We’ve received several emails asking our opinion of Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton’s latest magniloquence. Well, we might as well admit it: We didn’t read about it, we didn’t watch any television reports about it and we didn’t watch any videos of it. At the time, it just seemed to be the wisest use of [...]

Read More →

Can Tuesday get here soon enough? The dawning of the Kriner Cash era at Memphis City Schools would be reason enough for hopeful thinking, but with the current disarray and chaos at Memphis City Schools, expectations are so low that he has the opportunity to be a miracle worker. If you don’t need a weatherman [...]

Read More →

We’re continuing the discussion we began Wednesday and hope you’ll join in. Inspired by the Memphis Flyer’s cover story of two weeks ago, we want to know how you would answer this question: What would you do if you were in charge of Memphis? You can post your response here or join in the comments [...]

Read More →

The article in Atlantic that sparked our June 7 post is now on line here.

Read More →

We want to continue a discussion that was begun by the Memphis Flyer a couple of weeks ago. It asked nine people for their ideas about what they would do if they were in charge of Memphis. Here’s the link to all of the ideas. We’re posting what was printed from us below, but here’s [...]

Read More →

So, where does Joseph Lee go for an apology? Or to get a year of his life back? Today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office did the inevitable – dismiss charges against the former MLG&W president and former City Councilman Edmund Ford. But where does Mr. Lee recover his tarred reputation, where does his humiliation get reversed [...]

Read More →

We’ve always suspected that the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was the first draft for the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center and Jail. God knows, the imposing hulk dominating a critical city block in downtown Memphis has been the physical embodiment since 1981 for the public sector’s lack of regard for architectural quality. From [...]

Read More →

It’s puzzling why it’s so hard for some elected officials to grasp the meaning of two straightforward laws that should guide all actions of the public sector – the Tennessee Open Meetings and Public Records laws. In a sentence, it’s as simple as this: public business is the public’s business. So, any time two elected [...]

Read More →

Gas prices have reached 4 dollars a gallon across the country. Home prices have plummeted. What does one have to do with the other. Our guest Joe Cortright is an economic analyst for Impresa Consulting in Portland Oregon and speaker at this year’s Leadership Memphis “Community Breakfast.” His new report, Driven to the Brink, shows [...]

Read More →

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen sure has his panties in a wad. Or at least that was a political friend’s highly accurate – albeit inelegantly and highly colloquial – assessment. The governor appeared to be fuming because the Memphis City Council had acted within its legal rights to control its own budgets and priorities. In fact, [...]

Read More →

It’s always curious when economic development officials start talking like politicians who seem to think that admitting there is a problem is the same as being blamed for it. We thought of this as we read Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development’s upbeat column in The Commercial Appeal explaining why we should all have [...]

Read More →

In light of the renewed call by Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton for Memphis City Schools to become part of city government with the mayor appointing the superintendent and board as well as a proposal for a Joint Board of Control to handle certain operations of city and county school systems, we reprise this post [...]

Read More →

Being a Memphian is a bit like being part of a dysfunctional family. We get so used to things as they are that we think every other family is just like ours. We start to think that our family really is normal…until we start explaining things to someone from outside the family. We think of [...]

Read More →

The chest thumping by the Tennessee Department of Education about cutting $423 million in state money for Memphis City Schools unless City Council restores city funding is in the end headline-grabbing but little more than an empty threat. After all, a cut in funding of that amount hurts no one as much as the Department [...]

Read More →

Today on Smart City we’re talking about communities. Real ones, and the virtual neighborhoods found online in such social networking sites as facebook and meetup. Phil Wood is the co-author of “The Intercultural City, Making the Most out of Diversity.” In it he describes the advantages of a diverse city, and how the interaction between [...]

Read More →

Read More →

We’re not sure of everything Agricenter International is trying to harvest on its prime 1,000 acres of public land, but much of it looks to us like just a bushel-full of embarrassment. Put simply, it just gets clearer and clearer that the presence of this failed experiment just makes no sense on land that should [...]

Read More →

Surely, it’s about time to have a presidential campaign that’s about cities. So far, cities have been just short of pariahs in the endless debates that have regularly punctuated the party primaries. Candidates were asked all manner of esoterica, but routinely overlooked were questions about the residential centers and economic engines that are our cities. [...]

Read More →

It is a perfect storm at Memphis City Schools, and that’s not necessarily all bad. There’s investigations, scandals, academic crisis, fumbling management and general lack of direction. Despite some predictions to the contrary, it could actually attract a reformer, one who understands how he can leverage the perfect storm to create a more receptive attitude [...]

Read More →

Memphis has always been a tale of two cities – black and white, wealth and need, downtown and Boxtown, golf scores and body counts. That last pairing comes from two disparate, and ultimately disturbing, reports this week. The first appeared in an online post by a PGA Tour writer who described Memphis as a magical [...]

Read More →

Marty Sumner is the Chief of Staff of the High Point North Carolina Police Department. A decade ago, street-level drug dealing and criminal activity were rife on the streets on High Point North Carolina. The police force was both ineffectual and it had alienated the community. Major Sumner’s ground-breaking technique for getting drug-dealers off the [...]

Read More →

Here’s hoping that the Memphis City Council isn’t too busy toasting its historic vote to cut school funding by $73 million to see that its work is only half-done. In the midst of the wall-to-wall media coverage of the vote on schools, overlooked was the fact that the Council actually increased spending by city government [...]

Read More →