Enforcement, and it will go in court,” Lowery said. “And the court has the right to appoint a receiver to collect rent [from tenants], so that the water bill will be paid. The goal is to ensure that everyone can stay in their home.”

Lowery was inspired to create the proposal after tenants of Garden Walk Condominiums in Raleigh were forced to evacuate their homes due to the homeowner’s association failing to pay the property’s $30,000 water bill. If the ordinance doesn’t eradicate the potential for similar occurrences in the future, Lowery said he’s going to re-propose the ordinance in its original form.

“This was really a compromise,” Lowery said. “If this process doesn’t work one time, I’m going back to the drawing board and asking for all newly constructed apartments as well as condominiums…Water is an essential service. Food, water, and shelter are what people need, and government is here to make sure that cities run properly. We’ve got to make sure that people have water.”

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News The Fly-By

Meter Management

Despite having paid their utility bills, some local residents have still had their water cut off thanks to bills for master water meters at their apartments or condos not being paid by homeowner associations and property managers.

In an effort to end this practice, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery has proposed an ordinance that, if passed, would require individual water meters to be installed in all newly constructed apartments and condominiums. 

Lowery was inspired to create the ordinance after the tenants of Garden Walk Condominiums in Raleigh were forced to evacuate their homes due to the homeowner association failing to pay the property’s $30,000 water bill.

“Some people lost everything,” Lowery said. “If they owned their condominium, they lost it, because people were not allowed to move back in. People broke into the apartments, stole the copper wiring, folks’ clothes, all because the water bill wasn’t paid. My ordinance would require that any new construction would have individual water meters, so that this will never happen again.”

Tenants of apartment complexes and condos with master water meters typically have their monthly water usage combined with other tenants’ usage and allocated into their monthly rent.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water President Jerry Collins said about two-thirds of all apartment complexes in the city have master meters. Collins supports Lowery’s proposal, and he said certain apartment complexes are already installing individual water meters at newly built residences.

“Since we have apartments that are now putting in individual water meters voluntarily rather than using master meters, obviously this [ordinance] is not a terrible burden on the developer of the apartments or the condominiums,” Collins said. “It certainly has advantages for everybody. This really puts everybody in control of their own destiny rather than large numbers of tenants being dependent on a landlord to pay the water bill.”

Collins said there are several existing properties that operate on master meters, and the tenants pay extensive water bills. Collins said this is because the complexes are suffering from water leaks. Instead of the landlord or homeowner association having the leaks repaired, they take the total amount of the water bill, including the leaks, and distribute them among the tenants.

“I know of one case where I’ve been told that the landlord charges the tenants $150 a month for water when they probably use about $15 or $20 worth of water,” Collins said. “The difference between $20 and $150 is those renters paying for the common-area water leaks that are the responsibility of the landlord, not the tenant.”

Lowery’s proposed ordinance would provide new tenants with the security of paying their own water bills, but it won’t impact people who currently reside in areas that operate on master meters. Lowery is seeking ideas from the public on how residents at those apartment complexes and condos can avoid having their water cut off or paying hefty water bills.

The ordinance must go through three readings by the city council before it can be approved, and Lowery said he’s confident that the proposal will be passed.

“What reason would any council member have to vote against this?,” Lowery inquired. “Why would they not want to protect individual citizens from being foreclosed on or losing their property, because they’re not paying their water bills? I can’t see any reason to vote against this.”

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Opinion

Thumbs Down to Speed Cameras in School Zones

CREDIT: John Branston

school_zone.JPG

The ranters are mostly right on this one. Installing traffic cameras at school crossings, as the City Council proposes to do, is an idea driven more by money than child safety.

I don’t think proponents Myron Lowery and Bill Morrison, both stand-up guys, are in the bag. But at budget crunch time council members are under a lot of stress and they go into revenue mode and some bad decisions get made. This is one of them.

The safety of children at school crossings is obviously a legitimate concern of local government. Which is why it should be handled locally and not put in the unseen hands and cameras of a vendor called American Traffic Solutions in Arizona which is a subsidary of another company called TransCore which is part of another company called Roper Industries, traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol ROP) for $121 a share today, twice what it sold for three years ago.

American Traffic Solutions says that “our economic engine is driven by efficient outsourced transaction processing solutions and services delivering high value recurring revenue.” That along with the fact that the council took up this topic during a budget session (read: shortfall) Tuesday tells us pretty much all we need to know about this one.

One of the services American Traffic Solutions provides is handy data-heavy, footnote-weighty, official-looking rationalizations for politicians to use to justify hiring them. This is called salesmanship, and, as I suggested, City Council members are more prone than ever to fall for it this week.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, on the other hand, is a government agency established by the Highway Safety Act of 1970 and “dedicated to achieving the highest standards of excellence in motor vehicle and highway safety. It works daily to help prevent crashes and their attendant costs, both human and financial.”

It is not a for-profit business, but it also produces a lot of studies. According to one it did a couple of years ago, 79 percent of pedestrian fatalities among children (14 and under) occurred at non-intersection locations. The number of such fatalities decreased 41 percent between 2002 and 2011.

A Department of Transportation (DOT) report on automated speed enforcement using cameras called it “a promising technique that must be used carefully in selected areas and not as a stand-alone tool” but in the context of “political realities” and in areas “with well-documented speeding and speed-related problems.” Conclusion: “Speed camera enforcement must be thoroughly justified and explained with good media, social marketing, and signage. It must be justified as a method to improve public safety, not a revenue generator.”

I smell a revenue generator. Maybe a multi-million-dollar-a-year generator if 150 cameras are installed. It’s a cowardly, backdoor, cynical way to raise revenue in the name of “safety of our children.” I prefer an honest property tax increase any day to such nickel-and-dime (or dollars) schemes.

snowden.JPG

I base my opposition to this not so much on the dueling studies as on my own observations over the last 25 years of one particular school intersection at North Parkway and McLean, location of Snowden School for more than a century. I have gone through that intersection tens of thousands of times since my children attended Snowden, which is five blocks from my house.

There is an excellent traffic control system already in place. It consists of a traffic light, blinking lights warning of a school crossing, street signs warning that the speed limit is 15 miles an hour during certain hours, and — most important — human crossing guards in their yellow or orange vests carrying their signs and escorting the kids safely across the streets. Usually they’re bless-their-hearts traffic ladies, but sometimes they’re bolstered or replaced by parent volunteers or cops. I have seen dozens of traffic accidents at this intersection, but not a single child-crossing injury that I am aware of.

But what a revenue generator this could be. The posted speed limit on North Parkway, a divided boulevard with two lanes for cars and another for bikes on each side, is 40 miles an hour, but 50 mph is not unusual as anyone who drives on it knows. The posted 15 mile an hour limit applies for 45 minutes in the morning when school starts and in the afternoon when it lets out. Imagine the opportunities for snagging unsuspecting motorists during other times or on days when there is no school. Got an objection? Well then tell it to the judge, because “court” is where speeding-in-school-zone tickets wind up, according to the city’s website.

Once again from the DOT report: “Automated speed cameras may not be as effective in changing behavior as in-person enforcement by an officer, since speed camera citations are received days or weeks after the offense while officer-issued citations provide very immediate feedback.”

The safety of children going to school is a government function if there ever was one. So is sorting out the dangerous drivers from the occasional miscreant drivers to the wrongly accused. It should be done locally, with local public servants and parents working together. If the City Council needs more revenue to do this then it should raise taxes or cut other less important services. The solution is human, not technological.

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Opinion

Confederate Parks: “It’s Done” but It’s Not Over

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Could there be a more fiendishly designed story than Confederate parks and General Nathan Bedford Forrest to insure that Memphis forever trips over its own feet (well, maybe the Ford family saga)?

As City Councilman Lee Harris said, “It’s done” as far as renaming the parks. But it’s not over. This story has legs, as we say in the news biz. It also has horses, troops, and a cavalry. There are editorial revisions yet to come for the generic placeholder names, assuming a panel can be assembled that will agree on anything. But the real secret to the longevity of this story is no secret at all. It embraces the themes of race that Memphis loves so well.

If Forrest were alive today he would be coaching football at the University of Alabama. He would have figured out a way to beat Texas A&M, and he would be the darling of ESPN and the bane of reporters if he could not have them all flogged. As my colleague Chris Herrington says, a lot of people ignore the cause and confuse “war hero” with “great general”. Forrest is a war hero to unreconstructed white southerners like the ones writer Tony Horwitz described in his book “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.” He is an annoyance or worse to black Memphians for his ties to Fort Pillow and the Ku Klux Klan.

Shelby Foote, the great Memphis Civil War historian and author, wrote a lot about Forrest in Part Three of his trilogy. Forrest, who was in overall command at Fort Pillow, “was widely accused of having committed the atrocity of the war. ‘The Fort Pillow Massacre,’ it was called, then and thereafter, in the North.” Foote wrote that, in fact, Forrest “had done and was doing all he could to end it, having ordered the firing stopped as soon as he saw his troopers swarm into the fort, even though its flag was still flying and a good part of the garrison was still trying to get away.”

Foote died in 2005, shortly before the last (as in last one before this one) Forrest fight was staged. He opposed renaming Forrest Park as well as Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park. The statue of Jefferson Davis in Confederate Park (yes) was placed there in 1964 during the heat of the civil rights era and desegregation, the year after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington and the year three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi. It is impossible to imagine that its backers were not aware of the context. The Davis statue is more a political statement of those times than a monument to the Civil War. Davis could be in greater danger than Forrest.

If Nathan Bedford Forrest Park was on a less prominent street than Union Avenue, or if the general’s grave had not been moved in 1905 from Elmwood Cemetery where he was originally buried, the general would not get so much attention. But the park, with its equestrian statue of Forrest, is in the heart of the downtown medical center shared by the University of Tennessee and Baptist and Methodist hospitals that is finally showing renewed signs of life and investment. The Forrest grave site is a perfect spot for his admirers, whatever their motives, to put a thumb in the eye of the general’s critics, especially if they happen to be black.

Moving the monument and the graves of Forrest and his wife back to Elmwood, as some have suggested, would be one of the great media events of our time. Reenactors in full uniform would line the streets every foot of the way. Counter-demonstrators would turn out in equal or greater numbers. And every national news report would herald “Memphis Relives The Civil War.”

The City Council will revisit the issue soon. Councilman Myron Lowery has suggested adding a statue of Ida B. Wells to the park, a sort of one-of-ours-and-one-of-yours compromise. The problem with that is that some Memphians may not wish to identify with either one. If you are white, was Forrest “ours”? He belongs to history. His monument and grave have been there for 108 years. Moving them would make the annual Shiloh reenactment in April look like a church picnic. Union Avenue between Manassas and Cleveland is prime real estate that, hopefully, will one day look more like a medical center on the order of Nashville or Jackson, Mississippi. It’s complicated, fiendishly complicated. And not over by a long shot.

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News News Blog

Shelby County Wage Theft Ordinance Passes First Reading

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Shelby County is one step closer to adopting a wage theft ordinance that would make it easier for employees to reclaim lost or stolen wages. The ordinance, proposed by County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, passed on its first reading at the Shelby County Commission’s general government committee meeting today.

Kyle Kordsmeier of the Workers Interfaith Network was present at today’s committee meeting to stand in support of the ordinance; Herbi-Systems owner Kenny Crenshaw of “Lemme Kill Your Weeds” fame showed up to say, “lemme kill your ordinance.”

The county ordinance is scheduled to go up for its second reading next Monday. But the real test will be next Tuesday, when an identical ordinance, sponsored by Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, goes up for its first reading at city council. Because the Shelby County ordinance would only cover unincorporated Shelby County, the same ordinance must also pass in the city council for it to have an effect on wage theft in Memphis.

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Opinion

Good Debaters? Names Might Surprise You

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What America needs is one more commentary on the debate. Eleven million Tweets is not enough.

And my earthshaking thought is . . . debating is hard. Few people are good at it, and Barack Obama is not one of them. He’s lucky Sarah Palin was on the GOP ticket in 2008. And Mitt Romney, celebrated by Republicans today who scorned him a month ago, is more actor than debater, and, gets the benefit of looking presidential.

It’s been widely reported that Obama was a real tiger on the campaign trail the day after the debate, which only highlighted his shortcomings the night before. Debating is not the same as making a speech, with or without a teleprompter, before a friendly audience or even a hostile one. It is not making a witty comment in a roundtable discussion on a television talk show. It certainly isn’t like writing commentaries or blogging to a computer screen.

And it isn’t reciting deficit numbers or Simpson-Bowles and Dodd-Frank Act to a nation coping with unemployment, pissed off at banks, Wall Street, and each other, and partisans hungry for blood and red meat. In journalism we call that inside baseball, or casting your remarks for insiders and advisers instead of viewers and readers at large. Both Obama and Romney played inside baseball.

My nominations for best Memphis debaters are school board members David Pickler and Martavius Jones. They squared off dozens of times before and after the consolidation vote, sometimes in the suburbs, sometimes in the inner city, and many times in public meetings when the television cameras were on, the stakes were high, and the comments of their fellow school board members competed for attention.

Pickler and Jones stayed on point, knew their stuff, stuck to their guns, did not personally insult each other, and kept coming back for more. Repeated practice made them better, which is something that hurt Obama, as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post noted.

Tomeka Hart is a good debater too, but she didn’t make her case well when she ran against Steve Cohen for Congress. Cohen is a bulldog of a debater, loves a scrap, has encyclopedic political knowledge, and swamped her.

On the Memphis City Council, Shea Flinn and Myron Lowery get my top marks. Lowery has gotten better with age and benefits from his television journalism background. Flinn is a natural with a background in acting. Both use their skills with the knowledge that seven votes carries the day on the council, and, while they’re capable of it, pandering to the crowd is done better by others on the council.

On the Shelby County Commission I like Walter Bailey’s elder statesman appearance and the way he picks his spots. Nobody says more in fewer words or uses the long pause better. Often a maverick, Bailey was on the commission, off the commission, and on again. He has heard and seen it all. Steve Mulroy, also an attorney, is an eager and articulate combatant but spreads himself thin. Terry Roland has aw-shucks appeal when not tossing insults. Good debaters are often not likable but they keep some decorum.

Courtroom lawyers can be good debaters but rarely venture into politics. They play to the jury, and their foes are hostile witnesses and opposing counsel, but that is different than a debate format where each person has two minutes at a time. Former federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza, who did the Tennessee Waltz cases, would have made a terrific debater — plain-spoken, go-for-the-jugular, versed in the facts, and about half mean.

One of the disappointments of the ongoing schools case is the likely lack of a full-blown debate by top lawyers of the underlying issues in school consolidation and resegregation.

That would be worth a ticket.