When we build let us think we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us.

-          John Ruskin, 19^th Century Art & Architecture Critic

 The above quote, unceremoniously photocopied, has hung in a cheap frame on the wall of every office I have had over the last 15 years.  I am a fool who clings to the belief that we can do a much better job of planning for and building our city.

The quote was written 41 years before the Memphis women’s group, The Nineteenth Century Club, was founded to improve the lives of women and children in the city.  With the motto “Influence is responsibility,” perhaps they were also fools.

The book in which the quote is found (The Seven Lamps of Architecture) was published 60 years before the current Nineteenth Century Club mansion was built.  Like many lumbermen of the 19^th century South, Roland Darnell invested much of his riches in an iconic Midtown structure intended to elevate the standing of themselves and the city.

Perhaps this, too, was foolish.

The place I first saw the quote was etched into the lobby floor of the famous Chicago Tribune building.  It was placed there 76 years after the quote was written.  Newspaper publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick held an international competition to design "the most beautiful and eye-catching office building in the world."

Who knew that the Midwest had such fools?

And now, over 160 years after Ruskin gave us such an inspirational aspiration, we are again feeling the effects of generations that traded greatness for mediocrity.  Union Avenue may lose the Nineteenth Century Club.  I think we are collectively a bunch of fools.

When do we throw up our hands and surrender?

How about now?  Most of us already have!

John Ruskin was concerned with sustainability and craftsmanship long before Mayor Wharton dreamed up Sustainable Shelby.  Ruskin was not afraid to go out on a limb and let the world know exactly what he thought of city growth and the importance of the structures that accommodate growth.

Over the past twenty years, many people have revived his critiques as a method of warning against our ongoing folly.  And many, many other warnings have gone unheeded over the years, as well.

Yet, year after year after year, plan after plan after plan has advised modern Memphians on their looming fate.  And we have regularly, even purposefully passed on the really hard choices.  Why should we expect tomorrow to be different?

Population Density Per Square Mile

Our problems are not a surprise!

If you have ever read Smart City Memphis, you know we promote talent attraction and population trends.  You know we understand the economics of cities and the dire straits ours is in.  You know that we have offered solutions to education concerns, systemic poverty, to environmental conditions and business retention.  We study other cities, benchmark our programs and search for unique attributes to promote.

We try to build coalitions and support those who roll up their sleeves on the community’s behalf.  We give away credit and push as many items quietly as we do publicly.

But at some point a guy gets tired.  At some point the Nineteenth Century Clubs aren’t that much more important that transit options and downtown office markets and access to parks and retail overbuilding issues and property tax inequity.

At some point you have to ask yourself who’s winning and who’s losing.  You have to ask yourself if the patient can be healed or if you are strong enough to stay by her side while she just dies.

Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure.”

- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

 This is a terrifying quote.  Not because it is harsh.  But because it was harsh in 1961.  Because seven years before the first Camaro rolled off the lines in Detroit, Jane Jacobs knew where that community was headed.  Because in 1961, we could predict the coming traffic mess in Atlanta.  Because seven years before Martin Luther King was assassinated, Memphis was already headed down this same road of “low-density failure.”

In the 1970s, there was a terrific battle to save the Napoleon Hill Mansion on Union Avenue.  It was to be torn down to make way for a drive-through fast-food restaurant.  The demolition was finally approved.  And the dominoes along Union Avenue continued to fall.

To many people, the Nineteenth Century Club may be the last stand.  In reality, if it is sold and scraped bare, it will be but the last breath of a once mighty body.

Today it is a monument to the past… to great entrepreneurs, to bold philanthropists and to a city that was once the envy of its peers.  But it is a useless monument along a river of accepted neglect, failure and lesser structures.  It reminds us of what we could have been until we decided to not to.  It is a monument that has no admirers.  And is that a monument worth keeping?

When gone, maybe we can wax nostalgically about the times before with no guilt or responsibility.  Maybe we can drive-through and move-on and wonder why no one cares any more, knowing that it is no longer our problem to deal with.

We can watch our parents move to towns with squares and character.  We can watch our children move to cities with life and opportunity.

And those of us left?  We can blame ourselves for not working harder to save one more old building.

Governor Haslam announced this week that the Department of Economic and Community Development will pour most of its energy and resources into retaining and expanding existing Tennessee businesses.  This is good news and a long ignored strategy.

The Governor is correct to recognize that many new jobs can come from building upon opportunities presented by those already doing business here.  As well, intervening long before someone considers pulling up stakes and jumping the boarder makes a great deal of sense.  The amount of effort and expense that goes into wooing the next big thing from another state often diminishes the importance of partnering with those already in our backyard.

This strategy is so often ignored because it is not sexy, it is hard and it demands follow through.

Elected officials like to cut ribbons in front of manufacturers that promise hundreds of jobs and make something really cool.  There is never much press for the box company expanding by 15 people.  The problem/opportunity is that there is probably a company or two in each of Tennessee’s nine economic development districts that would expand by 15 people this year if someone would drop by and just give them some warm & fuzzies.  There’s your first 150 new employees without trying.

But, I do admit, this is tedious work.  Businesses have to be targeted.  Visits have to be made.  A true understanding of the operation has to be developed.  And the economic developer has to endure being chewed out an awful lot.  When a government official walks in for a friendly visit, most business owners are not going to miss the chance to give them an earful.

This leads to the make or break part of the retention and expansion strategy.  When the business manager needs something, you better darn-well deliver.  If you do, that person will sing your praises and I guarantee you will get more business development than you planned for.  If you drop the ball, you will have done more harm than good… they are looking for the exit.

Here are a few tips for Governor Haslam as he dives into this endeavor.

Double your target list.  The Governor said that he and/or Commissioner Bill Hagerty will visit 100 of Tennessee’s top businesses.  That’s one per week for each guy.  I would bet that part of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s daily morning routine goes something like this: Brush Teeth, call Washington, visit local business, call Tennessee business and ask when I can come visit them.  Someone has to live this strategy and it probably needs to be the top two guys.

Make sure your people answer the telephone.  This sounds stupid, doesn’t it?  This strategy is about building relationships that in turn build business.  When one of your team visits someone and attempts to build a relationship, it better not be lip service.  When someone calls, a live person better be on the line and ready to help.  Government employees are bad about saying, “I’ll have to get back to you”.  The best economic developers really do, with something valuable, and fast.

Don’t forget to say thank you.  If I have heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times…  “I have been doing business here for years and (insert Mayor/Councilman/Governor/Congressman/Block Club President) has never darkened my door to say they appreciate me”.  Ask your team to try this script:  “Good morning Mr. ABC Boxman.  Thanks for letting me come by.  First I just want you to know how much we appreciate you being here, me especially.  My granddad bought boxes here years ago.  Before we talk about what you need and what the state might be able to do for you, do you mind showing me around the factory so I can see how all of this really works?”  Don’t just say thank you.  Mean it and act like you mean it.

Don’t just ask about their business.  Ask them about their neighbor’s business.  Ask them about their suppliers.  Ask them about their customers.  When you visit someone, make them part of the team, not a name on a checklist.  Ask Mr. Boxman, “why isn’t your cardboard distributor closer to you?  Do you think there are any more businesses around here that could help him make a little more money?”

Finally, learn the codes.  For instance, a businessman that bothers to cuss you out and tell you that everything is wrong from his sidewalk to his taxes is pretty invested in the area.  If you can keep an open line of honest communication with him, he will become a great ally.  If you can fix a few of his problems, he will likely stay forever.  Look out for the guy who says thanks for coming but I couldn’t be happier, everything is great!  That guy is either going bankrupt or shopping his business to another state.

Bill Haslam is a salesman.  I suspect he knows how to do this.  But he needs to instill in his team a sense of importance and a sense of excitement about it.  Economic development is a lot like real estate leasing.  The only difference is that cold calls are easy.  Who will say no when you call and say you are from the Governor’s office and you’d like to drop by?

I applaud Governor Haslam for making retention and expansion priorities for his economic development program.  This should be good news for businesses that need a little help, good news for cities with established businesses and good news for the State of Tennessee.

I expected to see attractive ladies strolling their oh so fashionable children.  I expected to need my toes to count the Ferraris whizzing by.  I expected to hear the languages of the world more often than English.

But I never expected to be mystified by everyday things.

No Panhandling

I was in Miami for five days and was hustled only once.  There was no one even remotely suspicious anywhere around.  There were no visible security guards and very few police.  If you looked hard, you could find discretely placed cameras.

But for the life of me, I can’t understand why no one would be sleeping on the steps of buildings in a place with such beautiful weather.  I learned that the Miami Downtown Development Agency successfully lobbied for anti-panhandling ordinances last fall.  But Memphis has those too.  Mysterious.

A Beautiful Boulevard

Brickell Avenue is curb to curb about as wide as Union Avenue.  But it has only two lanes of traffic for each direction, a turn lane at intersections and small U-turn spots at the midblock points.  Brickell is divided with a magnificent median that is landscaped with trees.  Think North Parkway, if it were even prettier and passed right through Downtown.

I have been told for about 15 years that we can’t do this to Union because it carries so much traffic.  Union carries about 10,000 cars a day through Downtown, 16,000 cars in front of the UT Health Science Center and about 30,000 cars through the eastern Medical District into Midtown.  Brickell, in all of its Michigan Avenue-esque grandeur, manages to support over 36,000 cars a day.  Mysterious.

Pedestrian Friendly

Miamians do not think their city is pedestrian friendly.  This is confounding.  There are defined crosswalks everywhere and perfectly sized sidewalks with strategic shady spots.  I challenge anyone to find a trip hazard.

Most curious was not the built environment but in the actions of drivers.  It is as if they fear walkers.  Perhaps it’s because they didn’t want to damage their fancy ride with a human body, but these people gently slow to a stop anytime anyone remotely looks like they might want to cross the street.  Mysterious.

Really Good Design

The architecture is for the most part nice and interesting.  Buildings front the street with parking hidden in the rear.  There are few if any gaps between buildings to disrupt the urban experience.  Doors are in logical places.  Windows abound.  And everything looks inviting.

The weird thing is, in a place that has so many people, good urban design is unnecessary.  It’s hard to notice ugly buildings in dumb places when there are a lot of people around.  Good urban design is really important in places, like Memphis, where we don’t have high densities and the landscape needs to say something positive about us when we aren’t around.  But Miami went above and beyond in the Brickell District anyway.  Mysterious.

Creative Grocery Store Parking

As if it were not weird enough to have three Publix supermarkets within walking distance of each other, none of them wastes space on parking.  One uses a garage.  Outrageous, I know!  But the other two look almost just like typical suburban grocery stores.  The only difference is that they are inviting to both cars and pedestrians.

They are both adjacent (immediately adjacent) to big infrastructure projects.  This allows previously unused dead space to become parking for the stores.  One parking lot is beneath an expressway overpass.  The other has parking under a commuter train overpass.  Very little land that could be used for a building is covered with asphalt for a sea of cars.  Mysterious.

Cool Adaptive Reuse

The Brickell financial district has not always been so urban.  Not too long ago, the area did have banks with drive through windows, short office buildings set far back from the street and room for more cars than people.  Some of these older building examples remain.  But instead of slapping on a new coat of paint and hoping for the best, these property owners have really tried to embrace the changing neighborhood.

Landscaping along the sidewalk creates a comfortable pedestrian environment.  Strong signage makes the area seem exciting.  Walkways, banners, gardens and furniture shorten the perceived distance between the door and the street.  One of the coolest examples is a company called Workscapes, if you get a chance to check them out.  Others, like Burger King, have moved into small historic buildings and added the drive through on the alley.  Businesses are finding success in these unconventional locations while trying to help the appearance of the neighborhood.  Mysterious.

Only A Little Retail… On Purpose

The Memphis area has around 27 square feet of retail space per person compared to the U.S. average of 20 and the three to five square feet per person in major European countries.  Most cities fall into the trap of trying to line all of their streets with any sales tax generating use possible.

Not the Brickell District.  There are a few pubs and shops scattered around here and there.  However, most of the retail (other than supermarkets) and restaurant business is concentrated in a small two block area that is in a central location/destination.  Mysterious.

A Few Final Mysteries

People Bicycle with groceries.  Someone came up with an ingenious design to hang trees from the side of a bridge.  Visual clutter, like street signs and utility boxes, has been reduced to a bare minimum.  And pole signs have been replaced with tasteful monument signs.  Mysterious.

I am usually attracted to historic areas.  But this is a place made up of almost entirely new-ish construction.  Not Polar & Ridgeway new construction… unless you take everything built in East Memphis over the last 30 years and shove it all to the corner so you can walk to it.

It is easy to imagine what Historic areas must have been when they were nicer.  This is a new area of Miami designed to be nice now and possibly forever.

I think this might be because there are few bums in Brickell.  There aren’t many panhandlers and there aren’t any bums designing the buildings.  There aren’t any bums maintaining the sidewalks.  There aren’t any bums asking anyone to cut corners when it comes to the public’s space.  There aren’t any bums robbing their neighbor’s property of value by slapping up something inferior.  Someone somewhere decided that it was time to take pride in something and build the best.

No one in the Brickell District of Miami will ever be asking themselves, “how many things are wrong with this sentence?”… I think the Logan’s Road House turns its back on the street.

I was at Miami’s South Beach recently and caught myself marveling at the same three things over and over again.  Okay, I marveled at quite a few things.  But three design features kept appearing again and again.  South Beach is great because it is the perfect scale, offers extraordinary public access and celebrates its history with a fun twist.

Most people would recognize this.  I am not exactly breaking new ground here.  But this afternoon, I was touring around Downtown Memphis and realized some striking similarities.

Public Access

South Beach is successful because, first and foremost, it has an awesome beach.  Many Memphians have experienced a beach, usually behind a condo property in the panhandle of Florida.  I think we’d all agree that South Beach is a different animal.

One of the things that make it different is that it is completely accessible while still being supported by urban amenities.  The beach is treated like a central park.  The east side of Ocean Drive looks across walking paths, gathering spots and obviously the beach on the Atlantic Ocean.  The west side of Ocean Drive is lined with hotels, apartments, restaurants and retailers.  The area is bookended with taller buildings.  But every bit of it is inviting.  The area screams come on in and walk around.

If you have ever stood in the riverfront park just west of Island Drive, you have experienced something similar.  Henry Turley could have pushed Harbor Town right up to the high-water mark and put the main drag through the center of the development.  But that would have limited enjoyment of the public space with river views to those who could buy a 40 foot strip of it.  Instead, neighbors can walk to it and visitors can drive to it because it is open and accessible to everyone.

Much of our riverfront is like this and most of our in-town parks are as well.  Kinelworth separates Overton Park from homes lining the west side of the street, for instance.  This may seem like a silly thing to be excited about.  But I believe that this balance between developing private real estate while maintaining public access to amenities, in the end, makes both projects more valuable.

Preservation with a Twist

The Delano and the Fontainebleau hotels are the poster children for the Miami scene.  They have reinvented themselves as the hottest see and be seen spots around.  And they have done this by adding to the historic character of their properties, not destroying it.

Along Ocean Drive, this can be seen again and again.  The iconic Colony and Boulevard hotels have modernized their rooms and their lobbies.  But they celebrate their history through restored signage, architectural lighting and sidewalk cafes.  The 1930s era Clevelander Hotel built a pool in the 1950s.  In any other city this place would have been bulldozed by 1985.  Instead, the pool that is practically on the sidewalk has become one of the most exciting spectacles on the beach with newly designed bars placed anywhere you may need a drink.

Now I know the Peabody lobby and the Madison rooftop and Beale Street don’t exactly compare in this scenario.  But when you think how you felt discovering Itta Bena or what it took to meld the historic flavor with modern touches at the Majestic or the grandeur of Court Square Center hopefully you get the picture.  Historic preservation doesn’t have to be stuffy.  Sometimes it can be celebrated and even pushed to a new limit.  Memphians get that.

Café Ole’s deck is not historically correct, for instance.  But Cooper-Young has been transformed by putting new twists on old buildings.  Memphians have preserved great amounts of our history by reinventing what we do with the buildings that once housed it.

Scale

Most of South Beach consists of three, five, seven story buildings.  They line the sidewalk.  It is not too crowded but never lonely.  The scale is perfect to make people comfortable 24-hours a day.

The buildings are treated appropriately.  Awnings to create an anchor.  A bit of architectural detail, even though minimal in this art-deco land.  Doors that are where doors are supposed to be.  The architecture never overwhelms and at the same time never disappoints.

Memphis has a history with this.  When people speak of the Downtown renaissance, they aren’t thinking about high rises seen from miles away.  They aren’t thinking about the parking lots that are so out of place in a city.  They are thinking about how they feel walking down South Main where the tallest building is three stories.  They are imagining living at the apartments behind the ballpark.  They are comfortable because the scale is right much of the time.

Newly evolving areas like Broad Street understand this.  There is economic value in a comfortable urban scale.  Why else would new malls be built to resemble historic Main Streets and Town Squares… because the scale creates value.

South Beach’s scale, eye to historic detail and preservation of public access are major ingredients in its success.  Memphians would do well to recognize this and spend a little more time celebrating our propensity toward it.

Can we please give artists a rest?  They are asked to save everything.  Please paint a mural here.  Please put a sculpture there.  Please play my benefit for free.  And my favorite of all…

“Wouldn’t these old buildings just make the best arts district?”

Memphis now has at least three arts districts.  All of which are wonderful assets to this city.  None of which have enough critical mass to be terribly sustainable or world-class calling cards for Memphis.  And, it doesn’t help any of them (or their resident artists) to keep spreading things thinner and thinner by proposing more and more arts districts.

Art galleries are businesses and inspirational spaces for the creators they house.  When these are clustered together more customers are introduced to the art and more artists can feed off of one another’s energy.  Knowledge is exchanged, beauty is interpreted and sometimes money is made.

This is not terribly different than most any other business or endeavor.  When there is enough activity in the cluster, the district thrives.  When there isn’t enough, the district dies.  We are killing potentially special places and suppressing potentially magnificent artists by constantly moving the cluster.  This isn’t good for anybody.

Why don’t we try to create some new industry districts and let the artists fill out the arts districts we already have.  We are building a Biotechnology District.  I am asking Smart City Memphis readers for ideas of other types of districts we could use, build and celebrate as unique places that do not compete with artists.  Here are four of my ideas.

Design District

Similar to an arts district but a bit more specific to the building industry, design districts attract creative talent and high-end purchasers.  But this is not necessarily an artistic endeavor.  Of course there can be galleries of sorts, bars and restaurants as a small piece, but interior design firms, furniture showrooms and building material suppliers are the bread and butter.

Miami has added a public school called the Design & Architecture Senior High or DASH.  Cleveland has added graphic, urban and industrial design firms.  Seattle is launching a Design District Association and an awards program.  Wouldn’t this be amazing in Memphis?

Fashion District

The Los Angeles Fashion District and Manhattan’s Garment District pretty much have a lock on this category.  That may be our opportunity.  What if we had the most amazing fashion district outside of the major cities of the world?  Why not create the anti-mall in Memphis?  Why not be Mid-America’s fashion capital?

I am not just talking about shops.  I am not just talking about designers.  I am talking about factories that actually make locally designed clothes with regionally available fabrics and sold in district shops.

Memphis in May District

No, not a district open only during Memphis in May.  This would be a district that celebrates the culture of each and every Memphis in May country that has been honored.  Imagine a restaurant, an office building, and a retail location all housing authentic businesses from each Memphis in May country.

Memphis might be too small to have a full blown Chinatown or Little Italy.  But, we could sure support a few businesses clustered together in an international village or global business district or world culture destination.  Maybe a World Trade Center that is a few blocks long instead of several stories tall?  Memphis desperately needs to be more multi-cultural and this could perhaps be a place where ambassadorial people meet.

Old Fashioned Financial District

Lawyers need to interact with other lawyers just like artists need to interact with other artists.  Financiers, accountants and investors need to be clustered in an area where entrepreneurs can get a lot done fast.  Memphis lawyers are no longer downtown.  Bank headquarters are spread out all over Shelby County.  Accountants can work off their dining room table and no one would ever know.  Make no mistake, this is KILLING Memphis.

If we don’t have a dense concentration of financial and legal services, we will never, ever be the first choice for the best and brightest minds.  We will never, ever be the first choice for the strongest corporations.  When our children grow up, the best and brightest will certainly leave for a place that makes doing business both convenient and fun.  Vibrant isn’t ordinarily how Memphis is described.

Look around, the guy next to you isn’t the sharpest tack in the box.  Neither are you.  Neither am I.  If we were, we would likely be in a place that already has all of the cool stuff clustered together in a district that fits our needs instead of always talking about how we can improve Memphis.

But if we were artists, people would still be begging us to be part of a new district designed just for us in hopes of cultivating the best in us while revitalizing something interesting in our community.  So why don’t we do this for other creatives?  Why don’t we do this for global entrepreneurs?  Why don’t we do this for lawyers and financial services providers?

I think we can set our sights much higher.  I think we can improve our city for future generations.  I think we can learn more ourselves and have fun doing it.  I think some new districts may be the key to getting this moving.

Any ideas?

This is what the leader of a city is supposed to do.  However, I fear that we may soon be in for the inevitable introduction of a new and improved Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual… duhn, duhn, duhnnn.

I was contacted recently by an organization I have worked closely with asking me about policies.  They had a recent audit that criticized their lack of an available employee handbook.  I shared that yes, it is a good idea to have a general handbook of basic policies and procedures along with general descriptions of duties and perhaps some forms related to the 401(k) program and the like.

But I also cautioned that employees at many of the finest organizations in the world likely cannot locate their handbooks.  While the most bogged down bureaucratic agencies will inevitably have one on every desk.

In response to a department-gone-wild the first measure is almost always to write a tome that makes the bible look like Green Eggs and Ham.  It will be filled with all of the ways I can fire you and all of the ways you can avoid being fired.  It will spell out when you clock in, what you do for precisely 6.5 hours excluding designated breaks and when you will clock out.  It will have an annual performance review form with little checkboxes.  It will cover every conceived scenario.

This document will be useless for any practical purpose.  It will discourage innovation.  It will encourage behavior counterproductive to customer service.  And, it will force you to keep people you don’t want while making it impossible for strong people to move up the ladder.

So, as an organization leader, you will be forced to do one of two things.  Ignore the manual or embrace it.

Most people wind up just ignoring the handbook and treating people like adults.  This results in the inevitable problems that arise when you do something conflicting with a policy that seemed quite important before but now is impeding you from reprimanding the person who walked out of client presentation because he had a break scheduled at that time.

Or you hire a compliance manager who lives and dies by the manual and makes sure no one, at any time, takes any risk that might actually benefit your agency because everyone is terrified of the beat-down they will receive for violating policy.

So what is the answer?

Of course different organizations have different goals, need different levels of scrutiny and demand different models of operation.  But I always ask them to come back to my basic three policies.  If what your manual says accomplishes this, then you have what you need.  If the manual discourages this, then you and your employees will all be hampered.

Policy One:

Be where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there.  If you are doing this then feel free to move on to Policy Two.

Policy Two:

Do what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do it.  When you are comfortable with this, then move on to Policy Three.

Policy Three:

Do not be afraid to be somewhere you are not supposed to be doing something you are not supposed to do.  This is where the opportunities are.

Every sales, management, operations or general business guru with a book-on-tape has more or less said the same thing.  Success comes from first showing up, second from delivering on promises and third looking for new business and better ways to deliver on Policy One and Policy Two.

Finally, remember that an Employee Handbook is not a replacement for employee hand-holding.  Policy is not management.

As much as we all want to be the One Minute Manger surrounded by brilliant, self-motivated superstars in the making… we live in the real world.  Some employees will try to do too much and need to be slowed down.  Some will do too little and need to be pushed.  One or two will surprise you with greatness if you just leave them alone.  Others will over achieve if you just check in with them more often.

A personnel policy and procedures manual has nothing to do with those things that are a good manager’s responsibility.  A good manager should know how to get the best out of the team.  The Handbook just shouldn’t get in the way of that responsibility.

I hope as we start thinking about how Memphis government is managed in the future we do not overcompensate for the bad behavior by stifling the performance of the truly innovative professionals in the system.  Mayor Wharton has spoken of leadership in other successful cities.  I would venture to guess that those cities are following less of a strict model of policies and procedures and more of a loose model of entrepreneurial expectations.

Sweep the streets when it’s dark!

Several years ago cities thought they were in crisis.  Revenues were falling, expenses were growing and emergency funds were depleted.  Some aggressively changed tact, or challenged people or cut costs.  Most waited it out hoping the storm would pass.

Memphis has an opportunity to use our budget crisis today to reform our system for tomorrow.  Examples from peer cities and from visionary business practices could set the stage for Memphis to emerge stronger.  But only if hard decisions are made, bold initiatives are completed and basic principles are developed to guide us in good times and bad.

We cannot retreat, putting this off on the next generation or even the next administration.  Let’s tackle this today so we can enjoy tomorrow.  Let’s take our medicine; otherwise we will keep getting sicker.

Cuts Are Inevitable

CityMayors.com posted this in 2003: “As a result of an increasing squeeze on municipal budgets, many US cities and towns are cutting staff and services and increasing fees.”

According to a survey by the National League of Cities, the biggest negative factors affecting budgets were: costs of city workers’ health benefits (cited by 63%), costs of city workers’ pensions (30%), reduction in state aid (29%), the local economy (25%), and infrastructure needs (25%).

In response to the deteriorating fiscal condition of cities: nearly half (47%) of all cities increased fee rates in 2003, 30% reduced city employment, 29% imposed new fees or charges on services, 21% reduced actual levels of capital spending, and 11% reduced city service levels.

The cities that reacted with great enthusiasm then, may not be panicking as much through the current crisis.

The Streetsweeper Theory

We have to ask why we do certain things the way we do them.  An easy example is streetsweeping.  Has anyone ever wondered why some cities operate streetsweepers at night and others do it during the day?  I once took over a program that ran a streetsweeper between 9 am and 5 pm.  Public trash cans were emptied.  Weeds were cut.  Flowers along the sidewalks were planted and watered, while the sun was shining bright.

Some might just say, “Yea for sweeping the streets!”  Those people had not seen the budget.  It was unsustainable and it was costing other programs like public safety and economic development, as more and more funds were diverted.  We had to ask, “Is our goal to have a great looking downtown or is it to look like we are trying to have a great looking downtown?”

Streetsweepers run at night because cars aren’t on the street and people aren’t walking along the sidewalk.  Some cities run sweepers during the day precisely because people are around to see what they are getting for the money.

By changing the system and putting our crews out from 5 am to 7 am when everyone was out of the way, we accomplished far more impressive results.  Expenses plummeted.  Efficiency skyrocketed.  And the place looked amazing.

However everyday for about a year, a different property owner or elected official would call.  They were enraged that our streetsweepers were gone and couldn’t believe how we were wasting their money.  We stuck to our guns and over time (and with a bit of campaigning) the public caught on to the change and how cool the end results really were.

This is, of course, a most simplistic example.  I know many of our troubles are tougher to tackle.  But picking apart every initiative to get to the why, is what we have to do.  When we look strategically at the service and what it is intended to accomplish, we may not have to debate funding verses firing.  We may find ways to improve performance, doing a better job for less money.

What To Do

1. Improve customer service today.  This is cliché by now but a culture of great customer service brings costs down while driving customer satisfaction up.  Do something extra and unexpected and smile while you are dong it.

2. Look to cities that beat us to the punch.  Some cities started changing their budgets and attitudes in 1993, others in 2003 and others in 1953.  We have to start expecting responsible government at all levels of our community but that doesn’t mean we can’t look to others for help.

3. Hire real estate managers… good corporate real estate managers… to manage everything.  Great real estate investors understand the balancing act between reducing a property’s expenses, generating new revenues and keeping existing tenants from moving out.  This is honestly and exactly what our government is facing.  Commercial real estate has trained an army of managers who could easily use their talent with building portfolios to improving the portfolio of our city assets.

4. Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the performance.  Cutting is one strategy.  Raising new funds is another.  Delivering a better product almost always wins… even in government.

Where To Start

Phoenix is known as America’s Best Run City.  They have long had one of the best government websites.  An academic case study was done by Janet and Robert Denhardt entitled – Creating a Culture of Innovation: 10 Lessons from America’s Best Run City.  Phoenix takes pride in customer service, looks into the future to prepare for challenges, empowers both the public and its employees, and confidently stays the course because they have laid a solid foundation.

Minneapolis has started to think strategically about everything it does.  Cost-benefit analysis may not be what they call it, but that is what they are doing.  They are attracting business and revitalizing the inner city by making one strategic change.  Mayor Rybak recognized that the usual suspects in their incentive package were driving expenses in areas that hurt the economy of the core city.  He didn’t take any incentive off the table and may have actually added a few.  But he did state very boldly that Minneapolis would no longer give incentives to business to do whatever they wanted to do.  He would only entertain assistance to companies that would provide development that was beneficial to the city, in locations where it was needed, fit strategic goals and didn’t cost his people more than they were going to get in return.  If this means losing a business to a neighbor or distant competitor, he figures it is better to burden their citizens than his.

What To Read

There are voluminous business textbooks on strategic marketing and production management and operational efficiency.  If you have time, go get an MBA.  But for now, you may just want to take a weekend and read two, more simple books.

Ken Miller has a 124-pager called We Don’t Make Widgets – Overcoming the Myths that Keep Government from Radically Improving.  If you don’t get the point by page 12, other people and their systems aren’t your problem.

Despite the most cumbersome title in history, Michael J. Lipsey has distilled a wide range of revolutionary changes for customer service in the 191-page Tenants or Guests, Brokers or Clients, Vendors or Partners.

These should inspire you to look deeper, as well as to act on something today.

I’m not suggesting that anyone here change their mind, tweak their agenda or anything like that.  I am asking the few dozen writers, few hundred commenters and few thousand readers to consider helping simplify our message.  Perhaps we can make city building fun, important or comfortable?  How are we selling what we need to do in this city?

As a starting point, I am falling back to my greatest weakness.  I love television.  But more than television, I really love commercials.  I am that guy who has to arrive at the theater 20 minutes early in order to sit through the slide-show of local restaurants, the National Guard commercials and catch every single preview.  Ads are both art and entertainment to me.

The Serious Message

One of the top ads running on CNBC right now is one for Thomson Reuters.  A young, but very professional, woman walks out of a subway… probably in Europe.  She is looking at information on her mobile device and thinking the following to herself.

I don’t have time for old ideas.

I’m not interested in the old boys.

I’m not nostalgic for the old days.

I’m hungry for something new.

Why can’t this be the theme for the new Memphis?  I know this doesn’t represent everyone but this represents precisely the one opportunity we are not currently taking advantage of.  And it is historically consistent with why people walked out of the woods of Tennessee, road trains over from Arkansas and hitched wagons from the fields of Mississippi to build Memphis in the first place.

This is serious.  This is important.  This sums up exactly what Smart City Memphis has been trying to convey about the future of cities and why we must engage in creating a better environment.  Frankly, because we want her to live here.

The Fun Leader

There may be a few people around here that have a man-crush on Denver Mayor (and Colorado Governor Candidate) John Hickenlooper.  This guy has serious ideas but doesn’t take himself seriously.  He is at ease dealing with budget problems and constituent complaints.  He strikes me as someone that you don’t want to disappoint and still someone that you might bump into on the bus.

I don’t think that Colorado’s culture is that different than ours.  They’re pretty conservative people overall.  But not so much so that the leader of the community is scared to put beer and showers into his ads.

The point: Why do things like smart growth, budget reductions and sustainability have to be so awfully boring?  We haven’t been able to scare people into doing the right thing.  We haven’t been able to rationally reason with enough influencers.  So, maybe we shouldn’t be so ashamed of drinking beer… if it gets our point across, of course.

The Comfort Factor

Maybe part of the problem is us?  We are crusaders.  We are honestly fearful of higher taxes and neighborhood identity loss and economic segregation.  We don’t lose our minds over this stuff just because we are nerds.  We are angry that people cannot see the future we believe is descending upon us at an extraordinary rate.

On the other hand, we forget what we have to build on.  This community has more museums per capita than we should be able to support.  We have remarkable access to parks.  We have more restaurants than we could ever count.  We have way more retail shops than we need.  We have four colleges.  We have sports teams coming out of our ears.  We have competing arts districts.  We could make a list that is a mile long of wonderful reasons that this city is special.  And I believe this makes most people comfortable.

Comfort also translates into lazy sometimes.  Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that things are good.  Perhaps we need to remind our neighbors that they have it good too.  Yes, we will have to pay the piper someday… probably sooner than even we SCMers want to admit.  But, if it builds interest, maybe we can sell the façade of comfort?

One of the top foreign ads this week stars an army of kittens.  If IKEA can use cats to make people interested in a discount furniture superstore, then we shouldn’t discount what this cutesy-comfort imagery holds for building Memphis pride.

Please Help

Let’s examine our messaging.  It can contain serious information and still be inspirational.  It can tell a story and still be fun.  I am not sure exactly where the kittens fit in but I’m not ready to rule anything out.

I also think actions speak louder than words.  I think that messaging can go horribly wrong, seem trite and eat up resources that should often be allocated elsewhere.  I also think that there is already a wealth of very well produced urban design messages out there.

But we are just friends talking here.  Will you please brainstorm below about ways to engage this city with a new message that sells them on something that most have never seen?  At the very least, perhaps we need the distraction to help us before we move on to the next round of serious business.

This should be fun.

Unsolicited Plug: Each winter, the Brooks Museum is one of the few U.S. locations to screen the British Television Ad Awards.  The event is remarkable.  Look for it.

This region must stop fighting over scraps, get moving on something meaningful and decide what is really important to our future.

Southern cities are in an awkward point in history.  Our populations have grown in a time as the economy moved away from the agriculture that established us, through the industrial revolution that built some of us and on into an auto-dependant, single-family-home-loan driven economy that has failed us.  We have never really been cities in the traditional sense.  Towns, occasionally.  Villages, sometimes.  Squares, perhaps.  But never really cities.

Anyone who has followed my posts knows that I am on a quest for benchmarks, simple starting points and solutions to our Economic Development, Urban Design and Social Interaction dilemmas.  Returning from Dallas, I’d hoped to write another top-10 list of best practices like I did with Denver and DC. I could point out Fort Worth’s parking lot screening and Dallas’s free trolley.  I’d love to explore the urban residential explosion in both towns or the demolition of the old Cowboy’s Stadium less than one year after the last game there.  I tend to get very excited about this stuff and can’t wait to share.

But… three depressing things have stuck in my mind sullying my mood for a couple of weeks.

Fighting over scraps

Most southern cities are fighting like dogs over scraps.  Whenever I come back from Texas, I can’t help but wonder why Memphis, Louisville and Birmingham even exist.  Why are we still here?  How do we compete?

We keep building infrastructure like I-269 for businesses that never come.  We move a company from one part of our own town to another part of our own town and call that growth.

Driving around Dallas at times feels like flying around with Astro on the Jetsons.  Huge, majestic office buildings are everywhere, downtown and miles from it.  The Dallas CBD office submarket is almost twice as large as our entire metro regional office market.  The Dallas area has about six other submarkets as large or larger than our entire metro market.  The Dallas area has almost 175 MILLION square feet of space filled with smart people not even including the Fort Worth area.

Taking our time

Most southern cities do not commit.  We drag our feet, hoping things will work out if we just think about it long enough.  Texans react fast!  We spend years planning with no true implementation.  Texans have a hair-brained idea and then run with it for years.

About ten years ago we opened the Madison Avenue trolley line.  In that time we have successfully developed nothing that depends on or was inspired by that massive investment.  We didn’t change any zoning, recruit any developers, assemble any property, attract any businesses or anything else that encompasses transit oriented development.

In the same ten years since, Uptown Dallas has turned McKinney Street into a residential showpiece along their trolley line just outside of downtown.  Three, four and five story apartment buildings fill in between one story restaurants.  Townhouses take the place of old parking lots.  High-end retailers are a short walk from trolley stops.  While we have been fighting over CVS locations and spending seven years trying to adopt the Unified Development Code, Dallas has reinvented an entire area as a true mixed use neighborhood that acts as a city within the city.

Valuing the wrong things

Most southern cities do not value the right things.  Often it is difficult to tell if we value anything at all.  We abandon neighborhoods, office buildings, roads and sewer systems.  But more than anything else we abandon schools and clearly have little value for education beyond saying someone should do something about it.

Every time I have been to Dallas there have been prominent education stories in the Sunday paper.  These are huge spreads on the performance of dozens of area school districts.  How are we really doing on math?  How are we really doing in reading?  How does this position us for the economy of the future?  Dallas knows the answer.  They show what they value by tracking it, reporting on it, talking about it and participating in it.

Improve or Move

So, a business goes downtown, out-east or Olive Branch?  It is really hard to keep up the fight when you see the scale of a Texas sized real estate market.

So, an apartment building goes along the trolley line, near the University of Memphis or in Bartlett?  It is really hard to keep up the fight when you have seen the answer in person and walked down a street that someone has fully committed to restoring.

So, some of our kids will go to college, trade school or drop out?  It is really hard to keep up the fight when you have met people who do not have this conversation because most people just expect their kids to go get degrees.

Economic Development is really just real estate development.  We can commit to improving what we have, where it is located and the people who will use it over time.  Or we can keep moving the pieces around, where we can, when we can for the few people we can hold onto.

People today are incredibly mobile.  They see improvement or they move to another place that has what they want.

On Smart City Memphi,s we discuss the problems and pitch solutions.  But we must start committing to moving fast.  We have to stop fighting with each other over scraps and focus on improving what’s here.  We have to start thinking about what we value and what we are really willing to do to prove it.

Or we can forget ever being considered a real city worthy of being included in the same conversation with Dallas or Houston or San Antonio or Austin.  Texans do it big and make no excuses.  Memphis and other southern cities have to improve or risk losing everything.

And if you think we are competing in any way today, you are fooling yourself.  We are cutting our own throats, while the momentum in some other cities may never slow down long enough for us to catch up.

Few people today remember that Wernher von Braun was the Chief Architect of the Saturn V Rocket.  However, most everyone knows the name of at least one of the 39 Astronauts that played lead roles in space exploration through the Apollo missions.  And, just about anyone could tell you who said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Sustainable Shelby is the first agenda for sustainability in the Memphis region and a strategic framework that addresses building codes, the environment and neighborhood rebirth.  It makes the connections between transportation and traffic, public incentives for economic development and land use patterns.  This plan looks close to home by improving public building efficiency and purchasing policies, while looking far down the road at development opportunities, natural resource preservation and tax revenues.

The plan was developed through a process coordinated by 13 Shelby County employees and seven committees chaired by private architects, Sierra Club and neighborhood development leaders, urban planning professors, real estate professionals and community activists.  These committees consisted of almost 150 experts in their respective fields who each volunteered an extraordinary amount of time to a project that they believed would be a seminal moment in the history of Shelby County.

The Sustainable Framework

They all knew that, then-County Mayor Wharton needed this plan to address problems confronting us.  He stated clearly, “the present course is unsustainable on the basis of public finances, environment and land use, disposable neighborhoods, deteriorating health, and declining quality of life.”  Wharton recognized that young educated people are leaving Shelby County, that economic development practices can actually conflict with community building projects and that both fiscal and environmental efficiencies were needed to survive.

This team, however, knew something even more important.  They knew that the plan had to transcend one mayor’s time in office.  They had to create a document that wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the past smart growth plans and suburban expansion plans.  A plan was needed that could achieve buy-in from Shelby Countians and be embraced by administrations to come.  The Sustainable Shelby team was not only interested in solving problems and engaging environmentalists.  They were driven to create the catalyst we need to transform this county.

This plan is in line with past philosophies, current directions and future needs.  This initiative is in line with nationwide ideals that are being set by HUD, DOT and other agencies.  Shelby County is poised to be a true nationwide leader and has already been approved for a federal grant to begin implementing some of the Sustainable Shelby principles.

Interim-Mayor Ford unveiled the Clean Green Shelby initiative and also sought advice from local environmental experts… most all of whom participated in Sustainable Shelby.  This initiative consisted of a Wolf River brownfields assessment program, recycling, a greenhouse gas inventory, an MOU with municipal mayors seeking a solution to waste water issues and stream protections, in addition to drinking water protection.

Smarter Growth

Sheriff Luttrell, as a candidate for Mayor, publicly recognized Sustainable Shelby and that acknowledgment is appreciated by many who have been involved through multiple similar initiatives only to see them scrapped and rebooted years later under another name.  As well, the Mayor-elect stated that economic development begins with a safe and attractive community where people want to live and industries desire to locate.  He knows that “smarter growth” utilizes existing infrastructure like roads, schools, greenways, retail, medical and recreation.  He says we must capitalize on existing infrastructure that is not fully utilized.

There is no question that many of our leaders are speaking the language that is encapsulated within Sustainable Shelby.  This speaks to the lack of partisanship that existed in its creation.  So, there is no reason to lose ground by reinventing the wheel.

And please know that momentum may be waning as our county’s experts have enthusiastically come to the table and been disappointed many times before.  They are looking for a leader because their proposal is not achievable as a grassroots movement.  And because they know you can claim victory from day one, positioning Shelby County with peer communities around the country.

Like many cities in the late 1960s, Portland, Oregon found itself facing urban decay and suburbanization.  Then Republican State Governor Tom McCall and Democratic City Mayor Neil Goldschmidt rallied for and enacted measures to deal with issues ranging from urban zoning to farmland conservation.  The sustainability plan implemented over the last 30 years boasts about providing a regionally inclusive approach in order to build thriving communities, economic vitality and scenic beauty.

Ready to Go

Since 1980, the City of Portland has grown by 57% with a population density of over 4,200 people per square mile.  The Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has grown by 62% to almost 2.2 million.  Portland’s regional household income surpasses $70,000 a year.

By contrast, the City of Memphis has grown by 4.8% since 1980 and has a population density of less than 2,200 people per square mile.  The MSA has grown by 29% to just over 1.2 million.  Memphis’s regional household income is less than $62,000 a year.

Closer to home, please consider Nashville’s Cumberland Region Tomorrow.  As Davidson County and the surrounding area began to grow, this organization became concerned about the future livability and economic vitality of the region.  They have successfully supported and encouraged growth planning, with emphasis on land use, transportation, and preservation of the rural landscape and character of the existing communities for over 10 years.

When their Executive Director, Dr. Bridget Jones, was here for a Livable Memphis conference, she became familiar with the Sustainable Shelby work.  She talked about the most difficult part of Nashville’s project being tied up in building coalitions and creating a strong enough plan.  Dr. Jones marveled at the work that had been done here and stated emphatically, “you are ready to go, you have what you need, Sustainable Shelby is your plan and you are lucky to have it.”

Positioned for Success

Today our system of uncoordinated, isolated departments makes it difficult to promote and improve life in this county.  When the economy rebounds, is Shelby County going to be positioned to succeed?  We have all of the pieces of the puzzle.  Sustainable Shelby just makes sure they are all in the same box.  Who will be responsible for defining our quality of life and powering the greatest economy in this region?

A past county mayor, respected staffers, industry experts and an army of volunteers have built your rocket.  However, they have done all they can do until a champion steps up to move it off of the ground.

You, as new leadership, can choose to use your first few years drawing up new plans.  Or, you can be our Neil Armstrong, strap into the Commander’s seat and help Shelby County take the next step by implementing Sustainable Shelby.

This is the great recession, right?  No one is moving on anything, right?  Besides, Memphis is an extraordinary city with everything to offer and if there was a move to make it would be here, right?

Then how is it that over only two weeks in July, Olive Branch, Mississippi, took the gold medal in every category?

Soladigm announced a new 300 employee operation.  Hamilton Beach will move 125 jobs from Memphis south of the boarder into Mississippi.  Methodist was approved for a 100-bed, 480 employee hospital.  And, Grant Homes launched a 109-lot subdivision.

At Smart City Memphis we debate incentives and political baggage, crime and community, brains vs. brawn, expansion patterns vs. growth boundaries, venture capital and business retention.  We know economic development is supposed to be deep, complex work.  There are experts in the field that tell us how hard it is.

Well, as someone who spent six years working very closely with many Magnolia State economic developers, real estate professionals and business leaders, I’d like to share a few of their secrets.  You can decide how hard it is to really do this.

Mississippians know how to build relationships

Maurice Joseph, a Mississippi real estate investor, gave me the best advice I have ever gotten.  He told me one day regarding a prospect, “Don’t write them, don’t call them, go see them.”  These guys get to know you before you know you want to move.  They know what you need, how much you can spend and where your grandmother goes to church before you have ever mentioned expansion.  They have done things for you, unsolicited, that have helped you personally and professionally.

When the day comes that you do consider a big move, surprise, surprise, here is your buddy with the perfect place for you.  You don’t notice the peer pressure, the brochures or any of the other fluff because you are being asked to buy something they already know you want.

And you know this is a two-way street.  When I say relationship building, I mean it.  These people become your friends and that makes it real easy to do business.

Mississippians show well

Leland Speed, a national real estate investor from Mississippi, puts flowers in the bathrooms of every one of his properties.  When Governor Barbour asked him to be the pro-bono director of the Mississippi Development Authority Mr. Speed went on a statewide tour visiting every single rest stop demanding that they be beautiful representations of his state.

This might sound nuts.  But you don’t have to talk about burglaries or maintenance problems when management demands this level of detail.  You don’t have to sell someone on having the best when there is a bouquet next to the urinal.

This also lends itself to a brief mention of marketing, enthusiasm and interest.

Take this test:  Do an internet search for Mississippi advertising, marketing or public relations firms.  Do the same for Memphis firms.  Randomly pull five or ten web addresses from each.  Compare them and decide which community has the most creative minds, latest technology and enthusiastic spirit… and what will they charge you to share it?

Mississippi brings out the big guns

Olive Branch isn’t attracting this business by itself.  The Capitol is behind them.  From new roads to utility expansions to job training to income tax rebates, this is largely being handled from Jackson.  But that isn’t the most important part.

Having the Governor call on you and offer these things casts the line.  Having another businessman in the area call on you and tell you a story about how the Governor helped his business when they were once in a bind sets the hook.  Having the mayor call on you with a package of pre-approved applications and incentives reels you in.  The real estate developer just has to show up with the hammer and nails because the other work is being done for him.

I belong to both the Memphis Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club of Memphis.  These people are friends, business partners and true community leaders.  I took an informal poll of about 20 of them this week by asking if they could name a Memphis, Shelby County or Chamber economic development employee.  Most answered no.  If anyone would like to get close to these potential prospects, I can get you an application.

When the economy is slow there are some things winning communities do.  They work hard on getting to know their existing businesses, defining their future needs and discovering who might be complimentary to them.  They put together inspired armies of local cheerleaders.  Then they tell the world what they are doing.  Some things don’t require expensive initiatives or time consuming planning.

Step One – Make Friends

We have to build our relationships.  And we need to do it beyond our comfort zones, outside of our circles and with some people we may not understand.

Get to know others in business.  Practice selling to our friends.  And ask them to commit to this city.

Antonio Ubalde and Eric Simundza did research for and published Economic Development: Present and Future.  Below are their top five marketing strategies (out of 16) based on effectiveness:

* Internet/Website

* Out of town meetings with businesses

* Site selection consultants and familiarization tours

* Public relations

* Special events

Four of the top five are relationship-based.  They either start with a relationship or are designed to build one.

We keep hearing about the plight of One Commerce Square, the largest building on our skyline that is over half-vacant.  What if the owner or leasing agent was a member of Rotary or Kiwanis and had been building a personal relationship with several hundred potential prospects?  What if an economic development official had been doing the same?

Step Two – Help new friends fit in

We have to deploy our team.  That team needs all of the right information to make decisions and help others make decisions.

Do we have a team of influencers, business peers and, frankly, people it is hard to say no to?  Do they fully understand what happens to this community when they make factory decisions?  Do they understand how many other people they do business with nationally that could be prospects for our community?  Are they armed with the knowledge and determination to recruit for us?  Do they feel like this is an important part of life in a community, a last desperate measure or does that even matter?

Step Three – Give friends the right resources

We have to put our money where our mouth is.

In the Ubalde & Simundza work, they found that organizations that had an economic development component spent only around 10% of their budget on actual economic development marketing.  Of that 10% budget, over half was spent on strategies that were the least effective, 17% was spent on the important portal (Internet/Website) and only 30% was spent on the other four most effective strategies.

If economic development agencies don’t put their efforts and dollars toward what actually builds business then the communities that do will continue to steal victories from us.  If our most important figures, leaders and ambassadors aren’t willing to commit themselves to this effort, then more and more of their neighbors will move farther and farther away.

We need a movement that can start with very, very simple tasks.  Memphians must re-learn how to build meaningful relationships.  We must use those relationships to strategically tackle economic development issues.  And we must start deploying the necessary resources to get the word out.

And in all honesty… this starts with every small business person.  The initiative can be ours.  It doesn’t have to come from City Hall, The Shelby County Office Building, a Chamber or a club.

Last winter I wrote about five hours spent in Downtown Denver because I was so marvelously inspired by what was happening there.  I have not felt that excited since… until now.  A few days in DC and my outlook on life could not be any better. 

There is no better time than now to dive into trying to blend sexy real estate projects with strategic community building with necessary economic development.  What if we could claim beautiful sidewalks in front of charming restaurants?  What if high-density neighborhoods felt comfortable and convenient?  What if we could seamlessly transition from home to work to recreation and back again? 

Yes, our Federal dollars make beautiful public spaces possible, museums free and underground public transportation efficient in the nation’s capital.  But that is not what has me so inspired.  Below is a list of ten things anyone, anywhere can do right now.  We can get started with this today. 

#1 – Sweep your own sidewalk.

From the edge of their threshold, out onto the stoop and straight to the curb, residents and shopkeepers alike are happily sweeping.  Not powerwashing or leafblowing, but sweeping.  Smiling and sweeping.  DC is a cigarette smoking city filled with thousands of residents and millions of visitors.  I challenge anyone to find a pile of butts or wrappers or anything else.  I also dare you to find someone complaining about cleaning it up. 

#2 – Don’t stack the chairs until you are sure.

We arrived late and were starved.  The owner of a pizza place that was to close at 11:00 walked to the door and called us in at ten minutes after, when they saw us as potential customers peaking in.  Two huge slices, two drinks and two happy customers.  If we were it they would have made $11, but because we sat in the window, five other customers came in after closing time. 

#3 – Park only where you are supposed to.

No one in DC dares to park on the sidewalk, in a pedestrian plaza or in an illegal spot.  In contrast to Memphis, no freely dispensed passes exist for parking on a mall.  I can’t imagine a pedestrian tolerating their path being impeded by a construction truck or conventioneer or neighbor parking on the sidewalk.  I almost cheered when I witnessed a very nice Porsche being towed from a temporary parking zone in front of a drug store when it stayed past its welcome. 

#4 – Make your front yard matter.

Washingtonians embrace the sidewalk, or rather the property that abuts it.  The space is often defined with a two to three foot iron fence.  Some yards are meticulously landscaped.  Others are more eclectic.  All are wholly embraced for comfort, whimsy and fun.  Bushes, flowers, pathways, chairs, grills and art but never, ever just a grass lawn.  Additional living space may be the rationale.  Improved relations with neighbors and increased property values are the result. 

#5 – Kill your weeds.

People in DC are in a relentless battle against weeds.  Government workers pull violating foliage from beds.  Doormen armed with Round-Up attack steps and walkways.  Grandmothers yank and stomp to make certain their landscape looks good for anyone who might pass.  Where was the guy standing in the weeds screaming, “someone should do something about this”? 

#6 – Give busses their own lanes.

Dedicated bus lanes caught my eye.  They allow buses to move more people, more quickly and in fewer vehicles.  They are usually used in cities that don’t have the population for short-distance light-rail trains or in larger cities as a substitute for longer-distance commuter rail.  But Washington is using dedicated bus lanes to move people straight through the city without being constrained by other vehicles.  However, they do allow bicycles to share the lanes in some cases. 

#7 – Give bikes their own lanes.

Anyone who says it is hard to put a bicycle lane in Memphis has probably never talked to the guy who is in charge of doing it in DC.  There are one-way streets, bridges and roundabouts everywhere.  Yet they still manage to give access to bikers.  In one neighborhood, a wide one-way street was redesigned with a bike lane, a row of bollards, parking lane, three lanes of traffic and another curb-side row of parking.  Oh, yeah… bicyclers now have their own traffic lanes in the center of PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE! 

#8 – Offer exceptional public restrooms.

Bathrooms say a lot to some people about the community they are in.  I was moved by the design of restrooms throughout DC from The National Gallery of Art to the Library of Congress to the National Building Museum.  Government exists for two essential functions: to provide sanitation and safety.  When parks and public spaces lock, abandon or remove toilets it sends the message that the city cannot provide either at the most basic level. 

My wife was particularly fond of the unlocked toilets that we could count on anywhere, anytime ranging from Starbucks to local restaurants.  I broach this subject for one reason.  Memphis has tourist traps that hang signs stating clearly “No Public Restroom”, “For Customers Only” and “Out of Order”.  In our parks, bathrooms have been closed or replaced with porta-johns.

#9 – Mix things up.

DC neighborhoods are brilliantly mixed.  Historic townhouses next to modern office buildings.  Beautiful architecture contrasting with structures that were perhaps not the best idea but somehow it is okay.  Ten-story condos behind two-story houses across from six-story hotels down from eight-story offices.  This does not appear to be due to any design… not a recent one anyway. 

#10 – Hide the parking.

Parking facilities, whether lots or garages, are generally ugly.  They impede pedestrian activity and destroy the urban context of a street.  And, despite popular belief, obvious parking can reduce surrounding property values and stunt growth. 

With the exception of Nationals Baseball Stadium, it was close to impossible to spot any off-street parking.  Being a nerd, I looked.  I could find some cars pulled behind houses down alleys.  I could find ramps going to garages under buildings.  I could find an opening here or there that would lead to a structure behind something of actual human use.  I could find parking in the center of a doughnut with all of the buildings facing the street. 

But unless you look really, really, really hard, you will not see any of this.  It is as if there is only on-street parking in Washington DC.  And it is lovely. 

#10b – Go to Ben’s Chili Bowl

If none of this inspires you, go have an Original Half-Smoke with Chili, Onions and Mustard at Ben’s Chili Bowl.  The price is right, the service is great, the place is clean and the food is a welcome break from the seafood extravaganza found everywhere else.  Walk around the U Street area and experience how this neighborhood has continually reinvented itself while holding on to a few of its treasured institutions. 

This is what we must do.  Starting with what we can and working toward what is difficult.  DC has started and stopped, been built and burned, and had plan after plan after plan.  Sometimes things were accomplished in a year, sometimes in thirty.  But it was inspiring to feel the comfort in the people and their places, to see what can happen in short periods of time and to believe that some examples can be taken from their experiences.

I want our new consolidated metro government to have leadership that embraces fiscal, social and environmental sustainability.  I’d like this leader to have experience ensuring stability in property values.  And I’d like this leader to have vision for our community’s future.  After hearing the Germantown Mayor address the Memphis Kiwanis Club, I am putting a DRAFT GOLDSWORTHY sticker on my bumper.

Mayor Goldsworthy proved to me that she has an extraordinary understanding of government operations, budget management, constituent outreach and urban planning.  So much so, that I really would like her to reconsider her position on consolidation.  As well, I am asking all that have been critical of her position to try reaching out to her again.  I honestly believe that there must be more similarity here than differences.

Goldsworthy talks the talk & walks the walk

Mayor Goldsworthy eloquently spoke of Germantown’s past leaders.  She and her predecessors have been acutely aware of their city’s limited supply of land and growth potential.  Therefore they have managed development, costs and expenses in their community quite purposefully.

She stated, “Since we only have so much room for growth, we want everything to be of the highest quality.”  She talked about how this led to Shelby County’s first example of a Design Review Commission to ensure that all construction met exemplary standards and fit in with the area context and community plans.  Wouldn’t every city in Shelby County like this?  Couldn’t Memphis and Shelby County benefit from this mechanism to ensure investment security and neighborhood stability?  DRAFT GOLDSWORTHY!

Goldsworthy is a thoughtful manager

Mayor Goldsworthy rattled off an understanding of municipal revenues and expenses unlike any elected official I have encountered.  She talked about Managed Competition and other cost reduction techniques Germantown is actually using to run a responsible City Hall and keep from raising taxes.  Each time they think they are doing a good job, they research best practices and try one more time to do better.

Other than firemen and police officers, “Every department must come before a panel to justify filling vacant jobs because over time our needs change.”  Because she created a system that reduces departmental expenses and improves productivity, Mayor Goldsworthy has been able to expand public safety services, add police and increase patrol coverage.  Couldn’t Memphis and Shelby County benefit from this?  Wouldn’t this type of earnest drive for greatness benefit all of the communities that are touched by the newly consolidated area?  DRAFT GOLDSWORTHY!

Goldsworthy is a visionary economist

The Mayor talked about dealing with daily issues but repeatedly talked about looking forward.  She admitted, “no one worries when everything is new, but nothing stays new and we have to make sure we deal with aging neighborhoods before they are a problem.”  Germantown makes sure homes and yards are maintained.  Upkeep is never overlooked so no property ever slips into a deteriorated state.  This creates stability and security for every neighbor.

Sharon Goldsworthy spoke of best practices that she has gleaned by benchmarking with similar communities.  She seems to know what works and what doesn’t.

She also has a handle on the mix of uses that produce the optimum tax revenue while preserving the quality of life Germantown residents expect.  WHAT!?!  An elected official that speaks of planning and zoning?  A politician that not only has the guts to guide projects where the city wants them but plans for future projects and sticks to the plan?  This is unheard of.  Mayor Goldsworthy talked percentages of land area.  She knew that over 30% was public space, untaxed buildings, roads and infrastructure.  She knew approximately what percentage of retail and office space was needed to support that and benefit residential taxpayers.  She is seeking equilibrium in the existing developed areas and in the future of the yet to be developed parcels.  Wouldn’t we want this for all of Shelby County?  Couldn’t Memphis and Shelby County use a big fat dose of this medicine?  DRAFT GOLDSWORTHY!

She proudly discussed infrastructure, like water projects, being funded with today’s dollars but with benefits for generations to come.  She knew how many were being served and how many more could be and, most mindboggling, she knew why this information might be important to decisions made in City Hall.

Goldsworthy is a New Urbanism advocate

In her address, Mayor Goldsworthy even hit Smart Growth.  Yep, Smart Growth in a self-proclaimed bedroom community.  Mayor Goldsworthy seemed keenly aware that sometimes strip-centers outlive their usefulness or succumb to age.  She talked about some being repaired or rebuilt.  However, she also recognized an opportunity to knit different neighborhoods and municipal buildings together around a higher-density, mixed-use town center.  In place of some car oriented shopping centers could someday stand new urbanist communities that celebrate old Germantown and new Germantown.

Whitehaven, Raleigh and Cordova are all screaming for this while someone is planning for it in Germantown.  She is talking about doing exactly the opposite of what the criticized Overton Square developers were… adding urbanism NOT suburbanism.  DRAFT GOLDSWORTHY!

Mrs. Goldsworthy talks about including the public.  She speaks of the community’s vision, of public planning and of the city’s direction in deeply personal terms.  She sounds like she knows how to listen, enjoys learning and isn’t timid about educating citizens.

And she does it all for $24,000 a year (or about 16% of the Shelby County Mayor or 14% of the Memphis Mayor).  So I’d like her on my team… or I’d like to be on her’s.  Plus we could offer her 10 times as much money to be Metro Mayor and still see a significant savings!

Put these principles in the new charter

I don’t know from where her opposition to consolidation comes but I think Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy must be a wealth of experience and knowledge.  Persistence and vision.  She has presided over a town with design and sign standards.  She has managed a budget with techniques that sound masterful.  She has handled investors that want to bend the rules, neighbors that don’t like meddling and jokes from outsiders… and in the process created Shelby County’s most sought after address.  She hires strong people to help plan the future, manages a proud team and isn’t afraid to unload expenses that lead to tax increases.

She believes in her community as a place where you don’t ever have to say clean, safe and stable.  Office investors want to be there, or close by.  Residential investors make money there.  Shops wait for storefronts to become available.  Because, like it or not, Germantown in many ways sets the highest standard around here.

Isn’t this what most of us say that we want for Memphis and Shelby County every day?  Don’t we all deserve this?  Shouldn’t we all demand it?

I wish Sharon Goldsworthy would become an official advisor to the Charter Commission that is working on the consolidation issue.  I wish they’d listen to her ideas and write some of them in the charter.  Then maybe we all could go pull the lever for Sharon Goldsworthy to be our first Metro Mayor.

Instead, I believe new taxing proposals, like the Value Added Tax (VAT), are providing the wake up call.  Americans have been fine with spending our grandchildren’s money for what we want today.  But, we are suddenly appalled when a proposal is floated that suggests we pay for this stuff ourselves.

While I believe we should not spend more than we have, I do not like the VAT.  I fear that the VAT is philosophically wrong for America, functionally wrong for states and potentially devastating to cities like Memphis.

The VAT just feels wrong

United States taxes on individuals are largely transparent.  If I make $45,000 a year I know I should pay about $7,000 in taxes and the guy working next to me is probably paying about the same thing.  What I pay is written on my check stub and I have to sign a tax return at the end of the year.

The VAT is a multi-layered sales tax levied on every stage of manufacturing.  This will cause the costs-of-goods-sold to increase.  And I don’t get to see any of this on the check-out receipt at the register.

The VAT competes with the funding mechanism of many states

In Tennessee, we already have a 7% sales tax on everything.  If the cost of products begins to grow due to the hidden VAT, then that 7% starts to look like a pretty big number.  Because in Tennessee, we have to print taxes on the receipt for the sole purpose of providing transparency regarding what our government is taking from us.

A VAT may provide a short term boost in revenue for government but it represents an effective immediate pay cut for every shopping Tennessean.  As well, lower tax rate states that surround our skinny territory start to look like much better shopping destinations as the costs of taxable goods rise.

The VAT goofs up the entire local system

Despite the rise of creative industries, every economic developer still salivates over manufacturing plants and the ancillary businesses that support them.  If products begin to cost more because each stage of manufacturing is taxed, companies will consolidate functions to reduce these taxable stages and may ultimately move even more of their operations to districts with lower taxes… overseas.

Killing manufacturing does not just disrupt a few evil big corporations.  It eliminates a web of small, locally owned businesses.  Nissan, for instance, builds cars.  A local company close to the plant builds the frames.  Another local minority company electroplates the frames.  Another locally owned distributor stores and trucks the frames to the plant.  I think the VAT will eventually make this disappear.

In Memphis, a bolt & screw company makes a part for a self-propelled lawnmower.  Barrels of these parts are shipped to Tupelo, where the mowers are assembled with a bunch of other parts made in this region.  Then the mowers are sent to a warehouse in Memphis until they are shipped to hardware stores around the country.  The VAT (a tax on each of these stages) will force the lawnmower company to reduce the number of steps in the process, make fewer parts in this area and possibly build their mowers in Mexico, for instance.  If you build them in Mexico, why not ship them from Mexico… goodbye to America’s Distribution Center?

Retail taxes may equal retail destruction

Over the last five or ten years, America has had one huge advantage.  Due to our dollar valuation and due to our tax rates, retail has become a leading industry.  Tourism is being driven by foreign travelers who want to come see Graceland, tour the National Civil Rights Museum and shop.  Because European countries have versions of the VAT, it is cheaper (or at least enticing) to buy a plane ticket, rent a hotel room and shop in America!

And since we have already been losing manufacturing jobs due to other factors, crashing our financial services market and bankrupting our governments, in many ways mall jobs are some of the last positions to aspire to.  That will be severely damaged by the VAT.

Multiple tax streams are necessary but new mechanisms aren’t

I know multiple tax streams produce economic stability.  When property values are down, it is nice to lean on sales taxes.  When sales taxes wane, it is nice to have income taxes to keep the schools open, fire trucks running and police on the street.

I also recognize that existing income taxes are largely a middle-class mechanism.  Property taxes, in Tennessee anyway, disproportionally impact middle and lower income homeowners.  Sales taxes are fair in the sense that everyone pays but those at the lower income levels only have so much to give.

But at what point do we stop just adding new revenue streams and look at a rational approach to providing a fair, stable system?  When do we realize that there are always unintended consequences every time we just roll out a new expense then desperately grasp to find some way to pay for it later?

Rather than staff reductions, program restrictions or policy reviews, we may be offered a multi-layered sales tax on every stage of manufacturing.  Instead of department overhauls, efficiency studies and productivity programs, we may be offered a new tax that will increase the cost of goods sold without having to display the taxes paid on the receipt.  Instead of comprehensively looking at an entire system of taxes and spending, we may be offered a way to temporarily raise revenues through a mechanism that will stick it too those who can least afford it.

Maybe it’s just me but I think we need to spend less before instituting new taxes.

I am so pleased that after decades of some people screaming about the national debt, an administration has finally become interested in doing something about it.  I just fear that raising revenues through a tax on one of the most devastated American sectors is the wrong first step for local economies and for the country as a whole.

If you have been following the construction of the I-269 loop surrounding the outskirts of the Memphis region, you know that one of the primary tools of disinvestment causing, tax revenue depleting, character sucking suburbanization is well on its way.  This highway will make Sam Cooper look like New Orleans’ Decatur Street, the 240 loop look like the Parkway System and 385 look like the Champs-Elysees.

Couple this with an expansive and complete network of sewer expansions throughout Shelby County ready to hook up the rest of the fleeing Memphians, a government who has demonstrated no backbone for protecting the tax base or improving inner city life, and land barons itching to start cutting new deals for more roadside “development”… we find ourselves on the precipice of a catastrophe of epic proportion.

A recent MPO Imagine 2035 presentation of a “Business As Usual” scenario all but confirmed this… or at least the public discussion did.  While our regional population is growing at a tiny annual rate and we are losing population in working-age and educated demographics, we continue to gobble up land at a ridiculously amazing rate.

Therefore, we spend more time commuting in the car than many other cities.  We spend a disproportionate amount of our income on transportation.  Our property taxes are higher because we have to pay for services to the space between destinations.  We have traded any sense of predictable traffic patterns for a spider web of periodic gridlock.  We have destroyed any sense of place that existed in historic neighborhoods, have overbuilt then abandoned second-tier suburbs and started building new communities that are 100% auto dependant because they connect to nothing.

So what is there to hope for?  What is left for those of us who are desperate to see riders on the trolley, people walking to the park and pleasant neighborhoods that rank with communities we are competing with for talent across the country and around the world?

High gas prices!

I know this is a long way off and may never really materialize.  Peak oil theories may not be scientifically sound.  Instability in the middle-east may be a thing of the past.  Hurricanes in the gulf may never touch another platform.  Nuclear plants may never replace oil refineries.  But these things are more likely to happen than the stars aligning to force local leadership to guide us into any alternative direction.  High gas prices making it stupid to drive 30 miles a day for work, 10 miles a day for family activities or five miles to a grocery store… this is all we had left.

Gas prices were supposed to go through the roof.  Then people would start wanting to live near the office and some cute shops would pop up down the street and junior would walk by the barbershop on his way to a baseball game.  America would be America again.

But now this.

Cars that get 100 miles per charge.

Chevy’s is supposed to go over 40 miles on a charge.  Mitsubishi’s could go 90 miles.  The Nissan Leaf is leading the way with 100 miles per charge.  Well, that’s just great.  Instead of fuel costs teasing people back to more dense cities with an abundance of pedestrian options, we can drive even farther for cheaper!

In Houston, Nissan is partnering with Reliant Energy to ring the city with charging stations.  Other deals are in the works from Orlando to San Diego.  Just imagine; someone could live outside of L.A. and almost commute to San Diego, or live in Tampa and commute to Orlando.  And, they’d never have to buy gas.  That sounds neat, if you enjoy driving.  But what if you don’t?  Neighborhoods will still be popping up farther and farther from core cities where land is cheaper and cheaper.  The phrase “drive until you qualify” will take on new meaning when you remove the cost of gas from the equation.  You are in big trouble if you don’t like life behind the wheel.

Closer to home, a company called Ecotality has received a $100 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a system of over 2,000 charging stations in Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga.  I find it peculiar that one of the State of Tennessee’s single largest investments in highway infrastructure may be in the Memphis area but they didn’t think to link it to electric cars… so we can look forward to being spread out, inefficient and expensive while still driving gas guzzlers.

Unless we do something really cool.

Since Memphis is being left out of the electric car charging infrastructure while being asked to commute farther than anyone in the State of Tennessee, why don’t we use this as an opportunity to try something different?

Instead of agreeing to drive, drive, drive, why don’t we demand an alternative?  Why don’t we just redevelop our inner city where we already have all the stuff and walk or bike every once in a while?  Okay, that might a bit radical.

Why don’t we build our own electric vehicle charging infrastructure?  Why don’t we put charging stations in a system of town centers to encourage people to identify with their neighborhoods and not have to drive quite as far all of the time?

We could put charging stations in areas that are strategically positioned to be employment destinations or cultural destinations to encourage people to develop a pattern leading to a cohesive transportation strategy?

I am not sure what the answer is.  I do know that if we just chill out and watch, we will see more and more 25 to 40 year old college graduates get in their eco-friendly electric vehicles and drive away to another city where, oddly, people spend much less time in the car.

To Steve’s Tire and Auto on Poplar Avenue:  I am sorry.  Your crew has replaced tires, repaired breaks and been a terrific example of customer service.  I can’t believe I considered someone else.

To my neighbors:  I am sorry.  We live in a neighborhood close to everything we need.  I can’t believe I risked damaging that by taking my business across town.

To my city:  I am sorry.  For all of the moaning I do about building community and connectivity and supporting the hometown… I should really set a better example.

My wife’s car needed brakes and like any good husband would, I agreed to handle it.  Plus, I had a $20 gift certificate to Christian Brothers Automotive that I picked up from a U of M event they graciously sponsored.  The coupon had multiple locations on it, so away I went heading toward the corner of Germantown and Winchester Roads.  The traffic was as expected; I knew this would be a long trip.

Where did everybody go?

I rolled passed what must have been a million square feet or more of empty shopping centers, free standing restaurants and parking lots.  Not blighted in the traditional sense.  No boards on the windows or graffiti on the walls.  Just vacancy.  Abandonment.  Miles of it.  It was as if people were mysteriously transported somewhere else by aliens or war or famine, leaving behind perfectly good storefronts.

On Winchester alone, I saw where Kroger and Best Buy used to be.  I passed two former K-Marts and what looked like a half dozen empty Applebee’s before finding my destination (or what I thought was my destination).  I couldn’t find Christian Brothers Automotive.  I found a Coleman Taylor and an Express Oil Change and a few other places that could probably take care of my wife’s brakes.  But I never found the place offering $20 off.

So, I headed back to town.  I had already burned up a few dollars worth of gas and fair amount of time.  No need to make things worse by driving in circles.  Plus, I had not yet really cheated… right?  Perhaps it doesn’t count if you never actually make it to the date.

This place is a zoo.

I eventually hit Madison Avenue.  The guilt started to set in the second I saw Mercury Valet Cleaners.  What would they say if I snuck around taking my clothes to someone else?  Then I passed an old stand-by, The Bar-B-Q Shop, and the brand new restaurant, Fuel.  They are working to make my neighborhood special, shouldn’t I?  I turned toward Poplar and quickly noticed Café Society, one of our favorites.  I also spotted the renovated and expanded Joe’s Liquor.  Would I drive to Winchester for wine?

I pulled into Steve’s Tire and Auto and walked in as if nothing was going on.  I explained the brake issue, handed over the keys and then was offered a ride if I needed one.  Funny thing… I didn’t.

I walked out the front door debating what I could do for breakfast.  I passed on CK’s Coffee Shop and chose to grab milk and donuts from Circle K.  Why a convenience store?  Because it was across the street from Overton Park.

I sat in the park, read my newspaper and ate donuts.  That is until my sister called.  Within minutes, she and my two nieces were meeting me for a day at the zoo.  I don’t know what you do when your brakes are being repaired but, from now on, I go to the zoo.  I walked out of Steve’s and found myself at the sea lion show!  Where else can you do that?

Please don’t leave me!

The day turned out to be marvelous and the car is running fine.  I don’t know if Steve’s brakes are $20 more than the other place.  And, I am sure Christian Brothers would have been fine when I figured out where they were.

I do know that I don’t want my neighborhood to look like Winchester.  I don’t want new businesses to think I take them for granted.  I don’t want old buddies to close their doors and disappear.  I don’t want to miss out on waving to the dog walkers and Frisbee throwers and stroller pushers when walking from the garage to the zoo to my house.

I hope my apology is accepted.  I look forward to replacing the tires soon.

Several years ago cities thought they were in crisis.  Revenues were falling, expenses were growing and emergency funds were depleted.  Some aggressively changed tact, or challenged people or cut costs.  Most waited it out hoping the storm would pass.

Memphis has an opportunity to use our budget crisis today to reform our system for tomorrow.  Examples from peer cities and from visionary business practices could set the stage for Memphis to emerge stronger.  But only if hard decisions are made, bold initiatives are completed and basic principles are developed to guide us in good times and bad.

We cannot retreat, putting this off on the next generation or even the next administration.  Let’s tackle this today so we can enjoy tomorrow.  Let’s take our medicine; otherwise we will keep getting sicker.

Cuts Are Inevitable

CityMayors.com posted this in 2003: “As a result of an increasing squeeze on municipal budgets, many US cities and towns are cutting staff and services and increasing fees.”

According to a survey by the National League of Cities, the biggest negative factors affecting budgets were: costs of city workers’ health benefits (cited by 63%), costs of city workers’ pensions (30%), reduction in state aid (29%), the local economy (25%), and infrastructure needs (25%).

In response to the deteriorating fiscal condition of cities: nearly half (47%) of all cities increased fee rates in 2003, 30% reduced city employment, 29% imposed new fees or charges on services, 21% reduced actual levels of capital spending, and 11% reduced city service levels.

The cities that reacted with great enthusiasm then, may not be panicking as much through the current crisis.

The Streetsweeper Theory

We have to ask why we do certain things the way we do them.  An easy example is streetsweeping.  Has anyone ever wondered why some cities operate streetsweepers at night and others do it during the day?  I once took over a program that ran a streetsweeper between 9 am and 5 pm.  Public trash cans were emptied.  Weeds were cut.  Flowers along the sidewalks were planted and watered, while the sun was shining bright.

Some might just say, “Yea for sweeping the streets!”  Those people had not seen the budget.  It was unsustainable and it was costing other programs like public safety and economic development, as more and more funds were diverted.  We had to ask, “Is our goal to have a great looking downtown or is it to look like we are trying to have a great looking downtown?”

Streetsweepers run at night because cars aren’t on the street and people aren’t walking along the sidewalk.  Some cities run sweepers during the day precisely because people are around to see what they are getting for the money.

By changing the system and putting our crews out from 5 am to 7 am when everyone was out of the way, we accomplished far more impressive results.  Expenses plummeted.  Efficiency skyrocketed.  And the place looked amazing.

However everyday for about a year, a different property owner or elected official would call.  They were enraged that our streetsweepers were gone and couldn’t believe how we were wasting their money.  We stuck to our guns and over time (and with a bit of campaigning) the public caught on to the change and how cool the end results really were.

This is, of course, a most simplistic example.  I know many of our troubles are tougher to tackle.  But picking apart every initiative to get to the why, is what we have to do.  When we look strategically at the service and what it is intended to accomplish, we may not have to debate funding verses firing.  We may find ways to improve performance, doing a better job for less money.

What To Do

1. Improve customer service today.  This is cliché by now but a culture of great customer service brings costs down while driving customer satisfaction up.  Do something extra and unexpected and smile while you are dong it.

2. Look to cities that beat us to the punch.  Some cities started changing their budgets and attitudes in 1993, others in 2003 and others in 1953.  We have to start expecting responsible government at all levels of our community but that doesn’t mean we can’t look to others for help.

3. Hire real estate managers… good corporate real estate managers… to manage everything.  Great real estate investors understand the balancing act between reducing a property’s expenses, generating new revenues and keeping existing tenants from moving out.  This is honestly and exactly what our government is facing.  Commercial real estate has trained an army of managers who could easily use their talent with building portfolios to improving the portfolio of our city assets.

4. Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the performance.  Cutting is one strategy.  Raising new funds is another.  Delivering a better product almost always wins… even in government.

Where To Start

Phoenix is known as America’s Best Run City.  They have long had one of the best government websites.  An academic case study was done by Janet and Robert Denhardt entitled – Creating a Culture of Innovation: 10 Lessons from America’s Best Run City.  Phoenix takes pride in customer service, looks into the future to prepare for challenges, empowers both the public and its employees, and confidently stays the course because they have laid a solid foundation.

Minneapolis has started to think strategically about everything it does.  Cost-benefit analysis may not be what they call it, but that is what they are doing.  They are attracting business and revitalizing the inner city by making one strategic change.  Mayor Rybak recognized that the usual suspects in their incentive package were driving expenses in areas that hurt the economy of the core city.  He didn’t take any incentive off the table and may have actually added a few.  But he did state very boldly that Minneapolis would no longer give incentives to business to do whatever they wanted to do.  He would only entertain assistance to companies that would provide development that was beneficial to the city, in locations where it was needed, fit strategic goals and didn’t cost his people more than they were going to get in return.  If this means losing a business to a neighbor or distant competitor, he figures it is better to burden their citizens than his.

What To Read

There are voluminous business textbooks on strategic marketing and production management and operational efficiency.  If you have time, go get an MBA.  But for now, you may just want to take a weekend and read two, more simple books.

Ken Miller has a 124-pager called We Don’t Make Widgets – Overcoming the Myths that Keep Government from Radically Improving.  If you don’t get the point by page 12, other people and their systems aren’t your problem.

Despite the most cumbersome title in history, Michael J. Lipsey has distilled a wide range of revolutionary changes for customer service in the 191-page Tenants or Guests, Brokers or Clients, Vendors or Partners.

These should inspire you to look deeper, as well as to act on something today.

On March 24^th a Sinkhole appeared on I-240.  Helicopters soon hovered above, reporters descended on the scene and traffic was snarled throughout East Memphis.  Approximately 48 hours later, repairs were complete, the emergency subsided and our city went back to business as usual.

In a coup for Smart City Memphis, I have the obtained the first post-repair interview with The Sinkhole itself.  The Sinkhole speaks, on the record, sharing its experiences, thoughts regarding the greater sinkhole community and offering insights into life at the bottom.

JL: How are you feeling?

SH: Amazed and relieved.  I didn’t expect to be feeling good as new so fast.  It was a wild ride.  Who knew that a simple Sinkhole could grab so much attention?  I’m glad no one was hurt, had a pretty good time and feeling relaxed now that things have calmed down.

JL: You seem surprised that this was over so fast?

SH: Well, it’s not like I’m the only Sinkhole around.  With the way other sinkholes get taken care of, I thought I might just be told to change my name to Pond or Ditch.  You remember that sinkhole Downtown a while back?  Amtrak couldn’t stop in Memphis for months.  But you mess up a bunch of commuters and I guess you get real popular.

JL: What was the damage, by the way?

SH: Oh I figure about 60,000 people roll past here each day.  Some from out of town, others going to work, some just cruising the loop.  I bet I ticked off 100,000 people.

JL: Sounds like a lot?

SH: Not really.  My sister-in-law, Education Sinkhole, probably deals with over 300,000 students every day.  If you tack on 600,000 parents and a big-ole community that is going to need these kids to be smart, that is a pretty big crater.

She is sure mad right now though.  Half the time she thinks she is more important than any other sinkhole in town.  We tell her all the time that she gets all the money anyway.  But she swears the future is tied up in her and if I can get fixed in 48 hours, surely someone could do something with her.

JL: What did you tell her?

SH: Nothing.  My cousin, Middle Class Sinkhole, butted in.  I told him he wasn’t really a sinkhole and to mind his own business.  He wanted to know what you call it when a bunch of people funnel out of one place and settle in another.  He says I don’t pay any attention to him because he’s been sinking since the 50s.

I only talk to him because he has a bunch of young friends.  All 25 to 35 years old.  Hard to keep up with them though.  They’re not just moving around this area.  They are dropping out of this region all together… you want to talk about a major sinkhole?  I think over 20,000 of them have disappeared since 1999.

JL: You sound like this bugs you?

SH: Doesn’t bug me.  48 hours.  I got fixed in 48 hours.  Education affects millions and can’t get any attention.  Flight is in your face and no one is even trying to do anything about that.  I’m on the highway, man.  I have no complaints.  Plus, this town is loaded with sinkholes and I can’t worry about all of them.

JL: You know some on Smart City Memphis have concerns about our city budget?

SH: Worry away.  I have Washington money and Nashville money.

JL: What would you think if the money used to take care of you was used on a much bigger, newer highway loop?

SH: Ain’t gonna happen.  They said my highway was critical to solving all of the nation’s traffic problems years ago.  They said it had to be here to address growth in this community too.  They are not letting anything happen to that.  I am secure.

JL: I know, as a sinkhole, that you may not know what’s happening with new concrete.  What if I told you that 20 miles on every side of you, hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent to build a new version of your highway specifically to solve all of the nation’s traffic problems and address growth in this community?

SH: That’s crazy.  I just told you Memphis has a bunch of other sinkhole problems.  Most of those are caused because of population decline not increase.  Are you listening?  What would we need all that new highway for?  Unless you just want to fix a bunch of new sinkholes?

At that point, our interview was interrupted by attorneys from the Department of Transportation who asked us to submit a written request for information and to get moving.

And I felt that we Memphians better be ready to demand attention from Nashville one way or another through the remainder of the campaign and beyond. The words in this withdrawal pointed out to me Memphis’ importance to this state, its precarious position in its own history and the neglect it often suffers.

Lessons in Leadership

Set Goals

“We have had a specific campaign plan which called for a budget of $2.5 million – Our initial goal was to have at least $1.0 million of that by the end of 2009.”

Keep Trying

“We fell significantly short of that goal. We then set a goal of having at least $1 million by April 1 of this year.”

Accept Responsibility

“My primary responsibility was to successfully convince enough people to make that investment. To the extent we failed, it was my failure.”

Recognize Others… Even Competitors

“Since State Senator Jim Kyle and I have both withdrawn from the race, we have no candidate from my own community of Memphis and Shelby County or who understands personally its unique needs and opportunities.”

Summary of Universal Issues

“We have crime driven by gang activity and drug trafficking which cries out for changes in our state sentencing laws. We have one of the largest urban school systems in the nation with the urgent need for reform. The University of Memphis is a unique urban research university which is being overlooked by state government and deserves its own independent governing board. And state government needs to end its neglect of the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences and The MED.”

While many of us on Smart City Memphis have discussed these issues that the State of Tennessee should be addressing, it is rare to have them summed up and laid out so neatly in one paragraph.

Inspiration

“I hope the other candidates of both parties will work to learn more about the community I love. I’m looking forward to continuing my service as district attorney in Shelby County, our state’s largest jurisdiction. I’ll go to work every day determined to make my community an even better place in which to live. And I will continue to push aggressively for needed changes at the state level in our criminal justice system.”

Bill Gibbons may not have been the right politician in the right place at the right time to move this state from the Governor’s office. But we better follow his lead by doing what we can with what we have while we’re able.

I hope that our local leaders are listening and then acting. Mayor Wharton doesn’t shy away from Nashville or Washington and I hope our many other leaders are prepared to join the team. Taking action on problems in which the state should intervene will only be successful if galvanized and demanded by those we have elected from this community.

I hope that our local candidates are prepared to work like never before. Bill Gibbons said it best, “A statewide campaign in Tennessee is not for the faint-hearted.”

If you are running for Mayor or Commissioner or School Board or Dog-Catcher, you will have to campaign for Memphis at the State level. I hope your local vision is backed up by enthusiasm and unwavering strength.

Be the Squeakiest Wheel

It is easy for legislators and the Governor to work with Nashville. They are there all day, everyday. They watch Nashville news. They read Nashville papers. They dine in Nashville restaurants with Nashville leaders, business owners, citizens and lobbyists.

MEMPHIANS BETTER START SQUEAKING!

Like Gibbons, we need a goal and a heavy agenda to take east.

We need to keep trying when we aren’t being heard.

We need to accept our inadequacies when we fail, make some adjustments and then we need to try again even harder.

We need to build coalitions across our boundaries and rally together to solve the issues that we must, while forcing the State to step in when its authority is required.

We have to believe that crime and education and community health can be tackled, then run at real solutions with all of our might.

Our business leaders know this. Our elected leaders know this. Our citizens know this.

I’d like to take Bill Gibbons’ words in defeat as a rallying cry for the rest of us to make the next big push to band together and succeed. The first victory is being heard. A purposeful Memphis will have to speak loudly to Nashville with one voice. A determined Memphis may have to leverage our strengths and call in our favors just to get to the table. But we must begin moving toward our seat and shouting about what we need.

Making sure anyone with a tie to the Capitol hears what we are saying is the first step in making them realize that we can no longer be ignored.

Well, sometimes real life creeps up on you.  Today I was reading A Coordinated Human Services

Transportation Plan for the Memphis Area of 2007 (don’t ask why).  Several facts slapped me in the face and screamed, “SEE, THIS IS REALLY HARD TO FIX AND MAY TAKE A REALLY LONG TIME!”

There are people in the Memphis Metro Area that desperately need transit options.  Depending on which populations are included, this number is somewhere between 70,000 and 430,000 people.  Few of them live close to each other or close to where they need to go.  Few destinations are clustered in a logical way to make any transit option viable other than the personal automobile.  The challenge to serving our residents is far more wide-spread than people realize.  And, we are making decisions about public housing, new neighborhood development and the location of services that may be exacerbating the problem.

What is transit?

Transit covers a lot of bases.  The trolley, city buses, taxicabs, private vans and school buses are some modes most people would recognize.

Who currently uses transit in Memphis?

1. The elderly and disabled who cannot drive
2. Low-income residents who cannot afford to own or operate cars
3. Tourists

Where are the most in-need target populations?

Surprising to me, the regional population of people over 60 years old are the most centrally located.  The greatest concentration is within the 240-Loop but pretty evenly dispersed throughout it.  People with incomes below the poverty level reside largely inside the city limits of Memphis but outside of the 240-Loop.  The population with disabilities is much more spread out across the six-county region.

Where do most transit trips originate?

Trip origins are spread out all over the region.  Origins based on Families First, the Food Stamp program and Medicaid caseloads are concentrated in three locations.

1. Mainly in the Memphis city limits but outside the 240-Loop
2. West Memphis
3. Northern Tipton County

Origins based on elderly and disabled caseloads are concentrated in South Memphis, Fayette County, West Memphis and Desoto County.  The top 60 overall origin points are listed in the table below.

Where do most transit trips end?

Again, I was surprised by the density maps.  While destinations are spread all over the place, an East Memphis corridor going north to south from Bartlett to Hickory Hill stood out.  As well, the Collierville area had a similar density.  The top sixty destinations are listed in the table below.

Are we adequately serving people with transit needs?

Despite an extraordinarily wide range of public and private services, the simple answer is, no.

Latent Demand = 222,148

Average Daily Demand = 74,049

Average Daily Served = 25,860

At best we are leaving somewhere between 65% and 85% of the most in-need population unserved.  This is before we talk about including people who might make public transportation a mode of choice.  Not because MATA is dumb.  Not because MHA is bad.  Not because people don’t want transportation options or because options are universally doomed.

This is a hard, long term project because for fifty years we have intentionally built a community that has made it that way.

Today, I simply want to applaud the few people who woke up this morning knowing that they were heading out to try fixing it.

Over the last few months a debate has been brewing about the future of the Downtown cobblestones.  The problem of the area’s deterioration has been on full display.  Solutions have been presented.  Problems have been revealed and changes have been made.  Prices fluctuating from high to low based on different scenarios have been floated.  Through all of this, the chief advocates for preserving this area have been unable to agree on a compromise.  And every day the area gets closer and closer to becoming invisible history overcome by neglect.

In the next few weeks other, more interesting things will happen.  The RDC will ask the City of Memphis to cough up somewhere between $1 and $8 million to finish Beale Street Landing.  Sort of bugs you, doesn’t it?  Almost guaranteed is that some riverfront advocates will be there to oppose it.  I bet that ticks off a lot of you too.  But what happens next?  Is this project stopped, amended or embraced?  More importantly, what happens after that decision is made?

Sooner or later the RDC and other riverfront advocates will either learn to publicly and purposefully compromise or the great battle on the Mississippi will have to be waged once and for all.  The citizens of Memphis cannot continue to be held hostage by a group charged with developing the riverfront and others opposed to it.  Sooner or later the City will have to declare a victor allowing us to move on to the celebratory space we all demand.  Otherwise we will be stuck in this groundhog day for the rest of our lives.

Suck it up and finish Beale Street Landing

I hate to say it but we must complete Beale Street Landing.  The alternative is too detrimental to our future at a time in our history where our egos are too fragile.

Beale Street Landing has been criticized based on need.  It has been criticized based on design.  This project’s location, size and ultimate purpose has been criticized again and again.  Each time arguments were made, changes were agreed to and the project moved forward with official endorsements.  Now, perhaps around $20 million later, we find out that it needs more money to be finished.  This is infuriating!  But whether or not we are mad isn’t the question.  The question is what happens if we stop the project?

To me, this isn’t about the boat dock or the park or the restaurant or the flag poles or anything else that we could pick off of this project.  This is about the surrounding property owners.  This is about future development of privately owned parcels next door to this thing.  This is also about future funding of new public projects.  And this is about getting our heads out of our behinds and finishing what we started.

If Beale Street Landing is halted we will be out $13 to $21 million.  If it is halted, the Feds will laugh us out of Washington and the State will not let us into the Capitol if we ever come asking for anything like this again.  Tom Lee Park and the Cobblestones will forever be separated by a crater.  Number One Beale, if it is ever relaunched, will have to change its sales photos by replacing the internationally designed park feature with a pit.  AutoZone will be rewarded for its civic philanthropy with a front row view of a mudslide.

Memphians who actually use Downtown will have a visible reminder of our great mutual failure.  Visitors will wonder why someone doesn’t do something grand at the foot of Tennessee’s number one tourist attraction.  And Downtowners will just shake their heads at again being disappointed by all of the people who daily say they want what is best for THEIR neighborhood.

No doubt, it is fair to demand an accounting of how we got into this mess.  We should know how a project started before it was fully priced, before it was fully designed and before it was finally approved.  We should know how the community was engaged, who was involved and how the project evolved as a result.  We should hold the RDC and the other riverfront advocates responsible for their respective roles in this situation.  But stopping isn’t really an option, is it?

We need a decider

Someone needs to sit the RDC and other riverfront groups down and demand peaceful existence or a battle to the death.  In-limbo should no longer be acceptable for Memphians.  Let’s line up the projects, line up the issues and ring the bell.  Tolerance by the public (and most importantly, by contributors) is wearing thin after a decade or two of arguing about how we should embrace the Mississippi.

While this would be progress in the form of finally moving on and efficiently getting future projects done, it will be terribly disappointing.  The loser will represent an important segment of what makes cities truly successful.

The Riverfront Development Corporation is a unique catalyst for engaging the private sector, for building ambitiously inspired public amenities and for efficiently managing facilities in a way that is vastly better than past alternatives.

Riverfront advocates (like Friends For Our Riverfront) represent people who place appropriate value on our history, understand the potential of this City as it exists today and desperately want more people to experience our great public spaces.

However, most everyone else in town is divided.  One group thinks they are all fools with the same stated public mission but just jockeying for control or recognition.  The other group could care less if the cobblestones, Beale Street and all of Downtown quietly slides into the river.

We need a unified vision or a decision. Otherwise the group who thinks this is foolish and the group who doesn’t care will win, while all of the river lovers (and Memphians) in general will lose.

Aerotropolis is attempting to create linkages between all points of the community and multiple transportation modes to the airport area.  There are hundreds of miles of greenways being planned for Shelby, Desoto and Tipton Counties.  Sustainable Shelby is the first agenda for sustainability in the Memphis region and a strategic framework that addresses building codes, the environment and neighborhood rebirth.  As a follow-up to the 2026 long-range transportation plan, the Memphis MPO has decided to take on a regional imagining process to help determine how land uses should integrate with transportation needs while setting regional goals across jurisdictional boundaries.  And I-269 is one of the largest infrastructure projects in America.

Desoto County Supervisors should be applauded for pursuing a growth plan for their segment of the future I-269.  As well, Collierville planners deserve credit for a forward thinking Small Area Plan developed for their segment.  Some have accurately noted the need for local plans to guide development in areas that will be accessible from this new interstate loop touching two states and four different counties.  However, what the previously mentioned plans and this 30-plus mile I-269 project point out is a critical need for the first true Metro Area Growth Plan.

Honest planning for Memphis, the suburbs and beyond

A Regional Growth Plan not only studies development trends in an area, but guides equitable and sustainable expansion of resources to serve new development while maintaining the quality of life in existing neighborhoods.  The growth plan determines land-uses and housing strategies.  It lays out utility, infrastructure and transportation needs.  The plan helps us understand development’s impact on education, public safety and healthcare.  Workforce strategies are conceptualized and regional coordination is defined.

Most of all a Regional Growth Plan would help us understand both the fiscal impact of expansion and the quality of life that expansion would affect.  It would force us all to answer critical questions about the future of our community.

Can the Nesbit Water Association provide service to new neighborhoods, how much will that cost and will there ever be enough tax revenue to support new homes?  Will schools have to be built in Arlington and Piperton and will others have to be closed in Bartlett and Germantown?  Where will the new libraries, parks and community centers be and when will the old ones be decommissioned?  Will Memphis, Light, Gas and Water be able to continue providing power to new areas when the customer base in old areas is shrinking?  What happens to the Downtown office market that was replaced by the Airport office market that was replaced by the East Memphis office market when a new office market emerges in a different place?  Will industry be concentrated in certain areas or will it be spread from Covington to Hernando and from Marion to Hickory Withe?

Regional planning that works

Like many cities including Memphis in the late 1960s, Portland, Oregon found itself facing urban decay and suburbanization.  Tri-Met, the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was created to operate the area’s bus and rail system in 1969.  Then Republican State Governor Tom McCall and Democratic City Mayor Neil Goldschmidt rallied for and enacted strong local land use measures, a system of urban growth boundaries and rural conservation policies throughout the 1970s.

In 1977 the Oregon Legislature passed a bill allowing a referendum creating a Metro Council.  Residents in three counties and 25 cities in the Portland region elect the council that then works cooperatively with local governments on planning policy, regional services and quality of life initiatives.  The Metro Council proudly boasts about providing a regional vision and approach in order to build thriving communities, economic vitality and scenic beauty.  They also now manage over 12,000 acres of regional parkland, the Oregon Zoo, Convention Facilities, a Performing Arts Center, in addition to recycling and garbage services.

Since 1980, the City of Portland has grown by 57% with a population density of over 4,200 people per square mile.  The Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has grown by 62% to almost 2.2 million.  Portland’s regional household income surpasses $70,000 a year.

By contrast, the City of Memphis has grown by 4.8% since 1980 and has a population density of less than 2,200 people per square mile.  The MSA has grown by 29% to just over 1.2 million.  Memphis’s regional household income is almost $62,000 a year.

It’s not too late, we’re not too small, other regions are doing it

Manhattan, Kansas has an MSA with a regional population of less than 114,000 people.  In 2008, a coalition of seven different counties, four different cities, three chambers of commerce and two economic development commissions released the Flint Hills Regional Growth Plan for the Manhattan area.  This $900,000 initiative assessed regional conditions, anticipated future needs and prioritized actions to accommodate growth and mitigate adverse impacts.  The stated intention of the plan was never to supersede local agencies but rather to provide an assessment and a coordinated action plan to address the needs of the region.  The City of Manhattan recently hired its first Regional Growth Coordinator to spearhead the implementation effort.

More than winners and losers… survivors

Memphis is neither Manhattan, Kansas nor Portland, Oregon but we can learn by their examples.  These and other communities are realizing that the only way to survive is through a team approach to regional planning and development.  If West Memphis, Olive Branch, Whitehaven and Somerville continue to compete with one another, we will all continue to pay higher taxes for a declining level of government service.  As Mayor Wharton has said, “the present course is unsustainable on the basis of public finances, environment and land use, disposable neighborhoods, deteriorating health, and declining quality of life.” However, if we use I-269 or regional greenways or town-square restoration or manufacturing recruitment to start a dialogue about actual, coordinated regional growth planning, we have an opportunity to quickly change course and perhaps surpass our peer cities.