Shelby County Schools board member Althea Greene is running for the Shelby County Commission seat Tami Sawyer is leaving at the end of August.

Greene formally announced her candidacy in the May Democratic primary Wednesday, Dec. 15, at the corner of Chelsea Avenue and North Hollywood Street in North Memphis.

It was part of a flurry of maneuvering underway by candidates as next year’s election cycle begins to heat up. 

“I grew up in this area. I remember when there was a post office down the street plus a movie theater with a bank with a drug store,” said Greene, a retired teacher whose restaurant and catering business as well as church are near the intersection.

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“Everything we needed was in our community. Look around now,” she said. “We need to spend some dollars in this community, on this corner. As we see other communities are being developed, why not work harder in District 7?”

Greene also made a strong appeal to reverse the state’s new open carry law that permits those 21 and older to openly carry guns without a permit.

“My seat on the County Commission will not directly affect those laws,” she said. “But I would use my position to encourage our state and national leaders that we must eliminate the open carry laws in Tennessee.”

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A majority on the commission opposed the law through a resolution earlier this year, but it had no binding effect on the Tennessee General Assembly or Gov. Bill Lee.

“This law is so wrong for so many reasons. And I think it was created to do exactly what’s happening now, which is to increase murders in our communities,” Greene said Wednesday.

Asked about the statement later, Greene was more specific.

“That law was intended to put guns in the wrong hands. And we are clear on that,” she said. “If we don’t address it and get these guns off the street, we will continue to open up the newspaper, turn on the news and continue to see where guns are in the wrong hands and are being used by young people who don’t know how to use them properly.”

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Lee has defended the legislation, saying it actually enhances penalties for using weapons illegally. 

“The constitutional carry legislation that we passed actually enhanced and strengthened the penalties for those who use guns in criminal ways,” Lee said during a Memphis stop in June. “This legislation will actually help improve public safety across the state.”

Greene was appointed to a vacancy on the school board and then elected to a full four-year term in 2020. The school board seat she holds is not among those up for election on the August 2022 ballot, meaning Greene does not give up her school board seat in order to run for County Commission.

Candidates in the May county primaries can begin pulling and filing qualifying petitions with the Shelby County Election Commission as of Monday, Dec. 20.

But many candidates have already announced and/or filed forms with the Election Commission appointing treasurers.

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The District 7 commission race so far includes Kathy Temple, a resident in the Douglass area of North Memphis.

Greene said her three years on the school board have taught her the ins and outs of getting funding for the school system. Shelby County government, by the County Commission’s vote, is the sole source of recurring local funding for the school system that takes in Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County.

The school system’s $1 billion-plus budget is larger than county government’s $1.4 billion consolidated budget, with the county providing more than $400 million in funding annually to the school system as well as funding for the six suburban school systems within the county outside Memphis.

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The fact that the school system’s budget is larger than county government’s budget is a point that is usually raised several times during the county’s annual budget season.

“We have been putting some dollars maybe in the wrong places. So many nonprofits are out there and so many of them get dollars,” Greene said. “And sometimes we don’t monitor those dollars. We don’t follow up on those dollars. And perhaps they are not being allocated and used in the right place.”

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With less than a week to the start of the filing period to get on the ballot, moves in other races include Candice Jones, Eric Winston and Will Frazier Jr. appointing treasurers to run in the Democratic primary for County Commission District 11, the seat Democrat Eddie Jones is leaving because of term limits.

Frazier’s form doesn’t indicate the district he is running in, but his address is within District 11. He, Jones and Winston appointed their treasurers ahead of the commission approving a new seat of district lines for the 2022 elections. Although the boundaries of District 11 and other districts have changed, all three of the District 11 contenders remain within its new boundaries. Greene lives within the new boundaries of District 7 as well.

In the nonpartisan countywide judicial races on the August ballot, incumbent General Sessions Court Judges Bill Anderson, Danielle Mitchell-Sims, Betty Thomas Moore and Louis Montesi have appointed treasurers.

Mitchell-Sims was appointed judge in Division 3 by the County Commission earlier this year.

Judge Jennifer Johnson Mitchell, who won a 2018 special election to Criminal Court Division 10, has also appointed a treasurer in her bid for a full eight-year term.

Former General Sessions Criminal Court Judge Lee Wilson, who was appointed to the court and lost an election bid in 2010, has appointed a treasurer to run in Division 8, the drug court that Judge Tim Dwyer founded.

Public Defender Sanjeev Memula has amended his treasurer’s form to indicate he also will run in that division amid speculation that Dwyer will not seek another eight-year term on the bench next year.

Memula had already launched his campaign ahead of the amendment, indicating he was waiting to see which General Sessions Criminal Court positions might be open with no incumbent seeking re-election.

Attorney Dee Shawn Peoples has appointed a treasurer to challenge incumbent Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael on the August ballot.