Tag: Van Turner

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Rumblings on the Commission

It is the City Council that grabs most of the headlines and TV attention, but it must be remembered that the Shelby County Commission not only represents more constitutionally ordained authority than does the Council, it is the body that ultimately calls the shots on such important aspects of our collective life as public education and public health.

Eddie Jones

Not that the Commission controls the public schools; it just pays for them on behalf of the taxpayers. It can’t dictate on matters of curriculum — those are entirely to be worked out between the School Board and the superintendent’s office — but the Commissioners can, if they choose, withhold funding for the schools if they don’t like the drift of things.

Once in a while, in the heat of debate on the Commission, action of that sort gets threatened. One of the most persistent critics of the Shelby County Schools system is current County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., an educator himself and one who, in particular, is forever suspicious of S.C.S. spending plans and demands to see the fine print and the bottom line regarding virtually everything representatives of the school system bring to the Commission to get funded.

And now the Commission, which already is responsible for monitoring the county Health Department, is — in the crush of the ongoing pandemic — attempting to ground its authority even deeper, with the proposed creation of a Shelby County Health Board. The recent proposal to do so, which seemed at first to be uncontroversial, has become anything but.

Two key members of the Commission, outgoing chairman Mark Billingsley and Edmund Ford Jr., withdrew their sponsorship of the enabling ordinance at Monday’s Commission meeting amid reported pressure from city government and suburban municipalities — both of which entities are said to view the proposed new Board as threatening to their own power concerns. “We don’t like people trying to pre-empt us. We don’t like the state to pre-empt us, and we don’t like anybody else doing it, either,” said a well-placed source in Memphis city government.

The city, of course, is the driving force behind the Memphis-Shelby County COVID-19 Task Force, though virtually everyone of importance in local medicine, not to mention representatives of all the municipalities and first-responder agencies, is a member of that sprawling body which, for all the honorific nature of its cast of characters, does hard work and holds at least two valuable public information sessions during the week.

What the Task Force does not have is the power to compel policy throughout the county, and that is what the proposed Board would have, and that is why city and suburban officials were resistant to it right away. Van Turner, the low-keyed but highly influential inner-city Democratic commissioner and former chairman, is the remaining major sponsor, and he indicates he is amenable to broadening the composition of the Board — certainly not to the dimensions of the Task Force but in ways inclusive of the concerned separate jurisdictions.

After a preliminary 7-3 vote on the Board proposition and a decision to send it back to committee, the process of compromise and overhaul has begun. As it proceeds to the point necessary for passage, the concept of the Board seems likely to become that of an advisory body rather than a prescriptive one, and, in that case, its relevance as an add-on to the Task Force may cease to be obvious.

Besides the initial aversion of Memphis and suburban officialdom to the idea of the Health Board, there was another inherent obstacle to its creation — the ever-widening gap between Mayor Lee Harris and the Commission itself. There has always been a certain tension between the two power centers of mayor and Commission. In a sense the relationship is based on a balance of power, and relations between the two have always swung pendulum-like between common purpose and rivalry.

It was the latter state that dominated things during the last two or three years of the administration of former Mayor Mark Luttrell. A jurisdictional dispute that had begun in 2015 over the amount and disposition of a county fiscal surplus would harden into long-term enmity. A pair of Repubican commissioners — Terry Roland of Millington and Heidi Shafer of East Memphis — would each serve a term as Commission chair during the crucial period and the two of them, working with each other and with a technical Democratic majority, would supervise a rebellion against the GOP mayor that would erode his authority significantly and see him, at the end of his two terms in 2018, unable or unwilling even to oversee the details of transition to the newly elected Democratic mayor, Lee Harris.

Harris came into office with an 8 to 5 Democratic majority and resolved to avoid any schism with the Commission. Yet here he is, two years later, with the Commission having seized the initiative on producing the budget — and not tenderly, either — exactly as the previous Commission had done with Luttrell at the very start of their mutual alienation.

Brandon Morrison

It is this Mayor-Commission dichotomy and not partisan bickering that had seemingly become the major determinant of disagreements in county government. Yet that may be changing, as partisanship certainly reared up as a reality in the course of Monday’s election of chair and vice chair.

The Shelby County Commission has, more than most bodies elected by partisan election, been able to enjoy cooperation across party lines — certainly more so than Congress or the state legislature in Nashville. As already noted, the case can be made that Republicans Roland and Shafer (neither of whom can be described as a moderate) provided the guidelines for group action in the previous version of the Commission, a majority-Democrat one like the present version, which lines up 8 to 5 Democratic.

Which is not to say that Shafer and Roland imposed GOP ideology; except for their efforts on behalf of a tax cut, the main Commission emphasis during that period arguably was on behalf of MWBE (Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises). That and resistance to Nashville on matters like school vouchers.

Two Democrats — Eddie Jones and Edmund Ford Jr. — have experienced no problem working back and forth across the political aisle, in much the same manner as Jones and Justin Ford did in the previous Commission. The occasional vote on a partisan matter has often seen either or both of them voting with the body’s GOP members. Up until now, there has been no equivalent among Republicans.

That all changed on Monday, when, after a unanimous vote of all Commissioners for Jones as the body’s next chairman, East Memphis Republican Brandon Morrison joined six Democrats in a vote to make herself vice chair and defeat fellow Republican Amber Mills, a north county member who tilts significantly to the right and was the preferred candidate of the other GOP members. The significance of the vote is the bearing it is likely to have a year from now when the vice chair will presumably be in the catbird seat for the next vote for chair.

Mark Billingsley, a Republican from Germantown and the outgoing chairman, has reacted with outrage to what he sees as devious and disloyal action on the part of Morrison (whose conservative voting record, incidentally, has not been radically dissimilar from Mills’), and he declined to consider a motion from Democrat Tami Sawyer to make Morrison’s election unanimous.

While Democrats like Van Turner and Reginald Milton saw the matter as no big deal, except as a good-for-the-goose, good-for-the-gander bit of parallelism, the outgoing chair remained unappeased. Given that Billingsley himself had, during his chairmanship, clearly attempted to position himself as a conciliator of factions, his reaction could signal a sea change in future relations between the parties. All that remains to be seen.

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Cover Feature News

Welcome to the Machine: Fight Over Voting System Raises Issues of Integrity and Nepotism

Are the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County — troubled with decades of problematic and even botched election results — really about to acquire a new, improved means of expressing their will in the forthcoming August and November election rounds?

That question may be answered this week, as the Shelby County Commission decides whether to accept or overrule the judgment last week of Election Administrator Linda Phillips and the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) — apparently in favor of ballot-marking devices marketed by the ES&S Company, a monolith of the election-machine industry. The name of the chosen manufacturer was not explicitly revealed last week — “Company 1,” was how it was called in discussion — but several references by Phillips to the “thermal paper” uniquely employed by ES&S for production of machine receipts, were something of a giveaway.

Jackson Baker

Election Administrator Linda Phillips

The Shelby County Commission, which has the responsibility of paying for the machines (or not), had voted twice previously in favor of hand-marked ballots instead, on several grounds, including cost, transparency, and invulnerability to ballot-hacking. And an aroused contingent of local activists, abetted by a network of nationally known election adepts, is prepared to insist on that choice.

Theoretically, the SCEC voted last Thursday to accept something of a compromise resolution from Election Commision member Brent Taylor, one of the three Republicans on the five-member body. Taylor accepted Phillips’ recommendation on behalf of ballot-marking devices but proposed that voters in each precinct be offered, much in the manner of the grocer’s “paper or plastic” choice, the alternative of a hand-marked ballot. That was seemingly enough to win over Democrat Anthony Tate. But not Bennie Smith, the other Democrat and an election-security professional who is one of the sparkplugs of the case for hand-marked paper ballots.

The bottom line is that, despite last week’s 4-1 vote by the Shelby County Election Commission in approval of ballot-marking devices — again, presumably those manufactured by ES&S — the battle isn’t over yet. Hardcore proponents of hand-marked paper ballots, who have been highly motivated and organized from the beginning, are looking ahead to the prospect that the Shelby County Commission, whose duty it is to pay for and transact any purchase of voting-machine equipment, might override the stated choice of the Election Administrator and SCEC.

The county commission has put itself on record twice as wishing to purchase a system employing hand-marked paper ballots as the most cost-effective, transparent, and unhackable way to carry out an election. As the specter of COVID-19 began to make itself felt, the paper ballot adherents have also emphasized the lesser likelihood of viral infection via a paper ballot used singly than for metal used over and over by a sequence of individuals.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Van Turner

One of the more dedicated believers in the paper ballot concept is Democratic County Commissioner Van Turner, who some weeks ago at a commission meeting was involved in a verbal exchange with Election Administrator Phillips, who was adamantly insisting on her preference for ballot-marking devices.

“We can vote down the funding,” Turner pointed out.

“We can sue you,” Phillips retorted.

Legal Aspects

Though conflict-of-interest and disclosure issues are involved in the dispute, the heart of the matter may well be fundamentally different ideas about the right to vote. Though both sides in the current controversy make claims that the system they advocate will save money and achieve accurate results, the question is deeper and more essential than that.

There may, in fact, be something more than an incidental correlation between the method we choose to cast our ballots and the degree to which the franchise is made available to the maximum number of people. As one instance of that, the partisans of hand-marked paper ballots tend to favor the maximum use of voting by mail for anticipated absenteeism and other reasons, especially in a time of enduring fears regarding the COVID-19 virus. One such advocate is Steve Mulroy, law professor at the University of Memphis and a former member of the Shelby County Commission and one of the leaders of the local activists seeking hand-marked paper ballots.

Jackson Baker

U of M law professor Steve Mulroy

Mulroy first came to public attention more than a decade ago when he was an early advocate locally of a paper trail for the purpose of double-checking, if need be, the votes cast in an election. The concept is now accepted virtually everywhere, and the idea of scanners to provide such a paper record of ballots cast is now built into both of the rival systems being considered for Shelby County’s new voting process.

Even as Mulroy is joining with others to urge the county commission to expand its fiduciary intent and resources for the purchase of a hand-marked ballot system, he has filed suit in Chancery Court in Nashville against relevant public officials of the state of Tennessee — Governor Bill Lee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett, state Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins, and state Attorney General Herb Slatery — seeking relief for several named individuals and organizations from state regulations impeding or prohibiting their wish to vote absentee by mail in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Court is where the voting machine case could end up, too. The partisans of hand-marked paper ballots are hopeful that the seven Democratic members of the county commission who have voted twice to endorse the purchase of such a system will stick to their guns and vote to overrule the Election Commission’s official recommendation. Such a vote could happen at the county commission’s next regular public meeting, on May 18th. Or it could come earlier via a special called meeting.

In the event such a vote does occur, it is probable that the issue would be contested legally. A first step would be Chancery Court locally, where, as County Commissioner Turner, a proponent of hand-marked ballots, sees it, the odds would favor his side. “After that, who knows?” said Turner, who foresees a round — maybe several — of appellate testing, as well as a possible action supporting ballot-marking devices by a reconvened state legislature with its Republican super-majority. “However it goes, I’m with it to the end,” vowed Turner, who said he thought the other six Democratic commissioners favoring hand-marked ballots would persevere as well. (It should be noted that the party-line aspect of the current controversy owes much to a public letter from GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey addressed to the three Republican SCEC members insisting on their support for ballot-marking devices.)

Administrator Phillips is very much a true believer for her side. She has made numerous public statements disparaging paper ballots and extolling ballot-marking devices, and, even as her original RFP (request for proposal) went out to potential vendors, she had an op-ed published on behalf of such machines. And she has made frequent public statements alleging that voter error is a rampant feature of paper ballots and, even more sensationally, told a county commission meeting recently that voter fraud occurred “100 percent” in the realm of paper ballots.

Mulroy, who has authored numerous serious papers and a book on the kaleidoscope of issues relating to voting, promptly debunked Phillips’ assertions, producing evidence that such paper-ballot fraud is hard to authenticate anywhere and has been non-existent in Tennessee. Further, Mulroy cited studies demonstrating that the rate of voter error was no higher in paper voting or in absentee ballot counts than in touch-screen voting. Significantly, he used research performed by the conservative Heritage Foundation to buttress his conclusions in both cases.

A Matter of Bona Fides

Adherents of paper ballots have been at pains of late to question the bona fides of Phillips’ professed positions, citing her own relationship — and that of her family members — to companies with whom she has arranged contractual relationships. Inasmuch as her preferred vendor for the new ballot-marking devices she wants for Shelby County is apparently ES&S, it may or may not be relevant that, as her PR assistant Suzanne Thompson acknowledged in a recent communication, one of Phillips’ two sons, presumably Andrew, “worked for ES&S,” adding, “He’s no longer employed there.”

Documentary evidence does establish that Andrew Phillips, along with another Phillips son, Chris, did work at the voting-software company Everyone Counts in 2017, when Shelby County, during Phillips’ first year as election administrator , concluded a $1 million-plus contract with that company, for the purchase and maintenance of voter-registration software. Controversy surrounds the history of that contract, first of all, since not only the two Phillips sons but Phillips herself had been an employee of Everyone Counts. Everyone Counts was, in fact, her immediate past employer at the time she took the job of Shelby County election administrator.

At the time, Everyone Counts seems not to have been regarded as a leader in its field. During the first year of the Shelby County contract, in fact, Everyone Counts suffered financial difficulties and was purchased by a company called Votem, which took over administration of the voter-registration contract. In short order, Votem would divest itself of the Shelby County contract, passing it on to a third company, KnowInk.

Coincidentally or not, Chris Phillips, one of Linda Phillips’ sons, would end up in the service of each of those companies in turn — first Everyone Counts, then Votem, and finally KnowInk, where he remains today. Meanwhile, Shelby County has continued to pay an annual maintenance fee to whoever held the contract, and has purchased KnowInk e-poll books for $175,000 on a sole-source contract.

The issue of family connections is not the only one that has arisen regarding that voter-registration contract, which was Linda Phillips’ first major action in the service of Shelby County. There is some indication that she may have waived the duty of keeping her commission members sufficiently informed about the vendor or the other relevant facts regarding the contract.

Prior to concluding that 2017 contract, Phillips, who had been hired by Shelby County in 2016, went through the motions of asking Marcy Ingram, then the ethics officer in the Shelby County Attorney’s office, a series of questions, including those of whether her own past relationship with Everyone Counts needed to be disclosed and whether her son’s employment at the company should be disclosed as well.

Attorney Ingram’s answers were succinct: “As you are involved in the evaluation of the proposals,” she said, Phillips needed to make disclosure in both cases “to the other evaluators” to avoid “an appearance of impropriety.”

In her query of Ingram, Phillips had offered this assurance: “I’m not going to be making the final decision on what to purchase; that will be the Election Commission decision to recommend the vendor.” [Our italics]

There is no record in the minutes of Shelby County Election Commission meetings or elsewhere to suggest that the commission was in fact invited to pass judgment on the vendor. Norma Lester, an election commissioner at the time, is adamant about that and affirms, too, that there were no disclosures to the election commission of the sort mandated by Ingram. Phillips’ own PR consultant, Suzanne Thompson, explains the letting of the contract thusly:

“For the purchase of the VR equipment, a scoring machine [sic] made up from county IT reps and the election commission each ranked the equipment. Each member rated the system independently. She [Phillips] didn’t make a recommendation for the Voter’s Registration System because it was all up to the folks in purchasing.”

In short, while various IT technocrats may have had a shot at “evaluating” the contract, the Shelby County Election Commission itself seemingly did not. This may or may not be a problem of substance. It is certainly one of optics.

Also in the optics category is another odd circumstance: John Ryder, the veteran Shelby County Election Commission attorney who doubles as a vintage Republican Party eminence, was revealed recently to be sharing office space with the Nashville firm of MNA Government Operations. The head of that firm is Wendell Moore, a longtime Ryder friend, who lobbies for the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and for ES&S, that major player in the election-machinery field, and the ultimate choice of Linda Phillips and a 4-1 majority of the Election Commission as the contractor of Shelby County’s new voting system.

Once the matter of his office-sharing became public, Ryder argued that his presence in the Nashville office of MNA was due to the fact that his law firm, Harris-Shelton, rented space there and that he had no working relationship with either MNA or its client ES&S. He said further that he had no knowledge of the then-active RFP for Shelby County voting machines nor any of the vendors seeking the county’s business, and therefore he had seen no need to make any disclosures.

Left hanging over the affair in the aftermath, and never quite explained, was photographic evidence that, in two different versions of the glass register in the lobby of the Bank of America building in Nashville, Ryder was listed as an associate of MNA.

Jackson Baker

Election Commission in session

“Slimy Tricks?”

One thing is incontestable: As already indicated, ES&S, which absorbed its main rival, Diebold, some years ago, is a major player in the election-machinery business, a veritable titan. Critics of the company see it as an industry giant squelching would-be competitors and running rampant over contractual and constitutional processes in the jurisdictions where it operates.

Voting rights activist Susan Pynchon, a Floridian who, with local activist Erika Sugarmon, has organized several recent Zoom sessions on the voting-machine issue, has compiled a lengthy list of articles pertaining to the company’s activities nationwide. They run from charges of bribery to criminal negligence to playing fast and loose with contractual obligations to error-prone hardware and undependable software.

As a sort of distillation of all that, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a recent Zoom seminar on election security, said that ES&S “uses every slimy trick in the book” to get states to buy “overpriced, insecure voting machines.”

That, of course, is one side of the issue. ES&S has its partisans, too, who see the company as the industry standard, inveighed against as much for its success as for any actual misdeeds. For the record, ES&S markets a hand-marked paper ballot system as well as its line of ballot-marking devices, though it more aggressively pushes the latter. The SCEC’s recent RFP saw three companies competing for Shelby County’s business: ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart Voting System.

The Next Step

The next step in the purchase process will see Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris formally acknowledging the receipt of SCEC’s recommendation and signing an order for the Shelby County Commission to arrange a purchase for new machines to be used in August and thereafter. Word is that he will leave it to the county commission to accept the SCEC recommendation or make its own choice. If it does the latter, presumably it would opt to accept the low bid from among the various bids received in response to Linda Phillips’ RFP. And, as indicated, such an action might well be subject to legal action.

In any case, at some point in the near future, Shelby County stands to be outfitted with new voting devices, hopefully in time for the August election round. Even if human disputation is off the table by then, there might still remain the issue of whether the COVID-19 virus will remain persistent to the point that a truly serious urgency will attach to Mulroy’s aforementioned suit to allow the unimpeded use of “no-excuse-needed” mail-in ballots. For the record, those would be hand-marked.

…

Widely Differing Estimates

Election Administrator Linda Phillips and local activists for hand-marked paper ballots have difficulty agreeing on many things — notably the respective costs to Shelby County of the kind of new voting machines each prefers.

Phillips reckons the immediate purchase costs of new ES&S ballot-marking devices, which she favors, to be $7,160,000, as against $8,150,000 for a hand-marked ballot system. She sees the 14-year extrapolated cost of maintaining the hand-marked system to be $24,785,000, compared to $9,415,000 for ballot-marking devices.

The local advocates of hand-marked ballots, on the other hand, see their system as costing only $3,039,314 up front, with annual maintenance expenses of only $612,564, while they see the ballot-marking machines favored by Phillips to have an initial cost of $8,268,314, with annual expenses thereafter to be $885,203.

Not only different systems, but different vocabularies for figuring costs. No wonder this particular twain can’t meet.

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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. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Tackles Issues With State Legislature

The March 3rd Super Tuesday vote, with presidential preference primaries favoring Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and nominating Joe Brown and Paul Boyd, respectively, as the Democratic and Republican candidates for General Sessions Court clerk, has come and gone.

But there was still politics to be found locally. In a lengthy, oddly contentious meeting of the Shelby County Commission on Monday, political factors weighed heavily on several controversial issues, most of which were resolved either unanimously or via one-sided votes. A pair of hot-button issues were addressed in the form of late add-on resolutions at the close of Monday’s meeting, which had already generated significant steam via the regular agenda.

One of the add-on resolutions opposed Republican Governor Bill Lee‘s proposal for open-carry legislation, at least for Shelby County, and passed the Commission by a bipartisan 10-1 vote, the lone vote in opposition coming from GOP Commissioner Mick Wright, who chose to let his dissent speak for itself.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Republican David Bradford and Democrat Tami Sawyer. The minimal discussion of the measure was itself bipartisan, with, for example, Democrat Reginald Milton and Republican Amber Mills making similar declarations of being pro-Second Amendment but citing opposition to the open-carry measure from law enforcement officials.

Specifically, the resolution’s enacting clause asks that any open-carry measure exclude Shelby County: “Now, therefore, be it resolved the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County Tennessee be carved out of any and all permitless gun carry legislation.”

It should be noted that in a separate action over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee unanimously passed its own resolution condemning Senate Bill 2671/House Bill 2817, the permitless-carry legislation, citing similar objections — noting that, for example, “the Memphis Mayor, Memphis Police Director, and the Shelby County Sheriff have already spoken out against the bill.”

Another late add-on resolution at Monday’s commission meeting was introduced by Sawyer. It would have repeated the commission’s previous stand in favor of voter-marked paper ballot machines in Shelby County and included an exhortation to the General Assembly to “support legislation for paper ballot on-demand options,” thereby tying into specific ongoing legislation to that end.

Further, and importantly, the resolution provides an alternative to holding a public referendum authorizing new voting machines, as apparently required under a newly unearthed provision of state law. It underscores the authority of the county commission itself, “as the governing body of Shelby County” to purchase new voting machines, and notes the subsequent reallocation last month by the commission of capital improvement funds as a means of doing so. The resolution would not be acted on directly but was by unanimous consent referred to the next meeting of the commission’s general government committee.

Commissioner Sawyer appended to the resolution a copy of a letter signed by five Republican legislators representing Shelby County and addressed to the three Republican members of the Shelby County Election Commission.

The letter, on the official letterhead of state Senator Brian Kelsey, carried two specific “recommendations” to the GOP SCEC members. One directly opposes voter-marked ballots, stating that “[a]llowing voters to handle and mark paper inevitably opens the election process to numerous unnecessary human errors” and that “reverting back to technology from the 1990s would be a huge mistake.”

A second “recommendation” needs  to be quoted in its entirely: “Second, in order to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to vote and to limit the financial strains on the taxpayers, we recommend seven days of early voting be conducted at all satellite voting locations in Shelby County, preceded by eight days of early voting at the Shelby County Election Commission office. Opening only one early voting location in the Agricenter, as was done in 2018, was wrong and in violation of state law. The solution we propose will fix this problem.”

Buried in this somewhat disingenuous language is the idea of cutting back the amount of time devoted to satellite early voting from two weeks to a single week.

Sawyer was pointed and defiant in the citation of the Kelsey letter, saying that its recommendations and circumlocutions alike, as well as the confinement of the communication to Republican members of the SCEC, constituted an affront to the commission and to the process of resolving the voting-machine issue in an orderly, conscientious manner.

“The letter undermines this board,” she declared, insisting that her condemnation of the letter be given maximum public exposure.

The voting-machine issue was not the only matter to invoke the possibility of cross-purposes between county and state authorities. An unexpected controversy arose over a proposal, advanced by Commissioners Milton and Van Turner at the behest of County Mayor Lee Harris, to allocate $33,799 for a Veterans Service Officer in Shelby County. Commissioner Mills, who with colleague Edmund Ford, had been to Nashville last week to discuss county-government needs with state officials, asked for a postponement of the action, insisting that she had been promised the prospect of not one, but five such officers for Shelby County via state action, and that county action on the matter could scuttle the state effort.

An argument ensued between Mills and Harris, with the mayor, backed by several members of the commission, expressing disbelief that county action on the matter would provoke a punitive reaction in Nashville. But in the end a narrow vote approved a deferral of the issue to the commission meeting of April 20th.

Modest controversy arose, too, over the commission’s action in approving  a paid parental leave policy for county employees. The annual price tag of the proposal, $830,000, to be paid for by internet sales tax revenues, was objected to by Republican Commissioners Mills and Brandon Morrison, who cited a looming $85 million county deficit, and abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of approval.

Democrats at the Ready

Jackson Baker

Among those gathered Saturday morning at Kirby High School for preliminary party caucuses before this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee were (l to r) Rick Maynard, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, and David Upton.

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News News Blog

‘Never to Return’: Greenspace Wants Confederate Statues Out of Shelby County

Former site of the Forrest statue

The group that removed Confederate statues from city parks here in 2017, said Thursday it is looking to permanently relocate them outside of Shelby County.

The move comes after the Supreme Court of Tennessee denied a petition from the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Wednesday. The group hoped to get a review of its case against the city of Memphis for the removal of the city’s Confederate monuments.

The statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, along with a bust of Confederate Capt. Harvey Mathes, were all removed in 2017 and have been stored in an undisclosed location since.

Now, Van Turner, president of Memphis Greensapce, Inc, the non-profit that bought the two city parks where the monuments stood, said the organization is looking to get the statues out of Shelby County, “never to return.”

This week’s decision by the state Supreme Court effectively ends the litigation surrounding the statues, Turner said. Now, the Geenspace will “entertain conversations with a number of entities” to transfer the monuments in an “appropriate way.”

Turner said whatever entity the monuments are transferred to will be asked to sign an agreement that prohibits the monuments from returning to the county.

“That’s our main focus right now,” Turner said.

The group’s next focus will be the gravesites of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, which still remain in Health Sciences Park near the former site of the Forrest equestrian statue, Turner said.

Litigation surrounding the graves had been stayed pending a ruling by the state Supreme Court.

Now, the Shelby County Chancery Court will determine the fate of the graves, but for now it’s “up in the air,” Turner said.

Renovations are underway at Memphis Park

In the meantime, Turner said Greenspace, in partnership with the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) and the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), is looking to give the parks a refreshed look.

Enhancements to Memphis Park, which will be funded by Reimagining Civic Commons and were approved by the DMC’s Design Review Board in July, are already underway.

Improvements to the park include tree removal and replanting of trees, adding more benches and tables to create dining areas, and paving new trails. Lawn games and activities will also be added to the space.

The idea is to create a “greener, leafier, and more natural space that does a better job connecting the Bluff Walk with the River Garden,” according to the proposal submitted to the Design Review Board.

Turner said all of the enhancements are meant to make the park more “user-friendly.”

“The parks are symbols,” Turner said. “Do we have challenges? Yes. Is there a painful history there? Yes. Can we overcome those challenges? Yes. Can we return something that was negative in many respects into a positive that shows Memphis and Shelby County can move forward in a unified way? The proof is in the pudding looking at what were already able to do with the parks. It’s a win for every citizen in Shelby County and city of Memphis.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Commission Overrides Harris Natatorium Funding Veto

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Despite some wishful advance indications that the county government’s division over funding the University of Memphis swimming facility (“natatorium,” in officialese) would end in some de facto kumbaya, the resolution of things on Monday — with the expected near-unanimous override by the Shelby County Commission of Mayor Lee Harris‘ veto — left some nagging questions on all sides.

The university got the $1 million county contribution that would keep the natatorium on course to completion, and former Commissioner George Chism made a case for the advantages of the facility for needy youngsters in Shelby County without current access to a pool.

But the university — as evidenced in the testimony Monday of Ted Townsend, its chief for economic development and government relations — was no closer to having a definitive target date for a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all its employees than it was at the time of the veto that the mayor imposed two weekends ago at the behest of various union and activist groups.

Jackson Baker

Union rep Webster: “To this day nobody has seen a time frame:”

Townsend, affirming that “we are all focused on attaining a living wage,” contended that a fixed date for imposing a universal $15-an-hour standard was difficult because future state contributions to the university were unpredictable, as were enrollment figures. He made a case that the existence of employee benefits could equate to a de facto $16.82 income package.

Jayanni Webster of United Campus Workers, to whom Harris deferred in lieu of remarks of his own, would have none of Townsend’s arguments. She pointed out that women and blacks constituted a disproportionate segment of the 300-odd employees paid less than the $15 hourly figure and said the workers’ “seven-and-a-half years of fighting for a living wage” had been ignored by the university. “You cannot eat benefits or pay your light bill with benefits,” she said, noting, apropos the university’s claimed intentions, “To this day, nobody has seen a time frame.”

Similar arguments were made by Democratic Commissioner Tami Sawyer, a candidate for Memphis mayor, who turned out to be the sole defender of Harris’ veto. She pointed out the discrepancy between University President M. David Rudd‘s $200,000 annual salary and the wages of the university employees making less than $15 an hour. Sawyer was scornful of the university’s promises that “maybe in four to six to eight years” their pay situation would be remedied.

Other Democratic commission members made it clear that their sympathies lay with the workers but suggested that other factors led to their inability to uphold Harris’ veto. Eddie Jones said, “I’ve never voted against unions, but in this instance there was another way to do this before we get to a veto.” Alluding to former County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s several vetoes of commission actions, all of which were subject to overrides, Jones said, “The last mayor tried it, and it didn’t work so well for him. I would prefer to see if we could work this thing out.”

Commissioner Reginald Milton spoke of “a cast of characters with well-meaning intentions,” including in that definition “the mayor,  the county commission, and the university.” Calling for continued dialogue between the various parties, he said, “I will vote to override but will make sure that promises will be fulfilled.”

Commission chairman Van Turner foresaw a period of continued negotiation that would end in agreement with the university. Hopeful for change, Turner cited the memory of his father, who had been among the first African-American students to desegregate the university back in the early 1960s, a time, said Turner, when communication between whites and blacks was at a minimum.

Harris, who had largely left discussion to others, re-entered the debate to say that, while he had always enjoyed good communication with the commission, things were “not so good” with the university.

They were not exactly perfect with the commission, either. Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., a persistent foe, released copies of a letter he had directed to Assistant County Attorney Marcy Ingram, asking for a ruling on whether Harris had, as university President Rudd suggested two weeks ago, committed an ethical breach by appearing to bargain with Rudd on the basis of a quid pro quo.

In the end, the 12-1 veto override vote spoke for itself.

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Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Continues Budget Battle

There came a moment in Monday’s regular public session of the Shelby County Commission when chairman Van Turner attempted to assure his colleagues that all the forthcoming year’s budget numbers were in order, including maintenance of a fund balance amounting to no less than 20 percent of the total budget — the amount regarded as sufficient to ensure solvency.

After all, Turner remarked, there was the matter of $2.5 million that was “going back in” to the 2020 budget at some point. That would offset the impact of several new expenditures approved by the commission on Monday, including $2.5 million (or $2.4 million; the exact amount remained somewhat hazy) required for the county’s obligations under a joint pre-K program undertaken with Memphis city government.

The commissioners present seemed to know what Turner meant, though there was considerable confusion in the audience at large. In the course of an extended recess, during which much head-scratching occurred among media members and other spectators, things became a little clearer: As members of the commission and Mayor Lee Harris had been informed by county attorneys during executive session, a piece of litigation — its exact nature unspecified publicly — was about to be resolved in favor of the county.

Further prodding revealed that representatives of the city had evidently assured county officials that a settlement, in which the aforementioned $2.5 million would be made over from city to county, was imminent, though the deal was not yet done.

If this informaton seems uncertain to the point of being opaque, that circumstance is due to what amounts to a vow of omerta imposed upon county officials regarding the nature of the aforesaid litigation.

In any case, this “trust-us” premise is at the heart of what would appear to be a somewhat conditional resolution of both the county property-tax rate (at the current figure of $4.05 per $100 of assessed value) and the planned operating and capital budgets for fiscal 2020.

There’s an interesting ambiguity involved in the tax-rate figure, as well. As Shelby County Trustee Regina Morrison Newman revealed at Monday’s meeting, the $4.05 rate was arrived at last year by error, as the result of some faulty arithmetic (including double-counting of expected revenue amounts). Responsibility for the error was not assigned, though it occurred on the watch of former County Mayor Mark Luttrell and former Trustee David Lenoir.

Erroneous or not, the same tax rate is being continued, though, as Commissioner Reginald Milton keeps insisting (and did so again Monday), an “adjustment” is clearly in order. One impediment has been the adamant opposition to a perceived tax increase on the part of the commisson’s five Republicans and Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. — enough opposition to forestall the charter-ordained eight votes needed, especially since Mayor Harris is also reluctant on the score.

The like-mindedness of Ford and Harris on this point was in contrast to some ill feeling that has flared between them of late — and did so again on Monday when Ford publicly castigated the mayor for remarks made on a weekend television show blaming previous disagreements between the two on the fact that Harris had achieved his electoral victories by defeating members of the extended Ford family.

“Don’t use any member of my family as backup when you don’t have answers,” Ford said. “I can’t respect you.” Harris did not respond right away, but at the end of Monday’s meeting, which ended around 10 p.m., he made a point of praising the political Ford family and denying any animosity toward its members.

All of that, however, was but a sideshow to the budget turmoil, which, almost certainly, will require a revisit and perhaps a revision.

• Kudos: To 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen for presiding over an eye-opening panel of the House Judiciary Committee last week on a question that won’t go away — that of potential reparations to African-American citizens for the effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws. Cohen, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, was the sponsor, years ago, of a House resolution expressing an overdue apology for slavery.

To Sidney Chism, for another installment last week of his annual summer political picnic, this one attracting numerous political candidates, including mayoral foes Jim Strickland and Willie Herenton.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Ponders Matters of Time

CREDIT: Reginald Milton

Toward the end of Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, second-term member Mark Billingsley, looking out from his seat on the stage of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building, swept an arm out toward the auditorium’s row of seats, all virtually empty, as Billingsley pointed out, save for a few isolated staff members.

Billingsley went on to suggest  to his colleagues that the commission’s recent decision to change the start time of its meetings from 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — ostensibly, on the initiative of new member Mick Wright, to enable more members of the general public to attend meetings — had failed, and that maybe the commission ought to revert to its previous start time.

A couple of things struck at least one observer as unusual: 1) that the effective half-hour difference did not seem all that consequential; and 2) that it had been Billingsley himself, at the beginning of his first term, four years ago, who had moved for a change in the body’s start time, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. And his reasoning back then? That such a change would enable more members of the general public to attend meetings.

In one sense, given the number of reasonably significant matters that have occupied this commission in its first couple of months, the matter of starting time might have seemed relatively unimportant. But is it? Commissioner Wright, who represents Bartlett, had originally suggested an even later start time, 6 p.m., but that was shaved back during later consideration, on the grounds that, while the public might indeed be freer to attend in the evenings, staff members — whose presence on many matters is essential — would be inconvenienced by having to stick around.

There is no perfect time for a public body to meet, of course. The Memphis City Council’s start time for its Tuesday public meetings has, for several years, been 4:30 p.m., a time that strikes something of a mean between the needs of public and city government staffers, but seems mainly to be of advantage to the 10 o’clock newscasts of local television stations, by providing them with relatively fresh newsbreaks.

On Monday, Wright earned a bit of teasing from colleague Edmund Ford Jr., who noted that several of Wright’s initiatives involved clock time, including another matter up for discussion on Monday — that of Daylight Saving Time. Wright had suggested that the back-and-forth shifting — back an hour at one time of year and up again later on — creates unnecesary dislocation in people’s lives.

Wright first proposed including the state’s abandonment of Daylight Saving Time as an item in the commission’s recommended legislative package for the General Assembly but later said he’d be satisfied with the imposition of year-long Daylight Saving Time. The idea in either case, with or without DST, was to maintain a year-long consistency.

Ultimately, the commission approved an amended version of Wright’s resolution, one that would urge the General Assembly to reconsider the issue of Daylight Saving Time without recommending a particular course.

• As befits a local legislative body, perhaps, the incidence of partisan disagreements is not large, but it does exist. It showed itself on a few matters Monday.

One instance concerned the meaning of a resolution asking the General Assembly to amend the state’s Basic Education Program (BEP) “to fund additional school Resource Officers, Social Workers, and Counselors.”

A debate of sorts erupted over the meaning of the term “Resource Officers.” Amber Mills, the resolution’s original sponsor and a Republican, wanted the term construed to denote security officers. Or, at least, she accepted commission Chairman Van Turner‘s paraphrase of her intent to mean something such-like.

Other commissioners, including the body’s Democrats, wanted a looser definition, and they prevailed in a party-line vote, in which Wright, Billingsley, and Brandon Morrison, all Republicans, sided with Mills on the losing side. The final  resolution, with the looser definition intact, then passed 12-0.

Another Mills resolution asked the General Assembly “to avoid the adoption of Legislation, Policies, Rules of Regulations requiring the implementation of unfunded mandates.” This one, arguably reflecting a traditional Republican concern, was approved unanimously once it was reworded to specificy “unfunded education mandates” — which Mills accepted as expressing her basic intent.

A third matter reflected this commision’s apparent inclination to skirt possible divides in the interests of unity. This was regarding an ordinance, up for the second of three required readings, to amend the requirements of the Shelby County Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program (MWBE).

As outlined by Shep Wilbun, chief county diversity officer, the ordinance went into minute detail defining the terms, numerical and otherwise, that either permitted or encouraged the awarding of contracts in greater numbers to firms owned by women and/or African Americans. In the end, there appeared to be general agreement on the commission that the accretion of new detail was such as to make an already abstruse process even more “cumbersome” — an adjective supplied by Commissioner Morrison.

And thus the ordinance was routed back to committee to undergo a process of simplifcation.

• Last weekend saw a visit here by Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini, one of several planned for statewide under the head, “Analyze, Organize, Mobilize,” to discuss party affairs and strategy. A group of 30 to 50 local Democrats met with Mancini at the headquarters building of U.S. Pipefitters Local 614 in Arlington.

On hand to assist in the process, in the wake of what has been a highly successful year or two for the party, was Shelby County Democratic Party chair Corey Strong, who confided that he intends to focus on his job as special project director at Shelby County Schools and does not plan to seek reelection in March, when local Democrats meet in convention.

The forthcoming convention will re-inaugurate a cycle that was interrupted when the Shelby County party, having fallen into disunity and ineffectiveness, was dissolved by Mancini in 2016.

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Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Others Look to Challenge for Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It would seem to be a fact that former Mayor Willie Herenton, who headed city government from his election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected black chief executive until his retirement in 2009, amid a fifth term, will make another try for the office in 2019.

Earlier this month, Herenton, who first announced he was considering another mayoral race in the wake of the MLK commemorations of April 4th, made things semi-official with a formal statement of candidacy on Facebook. The venue was modish for a political figure of Herenton’s vintage, who made a point of saying, in his online announcement, that “age is just a number, and I am physically fit, mentally sharp, and quite healthy.”

Justin Fox Burks

Willie Herenton

Still, circumstances beyond those of age would not seem exactly propitious for the former mayor, who just learned that three of his remaining four charter schools will be forced to close, having landed on the Priority List of schools unable to meet state standards for two years running. Two other Herenton-operated schools were closed earlier, and the net result of it all would seem a crippling omen for the onetime city school superintendent’s desire to rekindle his educationist’s vocation.

The school closures give a sense of irony to the statement, “My record of achievement speaks for itself,” Herenton made in his announcement remarks. Indeed, Herenton had much to boast of from his 17 years of ascendancy in government, although much of the positive aura attaching to his tenure had dissipated toward the end of his mayoralty, and a run for Congress in 2010 against incumbent 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen ended disastrously.

Aside from other factors, that loss, in which Herenton’s share of the vote was only 20 percent, owed much to Herenton’s painfully obvious lack of resources, and it is difficult to see where his money would come from in a challenge to Mayor Jim Strickland, who is sure to be well-funded. (The current mayor has not yet declared for reelection, but no one seriously doubts his intentions to run again.)

The chief effect of a Herenton candidacy — should it come to pass — would be to inhibit the likelihood of another serious opponent to Strickland’s reelection. As of now, the only known challengers are Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, a 2015 candidate who has indicated he will run again, and a relative unknown named Lemichael Wilson.

Others who have received at least tangential mention as possible mayoral contenders in 2010 include Harold Collins, director of community engagement for the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission; City Councilman Martavius Jones; and the Rev. Keith Norman, a prominent clergyman with numerous civic and political connections, including the past chairmanship of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Collins, however, has just accepted an appointment by county Mayor Lee Harris to become Director of Re-entry for Shelby County government. Jones seems satisfied to explore the potential of his council career, and Norman would presumably have to vacate a well-paid position with Baptist Hospital to make a run.

Two other local figures with acknowledged interest in the mayoralty are, almost by definition, future-tense in their ambitions. They would be Van Turner, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, and uber-activist Tami Sawyer, a newly installed member of the commission.

Turner, who at 43 has the right balance of seasoning and relative youth to make a race, acknowledged to the Flyer that a mayoral run has crossed his mind, but says his candidacy is more likely to occur in 2023, when he will have concluded his permitted two terms on the commission. At the moment, he is still classified as a Strickland supporter and, as head of Memphis Greenspace, which purchased and removed the city’s downtown Confederate monuments, is an effective partner of the mayor.

Sawyer, who, as Turner notes, “has a great following among millenials,” is also apparently looking down the road to 2023, when the mayor’s race will seemingly be wide open.

Meanwhile, for Herenton and whoever else might be thinking about running in 2019, Strickland’s camp is floating a recent poll showing the incumbent mayor’s favorable rating among whites to be 66 percent, and that among African Americans to be 68 percent.

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News News Blog

Greenspace Looks to Recreate Parks Formerly Home to Confederate Statues

CREDIT: Downtown Memphis Commission

Former view of Memphis Park

Memphis Greenspace, the nonprofit that bought two Downtown parks and removed the Confederate statues from them last year, is now looking to activate and reinvent the spaces.

After additional Confederate memorabilia was removed from Memphis Park last weekend, Van Turner, director and president of Greenspace, said there are no longer any impediments in the park.

“Let’s recreate the parks and put there what people want,” Turner said. “The slate is clean.”

Over the weekend, proof of the clean slate was evident in Memphis Park, as it housed the city’s inaugural Dîner en Blanc, a pop-up dinner party established in Paris in the late ’80s.

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Penelope Huston, vice president of marketing at the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), one of Greenspace’s community partners, said 1,175 people attended the dinner and with the Confederate memorabilia still in the park that type of event “would not have been possible.”

When the organizer of the pop-up dinner came to Memphis looking for an event venue, Huston said “there was no place she wanted to be more” after learning about the history of Memphis Park.

Downtown Memphis Commission

Memphis’ inaugural Dîner en Blanc

“It made sense to help wipe the slate clean,” Huston said.

In an average week, the park also brings in more than 200 people for DMC-sponsored yoga and pilates classes.

“All this is bringing in thousands of people who haven’t experienced that park before who are now coming into Downtown and engaging with the parks,” Huston said. “Those numbers are important because they would have all been zero before.”

However, things are moving slower in Health Sciences Park where Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are still buried.

Turner said he hopes that the litigation surrounding the graves and markers will wrap up by the end of the year.

There has already been efforts to do programming in Health Sciences Park, Huston said, but there hasn’t been a lot of community engagement. “We haven’t given up, though.”

Huston said the challenge is getting people back into parks where they previously hadn’t felt welcomed.


“Because people have been out of those spaces for a while, they have to be trained to come back in,” Huston said.

Still, Turner said there is a lot of potential at both park and that Greenspace is working with its community partners — the DMC, Memphis Medical District Collaborative, Memphis River Parks Partnership, Memphis Bloom, and UT Health Sciences — to further activate the parks.

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The nonprofit is also open to suggestions about what should be implemented in the parks, Turner said. Feedback can be submitted on the Greenspace website.

Pop-up playgrounds, more seating, and art installations are all possibilities for the future, he said.

As far as memorializing any one person in the parks, which was an idea floated around by activists after the statues were removed, Turner said he thinks they should be temporary, rotating every several months.

“From a creative standpoint, we don’t want to be stuck in the mud, stuck in history, and get caught flat-footed again,” Turner said. “We want the park to be living, breathing, and fluid, while being able to change and reinvent itself.”

Turner said that’s the direction the city should go in as well, as “Memphis needs to reinvent itself and not be stuck in the past.”

“We need to constantly be evolving and reinterpreting what is already here,” Turner said. “That’s how you grow and how you keep people coming back.”