Surf New Forest Hills

ith the date already set for referendums that could make five now-hypothetical towns a reality in Shelby County, and with the legal channels that might block their reality apparently exhausted, these municipalities-in-waiting seem to have entered a sort of limbo: not really city, not really county, not really anything else. Leadership -- outside of the petitioners themselves and a handful of lawyers -- has not yet emerged, since there is yet nothing to lead; and in the media, coverage has focused on the Rout/Herenton front, since it is difficult to solicit opinions from elected officials whose constituencies ("the citizens of Nashoba," for example) do not properly exist.

But they do exist, really, just as surely as the December 9th referendums will take place; a fact that could easily be missed thumbing through the Herenton ads and the editorials decrying Rout's indecision. But where, outside of the letters to the editor, do these towns-to-be have their viewpoint aired and championed in the local press?

Well, what better for new towns than new media? While Web-pages have lately been raised in the names of Nashoba and New Berryhill, the first -- and most substantial -- online incorporation pamphlet tracks the path to cityhood of New Forest Hills, one of the handful of proposed towns that led the current charge. And while the page appeared less than a week after Charles Perkins filed the petition on behalf of the area, the site is entirely unofficial, unsponsored by any organization or any of the petitioners.

The person responsible for the page is Chris Lawrence, a senior computer-science major at the University of Memphis and resident of the Kings Mill development in New Forest Hills. The page provides information, opinion, and analysis about every phase of incorporation thus far, as well as links to relevant sites, including those for the state legislature and for other areas seeking incorporation.

"Especially at the beginning, a lot of the people were confused about it, didn't understand what it meant, and really the media wasn't being all that helpful in explaining it," says Lawrence, 21, of the void he seeks to fill with the page. "[The media] was just giving play-by-play. Joe Blow doesn't care about that. He wants to know how this is going to affect his pocketbook, he wants to know how it's going to affect his community, whether or not he's going to have any say in how these things are done. I think that's something that wasn't being made clear."

Culled from other news sources -- including The Commercial Appeal, The Memphis Flyer, and news broadcasts -- the page is part news digest, part political commentary. Lawrence, who is a self-described libertarian, characterizes himself as "fairly" pro-incorporation, and it shows on the page when he comments on incorporation developments, sometimes wryly, as in the observation, "Has anyone else noticed that our communities' names don't get quotes around them in the papers any more?"

"For me it's [an issue of] self-determination," he says. "For a lot of other people it's more Republican: low taxes coupled with some degree of self-determination."

His viewpoint comes through most forcefully when he discusses the "Pro and Cons" of annexation by Memphis under the sloganeering head of "Memphis gains monetarily while new residents pay for continued downtown subsidies," or when he takes aim at what he considers the "flaws" in Mayor Herenton's "Formula for Fairness."

Initially, traffic at the site was light, logging only a handful of hits a week. In recent weeks, that number has reached over a hundred. Not a ton, to be sure, but Lawrence says the page has garnered inquiries from leaders of incorporation efforts in the neighboring areas of Nashoba and Hickory Hill/Nonconnah, as well as other areas that are looking at incorporation, but don't know exactly where to start.

Whatever its status as a clearinghouse, however, Lawrence's page -- and the others that are following it -- seem to fill a need not unlike the one filled by incorporation itself. Driving around on the now-speculative border of New Forest Hills and Irene -- where a development at the corner of Shelby Drive and Forest Hill-Irene pitches itself with the boast "No City Taxes" -- Lawrence describes the suburban frustration with a city government that seems too far away.

"It could take you 45 minutes to drive to city hall from my house," he says. "And when you get there, there are 13 people representing 700,000 people."

The same frustration might be translated to the local media, which Lawrence describes as "generally pro-Memphis" all the way down to the Germantown-based Shelby Sun Times, which he accuses of straddling the fence editorially.

"The Commercial Appeal's -- what? -- a block from Danny Thomas and [The Memphis Flyer's] practically on South Main. The furthest East television station is on Highland. So it's always going to be something Midtown-centered or downtown-centered. If Memphis wants to be a downtown-centered city, that's fine," he says, no doubt echoing much of Shelby County's pro-incorporation sentiment. "But I don't think people should go out and try to finance that from people who can't get downtown every day."

New Forest Hills

http://www.newforesthills.base.org

Nashoba
http://www.netten.net/nashoba/
New Berryhill
http://www.berryhillassoc.com/