Despite a cumulative 11 years of national leaders from Tennessee – first the United States Vice-President and now the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Tennessee is still back in the pack when it comes to the amount of federal funds that it gets from Washington. It’s a strange irony, especially in light of [...]

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The Associated Press report this week that Chattanooga residents are driving to Georgia to escape high sales taxes could just as easily have been written in Memphis, where the implications on the tax base here is more profound and bleaker. Here, the lure of lower Mississippi sales taxes is strong and with Whitehaven and Southeast [...]

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Linda, a 64-year-old teacher, is hardly the stereotype of a civic reformer. But the winds of Hurricane Katrina that swept away so much of New Orleans also swept away the lethargy that has for so long been a fundamental part of the city. Petite, soft-spoken, impeccably dressed, Linda is the embodiment of the traditional “Louisiana [...]

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From Salon comes this positive post about Memphis International Airport: The FedEx/Northwest Airlines hub makes it easy to be a tourist from Asia. by Andrew Leonard Dec. 19, 2005 | Concourse B of the Memphis International Airport in Tennessee is a fine place to be in transit. Before Saturday, I’d never passed through the Northwest [...]

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It’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon a few days before Christmas and the line of customers waiting to order po-boys at Domilise’s is winding out the front door. One of those ramshackle New Orleans po-boy joints that are sprinkled throughout the city’s neighborhoods, Domilise’s serves up a classic oyster sandwich on crusty French bread just [...]

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The more that you scratch the surface, the clearer it seems that an adequate facilities tax or impact fee is not the answer to Shelby County Government’s financial woes. The real answer seems to lie in a tax proposal that works within today’s realities. A few trends to consider: • Shelby County continues to lose [...]

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You’ll never find this in the annual reports of the Center City Commission or the Riverfront Development Corporation, but in our book, one of their most noteworthy achievements is their construction signs. They’re the first signs we’ve seen in Memphis and Shelby County without the list of elected officials’ names that are as expected as [...]

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The controversy about the nativity display at the Bartlett Library is beginning to look as orchestrated as “The Singing Christmas Tree.” More and more, it appears to be a three-act play co-written by Broadmoor Baptist Church and the Alliance Defense Fund. Here’s the synopsis: Act 1, November 29. Joseph, Mary and Joseph are denied a [...]

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On the surface, it looks like a battle between Ophelia Ford and Terry Roland. In truth, it’s a battle about the credibility of the Shelby County Election Commission. The Senate hearing on the complaint filed by Roland is the sort of dispute that the rest of Tennessee loves. It reinforces all the preconceived notions about [...]

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We receive regular responses to our blog posts from a reader who always contributes to the quality of the discussion, as proven by this post to the commentary about the riverfront. We pull it from its buried position to give it the attention it deserves: Ahhh, yes, a suburban downtown – that’s a goal worth [...]

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If Memphis is anything, it is ever a tale of two cities, as we were reminded from three recent studies on the core city. The reports – one by the Brookings Institution and the other two by the U. S. Economic Development Administration – indicate that our enthusiasm over the progress in downtown shouldn’t obscure [...]

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In response to Thursday’s posting of Carol Coletta’s letter about the riverfront, we received a complaint from a regular reader. We publish his comment here, followed by Carol’s reply: LibertyLarry said… The RDC’s Riverfront Masterplan is an integrated plan to line the pockets of a few special interests loyal to King Willie. 1. The riverfront [...]

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Did you ever notice how quickly those of us who are in the majority – this time, I’m thinking Christian – can advise the minority to quit being so sensitive and to be more tolerant about our religious intrusions into their lives? It’s reminiscent of years ago when the Saul Alinsky-inspired neighborhood movement put down [...]

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This article from today’s Chicago Sun-Times reports on research that began as part of our work at Coletta & Company (now Smart City Consulting) with economist Joe Cortright for Philadelphia, Atlanta, Portland, Richmond, Providence and Tampa. CEOs for Cities has now taken it to a national platform: Cities that attract college educated 25- to 34-year-olds [...]

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The Commercial Appeal letter to the editor: If Memphians can’t make our riverfront a signature gathering place, what are we capable of doing? Your Dec. 5 editorial, “Land bridge going nowhere,” misses the fact that the riverfront master plan detailed an integrated set of key pieces, all having a purpose that serves the greater whole. [...]

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Please, mayor, say it ain’t so. In the wake of the release of the most insightful, thorough report on tax incentives for business ever written, Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton calls for creation of a committee. It’s not really the mayor’s fault. It’s just the nature of the beast. Why implement something when you can [...]

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The long-anticipated study of the city-county PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) program is finally finished and the conclusion couldn’t be more clear and unequivocal: the present system is broken and cannot be fixed. The 97-page report (with twice that many pages as appendices) is the most unexpected ever delivered to Memphis City Council. As Council Member Tajuan Stout-Mitchell [...]

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From a Financial Times interview with Tom Friedman by Andrew Hill… “Sir John Rose of Rolls-Royce [said], “I think we’re going to move from developing, developed and under-developed countries to a category of smart, smarter and smartest countries and smart, smarter and smarter communities because you can have an under-developed country with a really smart [...]

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A book review from the Philadelphia Inquirer: The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight Wolfe, Thompson, Didionand the New Journalism Revolution By Marc Weingarten Crown. 325 pp. $25 Long-form journalism keeps taking punches to the gut. Newspaper editors now chant a mantra of “short, short, short” to their reporters. (Hey, jerko, can you cut that to [...]

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From Nashville Tennessean: Lawmakers may have been in the dark, but Nissan North America’s consultant wasn’t when a new law came up for a vote last summer that would mean millions more taxpayer dollars for the car company if it moved to Tennessee. That’s because the Nissan consultant helped develop the policy while the elected [...]

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While we have questioned the ultimate usefulness of the Wharton-advocated development fees in correcting the fatally flawed tax structure that plagues our community, his proposal is not the devastating attack on the homebuilding industry as some would suggest. While the rhetoric overheats quickly whenever the homebuilding or development industries are involved, but what’s regularly missing [...]

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