Remembering Our Friend Jack Tucker

Somehow, it seemed appropriate that the sadness that enveloped us when the historic First Methodist Church burned down returned and intensified when another downtown landmark, architect Jack Tucker, left us April 5.

No one in downtown Memphis was more saddened than Jack by the loss of the church on the site of Memphis’ first meeting house. Now, all of us who care about downtown are grieving Jack’s loss and extend our sympathies to his wife, Cyndy Grivich Tucker.

He was 70 years old when he died, and he was just as passionate about the art and disciple of his profession in those last weeks as he was when he left University of Arkansas with his degree in 1963.

A New Attitude

He was the friend across the hall for Carol Coletta for 33 years, and became neighbors for all of us who have worked here. Back when he designed the conversion of this old cotton building - one of the oldest buildings in downtown Memphis - into three floors of condos called the Timpani Building, he inspired the imagination that would lead to downtown’s emphasis on transforming neglected historic buildings into unique symbols of our city’s special character.

When Jack, Carol and others moved into the converted cotton warehouse in 1976, they were considered oddities. After all, the number of people living downtown was measured by the handful. Because of Jack’s work and his example, thousands were to follow, and along the way, his ability to see the possibilities of neglected historic buildings became an adaptive reuse philosophy that became part of the downtown DNA.

Peace

In that way, it was as if Jack never left the Peace Corps.

As a University of Arkansas student, he took the Peace Corps test – although his date from the previous evening who’d suggested taking it didn’t show up – and he went to Tunisia in the earliest years of the Peace Corps, and there, his commitment to protecting and preserving history through our architecture was deepened. When he left after his years of service, he moved to Memphis, where he continued the teaching, the passion and the advocacy that were at the core of his work in North Africa.

Recognition of his new vision for downtown and his professional respect are seen in numerous positions that he held over the years – president of the Memphis Chapter of American Institute of Architects, chairman of the Memphis Landmarks Commission, founding member and president of Memphis Heritage, a founding member of Friends For Our Riverfront, a founding member and president of Downtown Neighborhood Association, and a founding member and president of Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy, to name a few.

Preserving Principle

The thread through all that he did was preservation, whether it was the built environment, the natural environment or the civic environment. Almost all of us who knew him first met him at a meeting that was dealing with downtown redevelopment or historic preservation. He was the expert. He was the institutional knowledge. He was an unceasing advocate.

In a city where there’s a tendency to “go along to get along,” Jack was different. He would not sacrifice his personal beliefs or compromise his professional opinions, and there’s little argument that he gave up work because of his refusal to put a price tag on his preservation credentials at a time when developers were gladly willing to pay him for his name so they could claim sensitivity for their re-design of old buildings.

There’s the story of a local government agency that was prepared to hire Jack, but decided against it, saying: “He just won’t do what we tell him.” It showed how little the bureaucrats understood him. He was willing to listen and design based on the client’s opinions, but he wasn’t willing to do anything that violated his principles.

Legacies

That’s why when Jack talked, everyone listened. It was a common sight to see him standing in the neighborhood around Union and Front or sitting in Front Street Deli, talking to someone seeking him out for some historical perspective, for advice or just to hear what he was thinking.

Over the last year, it was clear that his fight against cancer would be his last, but despite the obvious ravaging that his body was taking, he never complained or even hinted that the disease was taking a toll on him. Even as we saw him walking to his house more and more often and earlier and earlier to rest and recharge, when asked how he was “really” doing, he’d just say that he was doing well and that everything was going to turn out fine.

We may no longer see Jack on the street, but we’ll see him all around us. We’ll see him in the Scimitar Building, Lenox School, The Candy Factory, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, Pontotoc Building, Child Advocacy Center, and more. We’ll see him every day when we enter The Timpani Building. In fact, we’ll see Jack at his memorial service Saturday afternoon in the Lord’s Chapel at Elmwood Cemetery. That special place was also designed by him.

What We Call Him

The testimonials have flowed in from the great and the small since Jack’s death – from his peers and his beneficiaries. He’s been called many things, including the man most responsible for the revitalization of downtown, but for us, we’ll always call him friend.

For more than three decades, he was a special one. More to the point, he was a special friend to the people of downtown and Memphis.

That's why we are particularly grateful to Memphis City Councilman Bill Morrison, who's the source for an awful lot of good thinking in our city and who is asking his colleagues to name the cobble-stoned alley that runs behind the buildings, including the Timpani Building and CVB, fronting Union from Wagner Place to Front Street to be named for Jack.

Nothing Healthy About Memphians' Tax Burden

Memphis City Councilman Bill Morrison is right.

He has proposed for Memphis City Council to end city government’s funding of the Health Department.

The logic is similar to the courageous – and completely logical – cut of $66 million in school funding: Shelby County Government, according to state law, is mandated to provide health services, and Memphis taxpayers are paying twice for them – once as county taxpayers and again as city taxpayers.

It’s an untenable, not to mention completely inequitable and regressive, tax policy, and Councilman Morrison, who led the fight to end the double taxation for public education, finds himself once again leading a cause of significance to every Memphis taxpayer.

Communicate, Not Litigate

That’s not to say that Shelby County CAO Jim Huntzicker isn’t also correct when he says that city and county governments should meet to discuss these funding issues. That is of course preferable, and based on what we are hearing from City Hall, there’s really no aversion to doing that; however, it will not derail the present consideration of ending the Health Department funding unless Shelby County Government demonstrates convincingly that these talks are imminent.

Meanwhile, Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald engages in magical thinking in trying to defend the status quo, which for decades has resulted in Shelby County Government directly subsidizing services within the small town borders as part of their preferential treatment. Mayor McDonald says that Memphis entered into an agreement to pay more for health services because they use most of the services.

There’s nothing to indicate that he’s right, and anyway, we thought he abhorred consolidation in principle. When the city and county health departments were officially merged September 1, 1950, it followed the consolidation of several functions – vital records in 1934, venereal diseases in 1939 and tuberculosis in 1941.
Times Change

It was a totally different time. Shelby County Government was a rural government of good old boys who provided services to Memphis grudgingly, if at all, and even then, Memphis had to scratch and claw for whatever it got. It’s this fact that is behind city funding for several services typically the sole province of county governments.

We are now light years from the county government that was so rurally dominated that it was ground zero for the landmark U.S. Supreme Court's "one man one vote" ruling in Baker vs. Carr that changed reapportionment not only for Shelby County, but for every legislative body in the entire country. Until then, although the majority of Shelby County's population had always lived inside Memphis, the majority of the county's legislative body members was from outside Memphis.

In fact, every county town – including the hamlets Germantown and Collierville and four-way stops like Arlington – had their own County Court Squires (now the county board of commissioners), so decisions were all about what to do for the people outside of Memphis. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the County Court was also in charge of large parts of the administrative functions, and the long-time occupant of that post was the legendary, powerful Charles Baker of Millington, whose name is attached to the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

Small Town Logic

In other words, Memphis got short shrift in services and funding, and because of it, city government layered on funding to get services that the other towns got without any funding at all from their local governments, prompting city government to jump into the breach and tax for schools and other services although it was ultimately the responsibility of county government.

Over the years, the predecessors to the present cadre of town mayors have pushed back anytime anyone in Shelby County Government tried to even out the financial scales. To his credit, after 30 years of limited efforts to create more fairness, Mayor AC Wharton has made strides in ending some county subsidies that had existed for decades for things from roads to libraries.

As part of this tug of war, the county mayors have created their own justifications for the double taxation of Memphians. Mayor McDonald – ironically someone who talks a good game of “we’re all in this together” – rolled out his explanation: Memphians pay twice for health services because these funding arrangements were made years ago on the basis of who uses the services.

He’s wrong. There has never been a test for funding that addressed the sources of users. And last time we checked Bartlett used schools funded only through county taxes (with about 60% from Memphians).

Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right

To add to his error, he said that Bartlett residents pay county taxes for certain things, including the county jail, in which Memphis usage is high but its funding is minimal. Actually, Memphis has no jail, because it helped to fund the Justice Center (unlike the towns, by the way) and the jail was part of the quid pro for the help.

As for his fundamental point, he’s right and he’s wrong. Yes, the vast majority of people in the Shelby County Jail are Memphians, but no, Bartlett taxpayers shouldn’t be freed from paying taxes for it. That’s the concept of democracy, and despite the demagoguery of the recent presidential election, our entire government is built on the basis of redistributed taxes from one area to another to pay for services that are needed for the overall health of the area. But come to think of it, most Memphians aren’t using the roads and schools that they were forced to fund as county government became the willing vehicle for more and more unsustainable sprawl (which costs about $100 million a year in bond payments).

We’ve said it until you’re tired of hearing it from us, but Memphians should only be paying for services that are comparable to services in the county towns. All other services should be regional, or countywide, and they should be supported by the larger tax base.

A Level Playing Field

In other words, Memphians should be paying primarily for fire, police, sanitation, parks and libraries. Everything else should be immediately moved to the county tax base, especially regional amenities like museums that should be backed with the broader tax base, and Memphis Area Transit Authority, which is running buses to the towns although citizens of Memphis are footing the bill. These are regional services and should be treated and funded as such.

If we had the power, we would also move to the countywide tax base all libraries and all parks. We deserve to have a coordinated, interconnected system that delivers services seamlessly and without regard to the imaginary government borders that we put so much stock into.

Clearly, Shelby County Government saw this funding issue coming. Mr. Huntzicker asked for a legal opinion about it from the Shelby County Attorney’s office a few months ago, and on October 13, 2008, he received the standard “the county is right and the city is wrong” legal opinion. Before this debate ratchets up much more, we are certain that we’ll have a City Attorney’s opinion saying just the opposite.

Opinions: Everybody’s Got One

Mr. Huntzicker asked the attorney’s office to answer this question: “Whether the City of Memphis could reduce or terminate funding to the Memphis and Shelby County and what consequence would result?” Of course, no one in City Hall is swayed by what county government says about city rights and responsibilities, but the answer from the county attorney’s office was: “City of Memphis remains a financial partner of the Memphis and Shelby County Health Department.” The opinion acknowledged that by law, Shelby County is “required to maintain and support a county health department,” but adds that the “City of Memphis is responsible for a proportionate share of the costs of operations, maintenance, and financing of the Memphis and Shelby County Health Department.”

Not mentioned in the opinion is that the conclusion flies in the face of three decades of county policy built on the principle that county government is required to provide health services and that city government could end its funding any time it had the political will to do so. In fact, it was 10 years ago that the former director of the health department wrote a memo reiterating the long-held belief. He said county government is ultimately responsible for the health department, not the city, and that the city could end its funding with six months notice.

In fact, when city and county governments sat down at the table to consider a new alignment of public services in the wake of the “tiny town” controversy, both sides agreed at the beginning of the meeting that Shelby County Government was responsible for health funding, not city government. For that reason, it was assumed as a given that health department funding should move totally to the county’s side of the
ledger.

Courting Disaster

Perhaps, this issue is headed for court, where it can join the tin-eared lawsuit filed by Memphis City Schools against City Council for cutting its funding. Some, including the editorial page of our daily newspaper, say that a court judgment is the wisest way to resolve this issue. But that position fails to recognize the obvious fact that this is not about contractual obligations and 50-year-old legal agreements.

More to the point, it is a question of equitable tax policy for Memphians. Surely, no one in county government would argue that it is fair that Memphians pay twice for services and that city taxpayers- -who have lower median incomes - should pay a greater percentage of their incomes in taxes than taxpayers outside Memphis - who make higher median incomes.

That’s why it was encouraging that Mr. Huntzicker said that city and county governments should begin discussions to consider the full array of funding issues between them. That said, it’s got to begin immediately and have a deadline that we’ll live to see, based on 30 years of promises that city and county engineering will be merged or headlines two years ago that city and county fire departments were looking to merge.

It’s past time to bring rationality to our local tax structure, and it’s way past time for Memphians’ tax burden to be equitable and fair. In the end, there should be no greater objective for either city or county governments.

Moving Memphis From Pay Day Lending To Micro-Lending

It seems more than passing strange that at a time when local government is considering a lawsuit against the predatory lending that contributed to Memphis’ foreclosure catastrophe, some members of Memphis City Council would try to defend the predatory lending that is the underbelly of our personal finance businesses – pay day loan companies, title loan businesses and check-cashing storefronts.

It made for an odd tableau at last week’s City Council meeting as high-powered, politically-connected lawyers stood side-by-side with clients who looked like they stepped out of one of those newscasts of people whose trailers had just been hit by a tornado. To their credit, Council members did vote unanimously to move ahead with a change that was almost negligible in its impact, but only after some seemed to try to throw a lifeline to members of these parasitic businesses.

It is troubling what we are willing to accept as part of our city – as long as it’s “only” the poor who are being victimized. City Councils in the past have shamelessly acted as an enabler to the worst visual polluters in Memphis – the billboard industry – and given them carte blanche to pepper inner city neighborhoods with an endless array of ads for liquor, cigarettes and gambling. These billboards deserve greater regulation, but there’s been little will to do it, so we guess that it’s no surprise that some Council members – ironically, representing inner city constituents – seemed to grudgingly go along with a modest requirement that the companies could not be located less than 1,000 feet from each other.

There’s Legal And There’s Legal

We admire Councilman Bill Morrison for putting it on the City Hall agenda. His concern is well-placed, and because of him, we did at least acknowledge the presence of companies in Memphis whose introductions at City Council seemed only to be missing the theme from Jaws, so willing are they to feast on desperate victims trying to keep from downing in financial emergencies.

Councilman Morrison, who is emerging as a reliable voice of reason and source of new thinking, has greater ambitions for regulating the companies, but at least this was a start. It’s hardly a fair fight in City Hall, because for too many politicians, money talks, and as usual, there’s no one lobbying for the poor.

Their neighborhoods remain dumping grounds for tawdry businesses that prey on them and are justified by some Council members on the simplistic grounds that they are “legal.” Well, so are strip clubs, but no one wants them in their neighborhoods.

Naked Greed

As a result, valiant Thomas Pacello, assistant city attorney with the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, was left to reason with some Council members who seemed unable to grasp the simple notion that if government can regulate naked bodies, surely it can regulate naked predatory lending.

Ultimately, the new ordinance will not end the financial strip mining of our poorest neighborhoods, but at least it sends a message, albeit a soft one, that our community is concerned about companies that charge so much in interest that they make usury look inviting. Despite that, Council Member Barbara Swearengen Ware said that “nobody’s holding a gun to these people to make them walk in and hand somebody the title to their car.”

We couldn’t help but think of the famous Woody Guthrie lyric: “Yes, as through this world I've wandered/I've seen lots of funny men/Some will rob you with a six-gun/And some with a fountain pen.”

Robbery By Another Name

We’re certain that Council Member Ware’s true feelings aren’t as callous as they sounded, because there are places in her district where desperation is as real to her constituents as guns in their backs. And like the “company store” before it, once you start doing business with the loan predators, it’s awfully hard to ever pay off your balance. After all, the business model is built on keeping you in debt.

When the annual interest rate is about 450%, it’s pretty hard not to stay upside down in the loan. Consumer Federation of America conducted a survey of 100 lenders that showed they frequently charged 650%, a rate that stirs up nostalgia for the days of the old Mafia loan shark.

Parenthetically, all of this conjured up the war in the blogosphere some time back when it was pointed out that there was a strong correlation between the number of these pay day lenders and Christian Right strongholds in the Bible Belt, despite the Biblical admonition against usury. Pay day lenders have been able to side stepped usury limits by affiliating with a South Dakota or Delaware-chartered financial institution.

Big Bucks From Poor People

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the sometimes seamy storefronts, but this is big business. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, “despite attempts to reform pay day lending, now an industry exceeding $28 billion a year, lenders still collect 90 percent of their revenue from borrowers who cannot pay off their loans when due, rather than from one-time users dealing with short-term financial emergencies.”

The Center also concluded that “states that ban payday lending save their citizens an estimated $1.4 billion in predatory payday lending fees every year. “ North Carolina shut down payday lending in 2006 and an analysis by the University of North Carolina said that the closing “had no significant effect on the availability of credit for the households of North Carolina.”

To fill the gap in states without payday lending, some credit unions have set up Salary Advance Loans with annual interest rates of 12%. While we are supportive of emulating North Carolina’s actions, it’s unlikely to happen, because, to repeat, there aren’t any high-paid lobbyists in Nashville representing the interests of the state’s low-income families.

Memphis Microcredit

Perhaps, what we need to do here is to experiment with microcredit, the kind of loans that have proven successful for Third World nations. It began in Bangladesh, and there are census tracts in Memphis whose infant mortality rates and other disturbing demographic statistics aren’t too different from that South Asian nation.

Microcredit is even gaining attention of the traditional financial industry, which is considering ways to get in the game.

In other ways, if Memphis City Council wants to help out, it could consider ways that City Hall could help set up some form of micro-lending here. We are willing to bet that just like kiva.org and other micro-lending sites, there are an awful lot of Memphians willing to lend money to allow people to have more financial sufficiency and to engage in self-employment projects.

Memphis Branch Of Kiva

It may be that Kiva isn’t the exact model for our city, because it’s aimed especially at entrepreneurship, but we love the person-to-person aspect of the program. But if we can inspire and create national model programs like MIFA and Church Health Center, and if social entrepreneurs like Aaron Shafer can imagine ways that poor people can control their own destinies, surely we can come up with the model micro-bank for Memphis.

Perhaps, besides offering a new way to address the financial needs that are being exploited in neighborhoods across Memphis by predatory lenders, this kind of program could also contribute to an attack on the divisions that weaken us at the time when community connectivity is a competitive advantage.

We leave the details to people a lot smarter than we are, but put us down to buy the first share in this revolutionary people-to-people business.