Shelby County voters begin casting ballots in the last election of 2018 Wednesday, Oct. 17, as early voting opens before the Nov. 6 election day. The 27 early voting sites across Shelby County are all open from Wednesday through Nov. 1. The midterm general election cycle typically sees a higher turnout than the August county general and state and federal primary elections.

Additional parking along Riverside Drive, better access to the riverfront and improved safety are more important than keeping the Downtown thoroughfare at four lanes, a new survey for the Memphis River Parks Partnership shows.

When Jess Gaughan spoke last month at the start of an aborted debate that became a forum for Democratic Senate nominee Phil Bredesen at Rhodes College, the leader of Rhodes' Democrats didn’t get the same attention she might have.

Two Memphis fire stations are fostering dogs in a pilot program with Memphis Animal Services that is drawing inquiries from other fire departments and requests from other firehouses in the city. The stay at the fire stations could be two to three weeks before the dogs are transported to other cities for adoption there.

Questions on three city charter changes will stay on the Nov. 6 ballot. Shelby County Chancellor Jim Kyle denied Thursday a legal motion by critics of the referendums to remove them from the ballot as misleading and in violation of state law.

The Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club says a proposal to end Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division’s ties to the Tennessee Valley Authority and instead buy electricity from a renovated Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Alabama is “pie in the sky.”

Voters in Shelby County have decided 52 referendums in the last decade of elections, from wine sales in food stores to the formation of suburban school systems to amendments to the Tennessee Constitution.

Memphis City Council members never got a chance to see the video made by backers of a move to make a renewed Bellefonte Nuclear Plant the major supplier of electrical power to Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division.

Memphis City Council members approved a New Bellevue Baptist Church sanctuary and set of 17 single-family homes Tuesday, Oct. 9, on 4.6 acres of land on the border of the Hein Park subdivision.

The former chief operating officer of the Tennessee Valley Authority wants Memphis Light Gas and Water Division to drop TVA as its electrical power supplier in five years.

A group of 50 protesters and a few dissenters outside the Peabody Place office building Downtown Monday evening played out the ongoing national debate over the Senate confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And it came with a brief tug of war over a megaphone at the rally organized by Ama Ehrmann that drew leaders of the Indivisible Memphis organization.

Shelby County registered 5,768 new voters from December 2017 to May 2018, according to the most current Shelby County Election Commission numbers.

Memphis City Council members could discuss the process of filling three upcoming vacancies on the body when they meet Tuesday, Oct. 9.

The 73-mile Big River Levee Trail that runs between West Memphis and Marianna, Arkansas, is open to bikers and hikers for the month of October, the St. Francis Levee Board announced this week.

A group of citizens and an organization trying to preserve instant-runoff or ranked-choice voting in city elections filed a Chancery Court lawsuit Friday, Oct. 5, against the Shelby County Election Commission and the city of Memphis seeking to take a repeal of IRV off the Nov. 6 ballot.

The city has changed some materials for interior and exterior renovations of the Memphis Cook Convention Center and is benefiting from a slower pace of construction that had put a higher labor cost on the $175 million project.

Memphis City Council member and Shelby County Probate Court Clerk Bill Morrison will resign his seat on the council effective Nov. 1.

Construction contractors get a detailed look Friday, Oct. 5, at changes to the $175 million renovation of the Memphis Cook Convention Center.

The crime prevention nonprofit group SafeWays is partnering with the Memphis Housing Authority to work in eight public housing high rises and communities as well as mixed-income communities on what were once MHA developments.

Most Memphians who use Kennedy Park know it primarily for its softball and baseball fields. That changed Wednesday, Oct. 3, as the latest stretch of the Wolf River Greenway opened where an almost impenetrable combination of undergrowth and dredge material once hid the Wolf River there.

Treehouses taking shape in Mississippi River Park by the Wolf River Harbor will get signs before the park’s Nov. 9 opening saying they are suitable for children ages 5-12.

The path to end the city’s large public housing projects was a 20-year journey that brought city leaders to a tent last week near the corner of Vance and Lauderdale.

The city-county Economic Development Growth Engine organization known primarily for granting tax incentives to businesses coming to or expanding in Memphis should be empowered to pursue a broader economic development strategy, according to a new report that compares EDGE to efforts in four other cities.

Memphis police brass were about four minutes into Power Point slides at a Tuesday, Sept. 25, City Council committee session before council members shut down the presentation that tallied the hours of police camera recordings and number of cameras in patrol cars.

The leader of the city-county Economic Development Growth Engine says EDGE is willing to change, but Reid Dulberger was quick to add that changes to the formal approach to growing the Memphis economy won’t address the dominant challenges.