Author: Smart City Memphis

Watching the news unfold in New Orleans, we’ve learned painfully that the belief that someone is in charge when disaster strikes can be misplaced. Unfortunately, we also learned that too often, no one learns until it’s too...

Today, a Smart City guest with OK-FIRST, Oklahoma’s emergency management service, told me about “StormReady,” awarded by the National Weather Service to communitiies proven to be prepared to respond to severe...

In response to several emails and calls asking for more information about how fairness could be injected into the current tax system, here’s our observations. Memphis is unique in its place as one of only a few metropolitan...

In a blog last week, we mentioned that Mayor Herenton’s consolidation presentation was ignored by the news media and that the committee he appointed to study consolidation was hijacked by the town mayors and is now yet one more...

The late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen once notably said, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon, it adds up to “real” money. In Shelby County Government’s case, it’s ten million here and ten million there,...

The Bush Administration proved again last week that it has a tin ear when it comes to poor Americans.Beset by troubling and unrelenting questioning about whether the federal government’s bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina...

Mayor Herenton finally met his match last week when he bowed out of his latest campaign for school consolidation. In acknowledging that his presence is a lightning rode for controversy, he threw in the towel. But his defeat was...

It is a day to wonder if any government can get it right.Leaving television reports filled with today’s images of Hurricane Katrina, I drove to the Justice Center to go to traffic court. It’s not an experience that builds...

It’s been a historic week for the news media covering Hurricane Katrina. They have discovered poor, black people.There is widespread outrage about the deaths directly caused by the failure of our federal government to mobilize...

The following blog from early August is worth revisiting now that the Memphis Regional Chamber has taken a “more of the same” approach to its future with the selection of its next president. The new head of the...