Leadership_798680

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has one of the toughest jobs in politics – managing expectations.

Following his landslide election, expectations ran sky high.

Following eight years of neglect by the Herenton Administration, the demand for change was higher.

Following years of inattention, the need for a more livable Memphis had become a crisis.

All of it converged to create a political vise for the new city mayor.  On one hand, people wanted dramatic change, while on the other, they just wanted Memphis to get the basics right.  On one hand, they had renewed hope, and on the other, they are pessimistic that anybody can change things.

Second Chances

All of these public attitudes were on display when Mayor Wharton announced that he is reappointing most of the division directors from former Mayor Willie W. Herenton’s team.  There were the expected howls that nothing has really changed and disappointment that he did not take bolder action to send a message that the times are changing.

There’s little question that the politically expedient thing to do would have been to jettison most of the directors and to put his testosterone on display in pronouncing City Hall as his turf.  It is within that context that his actual decision on the directors was pretty gutsy.

It was also characteristically Wharton, advisors said, using adjectives like open-minded and fair.  Although these appointees serve at the will and pleasure of Mayor Wharton – with the confirmation of Memphis City Council – the new mayor is loathe to judge the directors’ abilities and performance based on years of a rudderless city mayor’s office.

That does not mean that these directors now have a free ride.  The debate about some of them is reported to have been animated and blunt.  In effect, their reappointments mean that they now have roughly 20 months to prove themselves – the time before the next mayoral election.

Marching Orders

As head of county government, Mayor Wharton proved on most occasions that he was committed to process and to giving people time to correct deficiencies before letting them go.  In that way, some people close to him say, his reappointment of most city directors wasn’t out of character.  He will give them a chance to prove that they can accomplish his agenda for city government, and if they don’t, they have made the decision about their futures.

In the coming months, there’s little doubt that Chief Administrative Officer George Little will repeatedly and clearly lay out the mayor’s expectations to the entire management team.   Mr. Little is described as a capable public sector administrator by former colleagues in the Bredesen Administration, where he served as Commissioner of Corrections, and they predict that he will require more than lip service to the Wharton agenda from the people who answer to him.

More to the point, if he does not see the results he wants, they say Mr. Little will show little reluctance to recommend a change to Mayor Wharton, but like his boss, he does little precipitously and without careful deliberation.  As someone in state government said of him, he is slow to anger but that shouldn’t be interpreted as being reluctant to make the hard choices.

His challenge as Chief Administrative Officer is to retool a management team that was part of a previous administration that represents the antithesis of Mayor Wharton’s ambitions and aspirations for city government.  After all, in the past eight years, the economic indicators for Memphis went from troubling to precipitous to crisis, but taking the long view, the mayor thinks with a clearer agenda and stronger management, the directors can deliver new momentum and the dramatic results he will demand.

Sustaining Change

Some of his political friends acknowledge that it could be a high-risk approach, but their concern is modulated by the fact that Mayor Wharton isn’t putting directors in place for four years but until the end of next year.

From the sound of things, their success will be measured in implementing the Wharton agenda of smart growth, talent and human capital development, a City Hall culture of innovation, entrepreneurial leadership, and a sustainable and livable Memphis.  To this end, a good way to evaluate whether directors are succeeding is to measure their performance against the Wharton platform, Sustainable Shelby and the report of his transition team.

Speaking of Sustainable Shelby, there is good news.  The Shelby County Board of Commissioners accepted the federal funding that will allow the opening of the Office of Sustainability – the engine for the far-ranging Sustainable Shelby recommendations.  It’s an exciting milestone for all of us who care about a livable, sustainable and successful city, and the new office will incubate in the Division of Planning and Development, which was the driving force behind Sustainable Shelby.

Not as well-known is that the idea for the process that produced our region’s first sustainability agenda was Mayor Wharton’s, an outgrowth of his emphasis on smart growth following his 2002 election as county mayor, and as a result, he will continue to be crucial to implementation of the recommendations, most of which fall within the purview of city government.

Sprawling Problems

While Mayor Wharton’s attention on smart growth was spurred by the threat of bankruptcy if county government’s debt remains unchecked, he is able to show just as much passion about reducing daily commuting mileage, increasing and improving public transit, creating neighborhood-based green jobs, complete streets, bike/walk plans and healthy, walkable neighborhoods.

We’ve proven how badly we can degrade our quality of life with unbridled sprawl, with developers calling the shots, with traffic engineers given the power to shape our city’s character and with an inequitable tax structure subsidizing the unsustainable lifestyle choices of residents in far-flung reaches of Shelby County.

That’s why it was encouraging to us that the #1 recommendation dealt with the public realm. We would never have predicted it, but there it was – “Create/reinvest in a great public realm that includes parks, schools, streets, plazas that are appropriately scaled – one size does not fit all.” Coupled with it in our mind is the #2 recommendation, which said: “Create/reinvest in great neighborhoods – not merely subdivisions – that are “complete, walkable, and provide a sense of neighborhood.”

Too often, in Shelby County, we’re not having the right conversation about the right issues. It feels like for the first time in almost a decade, it seems like we actually have the chance for a number of the right conversations that are fundamental to the kind of city that we want and deserve.