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Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for more than 40 years.
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Also on the Tuesday, Sept. 21, Memphis City Council agenda is more discussion of how to spend the council’s $20 million share of the city’s federal ARPA funds and a minimum wage for getting EDGE tax incentives.
A low vaccination rate is just one of the problems the city faces as it wrestles with chronic problems surrounding solid waste disposal.
The measure is one of three proposals to limit and require local government approval and regulation of new oil pipeline projects. It’s broader than the other two measures delayed Tuesday over lingering legal questions.
The resolution to form a commission to draft a consolidation charter showed up in Wednesday committee sessions without notice. Like the City Council, county commissioners amended it to stop short of beginning to draft a charter and to include looking at changes to local government short of consolidation.
The Shelby County Commission’s ad hoc group on the new district lines got its first look at some proposed maps for the redistricting plan this week. The group makes recommendations to the full commission, which decides on how to deal with shifts in population within its 13 districts.
Sheriff Floyd Bonner says the COVID-19 pandemic has made his job more difficult but touted low crime rates in unincorporated Shelby County.
The head of the city’s Office of Business Diversity and Compliance is also leaving her position.
The WKNO Channel 10 program features a reporters’ roundtable discussion on a variety of topics, including passage of the first of three city ordinances out of the controversy over the Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline project.
The Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission are already getting requests from groups that want a share of the money.
Shelby County Democratic Party Chairwoman Gabby Salinas says a new political action committee approved for the local party is a start toward a better-organized Democratic effort in the state’s bluest county.
The second part of the City Council-County Commission move toward a consolidation charter proposal showed up unexpectedly in committee session last week on the county side. And it was panned by most of the seven commissioners present even after a compromise to consider steps short of a merger of the two governments.
Some of the reaction called for an immediate look at the causes of such violence as part of a national debate while others called for supporting those grieving from the loss of life, at least for now.
After two contentious budget seasons, commission chairman Willie Brooks has changed up what is the most critical committee assignment in county government.
Ford Motor Company has selected the Memphis Regional Megasite for an electric vehicle and battery manufacturing campus, investing $5.6 billion and creating 5,800 jobs. Gov. Bill Lee said it was “the largest single investment in this state’s history.”
When chairman Willie Brooks created a study group Monday on possible local government changes without a vote, some commissioners call it a consolidation committee in all but name, causing chairman Reginald Milton to quit.
Memphis and the surrounding region lost out when the state’s original auto corridor was established in Middle Tennessee almost 40 years ago. But the new Ford plant in Haywood County comes with lessons from that pursuit as well as doubts and the prospect of more change beyond the electric vehicles powered by batteries made at the megasite.
Highland Avenue by Treadwell Middle School, north of Sam Cooper Parkway, will become more pedestrian and bicycle friendly with a grant of up to $25,000 from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
An anti-vax “Freedom Rally” Downtown Wednesday drew several dozen people including a candidate for Tennessee governor and two congressional candidates.
The second of two online public hearings hosted by the Tennessee Valley Authority is Thursday at 6 p.m. After pausing the process following City Council opposition, TVA is again talking about a detailed plan to move the waste by truck from southwest Memphis to a landfill in Capleville.
Former Memphis City Council member Barbara Swearengen Ware has died at the age of 82.
Barbara Swearengen Ware died Thursday, Sept. 30, 11 years after she resigned from the Memphis City Council after a plea deal on an official misconduct charge. She served 17 years on the council representing the North Memphis area that included the Douglass community.
The city is moving ahead with plans to expand the Memphis Zoo parking lot and take part of the Overton Park greensward in the process, the zoo and the city announced Friday, Oct. 1.
On “Behind The Headlines,” Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner talked about battling the COVID pandemic at the county jail and a call to resume federal oversight of Juvenile Court, including the detention center he runs.
Former federal prosecutor Linda Harris said Memphians are becoming “desensitized” to violence and that current remedies aren’t working. Harris is one of several candidates who plan to challenge incumbents in the criminal justice system by calling for change.
Halbert began complaining about the issue soon after she took office in 2018, resulting in the state investigation.