Regarding Advance, I would question where the employees were placed. Were they all full time positions? Were they hired by some of these distribution type companies that we are giving away the store in order to entice? The answers are not available on Advance’s website. I am not discrediting Advance’s accomplishments, as being employed beats being unemployed every time. However, when the training offered is only enough to help an individual land a service job at the back of a cafeteria or loading dock at a warehouse it is hardly bucking the trend and making sustainable neighborhood based economic changes. If anything it is simply feeding the types of employers that the EDGE is attracting making the community more dependent on EDGE economic policies. In the end, programs like Advance and the EDGE are aiding each other’s efforts. Advance provides the bare essential training for individuals to fill low skill employment and the EDGE is attracting low skill employers. In a world where we duplicated Advance’s efforts to every neighborhood in the city, we would have actually reinforced EDGE’s economic efforts because every employable person would have the base skillset for a job in a warehouse. If the desire is for Memphis to continue its current path, than growing both of these programs efforts would be ideal.

The financial support required to operate programs like Advance may not come via the tax collector, but it does rely on the generous contributions from individuals who also pay taxes. That fact should be balanced against a few very important points.
1) There is a limit to the financial support that is available to be donated by individuals in every community. Memphis is beset by a triple whammy of sorts: High poverty rate, relatively low average incomes and a demographic trend showing that every day several individuals/families with a higher education leave this region to be replaced by those with only the basic level of educational attainment. At some point we will exhaust not only the Fred Smiths and Pitt Hydes of this city but we will also have exhausted our for profit organizations that have all too often come to our rescue (like FedEx, AutoZone, Int’l Paper, the West Clinic. I-Bank, etc…).
2) In every community, there is a limit to the number of volunteer hours available from those whose time and skills might be of some benefit. There may be 1.3 million people in the metro, but having many of them volunteer for organizations like Advance Memphis would essentially be the blind leading the blind. In a city where the future is becoming so dependent on volunteer programs from A (Agape) to Y (Youth Villages) or even Z (if you count the Zion Cemetery clean up organization), we are tragically undermanned and understaffed.

While I am usually a grass roots, mom & pop, glass half-full kind of person, I am faced with the reality that no-where in the history of United States has a region that was defined by the similar levels of poverty, poor education, unskilled labor, institutionally lacking, and lack of financial wherewithal managed to reverse its negative trend. The turnaround stories like NYC, Pittsburgh, Portland, etc… either did not share the scale of these issues or were exceptional in one of those 5 categories. While I agree with SCM per the focus of the EDGE, I cannot help but think that they may simply be doing the best with what they have.

Here is their website: http://www.advancememphis.org/

Hopefully what they are doing is recognized as model for more neighborhood based economic development. It’s working but turning the tide on poverty takes time and a lot of volunteers coming into help mentor and coach and prepare lower income residents for the workforce.

There IS one? Where? who?
Planners? ED professionals?
Lipscomb?

The decline in property values won’t hit local government as hard as you think. In keeping with state law, the tax rate is always recalculated to produce the same amount of property tax revenues following a reappraisal. In the past, the tax rate has always gone down with reappraisals because of increased property values but with declining property values, for the first time, the tax rate will be recalculated upwards. In the end, city government will be whole when it comes to revenues but there is likely to be some political chafing as taxes go up.

We agree completely with your point about seeing the approaching train and continuing business as usual (the theme of this series of posts). As we wrote 2006: Sometimes in Memphis, it’s as if we’re the city equivalent of the frog sitting in the pot on the stove as the water gets warmer and warmer until it’s boiled to death.

Time is not on this city’s side. In fact, we may be nearing a point where time has essentially run out. The appraisal process that is set to begin in the next year or two is expected to yield a significant decline in the overall value of property in Memphis and perhaps Shelby County as a whole. Lower property values will result in less funding for all services which will in turn make it even more difficult to attract or grow businesses and the quality of individuals necessary to support and lead them. Many years ago (long before I moved here), SCM wrote a post that hinted that the city was nearing the edge of a cliff. There would come a time where the downward spiral would be nearly impossible to reverse. Well it appears that time has finally arrived. The real shame is that there was a period of at least a decade when enough individuals could see the approaching train and gave plenty of warning, and yet the drivers (and most of the passengers) ignored their comments.

If you create a new entity with the same players versed in traditional economic development maybe you’ll get the same results.

Great article SMC!