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 3806 articles by Bill Dries :
The only countywide election of 2020 in Shelby County has drawn more than a dozen potential candidates for a position most citizens know little about. The political scramble for the office of General Sessions Court Clerk began in November when incumbent clerk Ed Stanton Jr. told his staff he would not be seeking a third full term.
A total of 16 contenders, 12 Democrats and 4 Republicans, filed by a Thursday, Dec. 12, noon deadline to run in the March 3 countywide primary for General Sessions Court Clerk.
The tiny Deaderick family cemetery in Orange Mound was once much bigger. And this week, an archaeological effort by the city and several Orange Mound groups found evidence of more graves beyond the wrought iron fence of the cemetery along Park Avenue.
Aspire Public Schools superintendent Nick Manning talked on The Daily Memphian Podcast about the move of the charter organization in Memphis for the last seven years to a local board in the new school year.
The Saturday gathering at the AFSCME union hall Downtown drew a group of 60 supporters. It follows a similar gathering Tuesday for those supporting rival Democratic contender and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Roshun Austin, Noah Gray, and Steve Lockwood discuss the efforts in their respective communities towards neighborhood development and revitalization with reporter Bill Dries and Behind The Headlines host Eric Barnes.
The City Council could also Tuesday revisit its decision two weeks ago to reject a solid waste fee hike. Mayor Jim Strickland said no fee hike could lead to laying off sanitation workers and scaling back garbage pickups of curbside trash. The combination with the MLGW rate hike proposal could cause the council to do either/or but not both.
The eight-unit apartment building at Kansas and Waldorf from the 1950s got an extensive rehab with state funding and some donations after sitting vacant for 20 years.
Two years to the week that Confederate monuments were removed from three city parks, the statues have been turned over to descendants or the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the city announced Tuesday.
Memphis City Council members voted Tuesday, Dec. 17, to back state legislation that would allow the Memphis Zoo to sell beer during its regular business hours.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is one of 16 Democratic contenders in the March 3 presidential primaries.
City leaders announced Wednesday, Dec. 18, they are pausing the parking plan at the Memphis Zoo to consider instead building a one-story parking deck of 350 spaces.
The Holiday Night Market Friday in the park highlights the intersection between the drive to remove the monuments and an earlier effort to activate the park for more Memphians.
Water and gas rate hikes were approved but a proposed electric rate hike was rejected. The council also took back its rejection of a solid waste fee hike that goes on the same monthly utility bills. That after Mayor Jim Strickland threatened layoffs and reductions in garbage service in the new year without the hike.
Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg drew a crowd of 150 at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library Thursday in his first campaign stop in the city.
Harvard research fellow Thomas Abt talked on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast about his book “Bleeding Out,” which says poverty and violence are linked but fighting violence should come first.
The six Memphis City Council members whose terms end with the new year said their farewells Dec. 17 at the last council meeting of the year. For some it was emotional, for others it was a time to reflect and for still others it was political.
The grants to eight nonprofits announced at City Hall Monday cover areas outside Downtown and Midtown where the housing stock is old and could use some help to encourage private development. The fund works with the city's recently approved Memphis 3.0 land use and development guidelines.
Thomas Abt, author of “Bleeding Out,” talks about urban violence and different methods for reducing it.
The incoming and outgoing leaders of the Memphis City Council agree the city probably doesn't have enough money from a half-cent sales tax hike approved by voters in October to fully restore benefits cut by the city in 2014.
Analysis of what is ahead for second-term Mayor Jim Strickland and a City Council that is a mix of second-termers, new members and those in between after an election year that delivered some mandates.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals has upheld dismissal of a 2018 lawsuit against the City of Memphis, Shelby County government and the Memphis Grizzlies by Elvis Presley Enterprises over Graceland’s plans to build a 6,200-seat arena on its Whitehaven campus.