CITY REPORTER continued
What might be lost in the debate over jurisdiction, however, may be a more important debate over whether offering tax exemptions might prove to be an effective tool to stimulate blighted neighborhoods.
Patterson sees the board's power as potentially dangerous. Now that the word is out that some developers are getting deals, he wonders how many other companies are going to line up to receive a tax exemption.
Anderson said the board is regulated by tax laws. The board issues tax-exempt bonds to finance the developments. If the developer isn't setting aside a certain percentage of units for people with a low or moderate income, the bond trustee --a major bank -- has to consider the bonds to be in default. If that happens, then the bonds lose their tax-exempt status. This system is checked by the Internal Revenue Service. "The IRS is going to find that out sooner or later," Anderson said.
Board attorney Stephen L. Anderson believes the board has been acting responsibly. "The board has definitely felt a real tension here," he says. "On the one hand, there seems to be a desperate need for low- or moderate-income housing in Shelby County. On the other hand, how many projects [do we allow to] go off the tax rolls?"
The eight-member board is composed mostly of bankers and other business leaders, such as Ken Plunk, chairman of the board of Union Planters, and J. Kenneth Glass, president of the Tennessee Banking Group, First Tennessee Bank.
The board also includes NAACP executive secretary Johnnie R. Turner, who has served on the board for eight years. "I've been on that board a long time," Turner says, "and I was really delighted that we started doing this. It is an honest effort to provide housing for those who can least afford to get it." The board started using tax exemptions as incentives four years ago.
Providing incentives to increase housing for the poor and members of the working class is not a task the county usually handles. Such measures are usually distributed by the city, using state and federal money.
Another thing that bothers county officials is that the board's power is greater than that of its sister board, the industrial development board. The industrial board can waive property taxes to bring a manufacturer into the county, but it does so only for a set amount of time, ranging from five to 15 years, says Patterson. In the meantime, these companies pay smaller amounts of money to the county, called in-lieu-of-tax payments.
The housing facility board's exemption isn't a straight waiver and contains no provision to require in-lieu-of-tax payments. The board essentially agrees to take the titles of property, making the developers leaseholders. As leaseholders, the developers are in charge of maintaining the property as if they still owned it.
Anderson hopes that the state law could be amended so that the housing facility board and the industrial board operate the same way, using the incentives of property-tax waivers and the in-lieu-of-tax payment method to stimulate growth.
Patterson, however, makes a different suggestion: Shut down the board's ability to strike deals in the low- to moderate-income housing market. The mayor could lobby the state legislature to close the law that gives the board its power, he says.
by Phil Campbell
As the new executive director of the newly formed Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, Robert A. Bryden has already gotten a dose of how complex and daunting his job may be.
Finding thousands of people who say they are fed up with crime in the county will be easy, but the commission wants citizens to back their words up. The group hopes that one out of every eight Shelby Countians will give at least $10 to the commission and join it in the process. That's 100,000 members.
Attendance was poor, however, at a joint Shelby County Commission/Memphis City Council meeting last week, during which Bryden pitched his approach to the job. Only five commissioners and three council members attended. Commissioner and meeting chairman Buckner Wellford predicted Bryden's toughest job will be to persuade politicians that the group isn't just another blue-ribbon panel that talks a lot but brings about little change.
Commissioner Shep Wilbun was openly skeptical. He declared that Bryden's commission was "doomed to fail" unless it enrolls its 100,000 members and finds a specific focus.
Bryden himself is optimistic, even as he cautions the public and the public sector to be more realistic. There's no "silver bullet" to the crime problem, yet there are a number of things the commission can do, he says. "Give us some time and be as positive and supportive as you can," he says. "We can't deal in negativity to win this."
Bryden, 52, used to serve as the chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Now he's trying to find a house in the Midtown or downtown area so he can settle more quickly into his $140,000 a year, privately funded job.
He has already met with a few groups in the county and has begun to outline the major components of the commission's role. Primarily, he is forming about 12 committees that will look at specific issues, ranging from juvenile crime to alternatives to jail. Though the majority of commission members are business people, the committees will include a large number of grass-roots activists and neighborhood advocates, Bryden says.
One of his first jobs, he says, will be to take an inventory of what crime-prevention programs are already in place. Then the commission will know which programs are redundant and which ones are too small for the problems they are supposed to address.
These crime committees will then develop "Best Practices" proposals for the areas they research, which mean suggested reforms in certain aspects of the criminal-justice system. If a "Best Practice" is proposed by the commission but not carried through, Bryden says it is not his group's responsibility to push for its implementation. That's the media's job, he says.
"I would assume that you [the media] would ask the agencies why they haven't been enacted," Bryden says. "We're all on the same team. Every agency can improve. I think they [the public agencies] know that I'm here to help them. I'm not here to hurt them or embarrass them."
Sheriff A.C. Gilless sits on the commission board, along with a host of other public officials, and Sheriff's Department Deputy Chief Inspector [CK title] Don Wright expresses his enthusiasm with Bryden. "We're looking forward to working with him," he says. "He has a holistic approach. He can bring all of the communities together."
by Jacqueline Marino
Just one week after District Attorney General Bill Gibbons kicked off a program to evict drug dealers and prostitutes from rental properties, police have received 100 leads from residents of neighborhoods across Shelby County.
Capt. W.N. Cox, one of the Memphis Police Department officers who handles calls to Crime Stoppers, a nonprofit organization that funnels tips from the public to law-enforcement agencies, says the calls reporting drug activity are coming from all over the city.
"They're coming from neighborhoods you wouldn't even think of," he says.
The program works like this: Residents call Crime Stoppers (528-CASH) to report drug-dealing or prostitution in their neighborhoods. Then law-enforcement officers investigate the complaints. If enough evidence of criminal activity is obtained, the DA's office notifies the landlords and asks them to evict the tenant. The DA's office will proceed with the eviction if the landlord fails to do so. Informants get cash awards if their tips lead to an eviction or a criminal conviction.
Bill Ramsey, the program's coordinator for the DA's office, says he isn't surprised by the strong public response. "It shows there's a drug problem in the neighborhoods and that people are interested in doing something about it," he says.
The program may already be affecting criminal activity in some neighborhoods, says Danny Quinn, the Memphis landlord who has been credited with developing the idea for the program.
"I've heard things are shaping up in some of the lower-income, crime-infested neighborhoods," he says. "I hear OCU (the organized crime unit) is telling drug dealers they can be evicted."
Drug-related problems have become so intense in some neighborhoods, says Fran Wilson, executive director of Memphis Area Neighborhood Watch, that people sleep in their bathtubs at night to avoid being hit by stray bullets.
"This program is the most effective thing as far as giving people power to get criminals out of their neighborhoods," she says. "This is the first thing I think will be pursued with a vengeance."
by Elizabeth Lemond
For senior citizens with stars in their eyes, the casting call at Baptist Senior Health Center on Walnut Grove was the only place to be last Friday. That afternoon, a Polaroid-armed team from Walker & Associates advertising and public-relations firm began its search for enthusiastic participants in a new advertising campaign for the center, an outpatient department of Baptist Memorial Hospital that specializes in geriatric care and primary physician practice.
"It was on the calendar, and my daughter told me about it. I come to all the things they have here," said Betty Adams, who was one of the center's first patients when it opened in November 1996. "At least here, you're not a number."
"The reason that we decided to cast local people is because we felt like with a casting call we could expose a lot of people to the center," said Kim Kimbrough, Walker's director of public relations. "People who might not know about it, so it's an opportunity to introduce people who come over here for the casting call to the facility." In addition to the casting call, the center also hosted an open house with refreshments and an intense game of bingo.
"One thing that we really want to make elderly people aware of is, just because you're old, doesn't mean that you're going to be frail, or you're going to be sick," said Paul Martin, the center's program director.
About 25 people participated in the casting call, which simply involved taking a quick snapshot of each person. According to Joe Pizzirusso, Walker's creative director, about three to six seniors will be chosen for the ads.
"We're just looking for some interesting-looking people that have some character," he said. "We're looking for a diverse look."
Some seniors were decidedly more enthusiastic about being on film than others. While one woman joked, "No wonder no one's here!" after being told that she needed to have her picture taken, another, who had brought her husband along, seemed delighted at the prospect of being in an ad.
Though the husband responded with a polite "no" when asked if he wanted to be on television, she winked and said, "Just leave him in my hands."