Memphis City Council members rejected a proposed 31-cent property tax hike Tuesday, June 15, as they closed out the budget season with a $716 million operating budget and an $85 million capital budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The council gave final approval to a property tax rate of $2.71 — the rate set by the state that is calculated to produce the same amount of revenue as the current rate of $3.19. The rate takes into account the increase in property values seen in this year’s reappraisal of property for taxation purposes.

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Council member Martavius Jones outlined a 31-cent property tax hike that would have taken the rate to $3.02, but it never got to a vote.

Jones’ bid to suspend the rules to consider the item was contested and lost in a 1-8-2 vote. Jones was the only “yes” vote.

Council members Ford Canale, Chase Carlisle, Chairman Frank Colvett, Edmund Ford Sr., Cheyenne Johnson, Worth Morgan, Patrice Robinson and Jeff Warren voted “no.”

Council members Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas abstained.

Council members Jamita Swearengen and JB Smiley Jr. did not vote.

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With that, the council approved the certified tax rate of $2.71, making it the approved tax rate. Jones was the only “no” vote on the matter.

There was no council debate, although Jones made his case for a tax hike that would generate an additional $40.3 million in revenue for the city.

His plan called for:

• $10 million to increase city funding of the Memphis Area Transit Authority
• $14 million for a 3% pay raise to all city employees, not just police and firefighters
• $5 million in a solid waste supplemental fund to expand solid waste services beyond curbside pickup to include blight and illegal dumping
• $4 million for youth workforce training
• $4 million for the city’s affordable housing trust fund
• $3 million to the city’s capital “pay-go” fund that would go toward using cash instead of bond debt to finance smaller city construction projects

“Taxes are how we pay for services our citizens deserve and need,” Jones said. “The city budget sends a message to the priorities of the community.”

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Jones added that a $2.71 property tax rate sends the message that “there is a substandard level of service.”

“It’s never a good time to raise taxes. It’s never a bad time to invest in people and taking steps to clean up our city,” he said. “I think if I ask citizens if they are satisfied with the level of city services, a majority would say ‘no.’ ”

There were last-minute amendments to the city’s capital budget, including $1 million for 29 take-home cars for the Memphis Police Department.

The cars would be for officers who live within the city of Memphis, and they must be parked in the officer’s driveway or on the street. They cannot be parked in a garage.

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Ford tried to derail the expenditure that had the backing of the administration of Mayor Jim Strickland.

“I’ve got an issue with the police department right now,” Ford said without going into detail. “It’s very serious. This is a dangerous police department right now.”

After the council approved it anyway, Ford complained that he wasn’t being heard.

“We should have killed it right then,” he said. “You don’t pay attention. Wake up, y’all.”

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City Chief Operating Officer Doug McGowen said the take-home cars are an essential part of trying to recruit and retain more police officers. He also said the cars could help deter crime.

Police officers in special units like the TACT team already have take-home cars.

McGowen said because the cars are not driven from shift to shift, they have a longer life expectancy than those driven on a 24-hour daily basis.

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After Easter Thomas secured $46,000 in capital funding to improve crosswalks and intersections at three Frayser intersections near school in her district, Ford proposed and the council approved $500,000 more for the same kind of pedestrian traffic safety measures across the city.

All the last-minute amendments to the capital budget came from money left over from other items being rearranged during the budget process and were not additional capital funding.

With $154,000 of the $1.7 million left, the council divided it up for use among the 13 council members for allocations at $11,846 per council member.

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Jones made a second attempt in committee sessions earlier in the day to find $5 million in the operating budget to get the Mud Island River Park monorail up and running after years of being inoperable.

Of 11 council members in the committee session, he was the only one who voted for the monorail move.

Carlisle said he worked on a master plan for the river park.

“I spent the better part of a decade working on Mud Island,” he said in talking about city priorities and where he puts the monorail on such a list.

“The monorail is about priority 53,” Carlisle said. “No one wants to pay to deliver people to the island in its current state and condition.”

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Jones admitted some of his rounding up of small amounts from different line items to get to $5 million was “cut and paste.” But he also argued the amounts taken weren’t enough to have any real impact and amounted to less than a percentage point of the city’s $716 million operating budget.

Jones is known for budget season attempts to redirect smaller amounts of funding to his or other council priorities.

“I did find this budget harder than usual to find these cuts,” he said. “In past years, it was very easy to do so. This was very hard.”

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Council members were more open to his call to set aside $25.7 million of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act allotment for a set of assistance programs, some aimed at the city’s tourism and hospitality industry, including bonuses for workers who have returned to work by a certain date.

Jones wanted to move to get the money in programs including utility and rent assistance by the June 30 end of the current fiscal year in about two weeks.

That’s where others on the council questioned whether previous amounts under the federal CARES Act for those programs had all been used.

The administration also said there are still questions about whether using the ARPA money immediately might skew the coming calculation federal officials will make in the fall about the need for additional federal funding in the second installment of ARPA money to the city.

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“There are very specific items in our revenues that impact the calculation significantly,” city Chief Financial Officer Shirley Ford said, pointing to one line item in particular where the impact could vary from $16 million to $73 million.

While the city began calculating lost revenue for purposes of APRA money usage by line items, federal officials indicated last month they would look at the city’s overall revenue picture as well since 2019.

In the case of Memphis, that would mean counting several new revenue streams the city has enacted since the 2019 baseline year for determining revenue losses from the COVID pandemic that followed.

Ultimately, council members decided to hold the $25.7 million ARPA allotment with the uses outlined by Jones for later discussion to await the fall calculation in Washington and to get a better reading of where CARES Act relief programs were.