Reporter
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.
There are 3905 articles by Bill Dries :
While the new Frayser high school is being built on the current site of MLK Prep, those students will have to attend another school. Then, once the new school is built, Trezevant High School will close.
Latest cost estimates for the proposed Frayser area high school
The five-stage music festival May 3-5 includes a diverse lineup and lots of the city’s mix of music.
The DMC will also continue its policy of what amounts to a cover charge that goes to pay the cost of the private security.
The long-delayed final vote on the rule changes come with plenty of frustration about numerous rewrites of the proposal and long meetings to review them.
The commission first voted against sending the statistics to the state. But then it approved the report after attorneys said it would violate state law not to send it to state officials.
The County Commission took three votes on the county Land Bank Monday, which touched on larger issues that showed lingering differences across two other unrelated items.
The outage shortened the council’s meeting and hindered its online capabilities, including its Granicus and YouTube feeds and the body’s electronic voting system. Most of the council’s business was delayed to the April 9 meeting.Related story:
The Memphis City Council’s Tuesday meeting also includes a vote on a $200,000 salary for a new MLGW vice president that the council delayed two weeks ago.
The local government audit unit of the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office issued its report Thursday, March 21, on incorrect revenue figures from the Shelby County Clerk’s office after a three-week investigation that included a week in Memphis.
Hamilton County District Attorney General Coty Wamp and her investigators finished their two-day visit to look at problems within the Shelby County Clerk’s office.
Business leaders on “Behind The Headlines” say Memphians leaving the city because of crime is a real threat to the city’s economic prosperity, and they had to act on the problem.
“Pine Hill needed a win,” Mayor Paul Young said at the opening of the new clubhouse, which overlooks the revamped golf course in Longview Heights that opened last June.
There are a litany of things that can cause a ship or barge to collide with a bridge, with “Mother Nature being a primary one,” according to a waterways management chief with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young is hosting a newly formed coalition of Black mayors from 12 states.
City leaders get an earful from Frayser citizens at Memphis Mayor Paul Young’s third “One Memphis” forum.
Cohen secured $1.9 million in federal funding for MPD — half for surveillance cameras and the other half for officer equipment.
Sen. Bill Hagerty, Mayor Paul Young, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and other local officials focused on steps and initiatives that the group could agree on.
Presley was on hand for the announcement regarding the former Hard Rock Cafe site, which will house the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum and Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
The political roundup recaps some of the major action just ahead of the April 4 deadline for candidates to get on the August ballot.
The first County Commission Scorecard of 2024 also includes commission votes on large utility-scale solar farms along with pay raises in the Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office.
The first Memphis City Council Scorecard of the body’s term of office finds the council cleaning up a few leftover matters and examines the vote that didn’t happen on a North Memphis biomass facility.
“I’ve been ... hearing some great stories and then hearing some of the sharper and harder stories about the work that remains ahead and lies ahead,” New MSCS superintendent Marie Feagins said at the first stop on her tour of 20 schools this month.
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn was in Memphis Wednesday and talked with The Daily Memphian about crime, a proposal she is sponsoring to strip federal funds from cities with a no-cash bail policy and whether Memphis is a “soft-on-crime” city.
The son of Martin Luther King Jr. returns to Memphis on the anniversary of his father’s assassination for the National Civil Rights Museum’s annual commemoration.