Musicians Can Bring New Beat To Soulsville Neighborhood

The Memphis Music Magnet - a project spearheaded by the always creative Professor Charles Santo - is based on the premise that musicians can make equally beautiful music in revitalizing the Soulsville neighborhood.

More to the point, it's about building a culture of creativity that in the end can be more important in attracting young, college-educated to Memphis than the big projects that are so often billed as "the" answer to talent retention and attraction.

One of the programs that Dr. Santo has used as the pattern to recreate the fabric of the South Memphis neighborhood is the Paducah Artists' Relocation program.

For that reason, we offer this reprise of a February 18, 2007 post:

You’ve got to admire Paducah.

While the spotlight most often falls on large cities grappling with ways to strengthen their arts scene, there’s much to be learned from the small Kentucky rivertown. Few cities, regardless of size, have been as assertive or as successful in using their arts as a powerful competitive advantage.

We were reminded of this when we saw an ad in the Memphis Flyer a few weeks ago inviting us to “experience the Lowertown Fine Arts District.” It was the latest volley in Paducah’s Artist Relocation Program, this one aimed at Memphis, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta, Lexington (KY), Cincinnati and Chicago.

It was a heady display of the confidence that comes from success, because the Paducah program is a good example of how a bold vision, aligned civic resources and a focused strategy can transform a city. Memphis could take some lessons from it.

The Turnaround

With more than 70 artists lured from places across the U.S., Paducah’s success has outstripped the projections of even its wildest advocates. Since being started about eight years ago, the Artist Relocation Program has been responsible for the renovation – completed or under way – of about 70 buildings and attracted new construction.

It’s a dramatic turnaround for a part of the city of 30,000 that was built 150 years ago as a grand neighborhood of charming homes before a slide late in the 20th century took it to a seedy slum known for the easy availability of cheap drugs and women. Today, the area, which, according to a Paducah planning official, comprises about 30 blocks, is best known for artists’ homes and studios, not to mention the visitors strolling through the neighborhood in search of artwork and the new firms and restaurants drawn to it.

Arts and culture are being used as the foundations for economic growth in a number of cities. Through our firm’s work in developing creative city plans for cities capitalizing on their unique artistic and cultural assets, we can attest to the wisdom of emphasizing cultural assets as an effective, and undervalued, way for a city to find its distinctiveness.

DNA

Too often, cities looking for answers to their problems first turn their attention to finding “best practices.” It often leads to them identifying successful programs and strategies in other cities and eagerly transplanting them in their own with understandably limited success. In the end, it is an artificial initiative with no resonance in the local DNA. That’s because it’s the plans built on differentiation that offer the best opportunities for success, plans that grow out of a city’s own character, personality and heritage.

That’s what’s so impressive about Paducah’s Artist Relocation Program. It’s an innovation program that’s unique and responds to the needs of the city. Confronted with neglected homes with architectural integrity and a neighborhood serving as a seedbed for crime, city officials understood the need for redevelopment of Lowertown.

Artists can be as important to cities as new companies. It’s just most cities put all their attention and target their financial incentives on the latter. That’s too bad, because artists have the proven ability to transform at-risk neighborhoods and bring life to dying areas. Strategies to attract them have included tax exemptions from sales and income taxes for art produced and sold in a specific arts district, new “live-work” space carved out of warehouses and converted into loft studios, and specific neighborhoods where they receive special incentives or subsidized rents.

Triggering Change

Paducah knew all this, but it decided to do things its own way. It did it by focusing on home ownership, and along the way, it is creating a stable, arts community.

The Artist Relocation Program is the second attempt to revive the area, and the city’s first effort is instructive. About 25 years ago, Paducah designated Lowertown as an historic district, but it had marginal impact on stabilizing the area. What was missing a triggering mechanism to change things.

Planners say that was to come when a local artist living in Lowertown grew concerned about the crime at his front door and the fact that 70 percent of the property was rental and decaying. His concern took him to the city’s planning department which acted to deal with absentee landlords with a get-tough rental license ordinance and with aggressive enforcement of new codes to protect the neighborhood.

Defining Success

The artist-planner team – which essentially created the program from whole cloth - soon had city funding for the first year’s budget for the Artist Relocation Program and raised money to buy Lowertown homes. Back then, there definition of success was in attracting 10 artists to Paducah.

Here’s how they’ve attracted seven times that many. The city buys a deteriorating house at a bargain price and spends a modest amount stabilizing it. The house is given to an artist who spends significant amounts of money to renovate and restore the structure. Once completed, the house is appraised at much less than the renovated value, but the Paducah Bank agrees to make 100 percent loans on the full value as opposed to the appraisal. Amazingly, the bank became so supportive of the program that it stopped getting the appraisals altogether.

Instead, the bank qualifies the artists individually to make sure they have the ability to repay the loans for the renovations. This is in dramatic contrast to other cities, because more commonly, cities gives incentives for developers to renovate the space and then lease it to artists, which means that as soon as the neighborhood turns around, the artists are the first to be forced out because of higher values.

Artistic Support

In support of its program, Paducah pays a bonus so artists can pay for architectural fees for renovation, it exempts construction materials for properties in the program from sales tax and it pays for the websites of the artists.

These days, Paducah is a popular destination for city officials interested in ways to attract artists, because in the end, Paducah did much more than revitalize a neighborhood. More to the point, it has created a vein of creativity that enlivens the entire city and enriches its quality of life in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago.

This Week On Smart City Radio: Mobility

This week, Smart City will talk about mobility - bikes and career.

B-cycle is the latest bike sharing project to hit the U.S. Behind the project is Alex Bogusky, a principal with the creative firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky. We'll find out how B-Cycle works and why easy access to a bike causes big drops in traffic congestion.

And Elliot Brown will talk about Springboard Forward, an organization that inspires people to develop a long-term vision for career mobility. Springboard Forward helps transform the lives of entry-wage workers with a unique form of career development.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast so you can listen to it anytime you like. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Unexpected Cities Creating First-Class Public Transit

Grist magazine has a timely article in light of our recent post about the need for a 21st century public transit system in Memphis. The article - The best U.S. transit systems you never knew existed - spotlights cities where we'd never expect to find first-class public transit.

Must reading.

Pay Raises Raise Questions

The first reaction to the Memphis City Council’s vote in favor of a three per cent pay raise for its employees is disbelief.

On the surface, it appears that a majority of the Council is more concerned about employees than taxpayers. Below the surface, it was yet another reminder of the special importance that government has to the African-American middle class in our city.

In the end, we understand those dynamics, but it does little to temper our incredulity that in a year of disastrous budget challenges, with billions being shipped to local governments to stimulate the national economy and with jobs cuts are the norm, $11 million was used to boost city employees’ salaries.

One-Time Hit

We’ve written until most of your mouths move when we start talking about this, but it remains nonetheless true: the Memphis property tax rate must be reduced so that Memphis is on a level playing field with suburban municipalities. If a majority of Council members believe that city government has $11 million to spare, we’d suggest that it should be used to reduce the tax rate about a dime.

Alternately, City Council should have treated the three percent raise was a one-time bonus, so that it would not be an ongoing cost in future city budgets.
A one-time bonus would not de facto increase the personnel budget for next year, and even if City Council voted for raises next year, they would be based on the salary levels of last year without the three per cent increase.

Coupled with last year’s courageous, then disappointing, vote on school funding – when $40 million of the cut was moved to general city government operations – means that City Council has missed crucial chances to decrease the tax rate by about 50 cents.

Mixed Messages

As a result, City Council is sending mixed messages. On one hand, it’s cutting school funding in the interest of tax equity, but on the other hand, it’s not following through by slashing the city’s tax rate.

It’s Step 2 that matters most. Otherwise, as was shown last year, city taxpayers get a token reduction and the bulk of the money ends up feeding the broken business model that is city government.

And yes, we know that before their 5 per cent pay raises were given last year, city employees hadn’t received a pay raise in two years. But the economic downturn is forcing hard decisions on everyone, and there’s no reason that government is exempt from the realism that private sector Memphis workers are confronting every day, particularly the 33 per cent of them who are not now working.

Unfulfilled Promise

This year’s budget hearings began with such promise, but deteriorated into some grand-standing that is always expected with such a process and the racial divide that we hoped had finally passed.

The final vote on the three per cent said it all: only one white Councilman and one African-American Councilman abandoned their racial voting bloc. As usual, there was the seemingly inevitable black and white discord that accompanies most major public decisions here.

Hopefully, the residual effect of the budget wars will quickly recede, but suspicions seem to be growing with some members suspecting others with using the process to position themselves for higher office and with some convinced that other members are mired in the past.

Deepest Cut Of All

It would make for a challenging group therapy session, but despite the conflict of the hearings, a vast majority of the Council members profess a desire to mend fences and repair relationships. It can’t happen too soon, because with the economic realities and the regressive tax structure defining city government’s options, budget hearings will otherwise become more and more rancorous as this yearly drama plays out.

If the public questions the wisdom of the three per cent raise, they are absolutely bewildered by the reluctance of local government to reduce their workforce. We’ve seen juries return death sentence verdicts easier than local legislators faced with the idea of paring back the “personnel complement.”

It’s manifested in the attitude by some Council members and county commissioners that workers should be protected at all costs. There’s almost the sense that employees have a right to be employed and that the financial implications on the public are almost irrelevant.

The Promised Land

There’s normally a racial divide that opens on this question that has more to do with history than finances. For decades, government has been the promised land for the African-American middle class.

That’s why any time suggestions are made that workforce of city schools, city government and county government should be cut back, there is a howl of protest. That’s because in a large part of this city, this is more than attack on government spending. It is in fact an attack on the black middle class.

Of the 22 largest employers in Shelby County, 11 are public entities with about 75,000 workers. It’s a safe bet that at least half of them – in government and schools, it’s more like 65 per cent – are African-Americans.

All of this is why an issue like residency tend to explode in ways that perplex the white colleagues of black legislators with its emotions and hostility. And yet, as the local tax structure restricts city government’s ability to fund its services, it may in time erase any racial sensitivity about the size of the workforce and any idea that the workers deserve raises no matter what their performance.

Moving Past Denial About Our Shrinking City

We can cure you but we may have to kill you first.

That was a common reaction to an article in London’s Daily Telegraph that reported that the Obama Administration is considering plans for selective bulldozing in some “rust belt” cities including Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Memphis.

We suspect that the story may be a combination of imprecise writing by the reporter and an overstated interest by the Obama Administration from the article’s source, the treasurer of Genessee County who’s out to shrink Flint, Michigan, by 40 percent to compact the city into a more manageable size for public services.

Bruised Pride

He said the Obama Administration has approached him about applying the lessons learned in Flint to a number of U.S. cities. That’s where Memphis came in, because the treasurer Dan Kildee said he was relying on a Brookings Institution report suggesting that 50 cities should shrink.

Based on our inquiry to the Washington think tank, that is likely not an accurate interpretation of what its reports said and that the Obama Administration’s inquiry into the razing of deteriorating neighborhoods was like dozens of conversations about urban strategies by federal officials.

While it might all be a tempest in a teapot, it was disturbing to a number of people that Memphis was listed among the rust belt cities, but we hope that it encourages the serious discussion that is needed about Memphis as a shrinking city.

Doing More With The Same

As we have written before, Memphis annexations have been built upon a faulty analysis. Rather than merely calculating the cost of public services and the amount of new taxes (which often seem to assume that the area will never decline), the evaluation should consider the impact on the core city.

Too often, it’s been a false economy, and in the end, the same services are merely stretched over a larger area. For example, the budget of the Memphis Division of Park Services has been flat for 20 years despite annexations. Meanwhile, by propping up our city’s population through annexation, we are given a false sense of security about our city.

Here’s the thing: since 1970, even with 27 annexations of 100 square miles, the population of Memphis has remained essentially the same. And despite taking in this much land area, the population outside Memphis in Shelby County increased from about 95,000 to 250,000.

A Different Lens

Within those 1970 city limits, Memphis has lost more than 20% of its population. Density was cut in half, making service delivery more expensive and complicated. Perhaps, the equation isn’t about how much new land can we add to Memphis, but how much better can we serve what we have.

Some other cities in the same situation are beginning to consider shrinking their footprints, notably Youngstown, Ohio, and Flint. In fact, in its earliest days, Memphis was less interested in new territory. Between 1891 and 1950, there were 19 annexations, but with the dawning of the 1950’s came a new aggressiveness toward annexations. There were 12 annexations in the Fifties alone and the 1960’s saw 23 more.

In other words, city officials inherited a culture of annexation that has driven the idea that the appropriation of new territory is always a good thing.

The Lure Of New Taxes

The lure was new property taxes and new sales taxes. Unfortunately, we are strapped by one of the most regressive tax structures in the United States. In other words, the less you make in Memphis, the more you pay as a percentage of your income.

It’s time to step back and look at our annexation policies with fresh eyes. If the price for that new revenue is more responsibility over a larger area and no more to spend on the core neighborhoods that are the heart of Memphis, the entire transaction may have been built on a false economy.

It will require courage to act differently, but fortunately, this City Council has shown more in two years than previous Councils showed in 10. It also requires a shift in economic development thinking, where officials normally prefer to brag about.

A Totally New Approach

We can gain solace for the fact that we are not alone. More cities have shrunk in the last 50 years than have grown around the world, according to City Mayors. The difference is that here, we would decide to do it rather than having it done to us. We could consider scenarios in which we abandon the “annex at all costs” attitude or even consider deannexation.

As Shrinking Cities Institute said: “This alternative model could include the demolition or dismantling of underutilized housing and other building stock, the removal of redundant streets, and downsizing of municipal infrastructure to correspond to declining population…Opportunities may arise for restoring native landscape ecologies or reconstituting a new kind of city, where pockets of development are surrounded and connected by natural areas.

“Planned shrinkage can identify opportunities to establish lively and attract development clusters that take advantage of the best the region has to offer, while improving air and water quality, enhancing wildlife habitat and establishing exciting new recreation opportunities.”

New Planning

It may sound simple and logical, but it is incredibly difficult, because it requires us to up-end everything we’ve ever thought about cities.

The study and strategies for urban decline have dwelt on ways to revive neighborhoods and somehow breathe life in areas on life support. Only recently has the attention turned to “shrinking cities” and away from the magnetic (and misleading) power of “growth.”

That’s why it requires a total shift in planning, and the traditional tendency to react to the shrinkage by focusing on economic growth. It’s no overstatement to say that Memphis as a shrinking city may be the single biggest issue facing right now. That’s why we are so exorcised about the nail in the coffin that will be hammered home by I-269.

Taking The First Step

So here’s hoping that our city begins this important conversation. We also hope that it begins with the one conclusion that has received consensus already: traditional urban planning tools don’t work. That’s been proven by the slum and blight removal programs, followed by the urban renewal projects, followed by the economic development initiatives. Now, some cities are appealing to the young creatives who are not scared off by urban challenges but often find the funky environment and cheap digs that are so often lacking in boomtowns, and they are important.

However, they certainly won’t create solutions at the scale needed by cities like Detroit, where city housing is now going for $7,500 or for Memphis whose number of vacant properties has doubled since 2000 to about 14,000. But what it just might do is tap into the creativity and new thinking that creative workers and young talent offer for real solutions for Memphis. We have some now who need to be part – if not leading – this new discussion about the future.

But first things first: we have to decide to begin. Too often, dealing with urban problems in Memphis is like the stages of grief. Just this once, maybe we can move past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and unabashedly move to acceptance and develop the kinds of bold plans that can truly make a difference in the trajectory of our city.

Turning Memphis Green

The burgeoning green ethos that’s bubbling up from grassroots Memphis is gaining ground, and it can’t come too soon.

The downturn in gas prices may have lulled our city into a false sense of security, but we’re confident that the various forces for change – the evolution of cycling from a group of enthusiasts into a community of activists, the ambitious agenda of Sustainable Shelby attacking sustainability on all fronts, and the mushrooming of community-based programs like Green Fork, Green Hope, Clean Memphis, Grow Memphis and more – will not allow us to lapse into lethargy.

The actions of county government that drove up the public debt paid by all of us to about $1.8 billion and effectively put millions of dollars into the pockets of politically-connected, influential developers and homebuilders produced a pattern of sprawl that will require Herculean efforts to reverse.

The Numbers

Here’s the tale of the tape:

• Of the world’s largest cities by population, Memphis is #159.

• In land area, it is #69 in the world.

• In population density, it is #168.

It would be bad enough to contend with the consequences of sprawl in terms of the financial costs, but the social costs are even more. The warren of houses stamped out on small lots on parallel streets make finding an address in many suburban areas as difficult as finding an address in Venice (where the street names change every block).

Digging Out Of A Hole

Worst of all, the problems that characterize Hickory Hill are destined to be repeated in other areas where the design ethic, the inferior construction and the inattention to creating neighborhoods have been recreated. In other words, there is little question that like Hickory Hill, these sad developments will require homeowners to invest significant money in their houses before the first mortgage is even paid off.

Despite the temporary respite from gas prices, it is likely that there will remain increased interest by many suburbanites in moving westward to reduce their commuting. If we can reduce the average mileage driven by motorists by just one mile, it produces $250 million in additional income.

Sadly, we have to dig out of a really deep hole if we are to create a more sustainable community. Most surveys of green behavior find us on the wrong end of the rankings.

It’s Pretty Rank

Of the largest 50 metros in the U.S., Memphis ranked #45 in city preparedness for an oil crisis. The top 10 cities were unsurprising: 1) San Francisco; 2) New York; 3) Washington, D.C.; 4) Seattle; 5) Oakland; 6) Chicago; 7) Portland, Oregon; 8) Philadelphia; 9) Baltimore; and 10) Boston.

Ranking highest, according to the survey by Common Current, are cities with strong public transit system ridership (which we suspect is tied to delivery of a quality product, the crux of the problem here), well-organized and relatively dense city centers, a high degree of mixed real estate uses (retail, office and residential) and medium-to-high city population density.

Memphis’ ranking in various categories is revealing and points to the areas where we need to concentrate our efforts:

Carpooling: #13

Telecommuting Rate: #50 (dead last)

City Resident Public Transit Commute Use: #36

City Resident Walk/Bike Commute Rate: #38

Metro Area Overall Per Capita Public Transit Ridership: #39

Metro Area Sprawl: #35 (of 46 cities)

Trouble In River City

In stating the obvious, “clearly, the way in which cities and metro areas are planned and developed also has a measurable impact on fuel use, household transportation expenses as well as the degree of dependence on auto transport,” the report might as well have been commenting on Memphis.

A survey by BusinessWeek identified the 20 cities where Americans would most like to live and where they would least like to live. Memphis wasn’t on either list. The magazine observed how important it is to attract talent these days, and we’ve repeatedly pointed out the particular challenge facing Memphis when it comes to 25-34 year-olds – the most mobile, most entrepreneurial and best educated generation in history – and the precise group we need to retain and attract.

From 2000-2006, Memphis lost 14,508 people in this demographic, speeding up a skid that began in the 1990’s with a decrease of 6,814. It’s a troubling trend, particularly at a time when Memphis is struggling to compete in a knowledge-based economy. Past public policies, especially tax freezes given to companies that don’t pay living wages and that subsidized industries offering low-wage, low-skill jobs that relegate Memphis to the bottom rungs of economic growth in the future.

Selling Memphis At A Discount

By the way, already, the dismal job creation rate in Memphis and the weak record of capital investments produced a Greek chorus calling for weakening the PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) program of the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board little more than a year after some of the most liberal policies in the U.S. were reformed.

The mantra from developers and economic development types is that we need to loosen up the public cash register once again because we can’t compete with Desoto County unless we do it.

First off, our challenge isn’t to compete with DeSoto County. That’s part of our problem. We’ve got the question all wrong: we’re competing with cities in Asia and India. And frankly, we’d just as soon see some of the low-wage, low-skill jobs move to DeSoto County so their taxpayers can pay for the social services that they need as a result of not receiving living wages.

Freezing Tax Freezes

If we are going to loosen up the regulations for tax freezes, we sure don’t need to return to business as usual and the traditional over-reliance on tax freezes. As we were the first to point out three years ago, in a 10-year period in which Nashville only stamped approved on 5 tax freezes, Memphis/Shelby County approved 415 tax freezes which waived $60 million a year in taxes (we gave more tax freezes than the other 94 Tennessee combined).

If the IDB returns to the good old days, there would be one of those rare outcries that will reverberate loudly in the halls of government. That said, and this was why we brought up tax freezes in the first place, if the IDB is going to shift from perpetuating Memphis’ non-competitiveness in the knowledge economy to being a vehicle to create the kind of community that we need to compete in the future, it needs to tie its incentives to the objectives and strategies of Sustainable Shelby and to the overall sustainability programs that are creating a buzz about cities today.

And if you don’t think that is important, let us quote BusinessWeek: “Perception is a big deal when it comes to places. Everybody has preconceived notions.”

On A Bubble

Here’s the thing: we don’t have the margin for error that many cities have. We have to get things right, and we have to make the most of every investment, every program and every opportunity.

That’s why Sustainable Shelby is so crucial. It institutionalizes sustainability as a core principle and a core business of the public sector, and that’s an important beginning. There is so much to do, and we are blessed right now by the presence of so many people – especially young, creative ones – who are prepared to do what it takes.

Reward Good Employees Absolutely, Positively

As Memphis City Council gets ready for its budget wrap-up this week, we have only one request: no more Fred Smith analogies.

Because of our broken tax structure, there are no easy answers for the Council, only a menu of poor options. That said, the tendency to justify pay cuts (which are crudely symbolic) and the elimination of next year’s pay raises (which are prudently overdue) by citing Fred Smith’s reduction in his salary as FedEx founder is really getting old.

The relevance between Mr. Smith’s salary and any of the 6,000 workers in City of Memphis is non-existent – unless the employees are secretly getting stock options as well.

Come to think of it, maybe City Council should set up the equivalent of public stock options. They could do it by setting up a system where high-performing employees get special payment options. Now, it’s a system of disincentives, dragging everyone down to the same level and sending the message that excellence matters little. Best of all, something like a stock options approach would require city government to set up the kind of performance-based system that could truly shake up the public’s business in City Hall.

Now that would be something worth quoting Fred Smith about.

As Usual, Everything Starts With Mayor Herenton

Reports about an imminent resignation by Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton are rumbling again, and this time around, they seem to have more credence than before.

But with Mayor Herenton, we’ve learned to believe it when we see it, but if he steps aside, it will have far-reaching ramifications – for not just who follows him as city mayor but who gets elected county mayor.

His political friends report that the lack of passion in City Hall is quickly being replaced with the energy triggered by a potential race for U.S. Congress against two-term incumbent Steve Cohen.

The Contest

Despite the breathless coverage by the media, we are a long way from having any idea how that race is likely to shake out. The poll headlined by Channel 5 showing Rep. Cohen trouncing Mayor Herenton was specious and has little connection with the reality of the situation.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mayor Herenton still has a strong base, and the race for Congress between two political veterans – one who’s a master of the sound bite and another whose mastery runs more to biting when least expected – is likely to be a street fight to the death.

At this point, the main questions are how early will the mayor play the race card – or if he will leave it to be played by others – and how early the congressman will bedevil him with his patented barbs designed to either draw laughs or blood.

Swimming Upstream

Congressman Cohen already expects to swim against a strong political current in favor of returning an African-American to the congressional seat in a majority African-American district. In turn, Mayor Herenton should expect to confront an opponent who raises more money than he does and can point to African-American colleagues in Congress who have lauded his work.

But this election is still more than a year away – a lifetime in politics – and a great deal can change, notably Mayor Herenton’s legal status as the federal investigation continues.

More current are the dominoes that will fall if Mayor Herenton steps down within weeks to concentrate on his race for Congress and a new business arrangement with one of his sons.

Options And Plenty Of Them

But we want to talk about mayors’ elections, so consider what happens if the mayor resigns. If Mayor Herenton steps down next month or August, his successor will be chosen in a special election in October or November respectively. Immediately upon the mayor leaving office, Memphis City Council Chairman Myron Lowery would be appointed as interim mayor, and the special election scheduled within 90 days.

At this point, he’s planning to run for mayor, and the prospects of yard signs, “Keep Lowery as Mayor,” are pretty appealing, as well as the ability to leverage the city’s most important bully pulpit as he campaigned.

That said, it’s obvious that a special mayor’s election in such short order favors the person with the county’s highest approval ratings and the deepest campaign pockets – A C Wharton. He would be formidable in the best of circumstances, but in an election called with such a short fuse, it would take lightning striking for him to lose.

One Scenario

We know there is the speculation that the mayor’s race will attract a cavalry of candidates, and as the electorate is divided up like a pie with too many people at the table, Mayor Wharton’s slice will shrink, allowing former Council member Carol Chumney to ease into office. All things are possible in politics but it’s not a prediction to which we subscribe for a variety of reasons, including his ability to attract both black and white votes and that the other candidates are largely fighting for the same votes.

It’s our sense that anyone trying to undercut Mayor Wharton will need to raise at least 50% more than his campaign budget and with only 90 days to do it, the points go to the candidate with a proven ability to raise big money and with an existing war chest.

Assume we’re right: Mayor Herenton resigns and Mayor Wharton is elected city mayor in October. His victory immediately opens up the county mayor’s seat, and the chairman of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners fills in temporarily.

County Options

At this point, the next chair of the legislative body – whose term begins Sept. 1 - is expected to be Joyce Avery, now chairman pro tempore. She would serve for 45 days, upon which time an interim mayor would be elected by the board of commissioners. Commissioner Sidney Chism is interested in running for the next chairman pro tempore and using it as a springboard for the appointment as interim mayor.

All in all, a Herenton exit now is a near miss for the current chair of the board of commissioners, Deidre Malone, a leading candidate for county mayor. Filling in as the 45-day mayor with hopes to create some momentum if appointed interim mayor, her campaign would have been jump started with a head start for the mayor’s race.

It would probably have been tough since Commissioner Chism is backing former state legislator and Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and he’d try to block her appointment. (On the other hand, it’s just as likely that she’ll work hard to block him being named to the same position.)

Post-Republican Era

Whoever is elected as interim mayor by the board of commissioners, that person will serve until September 1, 2010, when the winner in the county general election takes office as Shelby County’s fifth mayor.

Interestingly, on that same August 5, 2010, ballot will be the election that will be a magnet for large Democratic turnout – the Cohen-Herenton Congressional battle. The returns 14 months from now will ratify the proposition that if we are not in fact in a post-racial world, our community is indeed in a post-Republican world.

It could even make for a difficult race for two-term sheriff Mark Luttrell, and it makes Attorney General Bill Gibbons’ campaign as the Republican candidate for governor an even greater long shot.

And as has been the case for 16 years, everything seems to start with Mayor Herenton.

This Week On Smart City: Sustainability And Race

This week on Smart City, we have two authors who are re-imagining some persistent but outdated ideas from the 20th century.

Alex Steffan is a journalist and author who runs the organization and website WorldChanging.com. The site practices what he calls "Solutions based journalism" on the environment and has become the go-to source for forward thinking solutions on climate change and sustainability. Alex joins us to tell us about this new vision for journalism and how to build a brighter future. Alex is the author of "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."

And we'll talk with author and Harvard professor William Julius Wilson. He's written extensively on race in America from his seminal work, "When Work Disappears : The World of the New Urban Poor" to his latest, "More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)." Professor Wilson joins us to talk about reframing the relationship between race and poverty.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast so you can listen to it anytime you like. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Quoting A Colleague In The New York Times

Our good friend and colleague Joe Cortright was quoted today in the New York Times in its coverage of cities' racing to bet on biotech. First, it made us proud that Joe was quoted, and second, it made us proud that Memphis Bioworks Foundation took a different, more precise approach built on our city's authentic strengths.

It's interesting coverage, which can be read here.

Here's Joe's cautionary tale in the Times:

Skeptics cite two major problems with the race for biotech. First, the industry is highly concentrated in established epicenters like Boston, San Diego and San Francisco, which offer not just scientific talent but also executives who know how to steer drugs through the arduous approval process.

“Most of these states probably don’t stand much of a chance to develop a viable biotech industry,” said Gary P. Pisano, a Harvard Business School professor and the author of “Science Business: The Promise, the Reality and the Future of Biotech.”

“You can always get a few top people,” Mr. Pisano said, “but you need a lot of critical mass.”

Second, biotech is a relatively tiny industry with a lengthy product-development process, and even in its largest clusters offers only a fraction of the jobs of traditional manufacturing. In the United States, only 43 biotechnology companies employ more than 1,000 people, according to BioAbility, a consulting firm in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

There is no guarantee that if a blockbuster drug materialized, it would be manufactured and marketed in the same place it was developed and tested.

Joseph Cortright, an economist who has studied biotechnology clusters, gave the example of a promising anti-leukemia compound developed at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, where Mr. Cortright is based. “The economic impact in the Portland area is zero because the rights to manufacture and market this drug were owned already by Novartis,” Mr. Cortright said.

But the race continues.

Memphis' Opportunity For First-Class Public Transit, Finally

It looks like Memphis Area Transit Authority has finally reached a long awaited point: put up or shut up.

For years, MATA has offered up numerous justifications for the sad state of public transit in Memphis. At a time when efficient, effective mass transit is a competitive advantage for cities attracting talented workers, ours does just the opposite.

For many students and young workers who come here, MATA becomes a symbol for a city that just can’t seem to get its act together. And it’s not a bus that they take getting out of here fast.

We won’t repeat the reasons why we are so focused on 25-34 year-olds because you’ve probably memorized it by now, but suffice it to say that we are bleeding this crucial demographic.

That Giant Sucking Sound

In the decade between 1990 and 2000, Shelby County lost 14,205 25-34 year-olds, and that was troubling enough, but in the first six years of this decade, we lost 18,482. In these same periods, Memphis lost 6,814 and 14,508 respectively.

Said another way, from 1990 to 2006, Memphis lost 21,332 25-34 year-olds and Shelby County lost 32,687 (including Memphis). DeSoto County gained 11,146 of this demographic, so our area had a net loss of 25-34 year-olds of 21,541 people.

In other words, slightly more than three 25-34 year-olds have left Shelby County every day for the past 16 years.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said that improving mass transit is the top issue that he hears from young Nashville residents (and keep in mind that Nashville’s public transit includes trains while we've managed to have trolleys that pretend to be transportation). Mayor Dean said he plans to move assertively to leverage newly passed legislation about dedicated funding source for mass transit to attract more federal funding and to upgrade his city’s system.

The silence here is deafening.

Why It Matters

Operating with the attitude that public transit is for poor peoples with no other choices, MATA is a significant obstacle to the kind of progressive image (and more important, reality) that other cities like Nashville are using as a lure for talented workers.

Focus groups with college-educated workers here tell us that they expected a city of Memphis’ size to have a modern, welcoming, efficient public transit system. Instead, they complain that the recruiters’ promise of a lower cost of living was misleading because “no one told us we’d have to buy a car.”

For example, workers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital come from around the world. Researchers have lived in Paris, Boston and San Francisco. In other words, they know what a first-class transit system looks like. One relatively new arrival from Africa said she felt home at Memphis because so much of Memphis felt like a third world country - such as its bus system.

In previous years, MATA has suggested that it can’t attract more riders, and that was certainly born out by polling of the Sustainable Shelby project. It was widely predicted that climbing gas prices would force suburbanites out of their cars and back to city neighborhoods.

It never happened here and it’s not likely to unless something dramatic changes. Shelby Countians say gas prices would have to be $6.69 before they’d get aboard a city bus.

Getting It Right

The fact that gas prices will have to increase at least 50 percent for MATA to start looking attractive says as much about the transit system's reputation as it does about Shelby Countians' concern for their carbon footprints. It also indicates that the record public transit ridership that is occurring across the U.S. won't happen here.

The poll results are backed up anecdotally by Leadership Memphis' regular experiment requiring its members to travel to a class day using public transportation. The experience is always an eye-opener, because most of the class members are among the 92 percent of Shelby Countians who don’t travel in MATA. Comments from Leadership Memphis fall into broad categories like the need for better customer service for MATA and cleaner, better-maintained buses.

Meanwhile, Atlanta has upgraded the comfort of its seats and now loads news, sports scores and weather reports into televisions on its buses when they leave the bus barn. Utah and Colorado have added Wi-Fi to longer commuter buses for $5,000 and report that it has produced added ridership. Meanwhile, the buses have reclining seats, cup holders and racks for briefcases, backpacks and bicycles.

A number of cities like Portland, Oregon, send alerts to passengers’ Blackberries, offering up-to-the-minute information about trouble spots and alternatives in the event of problems on the route.

Doing More Than The Expected

All of this sounds light years away for MATA, but two recent developments might change all that…or at least prove once and for all if MATA is competent and capable to deliver a high-quality public service.

MATA is currently drawing up its plans to update its regional transit master plan, which in the past had often been merely updating the previous plan. If the current system is the answer, then it’s clear someone at MATA has been asking the wrong questions with its previous master plans.

This time around, there is a growing interest at the Memphis Area Planning Organization (MPO) to do more than the expected and the perfunctory. Over the years, MATA has repeated that the Memphis region can’t afford a first-class transit system.

Here’s the problem: they’ve never told us what a modern 21st century system would look like and what it would cost. The transit authority might be surprised: it might be exactly what we want and we might be willing to pay for it.

No More Excuses

Meanwhile, the other – and more on target – explanation given by MATA is that it doesn’t have a “dedicated funding source” like many other transit companies. It is this dependable source that has been pivotal to other cities far superior systems.

Just two days ago, when told rightly by City Council member Wanda Halbert that “it shouldn’t talk an hour to get from a certain point to downtown, MATA president Will Hudson told the City Council Budget Committee: “I’m not being smart. A lot of cities have a dedicated funding source that allows them to do that..They beat up on us all the time. It’s not about we don’t know how to run a transit system…If I had the money…”

While we think his contention that the current management has the ability to manage an effective transit system is arguable, we assume that he knows that quietly, the current legislature unanimously passed a law to approve a dedicated funding source for public transit.

It’s encouraging that finally someone in Nashville understood that transportation is about more than just about building more highways. Public transit advocates across Tennessee hailed passage as a historic step toward improved mass transit in the four metro areas of Tennessee, and said it was the first step toward a toolbox for a modern public transit system.

Just Do It

The law allows for our area to create the dedicated funding source for a Regional Transportation Authority.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it begins a “no excuses” era for MATA and ushers in the opportunity for the MPO to think more boldly and broadly about the future of public transit in our community.

It proves conclusively that hope springs eternal.

Wanted: Someone To Connect The Dots And Disconnect I-269

Perhaps what local government needs most is a Department of Connecting the Dots.

While one public agency talks about creating a workforce that can compete in the knowledge economy, another gives tax freezes to companies that perpetuate low-wage, low-skill jobs.

While one government launches a "sustainability agenda," no government seems able to rein in sprawl-inducing projects that make Memphis the most economically segregated of the top 50 metros.

While one department talks about keeping and attracting twenty-first century workers, another operates a public transit system that's barely in the late-twentieth century.

While one division of city government works to revitalize urban neighborhoods, the projects of another make them more disconnected and less walkable and bikable.

The Symbol Of Unconnected Dots

If there's a poster child for this disconnect, it is I-269. It's essentially the latest gift to developers, but for Memphis, it's the gift that keeps on giving, fueling trends that already batter the city's ability to compete.

The Brookings Institution recently released a report that showed that jobs created within three miles of downtown are decreasing while those more than 10 miles from downtown are climbing. It underscored an earlier study by the think tank that showed that Memphis is a national leader in the loss of middle-income families and neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the economic segregation caused by sprawl results in concentrated poverty that is the seedbed for our city's most serious problems and derails our best efforts to address them. Projects like Tennessee Highway 385 and I-269 promise only to make them worse, because every problem becomes harder to deal with in cities that are economically segregated.

In other words, at the precise time when every city, county, and state agency should be focused on encouraging infill redevelopment that revives and stabilizes Memphis neighborhoods, our transportation investments hollow them out, and leaders appear unable to turn the tide and abandon the idea that sprawl is "growth."

Hammering It Home

To their credit, both city and county governments opposed and lobbied hard to prevent I-269 from ever happening; however, in a high stakes game of political gamesmanship, Mississippi held all the cards, and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott owned the deck.

Lott was supported by former U.S. Representative from Texas and House Whip Tom (Hammer) Delay, who had earlier suggested that the I-69 Coalition hire someone who would be uniquely skilled in presenting its case in the nation's capital. That person just happened to be his brother, who was paid about $300,000 a year. To DeLay's hammer, Lott played the nail.

Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton and Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout were relieved when they thought their fierce opposition and relentless lobbying of the Tennessee Congressional delegation had blocked the interstate add-on that jerks eastward at Millington and runs along the far eastern border of Shelby County (dipping into Fayette County to open up those green fields to residential development and a rail yard) before swinging downward across unspoiled North Mississippi landscape. (I-69 itself reflected the premise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.)

Faced with defeat, Lott added wording to a federal bill that essentially took the decision out of Tennessee's hands while stepping up construction of the interstate through his home state. In the end, it was like many road and highway projects in the region, born from a tradition of political patronage between government and developers that is embedded in our local DNA.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

The project cost is now moving toward $1 billion, and backers now justify it with terms like smart growth, knowledge economy jobs, New Urbanism, and open space protection. They also claim that Memphis will benefit from new economic growth and development as a result of I-269.

At the same time, the cause and effect — connecting the dots — between sprawl, the climbing Memphis tax rate, and an economically polarized city are overwhelmed by the megaphones (political, civic, and media) enjoyed by those who drive such projects.

The inattention to the urban center that fuels our regional economy is symbolized by I-269, but its impact will be real and immediate. It will further produce an economically polarized city where fewer and fewer Memphis workers are paying more and more in taxes — including those spent for services and amenities that are in truth regional.

This was the City Journal column in the May issue of Memphis magazine.

This Week On Smart City: Greenways And Cycling

This week on Smart city we're heading outside to explore the greenways and bike lanes of cities.

Greg Moore is the executive director of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. He'll tell how us the former military outpost became one of the largest greenways in the U.S., and how he brought together a group of cross-sector leaders for an event called "Turning The Tide" which focused on bold actions being taken on behalf of the environment.

And we'll speak with author, journalist and avid cyclist Jeff Mapes about his book,Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities". Jeff will share the political side of riding a bike and offer ideas on how cities can encourage two-wheeled transit.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast so you can listen to it anytime you like. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Kriner Cash Begins His Sophomore Year

It’s been a tumultuous first year for Memphis City Schools Superintendent Kriner Cash, but after a bumpy start, he seems to be finding his stride in his first job at the helm of large urban district.

While there’s always something controversial going on in the $1 billion business that is public education, there is more of a controlled feeling to it now, rather than the eruptions on all sides that characterized Dr. Cash’s first few months.

And yet, if there is a lull, it is the one before the storm.

That’s because as soon as the Tennessee Department of Education increases its standards (they are now a complete sham), most of the schools in our district will fail and end up on the troubled school list. It’s hard to imagine how the district doesn’t end up on the “high priority” list.

Entrenched

No one knows this better than Dr. Cash. While his elected school board seems to frequently see the world through rose-colored glasses, the superintendent himself has no delusions about the challenges that lie ahead. After all, if anything drives and defines his philosophy of education, it is data – and the data is unmistakably clear about the future.

Although he did his research before he hit the ground in Memphis, we understand that two things have astonished him: the entrenched poverty in Memphis and the entrenched culture of failure at the mother ship on Avery Avenue.

His decentralization of the district helped send an unmistakable message that people need to shape up or ship out. He’s also moved around principals and some key managers, but we’re told that it’s clear to him that his bench is awfully thin.

That some of the Memphis players have done all that they can to undermine the new regime, comparing them to heavy-handed dictators who threaten and cajole rather than convince and persuade, has not been lost on Supt. Cash. Many of these complaints seem to be connected to Deputy Superintendent Irving Hamer, whose people skills – whether aimed at principals or city leaders – result regularly in bruised feelings and frustration.

Trust And Verify

From all appearances, the staff, never known for their entrepreneurial acumen, has been slowing down decision-making even more. For example, the real estate findings announced by Dr. Cash a couple of weeks ago were essentially completed 18 months ago.

Meanwhile, anything that requires expediency and decisiveness is normally accompanied by an opening stumble. By now, Dr. Cash has learned to “trust and verify” the data presented to him, and he’s also come face-to-face with the reality that much of the perceived progress being made under the leadership of former Superintendent Carol Johnson was as much public relations as anything.

It was Dr. Johnson’s ability to bring tears to the audience wherever she spoke that set a high bar for Dr. Cash to clear. Largely, he hasn’t tried, defining success in the classroom rather than in speeches around town. At times, he seems to see these public appearances as necessary evils that take him away from the more pressing business of running the district.

Lately, he’s been getting his feet under him and seems steadier in his approach. While we agree completely with his position on city government funding of schools, we understand that he has to fight the good fight and to keep his options open. With single source funding of schools by county government appearing more and more likely, he’s kept the pressure on for a resolution that serves his students.

A Slow Go

To this point, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton has pledged to only support funding solutions that included a weighted formula to city schools in light of its large percentage of special needs students and the intractable poverty that defines the lives of so many of its 103,000 students.

The bad news for Dr. Cash is that he faces a much more cynical public these days. The good news for him is that there’s broad understanding about this: school reform is gritty, grind-it-out, long-term work.

That’s why the ultimate test of Dr. Cash’s approach won’t come in a year or even two. It may just be coming into focus at the end of his four-year contract. To that end, if his first year has been anything, it has been on-the-job training, and in that respect, he wasn’t able to make the most of his honeymoon period.

That said, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could have done much better, considering that the incoming bombs included the nutrition services debacle, insurance change outrage, communication breakdowns with key partners, taxing authority for the district, the push for his own police department, creation of new positions paying more than $100,000, the unequal playing field for charter schools and KIPP DIAMOND Academy, removal of the popular athletic director and the opposition expressed in Nashville to relaxing state admission standards for charter students. And that’s just to name a few.

Symbolism Matters

It seemed to us that Dr. Cash was at risk of becoming part of the Memphis City Schools culture when his alter ego, Dr. Hamer, predictably treated the controversy about cell phone abuse at the district as much ado about nothing. Initially, Dr. Cash even said that the issue was blown out of proportion.

We may be inclined to agree with him to some extent, but symbolism matters, and you ignore this fact at your own risk. Because of it, he should never have treated the charges for ring tones, screen savers and long distance calls too families as insignificant. It was important because the symbolism of the cell phone expenses validated the public perception that the district is out of control.

Eventually, Dr. Cash laid out new policies and seemed to grasp the impact that this kind of issue can have when it is allowed to dominate news coverage for multiple days. It’s hard to watch these kinds of episodes and the mixed signals coming out of the district and not conclude that Dr. Cash is poorly served by his communications department. We’ve even thought he should consider setting up a war room to act quickly and decisively to these kinds of issues.

As we’ve said before, we’ve not met anyone who can sum up the Cash Administration’s ultimate goals in 20 seconds or less. Of course, when you start your new job by laying out dozens upon dozens of strategies, it’s pretty hard to find a coherent message that the public can understand and embrace.

Now For The Hard Part

When Dr. Cash took his job here, we said that if there are guiding principles for his ideas, it’s probably these:

• Turnaround strategies must center on teaching and learning
• Structural changes are at the heart of urban school transformation
• Redeployed resources are critical to sustaining turnaround after the first year of change
• Collaborations between the community and the district are vital to eliminating low performance
• School turnaround requires responses to all of the conditions that contribute to underachieving students
• Increasing technology applications can reduce the time that teachers lose with paperwork and reports
• Stepping up the rate of achievement requires greater involvement of parents, families and communities

We suspect that when the year began, Dr. Cash expected to make major headway on these objectives, but looking back, he had to spend much of his firs year getting the basics right. That as much as anything is the theme for the first 12 months of the Cash era.

Now, it's about engaging in the "disruptive innovations" that can fundamentally change the trajectory of the district, and more to the point, the lives of its students.

Council Delivers Lesson On Civics

Yesterday's vote by Memphis City Council's budget committee may have been a political master stroke, but more to the point, it was a lesson in Civics 101.

A day earlier, Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton had said in effect that he would decide the future of the Memphis Sexual Assault Resource Center. Council members used this opportunity to remind all of us that our system of government is based on checks and balances.

More to the point, the people with the checks - or more to the point, the checkbooks - are legislative bodies.

So, while the mayor can keep a line item in his budget for Memphis Sexual Assault Resource Center, the Council can zero it out, thus opening the door for it to be moved under Shelby County Government.

Beyond the argument with the mayor, the Council was right when it kept its eye on the ball -- tax equity -- and once again pointed out thata regional service should not be funded only by Memphians.

Memphis Sexual Assault Resource Center does indeed serve the entire county and should be part of county government, so all taxpayers in our community are supporting it with their tax dollars.

This particular Council has done more in the past 18 months about serious tax equity than previous Councils in 10 years, and because of it, for the first time, there are serious discussions about moving crucial public services from the city tax base to the county's.

Yesterday's Council vote reminded us of our April 26 post:

Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton sent a stern note last week to the Memphis City Council that said its members need to restore full funding for Memphis City Schools.

It prompted memories here of the late Jesse Turner Sr., the civil rights leader and former long-time chairman of the budget committee for Shelby County’s legislative body. When presented once with a directive about the budget by a county mayor, he responded calmly: “I appreciate your opinion. That’s what you have – an opinion. What I have is a vote.”

It’s a fact of life that’s always been lost to some extent on the news media, which hang on every word of mayors and their budget recommendations as if it’s the administrative branch that determines public budgets.

The truth is that it’s the 13 members of Memphis City Council who will make the final decision. They have the responsibility, not to mention the authority, to set the final budget and the tax rate.

Dollars And Sense

We respect the mayor’s opinion about school funding. As the former superintendent of Memphis City Schools, Mayor Herenton, according to a political adviser, is too passionate about schools to remain silent on the issue of school funding. They said that it was a personal motivation that led him to chastise the Council in a letter to City Council Myron Lowery.

It seems likely that the Memphis City Council will return the favor, asking the mayor for his administration’s recommendations on how to include the school funding in the city budget – are cuts in other city departmental budgets recommended to offset the increase for schools or is the recommendation for a tax increase to produce money for schools.

More than a couple of City Council members think that the mayor may have been trying to paint them into a corner, but think that he instead shot himself in the foot (to mix metaphors). They said that if he were serious about funding schools, he would have put the money in the proposed budget that he presented to Council last week along with the bombshell that he’s planning to run for Congress.

In the words of one Councilman, “he didn’t present a balanced budget at all if he truly believes that schools should be funded at previous levels.”

Politics And More Politics

From their side, however, key finance officials assumed that if they had included the school funding, City Council would “grandstand and cut it like they were the only ones who know how to cut budgets.” Regardless of the rationale on each side, some people believe that it’s created a game of political chicken.

And yet, it’s just as likely, based on early reports from the Council, that its members may opt to ignore Mayor Herenton’s letter altogether, recognizing that final decisions on the city budget are theirs, not the administration’s. One Council member also pointed out that the mayor had similar opinions last year, but had no real influence on the City Council budget decisions.

As superintendent, Mayor Herenton was a rising star and highly regarded for top school jobs from Atlanta to New York City. So, it’s no wonder he has a strong feeling about the city’s funding of schools. We just happen to disagree with him.

As we’ve said before, tax fairness affects every Memphian, and if any one is harboring the delusion that our city can compete for new jobs, new talent and new business investment as higher and higher taxes are paid by fewer and fewer people, they are ignoring reality.

Cycles

That is exactly what current trends foretell. Unless we are able to bring some sanity to our current tax system – which punishes Memphis tax base, which is losing middle-income families faster and leaving a polarized city to pay for the increasing costs of the vortex of social problems that stem from our high poverty rate.

It’s a vicious cycle. The high rate of poverty begets a high drop-out rate which begets a high level of people out of the job market which begets the high rate of crime which begets the high abandonment of the city which begets higher tax rates which begets higher risk to the entire region.

In that way, a fair tax rate for Memphians isn’t just the city’s concern. It better be all of ours. In the end, all of us are at risk, regardless of where we live and how much we earn and how immune we think we are from the economic repercussions of Memphis’ collapse.

Because of this, Memphis City Council was not only right when it tried to bring some sanity to the local tax burden. They were also courageous.

Council Courage

After all, this community talked 25 years about placing all school funding where it belongs – on Shelby County’s larger tax base. We’ve been talking for way too long about making the Memphis tax burden more rational, and despite all the talk, nothing changed.

No one is suggesting that it’s not in all of our best interests – not to mention our common humanity – to pay for the education of our children. It does in fact take a village and we all need to be villagers in that pursuit. The village is Shelby County, not two villages, one in Memphis and another in Shelby County.

But the village doesn’t only have children. It has elderly people, especially the significant percentage here who live in poverty, it needs an economy that doesn’t play down to our low skill levels but helps to improve them, and it’s about neighborhoods that are connected, walkable and served by high-quality public transit.

It wasn’t too many years ago that City of Memphis provided significantly less funding for schools. Also, there was a widely held opinion – in both city and county mayors’ offices and in both city and county legal departments – that Memphis’ funding was discretionary. It could stop it whenever it liked, and as a result, City of Memphis increased school funding to higher and higher levels, but rather than getting a thank you note from city schools, they instead get served with a lawsuit.

Wanted: Logical Laws

The state law that forbids local government from reducing its previous year’s school funding may sound on the surface like a commitment to kids, but in the end, it’s a prescription that erodes the kind of self-determination that every government deserves. After all, the law would require government to keep the same level of funding even if enrollment collapsed.

Let’s say this one more time to make sure every one gets it. No property tax money from the budgets of City of Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Millington and Arlington go to fund schools. Meanwhile, Memphians not only pay for schools in their county property tax bill, but they pay for it again with their city taxes. No one else in this county does that – or has ever done that – except Memphians.

Meanwhile, those same small cities use their lower tax rates and their schools as lures to pull people out of Memphis, and Memphians are forced to help make it possible.

Gun Bill: "All About Me" Politics At Its Worst

Apparently, Tennessee Rep. Curry Todd took too many hard fouls to the head during his glory days as a hardwood phenom.

We’re not sure what excuse Sen. Paul Stanley has, unless it’s been hit too many times over the head with the Bible or by former Stanford Financial investors.

Either way, these Republican state legislators have become the poster boys for what’s wrong with our political system: it’s all about them.

Firing Blanks

Just think about it.

They led passage of a bill so gun owners can carry heat into restaurants. But that’s not what makes in so unbelievable.

They did it in the face of the opposition of the people who have to enforce it – the state sheriffs and police chiefs – and in the face of the opposition from the people who know their industry best – the restaurateurs association.

Their resolve in the face of overwhelming logic is testament to the phenomenon that invades government too much these days.

It’s all about winning and losing.

It’s all about political pandering.

It’s all about the objective that trumps public safety and sound public policy – getting elected.

One Word: Stupid

Aided and abetted by the National Rifle Association, our state legislators have thumbed their noses at the cautionary warnings by law enforcement and by businesspeople – supposedly the core of the Republican base.

It defies belief. Even my beloved cousin – a rural farmer, conservative, proud gun owner and NRA member – summed it up eloquently: “Stupid. Just plain stupid.”

But nothing like common sense is going to deter this kind of political behavior, which becomes so outrageous, it runs the risk of being a parody of itself. It’s like the rest of us keep waiting for the grown-up to show up at recess and bring this childish group to order.

To his credit, Governor Phil Bredesen is trying. He proved to the adult in the room, vetoing the pro-gun bill.

Paid Attention In Philosophy Class

Immediately, Rep. Todd showed the maturity that got us into this in the first place. He put his response in terms of “we’ll show him” and “we’re going to win.” He even said it would be like the "OK Corral" on Capitol Hill.

It’s tempting to put it all under the heading of absurdism and chalk it up to a plot worthy of Camus, but in truth, it’s pure, unadulterated nihilism. It’s taken to such a level that it’s become anomie as morality and social norms break down.

That’s the ironic thing about the blind ambition and personal gratification shown by Rep. Todd and Sen. Stanley. In worshiping at the altar of law and order, they are in fact breaking down law and order in pursuit of an “anything goes” attitude.

But enough of the diagnostics, the truth is that within the political context, their actions represent the devaluation of public service and the greater public good in pursuit of personal benefit. So often, the ones enacting these kinds of laws act as if they look down from Olympus and share their omniscient views with the mere mortals who elected them.

Queries

If Rep. Todd and Sen. Stanley believe that it is imperative that we can carry our guns anywhere we like (that seems the substance of their philosophy), then why can’t we carry them into the gallery of the Tennessee Legislature?

Why can’t we carry our guns into Legislative Plaza in Nashville when we meet with these very same legislators?

Why can’t we carry them into the building that houses our sheriff’s office or into the courts in the Shelby County Courthouse?

Why are only public buildings deserving of this extra layer of safety? The rest of us are up for grabs.

Surely, if we are now able, thanks to these enlightened legislators, to pack our firearms into a mere restaurant and a public park, surely we should be able to take them into the public buildings that we, as citizens, in fact own.

The Royal Court

Governor Bredesen stands little chance of winning this shoot-out, but in the end, this burst of political self-gratification will give way to most restaurants banning guns and with wise local governments keeping guns out of public parks.

We can’t blame all this on Rep. Todd and Sen. Stanley. After all, as citizens, we allow for the state capitol to be the equivalent of a medieval court, where minor players gain power by doling out indulgences and approvals. Most of these benefits accrue to lobbyists who treat legislators as if they are invested with wisdom only reserved for the gods.

When legislators tell jokes, every one belly laughs, and when they are angry, every one sympathizes. It is a world built on the massaging of oversized egos and undersized commitments to public service.

Every one should spend a couple of days in Legislative Plaza in Nashville, watching our good old boys soaking up the adulation and false praise. Thankfully, there are some (a precious few) legislators who actually ask: “how will the public benefit” instead of the more common refrain: “how many votes will this get me?”

Change Is Gonna Come

The cadre of conscientious legislators forms a core of hope for change. Just as there are no greater critics of journalism than the journalists themselves, these legislators are deeply critical of the gnawing gap between the founding dream and the present reality of the legislature. As one put it recently, “this place is a definite idealism killer and spirit-sapping.”

We’re not saying that at some level, every politician isn’t concerned about getting reelected. What we are saying is that too often today, from the U.S. Congress to the Tennessee Legislature, there are too many legislators whose only daily mission is to get elected – in granting favors in return for contributions, in passing gratuitous bills to satisfy their base and in being willing to divide us as a people in their own self-interest.

Change can happen, but it begins with us saying that we’ve had enough. It begins with a trip to Nashville. It begins with the knowledge of seeing it firsthand.

The good news is that if you miss your legislators in Legislative Plaza, you can also corner your legislators at local restaurants around the Capitol. Just don’t forget to take your guns.

Memphis Sides With Anti-discrimination

Coverage by the news media about the passage of the anti-discrimination resolution by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners suggested to some that yesterday's vote was a Pyrrhic victory.

That's not true.

The shift from an ordinance to resolution was irrelevant in the application and enforcement. They both have the same force of law and the same impact on county policy, according to Shelby County Attorney Brian Kuhn.

And while the language in the resolution may mirror wording in the county personnel policies book, there's a big difference now.

There is the legislative intent, and clearly, the intent of the county commissioners was to apply anti-discrimination to people of different sexual orientations or identities. That means that someone filing a complaint can cite the intent of the board of commissioners in passing the resolution and a judge can rely on that intent to decide a case. Even more, the county attorney can be called as a witness about intent.

It's a clear victory, not the one we had wanted, but one nonetheless. More to the point, it was a tribute to democracy. Board of Commissioners Chair Deidre Malone guided through the controversial shoals with care and dignity to all sides of the debate, and her decision to substitute "thumbs up, thumbs down" as signs of support rather than raucous cheering and clapping was brilliant, bringing the kind of somber deliberation that the issue needed rather than the environment of a pep rally.

More to the point, except for Commissioner Wyatt Bunker, whose bellicose and demagogic rants have now almost destroyed any veneer of patience toward him on the board of commissioners, the comments during the hearing were thoughtful, heartfelt and sincere.

We admire anyone who's willing to stand before a packed room and tell their public officials their personal feelings, so we salute speakers from both sides. In particular, we found the one-minute comments by gay, lesbian and transsexuals to be moving and courageous. The cause, our passion for it, became real in their words and its importance of it became clear to their lives.

Finally, for those of us who cared deeply about this issue and what it says about our city, we want to commend the nine commissioners who made the decision to stand for fair play, equity and equal rights. (Remarkably, we didn't see their names in this morning's Commercial Appeal.) They are Commissioners Mike Ritz, J.W. Gibson, Henri Brooks, James Harvey, Sidney Chism, Joe Ford, Matt Kuhn, Steve Mulroy and Deidre Malone.

The breakdown of the vote was reported in yesterday's blogging by CA reporter Alex Doniach, who now works the digital desk for our daily. It was an outstanding introduction to the power of instant reporting by a professional newsperson, and we look forward to more from her.

Talking Ourselves Off The Ledge From The Calipari Exit

We have seen the underbelly of college sports and it is our own.

Weeks have passed since our messy divorce from University of Memphis basketball coach John Calipari, and he got players, secretaries, assistant coaches, Chinese coaches, and most of all, our idealism.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. We were too cynical and too well-versed in the realities of college athletics to ever doubt that it was anything but big business. We couched it in noble terms - the spirit of competition, the thrill of teamwork and the magic of a unified community – but now we're just not feeling so noble.

We allowed ourselves to be fooled. We allowed ourselves to be seduced by a combination of a civic lack of self-worth and the belief that success at a national level could cure it. That there was never much respect and admiration across the U.S. as we recorded this success should have been the most blatant tip-off that we were blinded by the light of our own ambition and deaf to criticisms that now seem so blatant.

It's 20-20

Worst of all, it seems obvious from the kind of clarity that comes with the benefit of distance that the Calipari basketball program just may become the hammer that others can now use to beat up the university that it was supposed to serve. In the absence of a prevailing narrative for University of Memphis, the NCAA charges now become the narrative. We can afford to take some blows to get our basketball program righted, but it's unfair that by extension, our academic programs and professors must take them too.

No, we are not the only university that seems to have lost its sense of proportion, but it is cold comfort that coaches making multi-million salaries own the headlines while the university research programs and outreach programs get the footnotes. Perhaps, it's the nature of the media these days - Kate and Jon make the front page while the facts about Vice-President Cheney's latest stretching of the truth gets buried inside the paper (if mentioned at all).

At any rate, we're now like the alcoholic at his first AA meeting. We're still shell-shocked from hitting bottom and we're determined to fight our way back, but still, we sure did like the sweet taste of success.

Tell-Tale Signs

That taste allowed us to ignore the fact that something about the hovering specter of "Worldwide Wes" over our teams just didn't feel right.

We justified away the "one and done" syndrome that was supposed to give high school seniors a chance to decompress before entering the NBA, but does little more than treat these superior athletes as commodities.

We savored record-breaking seasons so deeply that we looked the other way when the road between Lauringberg Prep and U of M seemed questionable, as well as the possibility that it was a diploma mill.

Success tasted so sweet that we refused to see the off-the-court problems as a pattern and the inside-the-program trade-offs that told our student athletes that the latter always mattered more than the former.

Most of all, we were so busy tasting sweet victory that we ignored the aroma of something else, an aroma of self-aggrandizement that pervaded a program where it seemed that even our university president had to fall in line with whatever the coach wanted.

Earth To SCM

OK, perhaps, we're overdoing all this, but you know how it is: group therapy can be hard.

We're on the ledge, and it's pretty crowded up here.

It's because of all of this that Josh Pastner was the perfect pick as Mr. Calipari's replacement. He reminds us of the wide-eyed joy that should accompany college sports. He reminds us of the enthusiasm and the optimism that should emanate from successful programs. He reminds of the vocabulary that truly uplifts our ambitions instead of playing to our insecurities.

Most of all, he reminds us that it's the school that matters. Our players and our sports teams are not here to represent themselves. It's not the Calipari program. It's not the Pastner program. It's the University of Memphis program. That's why Coach Pastner has said that he is here to represent the university, its values and its principles, not the other way around.

Even those of us who sat on the edges of our seats for every game of a Calipari-coached team really never lost sight that we had allowed the tail to wag the dog. We were just enjoying it so much.

Metaphors That Matter

We knew it's supposed to be about the quality of the university, not the quality of its sports teams, but sports has always been such a strong metaphor for our city. For once, we had bragging rights.

Blessed with the clarity that comes from the stretching out between us and the last days of the Calipari rejection, some of the people who offered him the big salary to stay are now saying the change has been good. In hindsight, they say it had become like being in a dysfunctional relationship, a co-dependency. Enough was never enough. The chosen one always wanted more, bigger, higher and more expensive. And now they even admit that although they still like the former coach, looking back, it had just become too much.

They say now that things got too much out of balance, and that we may not be Final Four caliber year after year, but we will have a healthier, more stable and more respected program.

If sports have always been a ready metaphor for our city, Coach Pastner is an apt symbol for our city's transition to a newer generation of leaders. If we can trust a 31-year-old with a team whose success galvanizes our city like nothing else and whose budget undergirds our university's entire sports program, surely we can start looking for similarly aged people – and no, they don't have to have lived here their whole lives – to lead our governments and to strengthen our civic bench.

Life Lessons

If there is any consolation for us, it is that we are not alone. Even the mighty can become addicts, willing to ignore their core values to chase "W's" and wrapping their blind ambition in the vocabulary of civic boosterism and high-flown athletic ideals.

After all, if the University of Kentucky – a program with a pride justified by its history – is willing to blink, it acknowledges that in the end, all of us are alike – willing to ignore the obvious as long as the wins keep coming. That's why it wasn't ashamed to buy the UM program lock, stock, barrel and Chinese coach.

Already, Coach Calipari has worked his magic in Lexington, convincing school officials that he is persecuted and surrounded by detractors jealous of his success. Sports columnists already are becoming his cheerleaders, branding his critics as misguided and misinformed. The co-dependency begins in earnest.

But it's the coach that creates the culture for his program, and it's the coach that should take responsibility for its problems, something else our former coach had difficulty doing. More and more, however, we're willing to do it for him.

Anti-Discrimination Vote Is Good Business

Memphis has no margin for error.

Because of it, decisions like the one today on a county anti-discrimination ordinance are much more than parochial controversies.

To the contrary, all that we do now is amplified and magnified, and a vote by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in favor of the fairness could become a much-needed positive national headline about our city.

At a time when tolerance is a selling point for cities, a vote against the ordinance would stake out our claim to intolerance and sanctimony. It will chill efforts to recruit young professionals and immigrants to Memphis, and make no mistake about it, the success of cities today are directly related to both.

We are at a seminal point in Memphis history. Everything matters.

Already, our economic development officials are hobbled by our reputation as a race-conscious city racked by conflict. Their sales pitches are shaken by crime statistics and corruption.

If you add to that the need to explain why guns are needed here in parks and restaurants and why discrimination would win in a vote by our county legislators, the Chamber is left to push a large boulder uphill with potential businesses.

We can only hope that our county elected officials do what is right. They will if they remember that they are public officials, not religious officials.

While their private religious beliefs are important in defining who they are, it should not define their votes today. In truth, their votes are about our future and the chance to break from past prejudices and to reject the brand of politics that would treat some of our citizens as “less than.”

It’s a historic vote today, and its ripples will reach far beyond our county borders and define us as a people. If we are to stand for anything as a city, surely it is for fairness, equal rights, and our common humanity. We can only hope that our county commissioners will do the same.

Here’s our earlier post about the economic consequences of today’s vote:

Memphis is like the actor looking for the chance to take a role against type.

We need something dramatic to send the message that we’re not your grandfather’s Memphis, that we’re not stuck in time and that we’re not a group of Bible-thumping, intolerant bigots.

That’s why the vote by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners on an ordinance promising non-discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgendered persons is a crucible for our community.

It’s not often that a legislative body has a chance to do something so right. Or so smart.

Starring In A New Role

That’s because the ordinance gives us a powerful opportunity to act against type and send the message that this old river city is shedding a reputation that we’ve had too long and that we now find repugnant.

In a city that has suffered from the bitter fruit of bigotry and discrimination, it would seem self-evident that we should jump at the opportunity to be on the side of fairness and equality. But despite the lessons that we should have learned, we remain a place where intolerance flourishes on occasion.

As a result, the new ordinance – which only applies to county employees and companies working for county government – is a welcome development, and Commissioner Steve Mulroy deserves a commendation for the political courage to advance it to a board of commissioners’ agenda, but we’re sure that some commissioners will instead opt to vote for discrimination, but such is the lingering brand of prejudice cloaked in the flag and Scripture verses to hide its ugliness.

Despite this, we’re hopeful that a majority of our county commissioners will understand the importance of this moment in history for our community. You see, while voting for this ordinance is morally right, it is also economically wise.

That’s because tolerance is no longer a virtue. It’s essential to compete in the knowledge economy.

Prima Facie Case

Here’s how the dots connect: the presence of talent in a city today determines its economic success, the percentage of 25-34 year-olds in a city is the key determinant and these crucial members of the workforce are looking to work and live in cities that are clean, green and safe and that are places where they can live the life they want to live.

In other words, they want a city open enough to accept them as they are, welcoming enough to offer ways to plug in with others like themselves and accepting enough to reserve their judgments.

In this way, gays are the canaries in the coal mine. It’s been said that cities with significant gay populations are more successful, but it’s not just because gays have been key to neighborhood revitalization, development of the cultural and arts scene and to a city’s vibrancy.

More to the point, if a city is welcoming to gays, it is prima facie evidence that it is diverse and welcoming to everyone, and it is the presence of that level of tolerance and acceptance of others that is a magnet for talented young people looking for place where they can live the life they want to live.

Undervalued Tolerance

Tolerance as a selling point is vastly underrated and misunderstood in Memphis. But more and more, it is becoming a priority for cities that understand how it helps to attract and retain knowledge economy workers.

In our work in developing talent strategies for a half dozen large cities, it’s a common and compelling theme. It’s not simply something that comes up as a footnote in interviews, focus groups and research. To the contrary, it is uppermost in the minds of the young, college-educated people as they decide where they will work and live. It’s not that they are asking if cities have a vibrant gay culture. Rather, they ask about ways in which the city welcomes their opinions and accepts their choices, and there is no more telling indicator that the presence and acceptance of gays and lesbians.

It is in this way that the gay population is an indicator of the fundamental character of a city and serves as a foreshadowing to other indicators of economic success. To prove the point, Memphis’ rank at the bottom of the list of cities with gay populations is also where it is ranked on variety of other economic measurements.

The need for the ordinance is a sad commentary on the discrimination and bigotry still directed at gays, lesbians and transgendered people in our nation, but already, cities that are seen as open-minded are on the right side of the great national migration of young, talented workers.

A Better Image

Memphis and Shelby County are way on the wrong side of this migration. Since 1990, Shelby County has lost 33,300 25-34 year-olds, and we’ve already lost more of this group in the first six years of this century than in all of the 1990s. We’re in the process of determining how many of these had college degrees, but based on the preliminary numbers, it’s doesn’t look promising.

It’s worth remembering that two out of three of these people – the gold standard for the knowledge-based economy – pick where they live before they pick where they work, and they say that they want to live in a city where each can “live the life that I want to lead.”

Here’s the thing about the Board of Commissioners’ vote. If it fails, it’s a devastating blow to our already faltering national image through a toxic display of intolerance that will undoubtedly garner national media coverage. The good news is that if it passes, it will garner even more.

Maybe, before it’s over, we can actually attract some national attention for our ability to transcend our differences and abandon the bomb-throwing judgmental behavior that defines us too much nationally.

Setting The Future Context

As we said, voting for the county ordinance is much more than simple decency (although that would be reason enough). Rather, it’s an exercise in economic necessity.

In a world of multitudinous ethnic groups, an assortment of religions, different sexual orientations and collections of cultures, a city that can’t respect its own differences can never connect - or compete - in a world whose overwhelming characteristic is its diversity.

Or put another way, a city that is open, inclusive and tolerant has the best chance of competing for the kinds of jobs – and workers - that matter most in a knowledge-based economy.

This Week On Smart City: City Dividends On Every Block

Change is in the air and we've got the numbers to prove it on Smart City.

At a time when tax revenues are declining and city budgets are strained, our first guest has a modest proposal that could produce big dividends for cities. Joe Cortright is an economist for Impresa Consulting in Portland, Ore., and his latest work shows how profitable it can be for a city to be greener, smarter, and with fewer people living in poverty. The full report for CEOs for Cities is available here.

Want to find out what's happening in your neighborhood? Adrian Holovaty knows. He's the creator of Everyblock.com, a website that provides hyper-local news tailored to your street address. We'll give the site a test run and see what's happening on our block.

Smart City is a syndicated, weekly hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life: the people, places, ideas and trends that affect us all. Host Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, talks with national and international public policy experts, economists, business leaders, artists, developers, planners and others on the pulse of city life for a penetrating discussion on urban issues.

Smart City is broadcast at 6 a.m. Saturday and Sundays on WKNO-FM, but it is also webcast and podcast so you can listen to it anytime you like. For the webcast, times for the broadcast in other cities and to sign up for the podcast, visit our website.

Answering A Question About Guard Rails

A week ago, we wrote a post about the new, improved bridge design created by Shelby County Government, and some of you suggested a better relationship between the bridge and the guard rails.

To follow up, we asked County Engineer Mike Oakes about the guard rails, and here's what he said:

"The guardrails are a big problem. We have to comply with regulations on them and there is little leeway. On the signature steel bridge we were able to paint the bridge and guardrails the same Forest Green color but in the case of concrete, we don’t have that option.

"We are planning to paint these a tan-brown to get some compatible earth tones going."

In addition, he said the guard rail issue is requiring extra creativity for the planned Fite Road "Zephyr" bridge. It's hard to figure out how the guard rails will tie into the front of an Art Deco locomotive, he said.

If you've got any suggestions, we know he'd appreciate it.