City Council Scorecard: New face, runoff reprise and One Beale deal
During two special meetings in seven days this month, Memphis City Council members filled an open seat on the body of 13 and tried to engineer a charter change referendum with no public notice.
Members then approved a compromise in the standoff between Mayor Jim Strickland and the developers of One Beale over financing for public meeting and convention space.
The council met Sept. 1 and again Sept. 7 in what was technically one meeting since they recessed the earlier meeting.
The Council Scorecard tracks the votes of individual council members and what is behind the proposals and the decisions.
Appointment to fill the vacant council District 4 seat
The council appointed Teri Dockery to the open seat on the first and only ballot with seven voting for Dockery and two voting for Jana Swearengen-Washington.
Background: The council seat covers Orange Mound, Cherokee Heights, South Memphis and parts of Cooper-Young.
The seat became vacant in August when second-term council member Jamita Swearengen resigned following her victory in the August county general election race for Shelby County Circuit Court Clerk.
Dockery will serve until the winner is certified in the Nov. 8 special election for the seat, which could go to a December runoff if none of the four contenders get a majority of the vote.
A majority is required to win an election for any of the seven single-member district City Council seats.
The procedure: This has varied over the years. This time, there were no nominations taken from the 12 remaining council members as there were in 2018.
That council filled three empty council seats with a great deal of difficulty, several delays, more than 100 roll call votes in a single marathon meeting and even threats of litigation.
This time, council chair Martavius Jones eliminated nominations.
Instead, after speeches by six of the seven contenders who applied for the appointment, the council roll was called with council members naming their choice among the seven.
Barry Ford was the only applicant not present for the process.
Voting for Dockery: Ford Canale, Chase Carlisle, Frank Colvett, Michalyn Easter-Thomas, Edmund Ford Sr., Worth Morgan and Patrice Robinson.
Voting for Swearengen-Washington: Cheyenne Johnson and Rhonda Logan.
Not voting: Chairman Martavius Jones, JB Smiley Jr.
Absent: Jeff Warren
Observations: At the outset, Swearengen-Washington looked like the favorite to get the appointment because of her name recognition as the sister of Jamita Swearengen and the family’s name recognition in the Orange Mound part of the district.
Normally, council members assume whoever they appoint will run for the rest of the term or a full term or both depending on the timing of the resignation.
But this vacancy wasn’t like the past three in its timing.
The three vacancies in 2018 were also a case of council members winning county offices the year before city elections. But in 2018, each of the three departing council members delayed their resignations from the council to the end of the 90-day period required by the county charter for them to resign their city positions.
That meant there would be no special elections before the 2019 regular city elections for a full four-year term.
Swearengen resigned less than a week after election day specifically to get it on the ballot.
The deadline for candidates to file for the Nov. 8 special election was nine days after Swearengen resigned.
Dockery pulled a qualifying petition for that but decided not to file and therefore not to run on the November ballot for the year or so left in Swearengen’s term.
Meanwhile, Swearengen-Washington, La Tonia Blankenship and Barry Ford — three of the four candidates on the November ballot — applied for the appointment.
The council had an interim candidate who could not change her mind and decide to run for the office after getting the appointment. They were also getting a lot of pressure from Swearengen to vote for her sister, according to several council members — so much that it may have had the opposite unintended effect of pushing those who felt like they were squeezed too hard to go for Dockery.
Dockery also helped her cause with a persistent but less intense lobbying effort that focused on her organizational skills.
Dockery has said she intends to challenge the winner of the seat in the special election in the 2023 city elections.
Amended referendum ordinance to put a city charter amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot that, if approved by voters, would require runoff elections in the Memphis mayor’s race if no candidate gets a majority of the votes in the October city elections starting with the 2023 city elections.
A motion to suspend the rules to bring up the item failed on a 6-6 tie vote.
Voting yes: Johnson, Jones, Logan, Easter-Thomas, Robinson and Smiley.
Voting no: Canale, Carlisle, Colvett, Dockery, Morgan and Ford.
Absent: Warren
How did this item come up: Dockery took the oath of office as soon as she got the seven votes and the appointment. Filling the vacancy was the only item on the agenda for the special meeting. But the notice of the meeting included wording that allowed the council to introduce from the floor any other items they wanted to consider.
So Dockery took her seat with the other 12 council members.
Smiley then moved to take up the third reading of a referendum ordinance to allow for city primary elections.
The city primaries ballot question had passed on two other readings, failed on its third reading but was pulled from the minutes of that meeting for reconsideration and delayed just for this occasion.
With no public notice but all evidence pointing to some private discussion among council members in violation of the state open meetings law, Smiley proposed amending the item to take out any reference to primary elections.
He instead substituted a return of the runoff provision for the mayor’s race starting with the 2023 city elections.
Smiley insisted the measure had already passed on two readings and that it wasn’t necessary to start all over with a first reading but to just go to third reading.
Council attorney Allan Wade had also told the council that to get the runoff ballot question on the Nov. 8 ballot, it was necessary to give it final approval at this meeting or forget about trying to do it.
That led to Smiley’s motion to suspend the council rules of order.
Suspending the rules: This is a motion both the council and the Shelby County Commission have used with more frequency in recent years to avoid having to take another final vote on an ordinance when it has been amended substantially between the second and third votes.
In many of those cases, the amendment is something that appears in written form publicly just before the vote is to be taken in the form of a “substitute motion.” Instead of amending the original, a new version is “substituted” for the original.
Frequent observers of both bodies usually can spot such a move by hard copies of the substitute being passed out with the motion from the floor to consider the substitute.
Most on the body don’t even feign surprise at the moves of which the public is unaware.
Observations: The council’s tie vote seems to just about bring the curtain down on attempts to change the structure of city government ahead of the 2023 elections.
The council returned to the August ballot a charter referendum that would have extended the limit of two consecutive terms for the mayor and council to three consecutive terms. Voters rejected the expansion just as they did four years ago when it was worded differently.
There is still discussion about changing the structure of the council to eliminate the two council super districts with three members each and make the council a set of 13 single-member districts.
That could come up either in what’s left of this year or early next year.
The council made some minor changes to district lines to update them for the District 4 special election on the November ballot.
But it was with the assurance of Wade that the council could still undertake more sweeping changes ahead of the 2023 city elections when all 13 council seats — single-member and super district — are on the ballot.
Easter-Thomas will move at the Tuesday, Sept. 13, council session to form an ad hoc committee to get public input on more dramatic changes to the districts even if it keeps the mix of single-member and super district seats that cover the city twice.
Jones has been a longtime advocate of 13 single-member districts.
A resolution approving a $10 million advance lease payment by the city for convention meeting space at the Grand Hyatt hotel at One Beale to the Center City Revenue Finance Corporation, which would be loaned to One Beale developers and paid back over a 10-year period starting in 2026.
The council approved the resolution a 10-0 vote.
Voting yes: Canale, Colvett, Easter-Thomas, Ford, Johnson, Jones, Morgan, Robinson, Smiley and Warren.
Not voting: Dockery
Absent: Carlilse, Logan
Observations: This was a compromise to a full “backstop,” or city guarantee, of funding to back up a reserve fund for the public part of what will be the third of three hotels in the larger One Beale mixed use project.
The council originally approved the 100% backstop One Beale developers wanted. But Strickland had to sign off on what amounted to a contract.
He refused to do so after financial advisers said city backing of a reserve fund tied to bond debt could endanger bonds financing unrelated city capital projects.
There were also fears bond rating agencies might lower the city’s bond rating in the volatile bond market.
Council members had questions but no opposition to the compromise that detaches the city money from the bond money for the hotel.
But there were concerns the owners of the Downtown Memphis Sheraton hotel, the city’s original convention center hotel, might seek similar funding now that the city had set the precedent.
The council vote on the compromise for the Grand Hyatt came the same day the Sheraton owners announced they would seek tax incentives to expand and refurbish the 40-year-old property to include a tower expansion with 300 more hotel rooms.
Another unrelated provision in the Grand Hyatt compromise that went over well with the council was the repayment of the loan through CCRFC.
It says if the One Beale developers missed annual payments of at least $200,000 or didn’t make the full $10 million in the 10 years they have to repay it, the city would end the PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreement.
If the PILOT ends, the property begins paying property taxes at the property’s full assessment, which would be an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million a year, according to One Beale Developer Chance Carlisle.
Carlisle’s brother, Chase Carlisle, is an adviser to the family firm and has consistently recused himself and left council chambers during votes and discussions of items related to One Beale. In this case, he was absent from the special meeting that had only one item on the agenda — the One Beale agreement.
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City Council Scorecard One Beale backstop Teri Dockery city runoff provisionBill 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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