County Commission Scorecard: FedExForum, detention center, MATA and residency
The dollar figures are still being totaled at City Hall and the county building on the new FedExForum deal that keeps the Grizzlies in Memphis at least to the end of the decade.
The county’s process has been more public than the city’s.
Both mayors still have to outline plans for where the $45 million over the next eight seasons would come from in their respective budget proposals that are just around the corner.
Meanwhile, the current commission has less than six months left in its term and last month found itself still grappling with a project that dates back to the start of its four-year term — a juvenile detention center.
The commission called a special March 28 meeting to deal with cost overruns on what started as a new detention center near the present Downtown site of Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court and is now a renovation of the old Shelby Training Center on Old Getwell Road.
The County Commission Scorecard tracks the special meeting vote as well as three decisions from the only commission meeting for the month of April on FedExForum, a follow-up on MATA budget funding and a new wrinkle in the residency question for some county employees.
Here are bios of the 13 county commissioners.
A resolution for $10.9 million more for continuing renovation work on the juvenile detention center at 3420 Old Getwell Rd.
The resolution was approved on an 8-0 vote.
Voting yes: David Bradford, Chairman Willie Brooks, Eddie Jones, Reginald Milton, Brandon Morrison, Van Turner, Michael Whaley, Mick Wright
Absent: Mark Billingsley, Edmund Ford Jr., Mickell Lowery, Amber Mills, Tami Sawyer
The Numbers: The current juvenile detention facility has a capacity of 135 beds. The renovated center on Old Getwell is to open in March 2023 with 146 beds.
The County Commission bought the Shelby Training Center in 2020 from Core Civic for $3.4 million, which changed plans to build new from the ground up elsewhere.
The cost of the renovation is $28.1 million, not counting the cost of buying the property from Core Civic, according to county Public Works Director Cliff Norville.
The total cost including the purchase of the building comes to a per-bed cost of $216,000.
Norville looked at recently completed or still under construction juvenile detention centers across the country for a comparison of per-bed costs that ranged from $647,000 to $892,000 per bed or roughly three times the per bed cost of the Old Getwell renovation.
Staying near the middle of that range in other places, at $700,000 per bed for 146 beds, the cost of building a new detention center here would be $102.2 million, by Norville’s estimate.
Phase 1, which was to be the only phase, came in at $14.7 million and should be completed this August. But it didn’t meet the standards of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, which will run the detention center.
The first phase has cost $13.3 million that has been spent to date not including the use of another $1.4 million from phase one to buy materials for phase two.
Norville estimates in the past two years, costs have gone up 20% to 30% on the project because of supply and demand issues.
Norville said Zellner Construction, the contractor, told him material suppliers and a subcontractor warned that their costs for building materials in the second phase would raise 10% to 15% by the first week or so of April and the delivery of those materials is already taking longer — 40 weeks in some cases.
Observations: The commission’s plan on this was to keep it in committee for more discussion. It’s a controversial project that has now grown beyond what started as a seemingly simple conversion of the old Shelby Training Center and more recently a Core Civic private prison facility.
But there were problems, including cells that didn’t have the suicide prevention measures required and locks that didn’t meet prison standards. All of that prompted a second phase for a project that originally had just one phase.
Jones pushed for the special meeting after Norville told commissioners Zellner Construction, the contractor, projected a 10% increase in the cost of the project by early April if there wasn’t a resolution locking in the late March cost.
With that, Brooks had commissioners polled to see how many could make the special meeting that drew eight — the seven for a quorum plus one.
The 8-0 vote was simple enough. But the detention center has always been a controversial undertaking.
Sawyer had a beef early on with County Mayor Lee Harris about whether a detention center upgrade should come ahead of a juvenile assessment center to divert children away from the court system.
The assessment center has also had a slow and at times controversial path to completion.
In the case of the detention center, Sawyer led the charge for a smaller number of beds, arguing that leaders of the local criminal justice system would move to fill whatever number of beds were in a new or renovated facility.
She ripped the project’s second phase and the special meeting at the April 11 commission session, saying she wasn’t polled on the meeting until she found out other commissioners were being consulted and began asking the commission office about it.
Brooks said there was nothing improper about the special meeting.
Sawyer attempted to at least get a “no” vote by her recorded on the matter before minutes of the meeting were approved at the April 11 regular commission meeting, noting it would not change the outcome.
But the move was overruled by the commission’s parliamentarian, who said there is no provision in commission rules for such an allowance.
The renovated detention center with a juvenile court courtroom as well as educational facilities for children detained by the court will open sometime next year within the four-year term of the commission that is elected in August and takes office Sept. 1.
A resolution approving additional county funding for FedExForum
The resolution was approved on a 13-0 vote.
Observations: This was an item added onto the agenda with no public notice. Commissioners had been briefed on it during a close attorney-client session during April 6 committee sessions.
For the duration of the Grizzlies current contract with the city and county governments to operate FedExForum to the end of 2029, the county and city have agreed to what amounts to a settlement to prevent the NBA team from possibly leaving the Forum and the city. Attendance during the pandemic fell below a certain level, triggering the early exit option in the terms of the agreement.
That agreement is for the Grizzlies to operate the Forum for the city and county. As part of that, the Grizzlies are responsible for covering any red ink in the operation of the facility.
The Grizzlies, in return, have protection from competing arenas within the county of more than 5,000 fixed seats indoors. The city and county are barred from financing or helping to finance such a facility.
There was no discussion before the County Commission vote at the April 11 meeting and no detail other than the reading of the caption before the vote.
The numbers don’t exactly add up on the combined payments the city and county together will make over the next eight years starting with the fiscal year that begins July 1.
The commission’s vote was on its part of an agreement.
A Memphis City Council vote is not required for the city’s portion of the agreement because of the way the city and county charters differ on the ability of the mayors to make such agreements or contracts.
The Strickland administration puts its share of this at a total of just over $22 million. The county’s share is probably equal to that amount, although the commission’s resolution puts the share at a total of $18.5 million, which, if correct, would make this $40 million total for city and county.
For each of the next four Grizzlies seasons, both governments pay a combined $4.95 million a year. For the four seasons after that, they put up $6.3 million, which comes to a total of $45 million.
Mayor Jim Strickland could have more detail on specifically where the city’s share will come from when he presents his budget proposal Tuesday, April 19, for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Harris will also probably shed more light on the specifics of how county government would finance this when he presents his budget proposal in May 4 committee sessions.
Resolution on a grant contract with the Memphis Area Transit Authority for $1.3 million in county funding specifically for ‘MATA’s operating costs and the Transit Vision Plan.’
The commission approved the resolution on a 7-3-2 vote.
Voting yes: Brooks, Lowery, Milton, Morrison, Sawyer, Turner, Whaley
Voting no: Billingsley, Mills, Wright
Abstaining: Bradford, Ford
Not voting: Jones
Observations: Morrison sponsored this and the commission approved it during the county budget season about a year ago, and it is recurring funding.
But some on the commission and from both sides of the aisle are having some buyer’s remorse on this funding.
Some feel MATA should be more detailed in its plans with the commission for the money in the county budget.
Still others believe the funding should have been linked to county-appointed seats being added to the MATA board, whose board is nominated by the city mayor and approved by the Memphis City Council.
Morrison’s challenger in the only-contested Republican county primary on the May ballot is making MATA funding by the county an issue.
Jordan Carpenter says MATA is a city agency and the county has no business, at least under the current conditions, funding it.
Look for more of this discussion during the upcoming budget season that kicks off the day after the May 3 primary election.
Ordinance allowing county corrections employees and deputy jailers hired from April 2020 to April 2024 to live outside Shelby County provided $2,500 is deducted from their salaries.
The ordinance advanced on the second of three readings on an 8-1-3 vote.
Voting yes: Billingsley, Bradford, Jones, Lowery, Mills, Morrison, Wright, Ford
Voting no: Sawyer
Abstaining: Brooks, Milton, Whaley
Not voting: Turner
Observations: Since this was first proposed, state law has changed to bar any local government from having any residency requirement for police and firefighters.
The state law doesn’t apply to Shelby County Sheriff’s Office deputy jailers or guards at the Shelby County Corrections Center, according to county attorneys.
The provisions would apply to six current county employees and adds up to $15,000 in revenue for county government.
Mills, the sponsor, questioned whether this should even make it to third and final reading in May before voting for it on second reading.
First and second reading votes — no matter what the outcome is — do not stop an ordinance from advancing to third reading, by commission rules.
This may not make it to the next agenda.
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County Commission Scorecard Shelby County Commission FedExForum juvenile detention center Memphis Area Transit Authority county residency requirementBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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