Tag: Reid Hedgepeth

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News News Blog

Council Recap: Memphis 3.0, Pre-K, & Cannabis

Some Memphis City Council members raised questions Tuesday about the Memphis 3.0 plan, a comprehensive plan that will guide the city’s investments and developments for the next 20 years.

City officials presented the plan to a council committee Tuesday ahead of the first of three votes on an ordinance approving the plan in two weeks.

Councilwoman Cheyenne Johnson said she was “impressed” with the plan, but still had several lingering questions.

“What’s in here that might not be fully disclosed because of how people might interpret what’s actually written?” Johnson asked.

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Johnson also inquired about the 15,000 Memphis residents said to have participated in creating the 3.0 plan.

“Who were those 15,000 individuals?” she said. “How many of those were developers or builders? What are the classifications of the 15,000 which still represents less than 3 percent of the population?

”Do you think this is an adequate number to set out a plan that will be in place for the next 20 years?”

Ashley Cash, Memphis’ comprehensive planning administrator, said the city “made every effort” to have broad participation from the public, which meant developers, stakeholders, and residents were involved.

Johnson also wanted to know if the plan will guide equitable investments in the city and if the efforts will be balanced across all Memphis neighborhoods.

John Zeenah, who heads the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development said the anchors, or places identified in the plan for further development, are “evenly distributed” around the city.

Councilman Reid Hedgepeth expressed concerns about the unintentional consequences the plan could have.

“There’s a lot of things that I have heard from developers, from builders, and from people saying, ‘Wait, I’ve got to do what?’” Hedgepeth said. “These are things that I didn’t know. How can you assure us when we approve these 400 pages it’s not going to be similar to the UDC (Unified Development Code) and we had unintended consequences when we approved it.”

Josh Whitehead with the city/county Office of Planning and Development told Hedgepeth that the plan will be updated and amended frequently to keep it “relevant.”

Council members also asked for the “big bullet points” from the 400-page document, highlighting how things will change once the plan takes effect.

The council will take its first of three votes on an ordinance to adopt the plan in two weeks.

Memphis 3.0 planning meeting


The council also passed an ordinance that enables the city and county to appoint a fiscal agent to manage its pre-K fund.

This move comes as an $8 million grant that funds 1,000 pre-K seats in the county is set to run out in June. Now, the city and county are on track to fund those 1,000 seats plus an additional 1,000 beginning this fall.

The city/county joint ordinance paves the way for a fiscal agent to be appointed. The agent would be responsible for managing the fund, bringing in private dollars, and creating a high-quality pre-K program.

The Shelby County Commission will vote on a similar ordinance at its March 25th meeting.


The council also approved a resolution supporting three cannabis-related bills introduced by Tennessee lawmakers. The bills deal with decriminalization of certain amounts, medical marijuana, and taxation of cannabis.

The resolution, sponsored by council members Berlin Boyd and Martavius Jones, passed with a 5-4 vote.

Councilman J. Ford Canale, one of the members voting no, said he supports legalizing medical marijuana, but not decriminalization of the drug for other uses.

Boyd said that decriminalizing small amounts of cannabis would help the number of Memphians who have felony charges because of marijuana possession.


A vote to impose a plastic bag surcharge at certain retail stores was delayed until May, as state legislators are working on a bill to prohibit local governments from putting those types of fees in place.

The fee is meant to curb plastic bag usage to reduce litter, especially in the city’s waterways, Boyd, who is sponsoring the resolution, has said.

Tuesday Boyd said the fee would be 4 cents, instead of the 7 cents he first proposed last year. If approved, it would take effect January 2020.

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Editorial Opinion

Undermining the Public Will

We live in a time when elected officials and bodies seem determined to ignore the will of the populations they have been elected to represent. This phenomenon is observable in every governmental sphere — state, local, and national — and it threatens the democratic principle in the abstract and strikes at the core of our functioning democratic machinery at all the aforementioned levels.

We have just seen the House of Representatives and Senate in Washington, D.C., willfully ignore public sentiment, expressed in virtually every imaginable kind of opinion sampling, by passing an unpopular tax-cut giveaway for corporations and the wealthy few that will be paid for at the expense of the middle class — in the loss of accustomed deductions now, in the raising of future insurance premiums due to a provision of the bill weakening the mandates of the Affordable Care Act, and in the probable reduction of entitlement benefits down the line in the name of “economy.”

Similarly, during the past decade, we have often seen the Tennessee legislature behave with contemptuous indifference to the public’s unmistakeable disapproval of a plethora of gun bills that have ended up being enacted at the behest the NRA and other like-minded interests in the firearms industry. At the same time, the General Assembly, for naked partisan reasons, has turned its back on the expressed needs of individuals and the state’s financially distressed hospitals by refusing billions in federal aid for Medicaid expansion.

And now we find Memphis city government flouting public need and citizen opinion with a series of proposals, some of which directly contravene the results of referenda carried out at the ballot box. There is a questionable ordinance proposed by Councilman Reid Hedgepeth, reportedly favored by the Strickland administration, as well, that would restrict the rights of public assembly under cover of assuring “order.” There is the proposal by Councilman Ed Ford and others that would revoke the public’s right, already expressed via referendum, to a fair trial of instant runoff voting (IRV) in the next city election, and there is an effort by Councilman Berlin Boyd on behalf of replacing a two-term limit for council members that was only recently approved by the voters.

There is room for concern, too, in county government, where a power struggle currently rages between a majority of the Shelby County Commission and the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. The issues here are not as clear-cut, though the core matter of the moment is the need to sue for damages resulting from the over-proliferation of opioids in Shelby county. Sadly, all that is being litigated in Chancery Court is the incidental question of who has the authority to direct such legal efforts. A suit challenging the distributors of opioids is on file in Circuit Court but cannot go forward until the two branches of county government mediate an end to their jurisdictional dispute. Meanwhile,  the public continues to suffer.

Surely, it is no big thing to ask the various governments we elect to represent the public will, but it seems a tenuous prospect just now.

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Politics Politics Feature

Money vs. Grit ‘n Grind

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, as so many people declaim, money is the “mother’s milk” of politics, the fact is, there are some determined candidates who are virtually lactose-free and decline to be poor-mouthing about it. Others are letting their gross receipts and checkbooks speak for them.

As a sample case of such contrasts, consider the five-candidate race for Super District 9, Position 2. It is, like the races for mayor and City Court clerk, an at-large race. The two Super Districts, 8 and 9, represent a compromise dating from a 1991 judicial settlement, when the city’s electorate was roughly half white and half black.

In blunt terms, District 9 was the white half, more or less, while District 8 was predominantly African-American. Population shifts since then have altered the makeup of both districts, but the rough division still holds.

And there are clear distinctions between how candidates might run in an at-large race and how they can run in district races.

As Shea Flinn, the former councilman from 9, 2, and now an executive with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, put it, “You can walk a district race.” (That is, go door-to-door.) “You can’t do that to nearly the same degree in an at-large race. The territory is too large.”

That fact would seem to militate against an at-large candidate without a budget big enough to do radio, TV, and newspaper advertising. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate with the most money wins in an at-large race, but ample funding certainly conveys an advantage.

On the other hand, the same judicial settlement that created the current district structure ordained that, unlike the case in district races, there would be no runoffs in any of the at-large races. That fact gives even cash-poor candidates the hope of winning a plurality, if they can bring some other advantage to the winner-take-all scramble.

Stephanie Gatewood, for example, a former Memphis School Board member who now aspires to the Super District 9, Positon 2, seat, reported exactly $671.45 on hand in her second-quarter financial disclosure, covering the period April 1st to June 30th. She listed two contributions, each for $500.

Gatewood’s expenditures for the period totaled $338.95, which she laid out to Perkins Productions for some “4 x 6” wallet cards.

At a recent meet-and-greet/fund-raising affair held at Acre Restaurant (after the last reporting deadline), Gatewood boasted that her election to the old Memphis City Schools board had been achieved by grass-roots and word-of-mouth efforts without much of a budget and, after engaging with attendees in a kind of quiz-’em-on-the-issues dialogue, she asked those present to notify their Twitter or Facebook networks where they were and whom they were listening to.

Clearly, Gatewood hopes that her former school board incumbency, and the contacts that came with it, can generate some turnout.

That prospect may loom even larger with another name candidate and former school board member in the same race, Kenneth Whalum Jr. Whalum, who is something of a master at using social media and attracting press coverage, has made it clear, too, that his efforts will not depend on raising a huge amount of campaign cash.

In addition to his considerable name-recognition, gained most recently from a good showing at the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, Whalum intends to engage in serious networking — emphasizing the theme of education and coordinating his own efforts with those of like-minded candidates for other council positions.

As a late entry, Whalum was not required to post a financial disclosure for the second quarter.

Another entry in the 9, 2, race is Lynn Moss, a novice candidate with no prior incumbencies and no name-recognition factor. Her financial receipts are also lacking — with second-quarter receipts of $1,745, mainly from personal friends, and cash-on-hand of $1,173.48.

Moss would seem to be unusually handicapped against her opponents, but she has one ace-in-the-hole, affiliation with a group of grass-roots activists who meet frequently to challenge the precepts of various civic establishments. In particular, she is running on a ticket of sorts (with Robin Spielberger in Super District 9, Position 1, and Jim Tomasik in District 1) that advocates de-annexation from Memphis of relatively recently annexed suburbs such as Cordova. To the extent that she and others can make that issue prominent, she has prospects.

The campaign of Paul Shaffer, longtime business manager for the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), is intermediate between the position of determined do-it-yourself campaigns and those that are backed by numerous and significant donations.

Shaffer has benefited from large donations from union-oriented Political Action Committees (PACs). His cash-on-hand amount of $11,735.22 in his second-quarter report derives almost entirely from such sources, which are, however, relatively limited in number. They run the gamut from $500 to $5,000.

Shaffer can depend also on voluntary grass-roots support from union members and from the Democratic Party rank-and-file activists who have known Shaffer for years (many of them, as candidates, having benefited from IBEW’s own financial generosity).

And then there is Philip Spinosa, a new name to most Memphians, including the majority of voters residing in Super District 9, 2, but one not destined to stay that way for long. Already motorists along several of the city’s major thoroughfares — Walnut Grove being a case in point — are seeing Spinosa’s yard signs in great quantity, often in tandem with those of Reid Hedgepeth, the incumbent council member in Super District 9, Position 3, and Worth Morgan, a candidate in District 5, a Midtown-East Memphis enclave.

Like Hedgepeth and Morgan, Spinosa, a sales executive with FedEx, has the kind of youthful image that is made-to-order for television advertising, and his connections with influential members of the city’s business elite are similar to theirs as well. His second-quarter receipts were a whopping $164,940, and his cash balance was $149,133.75.

Resources like that (Morgan is similarly fixed, by the way) are almost on a par with those of the two mayoral-race titans, Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, and, over the long haul, obviously give Spinosa the potential to close and overcome the name-ID factor currently owned by a couple of his opponents.

Jackson Baker

The family of late civil rights icon and National Civil Rights Museum founder D’Army Bailey acknowldged the Shelby County Commission’s vote on Monday to rename the Shelby County Courthouse in his honor. From left: son Merritt Bailey, wife Adrienne Bailey, Commission chair Justin Ford, son Justin Bailey. At right is Commissioner Terry Roland, sponsor of the re-naming resolution.

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News News Blog

Memphis City Council Approves Budget, Raises for City Employees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

The Council District 5 Race

The District 5 City Council seat, which has been occupied for two terms by Jim Strickland, who is vacating it to make a mayoral run, is a crucial one for several reasons, including the fact that the Midtown/East Memphis district contains both substantial commercial and residential turf and several different hotbeds of politically active citizens.

It bears repeating that it will be a solid month before April 17th, the first date on which candidate petitions can even be drawn, and that any list of candidates is, of necessity, only a preliminary one. But there are several individuals who are campaigning already and have to be taken seriously.

There is Mary Wilder, for example, a veteran political and civic activist and longtime presence in the Evergreen Vollintine neighborhood, who has political credibility and name recognition from a previous race or two and from having served as an interim state Representative in state House District 89.

Wilder was the beneficiary last Thursday of a well-attended fund-raiser at Annesdale Mansion, hosted by former state Senator Beverly Marrero (whose vacated House seat Wilder assumed temporarily in 2007), and longtime progressive activist Happy Jones, who noted that Annesdale was an ancestral home. Between the two of them, Marrero and Jones symbolized the broad appeal Wilder hopes to demonstrate along the Poplar Corridor.

In brief remarks, Wilder cited her 11 years as United Methodist services director and her work on behalf of preservation initiatives and environmental causes. She also served as facilities director at MIFA.

A candidate with similar appeal and who, like Wilder, was an early entry is Charles “Chooch” Pickard, an architect who also has evinced a strong interest in preservationist issues and strategies for dealing with blight. Pickard has served as executive director of the Memphis Regional Design Center and currently serves on the MATA board. He has signed on some seasoned campaign pros to help his race.

In her introduction of Wilder last week, Marrero challenged Wilder’s supporters to work hard because, as she said, “there’s a lot of money on the other side.” 

There are several candidates that remark could describe, but one of them is certainly Worth Morgan, a member of a well-known brokerage family, if at this point still something of an unknown quantity. Morgan is an executive at SunStar Insurance of Memphis, and word is that his campaign will be well-endowed financially.

In that sense, with his themes unspoken to so far, his campaign could resemble the one successfully run in 2007 by current Councilman Reid Hedgepeth, whose race was in a sense under the radar but who had similar sources of support.

Another candidate who can count on significant financial backing and whose political profile is somewhat more developed, is Dan Springer, who has served as an aide to both Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and U.S. Senator Bob Corker.

Springer, who currently serves as communications director for Evolve Bank and Trust, has begun making the rounds of local civic and political clubs to introduce himself.

Coming from a totally different political corner is Paul Shaffer, business manager for IBEW Local 474 and a long-established presence in local Democratic Party politics. The well-liked Shaffer can count on serious backing from organized labor, but his support does not end there. In past races for a council super-district, he has enjoyed good across-the-board support from Democratic political figures of note, and he could well get a lion’s share of them this time, too.

As other political observers have noted, the District 5 picture could be complicated by the recently much-rumored prospect of a retirement from the Council by Super District 9 member Shea Flinn, to assume executive duties with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce. If that should come to pass, several of the names mentioned here, along with various others, could well end up on the ballot as potential successors to Flinn.

In any case, the District 5 field indicated here is likely to experience both pluses and minuses, and several other potential candidates have floated preliminary trial balloons. (Candidates omitted in this list should fear not; as indicated, we’ve got time, and they shall get their due.)

One of those who talked about making a District 5 race early on but who has been dormant of late is Mike Ritz, the former two-term county commissioner from Germantown who, as commission chairman, played a major role in important stages of the school merger/de-merger controversy.

On the eve of a move into Memphis last year, Ritz, a sometime businessman-banker with a long-term pedigree in both city and county governmental affairs, discussed his desire to seek the District 5 seat in the event that Strickland, as expected, chose to vacate it for a mayoral run.

Ritz has, however, decided against a council race. The reason? “I couldn’t find much interest out there — not only for my race but for anybody’s race.”

On the supposition that all of you reading this are sitting down, I can announce that, er, somewhat to my surprise, I was informed this week that yet another contestant — and an unexpected one, at that — is waiting in the wings with a definite hankering to enter the already crowded District 5 City Council race.

Joe Cooper.

Wow, that was noisy — all those chairs falling! Well, pick yourselves up, and I’ll say it again. Joe Cooper.

“I don’t want anybody thinking this is a joke” said Cooper, on the telephone. And I can assure you, Cooper is no joke.

Yes, Cooper has taken some hits — more than his share, maybe. He has two felony convictions, and there’s no hiding that. The first one, back in the 1970s, when he was a ubiquitous and influential member of the county court, is regarded in some quarters as having been payback for breaking ranks with a local Republican Party that was just beginning to feel its oats as a political force.

The offense was technically a species of mail fraud, in which Cooper, clearly hard up for cash, arranged some personal loans for himself in the name of friends, many of them influential government players. Irregular, to be sure, and he (but not they) got nailed for it by an unsympathetic D.A.’s office.

Cooper did some time, and for several years afterward divided his time between attempts at reestablishing a political career and several business start-ups, none of which endured for very long. He remained knowledgeable about government, however, and served in other people’s campaigns and offices and as a man-to-see about working the system and as an all-purposes resource — “the world’s greatest concierge” — as he called himself.

Do you need an autographed picture of President Chester A. Arthur by 2 p.m. tomorrow? Cooper is your best bet to get it. And much else.

In 2008, he got nailed again for selling Cadillacs to drug dealers, who paid cash for contracts that bore other people’s names — money laundering. While Cooper ended up doing more time, his punishment was mitigated by his subsequent assistance to the FBI in making bribery cases against local officials, and his cooperation netted him a sentence of only six months on the money laundering charges.

Besides treading these dangerous legal waters, Cooper has survived some significant physical ailments in recent years, and he, unquestionably and in a very unique sense, bears the aura of a survivor. For all his derogators — and they are many — he has his defenders, also numerous, although many of them, perhaps most, may be loath about boasting the fact publicly.

Cooper is what he is. He can make the case that he’s learned the hard way about staying on the beaten path, and it’s a path that he knows something about. He isn’t likely to win, but, in the crowded field that the District 5 race is becoming, who knows? He can at least hope to make a runoff (permitted in district races, though not for at-large positions).

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Council Candidate Lit Blasts Absent Opponent Hedgepeth

There have been many, many forums so far, involving
candidates for mayor and the various city council positions.

Almost all of them follow the same formula: opening
statements, policy positions stated in response to generalized questions in
specific subject areas like crime, education, economic development, than a
standard vote-for-me close.

Retired businessman Lester Lit broke new ground at a League
of Women Voters forum for District 9 candidates Monday night. Not only did Lit,
a candidate for District 9, Position 3, criticize an opponent at length and by
name, he used the entirety of his opening and closing statement time to do so.

Lit devoted his one-minute opening time to an attack on
Reid Hedgepeth as lacking qualifications to serve. Then, flanked by fellow 9, 3
candidates Mary Wilder, Desi Franklin, and Boris Combest, Lit used the
two-minute period allotted him for a closing statement to say this:

“…There really is an 800-pound gorilla in this room, and
he’s not here tonight. His name is Reid Hedgepeth, and I’m going to tell you
right now, with the backing that young man has, he could very well win this
election, and that upsets me. I’m mad as hell to think that he could, because we
have four very qualified candidates on this panel here tonight, and I’d feel
very good if any of the four could serve as your representative on the next city
council. I would not feel too happy if Reid Hedgepeth serves as my representative
on the City Council.

“He has been to no forums. He has been to no neighborhood
associations. He is maintaining his campaign strictly with a hundred-thousand
dollar budget on TV and slick mailers that he sends out, such as this one right
here [brandishing a mailout flyer], which is — this is not even a picture
of Memphis — this is Detroit that they’re using pictures of to mislead you…. Y’all
were nice enough to come out this evening to try to learn about the candidates.
I think you need to go one step further and educate yourself about the missing
candidate, the one that I’m afraid could steal this election because of
financial backing that he has.

“I forgot to mention in my opening that not only has he
never voted in a city council race in his life, he also made two separate
donations to Rickey Peete two years after the last city election. So you do
your homework. If you want to vote for one of us, you’ll get a good council
person. Let’s not make any more mistakes. We’ve had enough mistakes. Let’s not go down that road anymore.”