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 3895 articles by Bill Dries :
“There’s a lot of homeless children in Southeast Memphis,” Hospitality Hub Executive Director Kelcey Johnson said. “Southeast Memphis leads the county in evictions, almost three times as many as the rest of the city combined.”
Deputy Gov. Butch Eley has been part of Gov. Bill Lee’s administration for almost seven years.
The weeklong jury trial in Memphis federal court ended with the conviction of Ghost Mob leader Vincent Grant for the 2019 murder of a fellow gang member.
As it stands now, the Temple Israel building will come down to make way for Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church’s new church home.
The tour came the same day Musk announced his departure from the Trump administration.
A new plan for a local crime lab would focus on three specific areas with an estimated annual cost of $5.5 million. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and District Attorney General Steve Mulroy took the plan to Shelby County Commissioners Wednesday, June 4.
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has operated the West Tennessee Regional Forensic Center since 2014.
The full commission has one more voting meeting on June 23 to approve an operating budget, a capital budget and set the county property-tax rate before the fiscal year begins.
There will be a final vote on a new program to activate affordable housing on land currently going into the County Land Bank.
A grassroots organizer emerged as the winner over a retired businessman and party activist.
Memphis Zoo CEO Matt Thompson talks on “Behind The Headlines” about rising costs and lower attendance figures as well as how the zoo’s focus on elephants in an upcoming exhibit.
“It’s about the mother of the child who is going to school with your child,” Hospitality Hub Executive Director Kelcey Johnson said. “After school you take your child home. The other mother is taking her child to truck stops.”
The announcement was the kickoff of rebuilding efforts for the historic church.
In an “apples and oranges” comparison, the Shelby County Trustee said her office and the mayor’s administration don’t project county revenue the same way.
A new coalition is hoping to jump-start the development of both rented and owned homes.
Memphis City Council member Dr. Jeff Warren dipped his toe across the city-county dividing line when he waded into a discussion about building a new jail instead of a new Regional One Health campus.
Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s scathing report highlighting police abuses of power, Memphis Mayor Paul Young said the city would not enter into any federal consent decree with the DOJ.
The scorecard tracks how the city’s representatives voted in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill now goes to the U.S. Senate where the state’s two U.S. senators have already indicated they favor it.
Before the April 28 fire at the Downtown church, there were fires at the Memphis home of the nonprofit’s leader and another in East Tennessee at a property owned by her family.Related content:
“I didn’t know this until my confirmation process, but Memphis, Tennessee, is the homicide capital of America per capita, didn’t know that,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
Shelby County commissioners drew battle lines at their Monday, May 19, session as they go into the home stretch of their budget season.
The council also decided Tuesday, May 20, an appeal of a two-lot subdivision planned by one of its members in East Memphis and rejected a truck lot at Shelby Drive and Tchulahoma Road.
The Tuesday council day at City Hall also features a full briefing on a 120-year old brick culvert beneath the fire department’s maintenance shop that is at risk of “catastrophic failure.”
Chandler announced last week that he was leaving his position as executive director of the Germantown Performing Arts Center.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris has proposed a property tax rate for the new fiscal year that starts July 1 but the commission may leave the ordinance setting the new tax rate blank for now.