This is the latest edition of our feature that takes a look back at blog posts 10 years ago, so this month we’re flashing back to April, 2006. The topics that month includes posts about the study funded by Memphis and Shelby County Governments that urged reform of the PILOT program to make sure companies really needed the incentive, the power that the roadbuilding industry has in Tennessee and Senator Mark Norris’ allegiance to it, the need to put school districts’ merger on the table, and the price that our community pays for “commodities economic development.”
The following post is from April 30, 2006, and it is the first City Journal column that I wrote for Memphis magazine, an association with our award-winning city magazine that continues today. The occasion was the magazine’s 30th anniversary and the column laid out six recommendations for future priorities. You be the judge about how much progress that we’ve made on each.
Here’s the post:
It was 1976, and the decline of Memphis had ended. Unfortunately, it was because we had hit bottom.
The economy languished; the Chamber of Commerce flirted with bankruptcy and its last campaign, Believe in Memphis, had fallen flat; Beale Street was boarded up; downtown was on life support; Stax Records was shut down; and the closed Peabody Hotel was a potent reminder of Memphis’ flagging confidence in itself.
And yet, there’s nothing like a crisis to inspire new thinking.
As a result, young Turks conceived a new festival called Memphis in May. Other Memphians laid the groundwork for what became the Center City Commission. A small group began to talk about creating a new generation of leaders, giving birth to Leadership Memphis. City Hall fleshed out plans to buy and revive Beale Street. A new, improved Shelby County Government was launched, complete with its own mayor. A fledgling company called Federal Express picked up momentum after erecting its first drop box. Some civic-minded Memphians published the inaugural issue of a magazine called City of Memphis.
Back then, Memphis was all about survival, and that’s why the most important milestone wasn’t a new program, project, or political office. Rather, it was an obsessive determination – equal parts faith and desperation – to fight for Memphis’ future.
It was a sense of urgency that is all too rare in the life of Memphis. Today, there’s less of a feeling that we are facing history-altering choices, but it remains no less true.
Here’s a half dozen issues we could begin to address today in the name of Memphians 30 years from now:
Reinvent the local tax structure.
In a survey of 51 cities – Washington, D.C., and the largest city in each state – Memphis has the third most regressive tax structure in the nation. That’s why the ultimate answer to current government budget catastrophes lies in an overhauled tax structure (such as requiring the 88,000 non-residents who work in Shelby County to contribute to the public services they benefit from), not in patching up revenue shortfalls with new taxes that perpetuate the existing reality of families earning $25,000 a year paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than families earning $150,000.
Stake the future on quality, not cheapness.
To compete in the global economy, Memphis can’t sell itself at a discount – cheap workers, cheap land, and cheap costs. The city-county tax freeze program, which is waiving more than $50 million in taxes, is more entitlement than incentive, given even to companies paying food stamp wages. In the global economy, strategies to “out cheap” Bangladesh or India are a race to the bottom. Memphis’ competitive advantage has to be quality – research universities, highly-skilled workforce, efficient government, and attention to urban design.
Develop a greenprint.
More and more, the future is shaped by a heightened environmental consciousness, and knowledge economy workers are drawn to cities with a “green” ethos. Few cities could compete with Memphis if it created a seamless system linking Wolf River Greenway, Shelby Farms Park, Memphis Greenline, and a reinvigorated downtown riverfront.
Develop an anti-sprawl plan.
If words were money, rhetoric about sprawl could pay off the county debt. With the opening of Highway 385 – a worthy test case for the state transportation department’s toll road concept – sprawl is poised to get a $450 million boost. It’s not too late to do something about sprawl, but it’s perilously close. Doing nothing risks bankrupting county government, creating a disposable community, and hollowing out urban neighborhoods and first ring suburbs.
Rationalize local government.
Local governments’ current division of labor is schizophrenic, because there is no sense of what is always a city service and what is always a regional, or county, service. This confusion prevents accountability and results in Memphis taxpayers paying a disincentive to live inside the city limits. Countywide services should be shifted to the countywide tax base, more equalizing the tax rates of Memphians with their neighbors in Bartlett, Germantown, and Collierville, and allowing Memphis to compete on a level playing field.
Think and act like a region.
Regions are the competitive units of the global economy, and although Memphis is now competing against regions in India and Europe, we’re still focused on competing with Northern Mississippi. This balkanizes a regional economy that is larger than nine states and dozens of Third World nations. New alliances aimed at a cooperative vision of the future begin with interests everyone in the region has in common – water and air protection, an integrated communications and transportation grid, smart growth, and economic growth.
Admittedly, this is easier said than done. But if 1976 teaches us anything, it is that it can indeed be done, and maybe this time, it won’t take a crisis to make it happen.
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Unfortunately, all still relevant.
10 years ago but still relevant because so little has happened.
Memphis continues to be a city in major decline.
Not to be confused with the pessimist above, Memphis and the metro area has always had a lot of potential and I can add one more issue, to market our potential, our culture, and lifestyle to attract more young people to invigorate this City. It’s not for everyone but there is a certain niche who find us very attractive.
Also, on the tax question, you don’t mention that we are so regressive because the State imposes an antiquated tax system on us. If we can find a way to have outsiders who work here to pay a better share of the tax burden, one that would pass even Kelsey and other radicals version, then that would be a step in the right direction.
Significant progress has been made toward improving the metropolitan area’s “greeprint”. Not only are the four assets listed being improved and/or expanded to create a seamless system, but a very real Greenprint plan has been created for the entire MPO. Multi-use trails, bikeways, sidewalks and parks are being embraced as focal points in the day to day life of this community. This plan is not limited to sustainable goals and practice that are less tangible in nature, but includes actual delineated future multi-use trails, greenways and corridors. It represents one of the first of its kind in the nation as defined by its depth, comprehensive nature and clear guidelines for implementation. Who would have believed 10 years ago that we would be preparing to open one of the longest pedestrian bridges of its type across the Mississippi River or that officials and citizens at every level would be discussing (excitedly at times) the prospect of dedicated multi-use trail corridors radiating out from Memphis to cities and towns 100 miles away? That residents even in some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods would be actively campaigning to create bike lanes, their own greenline corridors and connections to this expanding system? That in a region that is perennially cash strapped and seems so divided would be able to witness completion of the Wolf River Greenway from Downtown to Collierville by 2019? That real estate websites would actively tout proximity to these amenities as value added assets for homes?
The fact that the Greenprint plan has been universally adopted and condoned by the various state, county and municipal governments throughout the MPO area speaks not only to its vision but also demonstrates regional cooperation on a level rarely seen at the local or national level.
Yes. All these points are still relevant today. A lot of American cities are not doing so well. Yes, you could say this city is in a “major” decline. Take it from this time traveler who lived in downtown Memphis during the 80’s. Then moved to the west coast and came back again to live in Memphis in 2013. I hadn’t seen Memphis from 1989 to 2013 – my what a difference – in a great way. Yes, the city’s bills are mounting, urban sprawl is blatant, resources are thin. But you can’t tell me Memphis is still the same as it was and in great decline. Like a lot of cities (including the one I lived in for a long time – San Diego – which is supposedly 1/4 inch away from bankruptcy just like CA) – we all have to get smarter to deal with the dumb decisions of the past. But I have to tell you that Memphis citizens have the most heart and determination of any city I have ever lived in. Great things can come out of dire circumstances. Just look at downtown Memphis now.