VOL. 126 | NO. 58 | Thursday, March 24, 2011 Memphis Daily News
Analysis Shows City Lost 90K Residents Last Decade

By Jimmie Covington
The area currently within the Memphis city limits lost 80,000 or more residents to outward movement during the past decade, the most recent census and birth-death numbers show.
And the number may actually be 90,000 or more.
The pattern of loss appears to be similar to the losses that have occurred in Detroit and Newark and some other cities across the nation, said Dr. Louis Pol, a demographer at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Pol, who is also dean of the university’s College of Business Administration, is a former faculty member at the University of Memphis and is familiar with the Memphis area.
“This isn’t the first decade of net out-migration,” he said. “There have been several other decades. There is a momentum to it.”
Recently released 2010 census figures show Memphis’ population dropping from 650,100 in 2000 to 646,889, a decline of 3,211.
But Pol agreed that those figures alone don’t take into account that during the 10 years, Memphis annexed areas that had a 2000 census count of 40,643.
If everyone had stayed in place, the annexations would have boosted Memphis’ population to 690,743, the number the U.S. Census Bureau used as the base for estimating the city’s population each year between the censuses.
And then there is the matter of births and deaths, another major factor affecting an area’s population.
Vital statistics show that Shelby County as a whole recorded 68,952 more births than deaths during 2000-2009. They do not show how many involved Memphis residents.
However, Pol said that given the size and age makeup of Memphis’ population compared to that in the county outside the city, a gain of 50,000 from births over deaths within the city would “probably be a pretty good estimate. And it could well be more.”
A gain of 50,000 from births exceeding deaths plus the 40,643 residents gained from annexations would mean that the current city area has lost more than 90,000 people to outward movement.
Some of those people went to Shelby County outside Memphis, some to surrounding counties and perhaps some to other parts of the country.
Despite the annexation of the 40,643 residents and the territory where they lived, the population in Shelby County outside Memphis rose from 247,372 in 2000 to 280,755 last year.
The figures also uphold the view that the number of African-Americans and other minorities living in Shelby County outside Memphis has increased significantly.
The 2000 census found that Shelby County’s suburban population was 201,106 white, 36,616 black and 9,650 other.
The 2010 numbers are 186,150 white, 73,694 black and 20,911 other.
Because of the large loss within Memphis, the county as a whole lost people to outward movement although, unlike the city, the county had an increase in population as a result of the births exceeding deaths.
The county grew from 897,472 to 927,644, an increase of 30,172. However, as cited above, the “natural increase” from births over deaths was 68,952, indicating a net out-migration of 38,780.
Calculations using the 2000 and 2010 census numbers reflect that Shelby had a loss of 66,112 white residents as a result of out-migration and a gain of 27,332 among African-Americans and other minorities from in-migration.
Lest one believe that most of the out-moving white residents went to DeSoto County and that few if any minority residents are choosing DeSoto County, consider these numbers:
Among the 42,801 people that DeSoto gained from movement of people, 26,712, or 62.4 percent, were African-Americans and other minorities, and 16,089, or 37.6 percent, were white residents.
DeSoto also gained 8,401 white residents and 2,851 minority residents from births over deaths in posting an overall 54,053 population increase over the decade.

http://memphistn.gov/pdf_forms/Operating%20Budget%202013/MemphisOpbudget_v13.pdf

Anonymous: Without Cordova annexation, Memphis population would have gone down about 30,000 (maybe even a bit more).

Long-term benchmarks could include things like capping police and fire department budgets at a set percentage of the city budget, and restricting their annual growth to within a percentage point or two of the year-over-year growth in city revenues, with a maximum total deviation of a couple percentage points over a five-year period, the long-term benchmark being to reduce police and fire to a certain percentage of the city budget within ten years. To address the priority of police spending, perhaps incentives could be created, so that, for example, if the police department can find it within their budget to spend more on prevention and intervention instead of incarceration, they are rewarded with a slightly larger total budget. So instead of conceiving of independent spending allocations for all three police roles for which the city doesn’t have enough money, the city incentivizes a shift in priorities without committing to more total spending.

Do you think it would be crazy to suggest that we tackle it line-by-line? Even if it takes a few years… what if we went line by line or department by department and publicly aired what our priorities, costs and resources are for each? I suspect at first people would be into it and participate. But over time, you could be right and the public would zone out.

My problem is that I have heard the “it didn’t take six-months to get into this mess and it will take a long time to get out” excuse for, well, long enough to have gotten out of the mess.

While I like the line-by-line methodical solution. I am inclined to think that a crisis would be better. We see the crisis coming (the ones that aren’t already on us). What if we just pretend they are all already here and force change NOW even if it is something drastic? The debt and maintenance may only be addressed if we do something bold as opposed to deliberate over time?

Would have shortened your story a lot though.

Or, “Joe Brown is BAD for Memphis progress”. Yes he is.
Or, Joe Brown is engaged in some shady things.

Joe is a lot of things, but, a public servant he is not.

Joe needs to step down.
MLGW, MCS, and City Government is bloated with handout jobs and cronyism. We all know it.
We have duplicated service and still:
SERVICES DO NOT GET DELIVERED PROPERLY IF AT ALL IN MEMPHIS.
MLGW still can’t get a meter read properly.

Memphis = Dubious Effortville.
There are no laws to address that?
Make some.

Madison Avenue bike lanes was an issue that garnered support or opposition from organized factions that were new. Strip Club regulation brought together strange bedfellows in religious groups, social services and big business around an unlikely issue. NBA now was an irresistible campaign that excited the pants off of people to do something big.

Is it possible to make the hard-to-understand budget an issue based discussion that people will gravitate to?

Agreed. But the continuing struggle is:

A) how do we define WE and PUBLIC? Citizens (that even in Memphis have wide philosophical chasms)? Corporations (who currently have vastly different views than citizens)? At risk of bailing talent? Future talent (who isn’t here to speak for itself)?

More importantly B) how do we engage this mythical WE/PUBLIC? We, as citizens, have a history of marching and yelling and making up simplistic us vs. them arguments from the comfort of our porch. We have rarely been asked, inspired or even logically engaged in real solutions in a way that generates confidence that our time & voice matters. How do WE reach a checked-out PUBLIC?