Tag: Tami Sawyer

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Prepares for New Fiscal Year

WIllie Brooks (Photo: shelbycountytn.gov)

In what amounted to their last public meeting of the expiring fiscal year, the 13 members of the Shelby County Commission resolved several pending issues, more or less clearing the boards for the year to come.

The Commission overwhelmingly endorsed County Mayor Lee Harris’ nomination of Dr. Michelle Taylor to be the new director of the Shelby County Health Department. The vote was 13-0, unanimous, and it included even Republican Commissioner Mark Billingsley, who had questioned the appointment in committee last week and raised doubts about it in a widely circulated email.

Billingsley made a point of apologizing to Taylor before casting his vote on Monday, attributing his former concerns to a feeling that he had been “misled” by Harris. He did not elaborate further. Taylor’s persona and credentials had been extolled by several audience members before the vote, and a sizeable number of attendees were on hand to root for her approval. The mayor had made a spirited speech in her favor in the Commission lobby before the vote.

Early in the meeting, county health officer Dr. Bruce Randolph had offered the Commission some new statistics indicating part of the challenges facing Taylor. As Randolph noted, only 35 percent of Memphis residents are vaccinated, and the rate of new cases, almost all involving the Delta variant, has jumped sixfold in the last month.

The Commission followed its ringing endorsement of Taylor by choosing a new General Sessions judge to replace the retiring John Donald. Danielle Mitchell Sims was selected from a group including Carlos Bibbs, James Jones, Cedrick Wooten, and William Larsha Jr.

Later on, the Commissioners elected Willie Brooks Jr. as new chair of the Commission in fiscal 2021-22, with Michael Whaley to serve as vice chair. A tradition of sorts was dispensed with, as both the new leaders are Democrats. With some deviations over the years, the Commission had adhered to a formula of alternating the party affiliation of chairs, with the vice chair being a member of the other party from the chair.

The Commission now contains eight Democrats and five Republicans, and outgoing Republican Vice Chair Brandon Morrison’s chances were dimmed for either of next year’s positions when her fellow Republicans cold-shouldered her — payback for her win for vice chair last year with Democratic votes against fellow Republican Amber Mills.

An important bit of old business was cleared out, as the Commission roundly defeated by a vote of 8 to 2 the latest of several requests from the Shelby County Election Commission to purchase $4 million of new ballot-marking voting machines from the ESS Corporation. Election Commission Chair Brent Taylor and Election Administrator Linda Phillips were on hand to plead for the Commission’s support.

The Commission, though, has the responsibility for purchasing new voting machines, and a Commission majority has consistently voted its preference for paper-ballot devices, for reasons of both transparency and expenses. The two bodies have been at an impasse for at least a year on the matter — “Your power versus our power,” said County Commissioner Eddie Jones — and the Commission, by an 8 to 2 vote with one abstention, voted late in the meeting to put out its own RFP (request for proposal) for the paper-ballot devices it favors.

Two more pending issues of more recent vintage were dealt with on Monday. The Commission approved a procedure to process by the target date of September 15th bonuses that it had authorized for county employees in the most recent county budget — $5,000 for full-timers and $1,600 for temporaries. And the body approved a new ethics advisory panel for itself, to be constituted by members of the greater community.

The Commission’s newly formed Black Caucus held a brainstorming session in advance of the regular Commission meeting and emerged, under the guidance of caucus Chair Tami Sawyer, with a commitment to focus on economic and health issues. Caucus members also heard a report on environmental hazards in the city’s underserved neighborhoods and agreed to sponsor a blood drive for victims of sickle cell anemia.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Battle of Byhalia: County Commission Debates Pipeline Risks and Benefits, Blocks Land Sale

(Photo: Kodym | Dreamstime.com)

As the saying goes, you can win a battle and lose a war. That adage also works in reverse. Opponents of the proposed Byhalia Connection pipeline ultimately triumphed at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, but only after an early defeat.

The first vote took on the pipeline matter broadly, via a resolution requesting “that the Federal Government review the Byhalia Connection Pipeline permit.” At this point, the would-be partners in the pipeline, Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, still possess a go-ahead from the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Invited to make the case for the pipeline, Katie Martin, a spokesperson for Plains, attempted to defuse criticism about environmental hazards and potential dislocations of the low-income area of southwest Memphis the proposed pipeline would pass through. She said the project had experienced  “unconscionable bullying” by an unfriendly and biased media. 

Justin Pearson, the youthful leader of anti-pipeline activists and founder of MCAP (Memphis Community Against the Pipeline), responded with warnings about the very matters Martin had attempted to debunk.

Commissioner Michael Whaley, co-sponsor of the measure with fellow Democrat Tami Sawyer, focused on “risks that exist with this pipeline” — alluding to one of pipeline opponents’ main fears, the threat of potential pollution of the Memphis sand aquifer, source of Memphis drinking water.

“I have yet to really hear a truly compelling reason why we need it,” said Whaley, who argued “that it would be more beneficial, for the sake of the community, to build climate-friendly infrastructure instead of additional fossil-fuel infrastructure.” And, he said, “Quite frankly, climate-friendly infrastructures could also be drivers of the economy, drivers to create jobs — but not at the expense of quality of life for people in the field.” 

Mick Wright, a Republican commissioner, described himself as “torn” by the issue, seeing both sides of it, but said he wasn’t totally convinced by opponents’ arguments. “I’m just not ready on it. We obviously still rely on oil-based transportation, and oil-based transportation has provided a huge benefit. I certainly have benefited from being able to have a vehicle and have traveled throughout the county and throughout the country. I definitely agree that we want to get to a place where we have fuel sources that are there possibly cleaner. So I struggle with this. But I’m just not there yet.”

Nor, on the general case at hand, was the commission. The resolution seeking federal scrutiny needed seven votes to pass but went down by a vote of five to six, with all five GOP members of the commission voting no. They were joined by Democrat Van Turner, who made it clear that he was joining the prevailing side in a tactical maneuver that would enable him to call for a parliamentary reconsideration of the matter at the next meeting.

Things went differently on the more concrete matter that was actually key to the resolution of things on Monday. This was a vote on whether to sell two properties, owned by the county as the result of tax defaults, which the pipeline proprietors need to pursue construction. That vote failed by the overwhelming vote of nine votes against and only two votes for, those of Republicans David Bradford and Amber Mills, and that was the ball game, though the pipeline companies have not yet formally surrendered. (Yet another resolution to remove a small portion of the 38109 ZIP-code area from a moratorium on property sale had lost much of its relevance and passed easily, eight to two, Commissioners Sawyer and Whaley voting no.) 

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Politics Politics Feature

Touching the Hot Buttons: County Commission Takes on Trump, PILOTs

The public musings of the Shelby County Commission add up at times to as accurate a bellwether on issues at large as can be found in these parts, and that applies to state and national subjects as well as purely local ones. By definition, the commission represents a larger and more representative hunk of the population than does, say, the Memphis City Council, and, though the body is by no means exclusively partisan in its outlook, the fact that its membership is elected by political party gives it natural polarities on a number of matters.

Four matters taken up by the commission at Monday’s public meeting illustrate the range. The first, sponsored by Commissioner Tami Sawyer, well known as a Democrat from her party’s progressive wing, was a resolution “to prohibit the naming of any Shelby County property after U.S. President Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the United States.”

Tami Sawyer

Clearly occasioned by public outrage and confusion stemming from the catastrophic endgame of Trump’s presidency, the resolution garnered the seven votes necessary for passage, all from Democratic members: Sawyer, Van Turner, Mickell Lowery, Willie Brooks, Edmund Ford, Michael Whaley, and chairman Eddie Jones. Three Republicans — Mick Wright, David Bradford, and Brandon Morrison — and Democrat Reginald Milton abstained. Two Republicans, Amber Mills and Mark Billingsley, cast outright “no” votes.

A companion measure of sorts, coming late in the day, was a resolution “in support of preserving our Republic and condemning the insurrection that took place at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” That one, sponsored by Wright and Milton, garnered 12 “aye” votes across the board but got a single abstention from Morrison.

In between those two resolutions was a pair of hot-button votes. One was a substitute resolution for one introduced back in the summer by Sawyer designed to curtail the potential acquisition of military-grade materials from federal sources by the Sheriff’s Department. Co-sponsored by Turner and Milton, the revised version acknowledged the fact that current Sheriff Lloyd Bonner desired no such weaponry but gives the Sheriff’s Department and the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security the option, via commission approval, to acquire protective equipment such as bulletproof vests, as well as rescue vehicles in case of emergencies.

The original resolution had drawn fire from several members as being what they saw as an unwarranted attack on the character of the sheriff. On Monday, Sawyer addressed those reservations: “You know, why do we need police reform? Sheriff Bonner’s a great guy. … But in 2020, across the country, and right here in Shelby County, we recognize a pandemic of racial injustice that was almost as deadly as COVID-19 that impacts the lives of Black and brown people every day.”

The ultimate vote on that one was 10-3, with Commissioners Billingsley, Mills, and Morrison remaining unmollified.

The other resolution incurring extended debate was also sponsored by Sawyer. It proposed a 180-day moratorium on the issuance of any new PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) grants by any of the eight authorities in the county able to issue PILOTs.

These tax-abatement grants, which by definition limit property-tax revenues in the interests of industrial recruitment, have long been controversial, as Sawyer noted, denouncing “the organizations that come and promise 1,000 jobs and never offer more than 300, organizations that pay no taxes, recipients whose workforces are 75 percent temporary workers with no healthcare, and no childcare. And then they close when they’re pushed to do anything else. Why don’t these corporations have to invest in the community?”

Ultimately, the PILOT resolution was recast as a proposal to join with the city of Memphis in a task force to study the implications of PILOTs and to consider possible changes in policy. County Mayor Lee Harris supported that proposition, saying, “I am all for trying to figure out how we might reform the system. … It’s probably a good idea to not try to tee up too many questions. But instead, we try as best we can to narrow our scope to what we might be able to handle. So I would try to narrow the scope to bite-sized amounts.” With that understanding, the proposal was referred back to committee for further shaping.

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Film Features Film/TV

2020 on Screen: The Best and Worst of Film and TV

There’s no denying that 2020 was an unprecedented year, so I’m doing something unprecedented: combining film and TV into one year-end list.

Steve Carrell sucking up oxygen in Space Force.

Worst TV: Space Force

Satirizing Donald Trump’s useless new branch of the military probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But Space Force is an aggressively unfunny boondoggle that normalizes the neo-fascism that almost swallowed America in 2020.

John David Washington (center) and Robert Pattinson (right) are impeccably dressed secret time agents in Tenet.

Worst Picture: Tenet

Christopher Nolan’s latest gizmo flick was supposed to save theaters from the pandemic. Instead, it was an incoherent, boring, self-important mess. You’d think $200 million would buy a sound mix with discernible dialogue. I get angry every time I think about this movie.

We Can’t Wait

Best Memphis Film: We Can’t Wait

Lauren Ready’s Indie Memphis winner is a fly-on-the-wall view of Tami Sawyer’s 2019 mayoral campaign. Unflinching and honest, it’s an instant Bluff City classic.

Grogu, aka The Child, aka Baby Yoda

Best Performance by a Nonhuman: Grogu, The Mandalorian

In this hotly contested category, Baby Yoda barely squeaks out a win over Buck from Call of the Wild. Season 2 of the Star Wars series transforms The Child by calling his presumed innocence into question, transforming the story into a battle for his soul.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

Most Inspiring: Hamilton

The year’s emotional turning point was the Independence Day Disney+ debut of the Broadway mega-hit. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop retelling of America’s founding drama called forth the better angels of our nature.

Film About a Father Who

Best Documentary: Film About a Father Who

More than 35 years in the making, Lynne Sachs’ portrait of her mercurial father, legendary Memphis bon vivant Ira Sachs Sr., is as raw and confessional as its subject is inscrutable. Rarely has a filmmaker opened such a deep vein and let the truth bleed out.

Cristin Milioti in Palm Springs

Best Comedy: Palm Springs

Andy Samberg is stuck in a time loop he doesn’t want to break until he accidentally pulls Cristin Milioti in with him. It’s the best twist yet on the classic Groundhog Day formula, in no small part because of Milioti’s breakthrough performance. It perfectly captured the languid sameness of the COVID summer.

Soul

Best Animation: Soul

Pixar’s Pete Docter, co-directing with One Night in Miami writer Kemp Powers, creates another little slice of perfection. Shot through with a love of jazz, this lusciously animated take on A Matter of Life and Death stars Jamie Foxx as a middle school music teacher who gets his long-awaited big break, only to die on his way to the gig. Tina Fey is the disembodied soul who helps him appreciate that no life devoted to art is wasted.

Jessie Buckley

Best Performance: Jessie Buckley, I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Buckley is the acting discovery of the year. She’s perfect in Fargo as Nurse Mayflower, who hides her homicidal mania under a layer of Midwestern nice. But her performance in Charlie Kaufman’s mind-bending psychological horror is a next-level achievement. She conveys Lucy’s (or maybe it’s Louisa, or possibly Lucia) fluid identity with subtle changes of postures and flashes of her crooked smile.

Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, and Jonathan Majors in Da 5 Bloods.

MVP: Spike Lee

Lee dropped not one but two masterpieces this year. Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the jungle, the kaleidoscopic Vietnam War drama Da 5 Bloods reckons with the legacy of American imperialism with an all-time great performance by Delroy Lindo as a Black veteran undone by trauma, greed, and envy. American Utopia is the polar opposite; a joyful concert film made in collaboration with David Byrne that rocks the body while pointing the way to a better future. In 2020, Lee made a convincing case that he is the greatest living American filmmaker.

Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul

Best TV: Better Call Saul

How could Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s prequel to the epochal Breaking Bad keep getting better in its fifth season? The writing is as sharp as ever, and Bob Odenkirk’s descent from the goofy screwup Jimmy McGill to amoral drug cartel lawyer Saul Goodman is every bit the equal of Bryan Cranston’s transformation from Walter White to Heisenberg. This was the season that Rhea Seehorn came into her own as Kim Wexler. Saul’s superlawyer wife revealed herself as his equal in cunning. If she can figure out what she wants in life, she will be the most dangerous character in a story filled with drug lords, assassins, and predatory bankers.

Michael Stuhlbarg and Elisabeth Moss in Shirley.

Best Picture: Shirley

Elisabeth Moss is brilliant as writer Shirley Jackson in Josephine Decker’s experimental biographical drama. Michael Stuhlbarg co-stars as her lit professor husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, who is at once her biggest fan and bitterest enemy. Into this toxic stew of a relationship is dropped Rose (Odessa Young), the pregnant young wife of Hyman’s colleague Fred (Logan Lerman), who becomes Shirley’s muse/punching bag. If Soul is about art’s life-giving power, Shirley is about art’s destructive dark side. Shirley is too flinty and idiosyncratic to get mainstream recognition, but it’s a stunning, unique vision straight from the American underground.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other

Michael Butler, Jr. accepting his award Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for ‘Empty’ at the 2020 Indie Memphis Virtual Award Ceremony.

In normal times, the Indie Memphis awards ceremony is a raucous gathering, full of self-deprecating gags and boozy cheers. This year, things were different.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the awards ceremony was virtual. The ceremony was broadcast from the auditorium at Playhouse on the Square, where it would usually occur, with about a hundred filmmakers calling in on Zoom. As befitting the times, it was a more somber affair, but it produced moments of unique magic.

Many more of the awards recipients were able to accept in person than in a normal year. Executive Order writers Lázaro Ramos & Lusa Silvestre accepted the Duncan Williams Screenwriting Award from their home in Brazil. I Blame Society director Gillian Hovart, at home in Los Angeles, introduced her cat, who co-starred in the film, when she accepted the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award. And most remarkable of all, director Michael Butler, Jr. accepted his Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for “Empty” from Methodist Hospital, where he was on call, cheered on by his fellow nurses, who looked a little bewildered. It was a uniquely 2020 moment.

The Best Narrative Feature went to Emily Seligman’s coming-of-age comedy Shiva Baby, while Best Documentary Feature went to Cane Fire, director Anthony Banua-Simon’s story of colonial exploitation and labor struggle in Hawai’i. When Deni Cheng accepted her Best Narrative Short award for “Paradise,” the astonished first-time filmmaker revealed that she had not been accepted into any other festivals. Kyungwon Song won Best Documentary Short for “Jesa”.

The Hometowner Feature prize went to Lauren Ready for We Can’t Wait, her cinéma vérité portrait of Tami Sawyer’s 2019 mayoral campaign. Best Hometowner Documentary Short was awarded to “Road to Step” by Zaire Love, which documented a season of Black fraternity life at the University of Mississippi. Best Hometowner Music Video went to The Poet, Havi for “You’re My Jesus”.

The Indie Grant program, which awards production packages worth $13,000 to short film proposals from Memphis filmmakers, went to G.B Shannon for his documentary short “Here Be Dragons,” to Justin Malone for his narrative short “Beware of Goat.” The first ever proof-of-concept Indie Grant, intended to help a filmmaker produce a short film that could sell a feature film concept to potential investors, went to Daniel Farrell for “Beale Street Blues.”

The Festival Awards, selected by staff and board members, are enduring traditions at Indie Memphis. The Soul of Southern Film Award, which stretches back to the origin of the festival, went to Lawrence Matthews’ Memphis labor documentary “The Hub.” The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award, which honors the festival’s DIY roots, went to “The Inheritance”  by Ephraim Asili. The Indie Award, which honors a Memphis-based crew member for outstanding service, went to Daniel Lynn, sound engineer at Music + Arts Studio. Lynn, who was mixing sound for the ceremony live stream, was one of the few people to actually accept their awards in person at Playhouse.

The most emotional moment of the night came courtesy of the Vision Awards. Kelly Chandler founded Indie Memphis in 1998 while she was a film student at the University of Memphis. Chandler no longer works in the film industry, and has lived abroad for decades. For years, journalists such as myself and Indie Memphis staff have tried to contact her to clear up details about the founding of the festival which have been lost to history. Finally, earlier this year, Indie Memphis staffer Joseph Carr, with the help of the U of M alumni office, tracked her to South Korea. Chandler gave a moving speech accepting the Vision Award in which she recounted the first night of the festival, which was held not in the Edge coffee shop as legend had it but instead in an empty Cooper-Young warehouse owned by the same people, and encouraging filmmakers to follow their dreams.

More winners from Indie Memphis 2020:

Best After Dark Short: “The Three Men You Meet at Night” by Beck Kitsis

Best Departures Feature: My Darling Supermarket by Tali Yankelevich

Best Departures Short : “The Return of Osiris” by Essa Grayeb

Best Sounds Feature: Born Balearic: Jon Sa Trinxa and the Spirit of Ibiza by Lily Renae

Best Animated Short: “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad” by Camrus Johnson and Pedro
Piccinini

Best Music Video: “Colors” by Black Pumas, directed by Kristian Mercado

Best Poster Design: Pier Kids

Tonight, Indie Memphis 2020 concludes at the Malco Summer Drive-In with One Night in Miami. Regina King, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for If Beale Street Could Talk and recently took home an Emmy for her work on HBO’s Watchmen, makes her feature film directorial debut with this adaptation of Kemp Powers play about the night Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) celebrated winning the Heavyweight Championship with his friends Malcom X (Kingsely Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.).

Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other

Then the festival closes with a little Halloween spirit. House is a legendary 1977 horror film from Japan’s fabled Toho studios. Directed by experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and featuring a cast of all-amateur actors and some truly eye-popping special effects, it has had huge influence on the horror comedy genre.

Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other (2)

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Politics Politics Feature

No Rubber Stamp: County Commission Flexes Against Election Commission, Harris

One bottom-line message emerged from Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission: The commission does not intend to function as a rubber stamp — not for the Election Commission and not for County Mayor Lee Harris.

In a much-anticipated vote on a request for a $5,815,405 purchase of voting machinery from the ES&S Company, the momentum of a tense, drama-filled debate tilted against the buy when county commission Chairman Eddie Jones pointedly reminded Election Commissioner Brent Taylor, who was making the pitch, that the county commission had put itself on record, not for ballot-marking machines of the sort marketed by ES&S but for hand-marked voting devices.

Jones was immediately backed up by Commissioner Tami Sawyer, and the commission’s vote, in short order, was 6 ayes, 5 nays, and 2 abstentions — leaving the measure one vote short of the necessary seven. During the debate, Commissioner Willie Brooks had reminded Taylor of his intriguing statement he had made to the Flyer last March: “The process is backwards,” Taylor said then. “The Election Commission should not have initiated the RFP and passed the decision about funding on to the county commission. What we [the Election Commission members] should have done is come to some broad general decision about the kind of machines we wanted and then let the county commission issue an RFP [request for proposal], make the choice, and then vote on the funding.”

Soon came another demonstration point, led by Edmund Ford, who wanted to establish commission authority over what he deemed a mayoral overreach: a $1 million expenditure to two local PR agencies to produce an ad promoting face masks as a prophylactic against COVID-19. The ad was commissioned by Harris in August under statutory emergency powers assumed to be his under the federal Cares Act. But Ford insisted that the statute did not give the county mayor authority without commission consent to contract for a sum larger than $50,000. Commissioner Van Turner, who had wanted to withdraw the resolution, said unhappily after a vote of 7 nays and 3 abstentions against it, that the matter had been a “political show,” a case of “wanting to stick it to the mayor.”

Early voting for the November 3rd election begins October 14th and runs through October 29th at the following 26 locations; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday.

• Abundant Grace Fellowship Church, 1574 E. Shelby Dr., Memphis, 38116

• Agricenter International, 7777 Walnut Grove Rd., Memphis, 38120

• Mississippi Blvd. Church Family Life Center, 70 N. Bellevue Blvd., Memphis, 38104

• New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, 7786 Poplar Pike, Germantown, 38138 

• Arlington Safe Room, 11842 Otto Ln.,  Arlington, 38002

• Anointed Temple of Praise, 3939 Riverdale Rd., Memphis, 38115

• Baker Community Center, 7942 Church Rd., Millington, 38053

• Berclair Church of Christ, 4536 Summer Ave., Memphis, 38122

• Briarwood Church, 1900 N. Germantown Pkwy., Memphis, 38016

• Collierville Church of Christ, 575 Shelton Dr., Collierville, 38017

• Compassion Church, 3505 S. Houston Levee Rd., Germantown, 38139

• Dave Wells Community Center, 915 Chelsea Ave., Memphis, 38107

• Glenview Community Center, 1141 S. Barksdale St., Memphis, 38114

• Greater Lewis Street Baptist Church, SE Corner of Poplar and E. Parkway N., Memphis, 38104

• Greater Middle Baptist Church, 4982 Knight Arnold Rd., Memphis, 38118

• Harmony Church, 6740 St. Elmo Rd.,  Bartlett, 38135

• Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, 1234 Pisgah Rd., Cordova, 38016

• Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 60 S. Parkway E., Memphis, 38106

• Raleigh United Methodist Church, 3295 Powers Rd., Memphis, 38128

• Riverside Missionary Baptist Church, 3560 S. Third St., Memphis, 38109

• Shelby County Election Commission, James Meredith Bldg., 157 Poplar Ave., Memphis, 38103

• Second Baptist Church, 4680 Walnut Grove Blvd., Memphis, 38117

• Solomon Temple MB Church, 1460 Winchester Rd., Memphis, 38116

• The Pursuit of God Church (Bellevue Frayser,) 3759 N. Watkins, Memphis, 38127

• White Station Church of Christ, 1106 Colonial Road, Memphis, 38117

• The Refuge Church, 9817 Huff N Puff Rd., Lakeland, 38002

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News News Blog

Strickland Calls for Investigation of Police Response to Protest

CREDIT: Facebook/Tami Sawyer

Facebook/Tami Sawyer

A day after applauding the actions of Memphis Police Departments during a Wednesday night protest, Memphis Jim Strickland announced he is calling for an investigation into police actions after receiving more information.

“After learning more information on an event that occured Wednesday night with one of our officers and a female protester, I have asked Director [Michael] Rallings to fully investigate the matter,” Strickland said.

In Strickland’s original response to the protest, he said he was “proud of the Memphis Police Department and the way our officers conducted themselves last night.” Now the mayor is calling for an investigation, after viewing a video of an MPD officer in riot gear shoving a protester to the ground. 

Thursday, Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer and other leaders held a press conference and called out MPD’s excessive use of force and asked for the release of arrested protesters.

At least five protesters were arrested as a result of the demonstration that shut down Union Avenue in response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. The demonstration, which lasted more than three hours, was met with counter-protesters from the Confederate 901 group, along with dozens of police officers.

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Politics Politics Feature

Numbed by the Numbers: County Commission Struggles to Agree on Budget

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Separate attempts to produce a budget for Shelby County failed to produce anything resembling a consensus on a marathon meeting day of the County Commission on Monday. Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley said he intends to call a special meeting for next week to see if the process can be expedited.
Jackson Baker

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley

Billingsley told his fellow commissioners the called meeting would likely be necessary in the interests of reaching agreement on a budget, with the new fiscal year just around the corner on July 1st.

The Memorial Day holiday next week forces an adjustment of the normal schedule, which would mandate a day of committee meetings during the week, preparatory to the next regular commission meeting the week after. The holiday forces the entire sequence to occur a week later, with committee meetings scheduled for June 3rd and the next regular public meeting to be on June 8th.

Hence the need for a called meeting, especially since Monday’s meetings — a special called budget meeting, starting at 11 a.m., followed by the regular Commission meeting at 3 p.m — became embroiled in complications that were still unsnarled when the commission adjourned at nearly midnight.

“We’re getting into another day,” said budget chair Eddie Jones wearily, with the clock moving toward the witching hour and one of the Webinar meeting’s participants, an administration staffer participating from home and having to alternate her contributions with soothing words for a restless two-year-old. “That sounds wonderful,” was the wistful comment of Commissioner Mick Wright on this audible reminder of a domestic life beyond numbers-crunching.

Various formulas have been adduced for dealing with a looming budget deficit that had looked to be as large as $10 million even before the effects of the coronavirus crisis pushed things even further into fiscal crisis.

In mid-April, County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed a $1.4 billion “lean and balanced” budget, with $13.6 million in specified cuts offset by a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a. the wheel tax. A majority of commissioners could not be found to agree, and alternative budget proposals, all with different versions of austerity, have since been floated, one by Commissioner Brandon Morrison, another by budget chair Jones, working more or less in tandem with vice chair Edmund Ford.

Among the issues raised by Monday’s day-long discussion was that of whether, as county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby contended, the proposals offered by Jones and Ford focused overmuch on cuts in administrative departments, thereby paralleling what has been something of a running feud between Harris and Ford based, as more than a few observers see it, as a potential long-term political rivalry between the two.

Crosby also offered criticism that the Jones-Ford proposals for budget-cutting ignored distinctions between the county’s general fund and various dedicated funds for mandated functions.

Another potential issue is that of the county tax rate, currently pegged at $4.05 per $100 of assessed value. Commissioner Reginald Milton, for one, believes that the rate is set artificially low because of simple mathematical error and that this factor is bound to doom the county to endless future variations of the current budget scramble until the rate is recalculated. The current rate has so far been reaffirmed in two of the three readings required for passage.

The budget issue is predominating over other matters, though the commission did reach an agreement Monday on what had been a controversial proposal by Commissioner Tami Sawyer for an ordinance requiring, on penalty of $50 fine, that residents and visitors wear protective face masks in public areas. Sawyer recast her proposal in the form of a resolution requesting such a requirement by the Health Department but providing for no fine. The resolution passed 8-5 on a party-line vote, with the Commission’s Democrats voting for and the Republicans voting against.

Another matter of consequence that awaits the commission is the matter of new voting machines for Shelby County. The commission has twice voted a preference that the county invest in a system of hand-marked paper ballots in time for the August county general election and federal-state primaries, but the Shelby County Election Commission has approved the recommendation of Election Administrator Linda Phillips that new ballot-marking machines from the ES&S Company be purchased instead.

With the elections approaching, the need for a decision soon increases. The process requires that Harris sign an order authorizing the purchase of a new system, after which the commission must vote for its funding. At issue is whether the commission will approve the Phillips/SCEC request or act according to its own preference for the hand-marked system.

A sizable and well-organized group of local activists is pushing for the latter option, on grounds, among others, that a system of hand-marked ballots would be cheaper, more transparent, and less vulnerable to hacking.

Other, related aspects of the controversy include allegations from the activist ranks of potential conflicts of interest involving Phillips and family members and a concern that purchase of the ES&S machines would involve an implicit need to purchase a new voter-registration system from the same company.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Commission Gets $1.4 Billion “Lean” Budget from Harris

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Here’s one for you: What’s the difference between $10 million and $13.6 million?
The answer to that is two weeks. In that amount of time, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris raised the floor on what he considered the minimum amount of spending cuts needed in the county’s 2020-2021 budget year.

On April 6th, Harris presented a plan to the Shelby County Commission calling for $10 million in cuts, spread among various departments of county government. In a lengthy discussion of alternative methods of reducing the budget, the commission decided to put off action on Harris’ plan.

In the meantime, the mayor has recalculated and increased the tab for what he considered necessary as a means, without raising taxes, to get the county through the dismal current reality of continued shutdown followed by uncertainty. Actually, Harris did propose a mite of increased taxpayer obligation to accompany his proposed austerity budget revealed on Monday — a “lean and balanced” one of $1.4 billion. The increase would be in the form of a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a., the wheel tax.

This is the second time of late that the wheel tax has figured as a component of a plan by Harris to raise revenue. The first time was earlier in the year when the mayor proposed an incremental increase in the wheel tax to finance a new contribution to the Memphis Area Transit Authority in the interests of expanding MATA’s purview.

Objections to that proposal from various commissioners and members of the public — no few of them noting that the wheel tax, as originally conceived, was meant to be restricted to education — scuttled that approach and forced the county to find other means to fund its MATA contribution.

But now it’s baaack! And, as repurposed in the mayor’s budgetary plan, it drew more tentative fire than before, with Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison, who said she could support the precedent, nevertheless invoking the dread metaphor of “the slippery slope.”

Firmly but a bit apologetically, Harris pointed out that Shelby County’s property tax, sales tax, and hotel-motel tax were all at levels too high to push any further and that the county’s automobile license tax was at an “average enough level among equivalent state fees” that it had the right amount of give.

The two other components of the mayor’s austerity budget involved the aforementioned $13.6 million in cuts and a $6 million borrowing from the county’s fund balance, leaving that reserve fund at the comfortable go-no-lower level of $85 million.

Under probing from various commissioners, Harris defended his recommendations by saying explicitly that without cuts of the sort he proposed, the county would have to go up on taxes — “it’s one or the other” — and might have to impose layoffs, also.

Democratic Commissioner Tami Sawyer voiced a concern that, even should Harris’ cuts be adopted, layoffs might be around the corner.

The mayor’s proposed budget would shore up the target areas of health, public safety, and the social safety net, and it contains several new or protected expenditures — approximately $4 million to fund 30 new additional patrolman positions in the Sheriff’s Department, needed “to patrol the soon-to-be de-annexed areas” of Memphis; a second dose of $8.5 million to Pre-K and early Pre-K, as well as “$427 million for schools, in addition to $33 million in school construction needs this year.”

The budget also contains commitments for funding continued actions for relief and treatment during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The commissioners, who rejected the specifics of a hiring freeze proposed two weeks ago by Harris and resisted at the time by county department heads, adopted one of their own on Monday — a more lenient version that would freeze hiring and spending through June 30th but contained appeal procedures that Harris said made it a “soft freeze” compared to what had been his “hard stop.”

The freeze adopted Monday was sponsored by Republican commissioners Mick Wright and Morrison and got the seven votes needed for passage, with most Democratic commissioners either voting no or abstaining. 

Without being specific, Democratic Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., a persistent critic of the mayor, compared Harris’ projected plans to some adopted in 2014 by the Memphis City Council on which both he and Harris served. Those financial arrangements would lower the county’s bond rating and draw the attention of the state comptroller, Ford said.

In related action on Monday, the commission unanimously approved the county tax rate for 2020-2021 — keeping the rate at its current level of $4.05 per assessed value of $100.

The commission also voted 7-4-1 in favor of a resolution, sponsored by Democratic commissioners Tami Sawyer, Michael Whaley, and Van Turner, requesting Governor Bill Lee to sanction no-excuse absentee voting for the duration of the coronavirus shutdown and expressing a preference for machines allowing voter-marked ballots. That vote was more or less along party lines — 7-5-1, with Democrat Ford joining several Republicans in opposition.

Online Glitches
Commissioners and other personnel participating in the commission’s meetings have by now gotten used to the webinar means of virtual electronic communication, whereby each participant tunes in from separate computer stations and discussions proceed more or less along the lines of Robert’s Rules of Order.
Jackson Baker

Mark Billingsley

But their familiarity has another side to it — highly noticeable Monday when a few commissioners allowed their lines to stay open during discussion, thereby picking up traces of private conversation and domestic soundtracks.

That fact, along with technological glitches in the presentation of the Harris budget, complicated the process of communication on Monday and kept GOP commission chair Mark Billingsley calling for order in that regard. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Virtual Deadlock: County Commission Fails to Resolve COVID Funding

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Several things have not changed during the transformation of Shelby County Commission meetings from open affairs held in the public auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Building Downtown to the current audio-visual affairs conducted online, with the commissioners and supporting county personnel all connecting virtually from their own separate computer spaces.

Jackson Baker

Sharing the screen during part of Monday’s prolonged County Commission meeting were (top row) Commission Chair Mark Billingsley and Commissioner Tami Sawyer; (bottom row) County Trustee Regina Morrison Newman, County C.A.O. Dwan Gilliom, and CFO Mathilde Crosby.

The meetings still engender seemingly endless back-and-forth bickering and bartering, still suffer from the longueurs, and still move toward their drawn-out conclusion in the most anti-climactic ways imaginable. 

Which is not to say that grave and significant matters do not get dealt with, along with not-so-momentous but still intriguing matters such as Commissioner Tami Sawyer’s conclusion that someone was “a piss-poor communicator.”

Who did she mean? It was hard to tell, since Sawyer’s opinion was of the open-mic variety, spilled unintentionally and only fragmentally during a lull in the proceedings Monday. Sawyer quickly realized she was being overheard, got her mic turned off, and the agenda item under discussion went on being discussed as it had been.

An hour or so later, however, Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley could not resist saying aloud, “I hope that wasn’t me you were talking about.” Sawyer, who had meanwhile apologized for her lapse, allowed as how “Yeah, it was,” then gave a mischievous chuckle to indicate she was kidding, and never did acknowledge who had actually been the subject of her observation.

Actually, all the commissioners, as each of them has demonstrated more than once, have decent talents for communicating. The problem Monday was that nobody ever quite managed to convince a majority of the others  regarding the one subject that proved most time-consuming and most vexing — how to fund a $2 million commitment to the Shelby County Health Department and the Emergency Management Agency to help deal with the coronavirus emergency, part of $10 million altogether that needed to be pared from a forthcoming county budget that was already threatened with mega-deficit.

Was the money to come out of proportionately deducted portions of monies counted on by the various departments of county government, as County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed? Or could it instead be carved in one big hunk out of the county’s Public Works budget, as Sawyer, Edmund Ford, and budget chair Eddie Jones had all proposed?

The problem with the mayor’s idea quickly became evident in complaints called into the meeting from various elected clerks protesting the potential diminution of their funding. The problem with the Sawyer-Jones-Ford plan was that it would violate two desiderata by causing layoffs and by canceling county contracts. In the end, neither of those alternatives, nor any other, would pass muster with a commission majority, and the solution was postponed until the commission convenes again — virtually — in committee meetings on Wednesday of next week.

The most remarkable thing about Monday’s meeting, a “Webinar” affair as indicated, was that, despite various technical glitches, such as people’s mics going off — or on — at the wrong time, the meeting developed its themes in the same slowly accretive way as always, threats, like Ed Ford’s to start calling out administrative improprieties, got made the same way as before. Tempers flared and subsided in familiar ways, and key players determined the political flavor of certain outcomes merely by shifting from one partisan group to the ranks of the other in the case of a particular vote. All of this, according to the long-established patterns characteristic of boisterous public meetings with everybody on hand to stare everybody else down.

And, just as it was when they were all together in one place, they had difficulty in finding a place in the proceedings to hang up and say goodbye. Somebody always had some last words that had to be said. And that’s how bare-bones agendas, like Monday’s, become five-hour meetings.

In all fairness, the time and energy spent in trying — and failing — to devise a framework for making truly serious financial cuts for the sake of a cause so urgent as confronting the worldwide scourge of COVID-19, to pay for the PPEs and other paraphernalia of constructive self-defense, was not wasted. They’ll get it right next time now that they’ve worked out the kinks.

Meantime another thorny matter, that of what to do about the issue of paper ballots in forthcoming county elections, was postponed on the quite logical grounds that the Shelby County Election Commission has not yet crossed its own Rubicon on the matter. It will, though, and almost certainly in time for the Commission’s next installment of Webinar.

The August 6 Election Roster as of Now
SHELBY COUNTY SCHOOLS BOARD: Five of the nine Positions are up. 
District 2: Incumbent Althea Green is unopposed.
District 3: Incumbent Stephanie Love has opposition from Aaron Youngblood and Jesse Jeff.
District 4: Incumbent Kevin Woods is opposed by Kristy Sullivan,  Tamarques Porter, Allison Fouche, Clyde W. Pinkston, and Joann Massey.
District 5: Incumbent Scott McCormick will be opposed by Paul Evelyn Allen, Sheleah Harris, April Ghueder, and, if his signatures check out, Mauricio Calvo.
District 7: Incumbent Miska Clay Bibbs will apparently be opposed by Trevor Johnson Banks, whose signatures are undergoing verification.

LEGISLATIVE PRIMARY RACES
State House, District 83: Republican Mark White (incumbent) is unopposed in his primary, as is Democrat Jerri Green in hers.
State House, District 84: Democrat Joe E. Towns (incumbent) has two known primary opponents, Dominique Primer and Phyllis Parks, with another, William Frazier, awaiting verification of his nominating signatures.
State House District 85: Challenger Alvin Crooke is challenging first-term incumbent Jesse Chism.
State House District 86: Long-term incumbent Barbara Cooper has four Democratic challengers: Dominique Frost, Daryl Lewis, Rob White, and Austin A. Crowder. Kenny Lee has filed as an Independent.
State House District 87: Democratic Minority Leader Karen Camper has the primary to herself.
State House District 88: Incumbent Democrat Larry Miller is opposed by Orrden W. Williams, Jr.
State House District 90: Incumbent Democrat John J. Deberry Jr. had three Democratic challengers, Torrey Harris, Anya Parker, and Catrina L. Smith.
State House District 91: Incumbent Democrat London Lamar has a possible challenger if Doris DeBerry Bradshaw’s signatures check out.
State House District 93: Incumbent G.A. Hardaway has the primary to himself.
State House District 95: Incumbent Republican Kevin Vaughan is unopposed in his primary, as Democrat Lynette Williams is in hers.
State House District 96: Incumbent Democrat Dwayne Thompson and Republican challenger Patti Possel are unopposed in their respective primaries and await a rematch November.
State House District 97: For Democrats — Allan Creasy, Gabby Salinas, Clifford Stockton III, Ruby Powell-Dennis — seek their party’s nod for this open seat, while Republicans John Gillespie and Brandon Weise seem destined to tangle in their primary.
State House District 98: Democratic incumbent Antonio Parkinson may have a primary challenger if Charles A. Thompson’s signatures check out.
State House District 99: Republican incumbent Tom Leatherwood has a serious challenger in his primary, former Shelby County GOP chair Lee Mills.
State Senate District 30: Democratic incumbent Sara Kyle has a party challenger in perennial candidate M. LaTroy Alexandria-Williams.
State Senate District 31: First-term Republican Paul Rose has primary opposition from Scott Throckmorton, while Democrat Julie Byrd Ashworth’s signatures are being checked for verification in her primary.

GENERAL SESSIONS COURT CLERK: Democratic nominee Joe Brown and Republican nominee Paul Boyd are matched.