Thumbnail: Memphis lags significantly behind comparable cities in its investment in affordable housing. If it halved the $19.3 million increase in the police and fire budgets and used that half to fund bonds, it could invest $106 million to address the city’s serious affordable housing deficit.
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Thumbnail: Memphis launches a $1 million housing trust that is underwhelming when compared to other cities. It cries out for a robust program to increase home ownership and give all Memphians an opportunity to create wealth.
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Thumbnail: Memphis can be a leader in a movement that downsizes or removes waterfront streets to improve quality of life. Downtown Commission’s Master Plan calls for a reevaluation and a possible road diet for Riverside Drive.
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Thumbnail: I recently posted a New York Daily News’ column by David Eichenthal, prominent consultant on city finances and justice with the PFM Group. He was also lead consultant to City of Memphis’ Five Year Strategic Fiscal and Management Plan. He says police and corrections have become sacred cows, with elected officials calling for more police as a show of their commitment to crime reduction, when it is time to reexamine and revamp hiring practices to require standards of professionalism, no tolerance policies toward abuse, and common sense policies limiting the use of force.
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Thumbnail: For the first time since the municipalites formed their own districts, Shelby County Schools District will receive a larger share of county and local sales tax funding than last year. The school districts in the municipalities will get less.
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Thumbnail: Police killings of Americans are up, and African Americans are victims at a rate more than twice as high as its percentage of population. The number of police killed by Americans is down.
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Thumbnail: Covid-19 is rebounding with a vengeance in the Sun Belt, and Memphis is one of the hot...
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Thumbnail: Racism can rear its head in the most mundane of situations for African Americans. Even a Memphis family in Destin is not immune from racist encounters. My memories of the Jim Crow South indicate how deeply engrained racism is in our culture.
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Thumbnail: The search committee is recommending to city officials that The Metal Museum becomes the next tenant of Rust Hall in Overton Park now that the Memphis College of Art has closed down. Armed with a promise to create a national museum and a pledge of $12 million from an out-of-town donor, the Metal Museum becomes the perfect occupant for the architecturally significant building.
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by Bill Day. Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. Cartoons Archive →